What a lot of time I waste. Reading the paper or anything -daydreaming, just generally wasting time. If I knew I would die tomorrow or even next week I would spend it so differently. Drinking in every motion of the people I love, you and your father. Recording the beautiful thoughts about you both. Working hard to make you smile. I would spend very few of those precious moments doing things that did not involve someone else. I should have learned that lesson in Mexico. My most treasured pictures are not of Cathedrals or even mountains, but of people, and there are far too few. The memory of those people is all that makes me long for Mexico again.
I have often thought what McCall would hold for me without my parents. The lakes would be beautiful still, but how could I go there and not see my father fishing on the far side, or my mother reading in the soft needles below a pine. The place would be lonely, foreign, even if you and Daddy were there. McCall is my parents most of all. And would this house be warm if you two were not in it? Some of my most treasured moments last spring came when I walked in from class and found you on Daddy’s lap. Usually quietly lying there but sometimes eating noisily. So warm, so familiar, so wonderful.