Were I playing this game with anyone else, nephew of mine, I would have begun rolling my eyes and fishing for reasons to leave long ago. Instead, I find myself hoping that you will not tire.
The yellow hood of your winter coat bobs charmingly as you dart between the grated drain and the nearby heap of barn red woodchips. You stoop to grasp a handful of red. The next moment you are purposefully marching to the grate, where you hunker over it and extend your clenched fist.
The timing is always perfect: a moment's pause to savor the anticipation of what's to come, and then--ha!--the fingers burst apart. Like the reckless young invincible that you are, you let those chips fall where they may. Some catch on the bars of the grate, but most freefall and then splash satisfyingly in the inky water pooled below.
I'm watching you watch them, although you are hard to keep track of from moment to moment. As great as your pleasure is in watching what gravity and ground water do to woodchips, mine is infinitely greater in watching what imagination and curiosity do to you: seeing your eyes sparkle and hearing the glee in your voice and realizing that your mind is so absorbed in this that you've forgotten I'm even here.
It's only after I've written this experience out, after I've taken these woodchips of experience and flung them into the drain of my own mind and reveled in the sensations of memory and love that they produced, that I find the detachment to wonder: who might have been watching me watch you all that precious while?
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