He was right to leave the dog home so we could ride our bikes to the river. It was an easy jaunt, just two miles in and two miles out. A short steep-ish walk down to the river side, which was rocky but completely deserted. We balanced carefully on the stones, trying to step only on the wide, flat ones, but missed sometimes and braced delicate insteps on pointed, angled rocks, wincing the whole way.
The current was thicker, faster here and we walked carefully in - careful of those rocks - and Madeleine wanted to surrender to the current, to let it carry her wherever it wanted to. Wayland held on tight for a bit, then just let her go, keeping close by.
Violet, always a bit slower, more careful, found a spot in the middle of the river and sat, pulling small rocks from the bed and placing them on a large one jutting out of the water. "It's a rock family," she said, placing another "baby" down. "These are the babies, and this is their mama."
Saying "family" like this: fan-uh-wee.
I sat with her, collecting stones of my own, while Wayland and Mad traversed up and then down the river a stretch. They found treasure: a collection of golf balls (21!) washed up on an inset of the river, and a tan and black moth, with surprising hints of orange on the inside of its wings.
We saw a crawdad scuttling from underneath a rock in the river and a millipede-looking creature crawling across the stones. Tiny minnows nipped around our ankles.
It was late afternoon and the sun made light dance on the water. We heard nothing but the rush of water and the call of birds and a little bit of wind clapping against the leaves.
This is a day that matters, like a reset button, a centering force to stick a pin in, so that the rest of your days can revolve around it, focus on it, come back to it. Because these are the things that matter: the careful steps, the sun and the water, the silence and the unexpected treasure, the absolute joy, and of course, the fan-uh-wee.
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