She watched her daughter on play on floor on dig, search, and scatter of books from basket where they kept.
Viewing, she thought how life was full of stories and, like stories and books in basket’s store, she wondered which ones in life she would choose: to read, to write, to live.
Searching into basket, still, daughter reached for story of a little blue truck and farm animals that helped each other. Holding in her little hands, daughter raised it for her to read. Story was a favorite of them both.
It was a little blue truck of make and kind her own father once had had, and to read of it, her daughter climbing and taking place on lap, she felt him near and close again.
She read the story to her daughter again, as she had a hundred times and would as many more as her daughter asked and wished her to.
She remembered back to books of youth, read to in same and rest on her father’s lap—favorite stories that were theirs.
Daughter helped her turn the page pointing, excited, to next scene that showed. She read on in a rhythm and pace that, for all of life after, would serve to her daughter as tone of spirit-soothe.
She thought of her father, upon his lap, helping turn the pages too of story they both knew.
“…Now I see a lot depends on a helping hand from a few good friends.”
Child on lap, children’s book, she felt near to him again.