#4

With a free afternoon I would go down to the pond that’s just a few steps from my house, I’d put down a blanket and watch the beaver that’s building his house and chewing down trees, in the stream that fills the pond. I’d watch him swim and chew and slap his tail and let the day go by.

#3

How I feel about Wednesdays, huh, well of course Wednesdays are mid week; shying away from the drudgery of Monday and Tuesday and all the homework and yawns that come with those days and drifting ever closer to the hopeful days that are Thursday and Friday. Wednesday itself is not a promise filled day like say Friday is, nor is it a freedom filled day like Saturday. Rather Wednesday is the gatekeeper to these days, he sits atop a giant hill that one must climb to the top of, through Monday and Tuesday to reach the peak, and there is Wednesday pointing downwards to the receding slope, where there is a picturesque view of Thursday then Friday and further still the beloved valley that is Saturday and Sunday. Sure Wednesday is spelled oddly, you need a pneumonic device to remember which letters go where, and of course Wednesday does not enjoy freedom itself but it does offer the best view of it.

#2

I can count on my dad; I know that no matter what he will be there for me. Maybe the smallest way I can be sure of this is how he read to me, or what he read to me. I think when I was seven, maybe younger, I found a series called the Magic Attic, and looking back it was pretty terrible; basically there were four girls who could transport themselves into becoming princesses and cowgirls from a magical attic in their neighborhood. The stories themselves are all but forgotten but the memory of snuggling up to my father with Keisha the Fairy Snow Queen in my hand and an expectant look in my eyes is still there. He might have sighed occasionally, even a  casual eye roll once in a while, but he always read it, he’d always crack open the cover and read a poorly written, illustrated story of a girl becoming a snow queen in an alternate dimension, he would read the whole thing and then the next one I handed him. Sometimes he would fix us both a bowl of ice cream and grab a book of his own, something a bit less frivolous, A Series of Unfortunate Events , and read that to me until I realized that maybe a bloodthirsty child stalker, was a better read than Keisha and those books went into our attic. Even now that I read my own books my dad sometimes will slip a book into my hands, with an uninvited recommendation of “You would like this.” And despite my reluctance, I always do.

#1

I remember the book Go Dog Go, I use to get on my tippy toes and snatch it off the shelf and then take it to the nearest person, hand the book to them and then plop downaqt their feet. I would sit cross legged waiting expectantly for my mom or dad or whomever to begin. I loved the pictures, the dogs in their absurd places; boats, trees, cars. I loved the opposites, there would be a small red dog out and a big blue dog in and I think when I was eight I could quote it as my parents read. Even now my family quotes, “’Do you like my hat?’ ‘No I do not like your hat.’” Some things don’t change, even today if I turn the pages of Go Dog Go, I will still meet all the dogs, big, small, yellow, red, blue all going to the big tree. They never stop going.