The water was freezing, and no other children were in the pond. Once she was used to the water, though, she enticed Annika in, and they splashed themselves muddy and plum-lipped.

.

Hey, Superman showed up at the reunion, too!

Mopsy, Popsy, and Great-Uncle Bill. He's Aunt Mae's brother.

Mopsy and my great-aunt Mae. I've admired Aunt Mae since I was quite young. She never married and used to traipse about the fields like nobody's business. She has gorgeous flowerbeds, is a self-taught painter with a folk-art feel, and creates beautiful handiwork (needlework, hooked rugs, etc.). Before John Spoke, back when I fully intended to be a jolly, old maid, I thought I'd like to be a lot like her, only with my wanderlust fed by faraway places.

I took this picture a few minutes before Haven brazenly, deliberately walked into the deep end of the pond. He had been standing right next to Sarah, and she jumped in an eyeblink after his toes hit the water. What a boy that boy is.

Sheila is my cousin Matt's wife. She is very cool, and her five girls all look like elves.

I wondered what was the center of the commotion at the other end of the pond.

A bullfrog. Shoulda known.

This beautiful, little girl was one of the children most enamored with the frog. As she held him, she had him perform kicks because he was "a ballerina frog." It was really funny and kind of cruel all at once.

Annika and Popsy. (What most of you don't know is that he paroles the perimeter of the pond with his arms full of inner tubes, ready at a moment's notice to throw them to drowning-- or not-- children. He still carries guilt from the skull fracture I suffered as a baby after tumbling down the basement steps in my walker, and I tease him by saying that his vigilance is one expression of that guilt.)