Oona Oolong opened her front door and stepped onto the porch. She took one big inhale and looked around. A tendril of morning glories wrapped the faded wooden fence in green and sky blue. They were not there last night. Orange sunshine streaked across the lawn and alighted on tiny dewdrops on each blade of grass. A cat sashayed down the sidewalk, as if it had a very important engagement.
“I can’t possibly go to school on a day that smells like this,” Oona Oolong declared, and walked right past the bus stop and kept going until she reached an old stone staircase that led down into the river gorge.
Some kids may have stopped and looked back at the bus stop, with a fleeting sense of guilt or obligation. Some may have even turned around. Oona Oolong was not one of those kids. She forgot all about the bus stop the moment her foot hit the first worn stone.
If she had thought about school at all that morning, she may have said to herself “Oona Oolong, you will have many days, many years of sitting behind a desk, but you will only have one morning in September when the flowers are still blooming and the sumac is turning red and the air smells just like someone somewhere opened a window and let everything in.”
But, Oona Oolong was already skipping down the steps, anticipating what lie ahead and half-watching a log in the river below swirl past the sandy shore.
“I can’t possibly go to school on a day that smells like this,” Oona Oolong declared, and walked right past the bus stop and kept going until she reached an old stone staircase that led down into the river gorge.
Some kids may have stopped and looked back at the bus stop, with a fleeting sense of guilt or obligation. Some may have even turned around. Oona Oolong was not one of those kids. She forgot all about the bus stop the moment her foot hit the first worn stone.
If she had thought about school at all that morning, she may have said to herself “Oona Oolong, you will have many days, many years of sitting behind a desk, but you will only have one morning in September when the flowers are still blooming and the sumac is turning red and the air smells just like someone somewhere opened a window and let everything in.”
But, Oona Oolong was already skipping down the steps, anticipating what lie ahead and half-watching a log in the river below swirl past the sandy shore.
