#2 Long WalksWhen Rose was little we walked together all the time. Once we were going along with her stroller and I saw a flowering cactus on the side of the road. I parked and carefully pried the lovely, yellow flower from the plant. Examining it and seeing that it was clean of prickles (and not being a cactologist for Pete's sake), I handed it to my sweet baby girl.
We continued our walk.
After a few moments she threw the flower aside and squealed, screeched and kicked her little heart out. She rubbed her hands as if she was being attacked by a swarm of crawly bugs. I grabbed her hands and realized to my horror that this innocent, yellow flower contained within its stem a blitzkrieg of microscopic needles. I ran her home, and looking at her hands, saw hundreds of little white things in her soft, fat palms. Every attempt to pull them out with tweezers failed. After many tears between us, I finally shoved her whole hand in my mouth, and with my tongue and teeth, cleared her hand of every needle.
I vividly remember the oddly trusting look on her face, as it might have seemed to her that her mama was eating her hand, while at the same time making every thing better.
So, in recent years we haven't walked much together. And so my plan is to walk and fish more within the next 35 days.
