Oh, to be young and wear flowers in your hair…

Yooooo-hooooo…Yooooo-hoooooo.... My nephew was calling up to the second-story window where I was seated at my laptop while writing a paper. This was the first time he had ever done this, and even though I was busy and knew that my responding would get something time-consuming started, I called back down to him. He froze at the sound of my voice resonating from somewhere unknown. Romeo called again. I responded a second time and began to wave from the window. “Hurry, hurry quick Auntie Carol…you must come down right now!” Paper be damned, I sprinted down the steps three at a time and flew out the front door with a flourish! Nephew beamed at me when I appeared on the porch. There’s nothing sweeter than a boy who looks at you with such complete adoration! And he presented me with my favorite flower of all, one that was picked on the spot from the yard, a mere weed, but perhaps the most beautiful wild-onion-flower I’ve ever seen. So beautiful in fact, I poked it behind my ear so that I looked like an island girl. Nephew wanted a flower behind his ear too, so I helped place one there for him (he only has a few good flower-in-the-hair years left in him before some numbskull makes fun of him for such an innocent inclination, so I’m going to encourage it all I can). He then showed me his swing-set skills by climbing up on the slide to jump, and hanging upside down to swing and flip. He did all of this without dislodging the flower from behind his ear. That’s my boy.