Remember that one Barry Manilow song?
Anyway, it started to rain on our walk back from school, this afternoon.
There are only two of these walks left before the long summer vacation.
I like when it rains.
I like this for a lot of reasons, but when it rains on our walk home from school, I like it because when she doesn't have an umbrella, she uses her back pack a shelter for her beautiful shiny blonde hair.
Then, it doesn't hang on her back, low and over her butt anymore.
This is prettiness when you are me, and she is her fourth grade self.
She, whom you've known from the time she was three, and loved forever.
She, who will never fail to make your heart ache, and do everything that could break your soul, but won't, 'cause you won't allow it, if only so you can lay it down at her feet again and again.
Pedophiles don't touch children: the hopeless and the sociopathic do.
On the island, at the light, she grins and looks up with those giant deep brown eyes from under that back pack atop her head, "I'm wearing a white shirt, too."
Her smile is so radiant, her eyes so impish, and giggling in silence, her self and soul, at 9, almost ten, with just a hint of a clue, if at all.
A serene and gentle smile back, with only one tiny glint in my eyes, "it's okay, though, you have another shirt on, underneath."
Our smiles remain, and the moment passes and something is separately shared.
Later, down the street, she struggles to get her dark pink hoodie from the pack, to keep her downy arms dry, too. "Here, I'll hold that for you," I say, taking it from her.
And for a little tiny moment, in the time it takes for her to don the garment of which I am jealous, I am carrying her books home from school, if not playing make believe she was married to me.
I'd gladly carry her home everyday, through any weather.