"Unlike the bell lost in its spire somewhere far away, the silent Sky always expands as you go to meet it. It’s not at all like that hawk circling high above which, as it scans the earth, pauses now and again to consider you as a target. The Sky never condenses down to a point. It doesn’t choose any targets. It always opens up to you as you approach. If it had arms they’d be wide and waiting, forever. So different than the bell, which echoes and disappears and then reappears when you least expect it. The Sky is always present. It never leaves, it never arrives. It knows no past, no future. But it knows you and it definitely knows me. It knows us both. And it wants to know the Earth and that’s where we can help. That’s where we, like the trees, are truly kings. Kings who can reach up and pull the Sky down to them."

young love      When Little Pete was four years old he fell in love. Her name was Payton. She was a year older than Pete. She had an older sister, Shana, who was Anna’s friend and classmate. When he was two and then three years old Little Pete had a serious crush on Shana the older sister. Perhaps it was just an infatuation. Shana would visit Anna at our house and Pete would follow her around with love in his eyes. Shana would laugh, shyly. Finally, after a year or so of this, Little Pete was bold enough to ask her for a kiss. She consented. She was maybe thirteen years old when Pete kissed her. She leaned down and Pete toddled over and tried to kiss her on the cheek but he didn’t quite manage to kiss her. He ran back to me and then turned and looked at her. I encouraged him to try again. Once again she leaned down, he toddled over, and once again he missed. His lips couldn't quite connect. He ran back to me and he again turned and looked at her. She was practically blushing. With all the discretion I could muster I urged Pete to try again. This time he succeeded. Anna and Shana thought it was the cutest thing in the world and I was surprised at how sweetly Shana blushed when his lips finally touched her cheek.

Little Pete fell in love, truly in love, with Shana’s little sister Payton at the South Harrison Elementary School dance. He was older now, as I said four years old. The dance was held in the afternoon in the school gym. They pushed everything over to the walls and they had a student DJ on the stage with his records and they had tables with soda and cake and the wild young boys ran around the edges of the gym and the girls stood in groups here and there. I think Nick was in the 6th grade, which was as far as you went before moving up to the middle school which was in Swedesboro next to the high school. Our elementary school was just down the road from where we lived. Anna and Payton were both at the dance as visiting alumni, and our Maddy was there clinging to her mother’s hand. They had piled up the blue foam gym mats by the wall, and one of the piles was just the right height for kids to sit on. Since Little Pete was in danger of being run over by the wild running ten year old boys, I plopped him down on the pile of gym mats and then stepped back out of the way so he wouldn’t feel I was hovering over him. That’s when Payton’s mom, who was a friend of my wife, walked over with her little girl in hand and struck up a conversation with my wife.

As she spoke to my wife she almost absentmindedly hoisted up Payton and then set her down on the pile of gym mats behind her, beside Little Pete. I had the perfect angle to observe Little Pete and Payton. Payton’s mom stepped away and continued her conversation, and Little Pete turned his head to the right and found out that a little girl was sitting beside him and looking directly at him. Their eyes met just like in the songs. I was already at full attention waiting to see what would happen. I watched Little Pete as he held her eye. It was only for a moment, and then he smiled. Payton smiled back. And then Little Pete reached out and offered his hand and she took it. They both jumped down from the pile of gym mats. Payton’s mom turned and saw that they were walking away together, and then she turned back to my wife and they both laughed and they let the two children wander off. Little Pete and Payton spent the dance together walking around hand in hand. Afterwards Payton’s mom brought her little girl over to our house so the two children could play. They ran in the yard with our dog Berry and played on the swing set and the slide. When Valentine’s Day came around, we found a homemade Valentine’s Day card sitting in the mail box. It wasn’t stamped so Payton’s mom must have driven her little girl over and let her put the card in our mailbox which is out by the road. My wife had to hustle to get crayons and paper for Pete so he could make his own card and then she drove him to Payton’s house and he put the card in her mailbox. I don’t know when they stopped playing together. Payton also went to South Harrison Elementary school but she was in the grade above Little Pete. Maybe the age barrier was just too great a barrier to overcome.

A few years later my mother took us all into the City and we saw the Cirque du Soleil perform. There was a big open lot at Broad and Washington Avenue just below Center City and that’s where the “Circus of the Sun” set up its tents. Our whole family went that afternoon, all four children, plus Grandmom and Grandpop, all of us standing in line in the bright sunlight, waiting outside by the white tents with so much excitement buzzing around. And once inside, in that cool dark space, we had seats right down in front, and then the lights in the center came up and the show started. The story they told using dance and acrobatics was the story of young love. A young woman and a young man danced and flew through the air on trapezes and the story showed you how they met and got to know one another and how they went back and forth in their courtship and at last how they surrendered to one another through love. You understood that it was first love for both of them, and that they would love one another their whole lives. They were both very beautiful and very kind, and it didn’t seem that either one of them was capable of ever telling a lie or intentionally hurting someone, least of all one another. A singer stood off to the side, a pretty woman with a fine voice, and her songs helped tell the story of the two lovers. Her name was in the program guide. I forget it now though I can still see her face. She had a Nordic name, it was something interesting. Before the show started a couple of the performers came over to me and they said to me, seriously, “Are you so and so who’s the friend of our singer in this show?” I wished it was true, I wished I was her friend and I wished I could be part of a show as wonderful as this Circus of the Sun show. But I had to say no.