As children, they played in the woods and creek that ran in parallel to trail through the neighborhood park.
She had dark hair and dark eyes, ran fast—for a girl—when they played as well on the soccer field and baseball diamond in open beyond the woods.
In the woods, for most of season and year, the creek was still and mostly pools. It ran only in the after run-off of heavy rains when they fell from sky. When they explored, they wore old shoos and played in the pools catching tadpoles in empty Smucker’s jars with holes poked in the metal tops for air. They would keep them for a while—watch length of the tail shrink and growth of their arms and legs begin—then return them to the pools to catch again when fully grown to frogs.
Under stones, they found crawdads in their hide. They were always slow to grab, afraid of the pincers, until finally pinched and realizing it didn’t hurt as bad as the fear.
They’d raise and hold the crawdads up to sky. Catch of the light and sun changed common of their brown in illuminated streaks of almost-flourescent blues and greens. Always, they put them back, covered again with stone.
That was many years ago. Even all but his youngest child were past that age of innocence, adventures, and discoveries.
Some days, he wished he could return—when all was adventure and most common of finds were seen as living treasures: to catch tadpoles and frogs and crawdads once again, feet and shoes and bodies muddied in adventure.
Then the simple-seeing, revelation—he could.