Out for a Walk

Lillian’s in an afternoon theater camp this week, and my fabulous niece Miranda came over to watch my mom so I could walk there with Lillian.

Walking with Lillian is always a delight (Texan though she is, she still has a word or two of complaint about the mid-summer heat). She talks and sings and wants to know about all kinds of things.

Today, she was struck by the music of the cicadas in the trees, and the shapes of the clouds in the sky, and she was delighted by the touch of a light breeze while we stood in the shade.

That walk was pretty much the high point of my day.

Boredom…

Checking out Bellaire’s new Evelyn’s Park with Lillian.

“Is this going to be another BORING walking park, ePa?”

“Let’s go and see.”

“Oh, yes, it is BOR… wait, can you play in the sand? Can I take my shoes off? See ya!”

Playing Cards

After a couple of games of Go Fish, Lillian announced that she was creating her own card game, “Bulba-Bub”.

“I get all the high cards, you get all the low cards,” she said. “The person with the high cards wins.”

“Hmmmm,” I said.

There was a long pause.

“But it’s fair,” she said.

It was fun.

I lost.

The Last Day of Summer

What better way to spend the last day of summer than at the beach?

We’re staying in a house up on stilts a short walk from the beach. In the early morning, sitting on the veranda, you can hear crickets and cicadas in the fields, and birds singing on the utility wires. In the evening, choruses of frogs replace the birds of the morning. There’s the scent of the fresh-cut grass from the field across the way, mixed with the aroma of the Gulf carried up by the south-easterly breeze. Every once in a while, someone drives by, sticks an arm out the window of a pickup truck and waves.

Down on the beach, you mostly hear the surf and the calling of the gulls. In the middle of the week, the beach is empty, except for a fisherman or two. They are pretty friendly, old folks for the most part, and you eventually realize that they stop to chat because they see you as one of them — just another old geezer with time to spare. The air today has a particular freshness, a hint that the season is about to change. It’s still hot — we’re in Texas after all — but the heat is just a little less aggressive.

We are doing nothing much — reading books, cooking a light meal, walking in the surf and ignoring our cell phones, mostly. To send the summer off, we went out on the beach at sunset and watched Venus shining brightly in the darkening sky and saw the stars come out over the water.

Tomorrow will feel much the same, but it will be autumn, and another year will speed to its end.

Now We Are Six

Today, August 9, 2016 was Lillian’s sixth birthday. This picture is of Lillian yesterday, when she was five years and 365 days old–she is off flying around the country with her mom and dad today.

When she gets back, she’ll be starting school at Armand Bayou Elementary down in Clear Lake, just a few blocks from her house. She is excited that they have a cafeteria.

She is a joy.

Lillian Gives Yia Yia Huggies

Lillian hugging her Yia Yia. The dress Lillian has on used to reach below her knees. 

Sand. Sea. Girl.

Lillian is a beach girl. 

At A Favorite Park

Lilz loves Karl Young Park. There is a large sandbox. Need I say more?

Let’s Go, ePa!

Lillian and her great-grandmother and I went over to the Russ Pitman Nature Center in Bellaire this morning. Her great-grandmother sat in the shade (when you’ve gotten to the age where your body can no longer tolerate cold, Houston in the summer has a certain appeal), and Lillian and I went strolling.

Lillian isn’t actually much of a stroller: she’s more a combination of runner — dancer — jumper — prancer, but she stops often enough to watch spiders and squirrels and flowers that her old and slow ePa can still keep up. There’s a rabbit in a pen there; Lillian tries to engage him in conversation, but he just wrinkles his nose and ignores her.

Even at the advanced age of three, Lillian is sure to make an experimental splash in every puddle in the park, and always sticks her hand in the goldfish pond to wave at the fish. And, after a few minutes at each stop, she tugs on her grandfather’s finger. “Let’s go, ePa,” she says, and we’re off until something else strikes her fancy.

In Performance

Lillian spent her mornings last week at St Thomas’ Episcopal‘ VBS, hanging out with other kids, making various craft-y things, and practicing for the big Friday evening performance. She’s a bit of a ham and really enjoyed it, but her interpretations of her parts in the songs were certainly idiosyncratic.

She’s also gotten to spend a lot of time with her great uncle Paul, great aunt Nina and cousin Samuli, who have been visiting from Kerava, Finland, while her grandpa was amusing everyone by passing a few kidney stones and otherwise making a general nuisance of himself. The Finns return to Finland today and we’ll all miss them, though I suspect they are looking forward to the weather ( highs in the low 70s) and to their garden in full bloom.

As Lillian says, “See ya later, guys!”