We missed Logan’s boarding the bus on the first day of school by two minutes. We were walking up the steep hill and saw his feet as he sprang in the bus. We were a bit earlier the second day, in time to get a picture of him. He was so proud of his new sneakers that he actually stood still.

As the bus chugged up the hill, he was a blur as he ran to the end of the road.

Retrieval systems came into play after school. John used a pole to extricate an airplane, while Logan had a stick to get back a tennis ball he had thrown.

Checkers gave John a chance to rest after all the activity in the yard.

Today is quite different from the exuberance of youth. We are saying goodbye to neighbor Dave and thinking of peace and rest. I last talked with him as the neighborhood celebrated the Fourth of July. His health went downhill, and he couldn’t win that last battle with pneumonia. We will miss seeing him with Connie on their porch, hearing his ready wit and interesting stories, and knowing a big-hearted man can only love us from afar. This is my favorite picture of him, taken on our back porch on Memorial Day, 2016.