WONDERLAND

9 AM. The sun reflects brightly off the snow and into my bedroom window.

My son is crunching through the ice-cold shell that blankets the back yard. I watch him through the window. Eleven and a half years old...banging brittle sticks against trees, tumbling and rolling as if felled by laser blasts, conversing with invisible characters.

These are his Last Days as a “playing person” on this earth. So I go out in my slippers and join him.

I suggest a rigorous adventure: crossing the concrete drainage ditch between the yard line and the strip center parking lot. It is a precarious journey involving a steep drop and climb, flowing water, dubious sapplings for balance...but he makes it. Even if I have to lend a hand on the return.

He will probably never know how much I love him, this mini-me...but God-how-I-do.