Basketball walk

I've examined this photo for months now. To me, the facial expression is fascinating. What does it remind you of? I see curious. I see eager. I see a young boy filled with potential, whose life I hope will be filled with goodness, love and adventure. God bless you, Noah.

Amma and Pa's recent visit to Noah featured delightful weather, and a little boy who is adventure, who is fun, and never stops, except when we insist that he eats something, and takes a nap.

Yesterday it was basketball, in fact all sorts of balls - tennis, soccer - at play. Noah has a small basket into which he's able to dunk a ball, but he made a couple attempts at the official 10 foot high basket yesterday. That need a little work.

I kicked the ball over toward the fence, and encouraged him to kick it against the fence, catch the rebound with his foot, and whip it back against the fence, hard, trying all the time to control the ball. It's how his Dad learned to be a good soccer midfielder. Matthew was able to remove the ball from contention with one hard well-placed kick, and change the direction of a game in an instant.

A little later, Noah led me on a walk around the garage. There are narrow alleys to the right of and behind the garage. We began by walking through a bed of volcano rock down a corridor that was about four feet wide, made a sharp left and reached a patchy area of grass behind the garage.

As we made our way toward the open backyard and the lush open grass, he began to run and to yell. I did the same and began to run and yell myself. We did it many more times together, and I began calling it the "basketball walk." I told Noah that we would use the walk to build our stamina and agility, so that we would become better basketball players.

A little later, I began running sideways on the grass, like sliding during basketball practice, and he loved it. He began doing it too, and we had the best time.

After he went inside and took his bath, we played with a beach ball in the living room. After working on this for a few months, he has learned how to catch the ball, and to throw it back to me. He puts the ball behind his head, and has now learned to release it at the right point so it flies toward me, instead of off into space.

When Amma and Pa bid him goodbye, it was as if we were saying farewell to someone with whom we'd just shared a great daylong adventure, like a whitewater rafting expedition. It was that much fun.