Oh CC — I love you.
The moon let sun go; she would not leave my lap, and I kept every frame.
You were three, and you wanted the tractor. That was the whole plan — a hay-ride at a pumpkin patch out past the vineyards, the kind of October Saturday Livermore does so well: dry gold hills, a sky scrubbed to enamel, kettle corn and warm straw already hanging in the parking lot before we'd even found the gate.
It was the morning Ra played hide-and-seek — there was a solar eclipse just after breakfast — but by the time we had you buckled in the car the sun was back like nothing had happened, and you wanted the tractor more than you wanted the sky. Fair enough. So did I.
The tractor had a floral umbrella bolted right to it — a big brown-and-cream patio thing throwing dappled shade over the bench where we sat. You climbed onto my lap and would not be put down for the length of the ride. Tongue out, then a grin, then the tongue again. I matched you every time. That morning was just the two of us.
The cap was my doing, of course. A red buffalo mid-stride on royal blue — the old standing-buffalo mark, from before the heartbreaks. Your papa and I became Bills fans at the same time — I think he was six or seven. We both signed on for life and have never wavered. And now here you are, his girl, wearing the Bills too: three of us in one small cap. You had it on backward by noon.
Then the tractor, at last. You held your paper wristband up like a ticket to somewhere important and we rode out past the rows, the pumpkins sitting in the dirt as if they'd been set down mid-sentence. Sixty-eight degrees, a few high clouds, that light wind coming off the pass. You gave the camera a thumbs up from my lap while I fumbled the phone one-handed. I took far too many and I'm not sorry.
That night I wrote three words and your name. The rest of this is just me, finally telling it.
You won't remember this — you were three. I had one arm around you and was holding the camera with the other. That's the part I get to keep for you.