Intro 2

The sun was never directly overhead when he'd steer the canoe toward the lilies. I remember this because the water always looked black instead of brown. I'd see them floating the way I always thought tree ornaments hung before I caught my mother with the wire. I understood later, when the imaginations of childhood wore thin, that he didn't make them for me. He only plucked them, gently, so the paddle would not crush any. He'd turn around on his wooden slat, the canoe swaying with his motion, and hand them to me. "They are all perfect," he'd say. "Especially this one," to which he meant the one with a missing petal or two and bugs feasting at the middle as it rotted.