It’s a great morning to be awake in the world. I have someone who wants a hot chocolate made by my hand. We have breakfast before he leaves for school. Before that, I learn a new word––keekaw. Last night when I came home I saw an empty cardboard box turned upside down on the deck. I wondered why no one had simply put the box into recycling, but then I forgot about it until this morning, when I decided to recycle it myself. But when I picked up the box, underneath there was a dead male cardinal! I screamed, something that must have sounded like “keekaw!” Now, my daughter had texted me yesterday that a bird had been found dead on the deck, but I was preoccupied with my friend at the hospital. I assumed it had been disposed of. But when the young one drinking hot chocolate heard me scream, he was, of course, curious. I explained what was under the box. Oh, a keekaw, he said. So, a keekaw is a dead bird that is waiting for burial under a box. The in-house animal control officer (Frank) is out of town. So, that explains why the keekaw has not been moved. He and his father made it out of hurricane territories to New York to watch the US Open. Today is my older brother’s birthday, Dusty Jr. I texted him first thing. On the way home from my gloriously sunny walk with Charlie in the meadow of crazy lace, I found, in our yard, a copy of the script from our story show for the kids a week ago in a fascinating weathered state. Speaking of erasure, I woke up to an email from the editor of the journal to whom I submitted my revised essay on Tuesday. It said: Thanks for this revision; I love it; it's awesome! We will publish it in the forthcoming issue. Better than finding a keekaw on the deck! And the day proceeded in a wonderful way to include a swim in the deliciously clean and gorgeous Walden Pond (thank you Henry David!) with my youngest and a chance to talk over quite a few things. All the while, also, the happy knowing my friend is recovering quite well from her surgery yesterday. And I made pizza for dinner to celebrate the back-to-school boy who thanked me after his second piece, before his third. And he chose me out of all the choices of readers to read to him at bedtime. If my mother were alive, today she would have baked an angel food cake with homemade whipped cream for her first born child’s birthday.