Hints and Guesses

Being the only otherwise-unoccupied competent family person, today I was designated to be the companion for the eight-year-old younger brother of my two stepsons (and no matter how awkwardly constructed this sentence is, I have no intention of rewriting it). He’s a great kid, or it would have been a bother.

He watched television while I worked around the house all morning. Then we went to the lake, where I thought I might write the morning pages, but this eight-year-old has more confidence in his swimming skills than I do, so we swam together. He got tired of swimming, so we went to the playground. He finally got tired of the playground and wanted to walk to the end of the pier, so we did. We sat for a while at the end of the pier where he pretended to fish with some fishing line he found.

We wrapped up the day at Kilwin’s (because it was his last day of freedom before school begins tomorrow, and if you’re going to eat ice cream it might as well be the good stuff).

“Is there anything else you’d like to do today before you go back to school tomorrow?” I asked.

“Finish this ice cream,” he said.

And so we did.