While I'm away, here's a photo of my mom, my grandpa, Ruth, and my hero Uncle Carl.
It was a different time. Back then, you walked to school without a parent. I was supposed to walk with KC but I didn't really like talking to her and I suspect she wasn't that interested in me. I ended up walking by myself a lot of the time, which, even then, was something I liked to do. I liked having time alone in my own head. I don't remember the actual walk. We moved halfway through my kindergarten year, so it was never part of my routine, the way the walk to my future grade school would be. It was a suburban Detroit neighborhood, full of houses like the one I lived in. I believed that the world was like this: house after house. What did I dream about back then? What went through my head? One day I came home and there it was, in the center of our lawn: a huge monarch butterfly. I froze. I was terrified of butterflies. They clearly weren't natural: they were large and colorful and flew in random directions. I was pretty sure they had teeth. How could I possib