Walking home

We walked home from school today. It was a little cold but beautiful, sunny and clear.

Kate was a little sulky initially, preferring not to walk. Jack, in contrast, would walk home every day if he could. So he made it fun for Kate.

"Kate, let's see what we can find for leaves, OK? We can find the biggest, or the most colorful?" They did that for a couple of minutes, then Kate got leaves in her sneakers and was irritated. So Jack said, "Let's walk on the sidewalk, and see what else we can find."

They spotted what seemed to be a piece of colorful glass fused into the sidewalk. "Look, Kate, it's a secret passageway!" Jack said. "We need to find the key!" They knelt down and sifted through rocks and twigs. "Is this the key?" asked Kate. "What about this?" "Ooh, that's a good key. Hmm, no it doesn't work."

We walked some more. Jack found a metal key ring. "THIS is the key!" They both ran back to the fused glass. "Yeah, look at this, that's great!"

Walked a few yards more. Played with more leaves. Analyzed the staples in a telephone pole. Careful, I said.

On the street parallel to ours there are two big columns on either side, like a gate or archway. "Stop!" Jack instructed to us. "We can't go through without the key." They both knelt to find the key. Kate came up with a stick, Jack a rock. Jack said, "We place the rock here--" (in front of one column) "--and poke it with the stick." Kate poked it. "There! Now we can go through." So we did. 

Came to the white stones on the border of a neighbor's lawn. Kate dubbed them the "Rocks of Joy," and jumped from rock to rock. Jack followed suit. I told them it was time to cross. Kate looked up. "Look, MORE Rocks of Joy!" We crossed, and they continued jumping from rock to rock.

On the cross street near our house, there was a big, waist-level tree stump at the edge of the road, where a tree had been knocked down in a storm. They approached it reverently. "This is the thump-thump stump," Jack explained. "You have to pat it while singing a song to pass." They both patted the stump like a drum, singing a made-up song. We passed.

On our street, we passed a house with a lawn decoration of a turkey rising out of a pumpkin. They walked up to it and said hello to the turkey. I noticed the owner on her porch and warned them not to touch it. She said, it's OK, they can look. So they did.

We passed a guy walking his dog. The dog's tail whipped back and forth as she saw us. As we passed, Kate moved aside, I held out my hand to greet the dog. It flopped down on its back and Jack and I scratched its belly. Its tail went thump thump thump.

Reached home, having made a 10-minute walk in about half an hour. "See, Kate, isn't walking home GREAT?" said Jack.