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Grey day outside, pale clouds are all making the same amorphous shape, squirrels up and around the wires, near the electrical box, chittering, while I try and decide if it would be worth losing the electricity to see one go down, the maple sprouting small green buds, azaleas all pink blooms, the musty smell of bark after rain, sitting on the front porch and pointing out the geraniums to s.

Inside, greyer day, windows and blinds open, lights off, s is sitting in her new jumperoo glowering at the plastic monkey in her hands. She spins a little wheel and looks up at me in confusion. I lean down and turn the jumperoo on. She spins the wheel and an orange light flashes and the monkey calls out oooohhhhhh, oohhhhhhhh, ahhhhhhh, ahhhhh, and she looks up at me again, expectant or proud. "You did it s," I tell her, and she smiles.

It's been quite fun to watch s learn about cause and effect in her new jumperoo. I didn't know if she had the concept down until a couple of days ago when I noticed her repeatedly spinning the wheel to make the monkey go. I see a bright future for her now. Now we just need to make sure that she has the capacity for empathy connected to the cause and effect. I don't think she quite has this one down, or she wouldn't spend so much time pulling S's hair out of her head with a sublime look on her face.

Inside, pale light coming through unwarped glass. On the radio, three people are talking about literature as if it might matter. On the floor, the little girl, cradled between her daddy's legs to keep from tipping over looks off into the distance. The pale light illuminates her face, red cheeks, wheat colored hair, eyes the color of whatever dark color she's wearing. She looks away from her toys off towards where the voices are coming from. Her three chins turning as one, and then turning back. Disembodied voices are still a new thing.

"Those are ghosts," I tell her, talking about a person who has died.

But by now she has forgotten about the disembodied voices as she idly chews the leg of a giraffe named Sophie.

In the morning she takes the smallest bits of naps, like edges torn from a paper to make it look worn. In the afternoon, when we stand outside, looking back at our house, I imagine that all we need is more color.
"Color," I tell her, "Color can save the world."

And she is too young to remind me that color doesn't exist, merely properties of light, wavelengths.

"We'll plant wavelengths of light," I tell her, but she is busy trying to hold on to her toes.

In the evening she sits in a purple chair and laughs as I prepare dinner.

"There is nothing funny about warming pita in the oven," I say, already knowing that I am wrong that to be a child is to find humor in the strangest things rather than the distance between what is said and what is meant.

"Some day," I tell her, "we'll pull out the Juniper, which is almost like a weed where I'm from, and replace it with wavelengths of light embodied in all sorts of flowers." But she is already sleeping the frequent sleep of a child.