Tomorrow’s a dad day. Abby’s got work at the café, so I’ll be hanging out with her. My sister’s coming by for some time with her also, but the morning’s just us. Maybe we’ll go on a walk. We’ll make some breakfast and sing songs and be silly. Mornings with Roby are a real treat, the best kind, really. 

When we’re together I feel such incredible comfort. It’s honestly difficult to imagine a time before she was here. What else did I have going on, exactly? It makes no sense. 

Luckily I don’t have to worry about a time before Robinia, that’s in the past, I’ve got a future full of her, and thank goodness. 

It’s going to be a good summer. She was a riot last year, and this year? This year she can run around. And she’ll be doing plenty of that. Likely naked, as naked as she’d like, really. Which I’m guessing will be a lot. 

She’s got an immense warmth to her, emotionally, but also physically. She walked outside today without socks on, barefoot across the ice, which she picked up an ate. While we were throwing the ball for archie, she stood on the ice again. I remember as a kid, swimming in Maine in the early summer, it might’ve been spring. It didn’t bother me none but folks were astonished. Robinia’s the same kind of hero. 

We’ll go swimming, we’ll lay in the grass. She’ll shortly be too big for walks where she’s strapped to me, but we’ll still go on walks. 

We walk now, this winter, with her still in the harness we used when she was teensie tiny. Now she’s large enough to really do a number on my back. But I still do it, and I’ll do it as long as I can, because this summer I won’t be able to anymore, and that’ll be a sad thing.