It’s a late start today. Went to a house concert last night. There was a rain delay. I got home late, for me. The alarm went off at six, but I ignored it. Now here I am. It’s nearly eight, and by this time of the morning, I’m usually well into my day. The words are down. The picture polished. And the entire package shoved out into the world. Usually. Sometimes I get this sort of day. When I do, I just amble through it, making it up as I go along.

It rained again while I slept. The morning air is cool. The ground wet. And everything is growing. I’d say this has all the hallmarks of becoming a good day as would any day that starts with rain. Of course, my daughter and the kids are coming this afternoon, so the day had a leg up on goodness. The granddaughter is going to camp tomorrow. The same camp her mother attended, Kickapoo, just outside Kerrville. I never went to camp as a kid. Summer was for playing with my friends. We popped outside in the morning, came home when the sun went down.

In fact, I doubt my parents ever thought about sending me to camp. Not really in their life experience. My mother spent most of her childhood in an Ohio orphanage, even though her father was alive, and my dad was a barefoot Texas boy, who grew up around Alice and Freer and San Antonio. Not ultra-hard lives, but certainly not camp lives. My late wife brought camp into my picture, another brush stroke in the painting of my life.