The Visit

Recently, my five year old grand-nephew Cole spent the afternoon with me. We ate lunch together, he played with a collection of my sons' childhood cars that I keep in an old bright red bread box, he hunted for my invisible cat Sam I Am who never did show himself on that day. He watered my kitchen garden and filled the birdbaths and ate blueberries which he declared would make him healthy and strong. And near the end of his visit, we went out to The Happy Camper.

I opened the door and he went in first. "Wow," he said. In fact for several minutes that's almost all he could say. He had me turn on every light. "Wow!" he said.

We opened the oven door and then the small refrigerator. "Wow!" He closed the refrigerator door and had to open it two more times before he could move on.

"What's behind that door?" He pointed to one of two closets.

"On some shelves, I keep food. On this shelf, I have games. Up here are books." Wow.

We looked inside the other closet and found a trash can and a broom and some tools and a pile of extension cords. He pointed to the faucet. "Does that work?"

"Yes, but not right now because we don't have water in the tank. I can wash dishes in the sink."

At last he sat on the sofa. "Can you sleep here?" he said.

"Yes," I answered. "If you fold this couch out, it becomes a bed. And here, at this table, you can have your dinner. I can fold this table up and put it in the closet if I want more space."

"Do you live out here?" he said.

"When I camp, I do."

He laid his head on a large yellow pillow and smiled. "You could sleep here," he said. He spied an old tin toy travel trailer I have setting up on the galley counter, next to the coffee pot. The toy trailer has two doors at either end that open, and just inside the open doors are a boy and a woman waving. "Who are they?" he asked.

"Well, maybe the boy is you," I said.

He looked deeply offended. "I am too old for that."

"Oh," I said, "you don't play those kind of imaginary games. Okay." But still he opened and closed the doors a few more times.

He wanted to close the trailer door while we were inside, which we did. Then he wanted it open because, he said, " I can't breathe."

At last, he sat in the doorway, his feet on the front step and looked out at the yard. The birds and squirrels and rabbits that reside in my yard seem to forget that the HC is there, and often they come quite close without seeing that people are nearby. After a minute or two of watching a robin search for worms, he asked, "Where's Keeper?" Keeper is my dog, a handsome canine of ten years who is part Dachsund and part Shiba Inu.

"I think he is inside. Should we go find him?" I said.

"He misses me," Cole said.

We closed the door of the trailer. "But we will come back," Cole said.