A first child is your own best foot forward and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity and crow it to the world. But the last one the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after--oh that s love by a different name.

We are bodies sometimes with dreams and always with desires.

Those first few weeks are an unearthly season. From the outside you remain so ordinary no one can tell from looking that you have experienced an earthquake of the soul. Youve been torn asunder invested with an ancient incomprehensible magic. Its the one thing that we never quite get over that we contain our own future.

So you make this deal with the gods. You do these dances and theyll send rain and good crops and the whole works And nothing bad will ever happen. Right. Prayer had always struck me as more or less a glorified attempt at a business transaction. A rain dance even more so.I thought I might finally have offended Loyd past the point of no return like stealing the lobster from frozen foods that time to get myself fired. But Loyd was just thinking. After a minute he said No its not like that. Its not making a deal bad things can still happen but you want to try not to cause them to happen. It has to do with keeping things in balance.In balance.Really its like the spirits have made a deal with us.And what is the deal I asked.Were on our own. The spirits have been good enough to let us live here and use the utilities and were saying We know how nice youre being. We appreciate the rain we appreciate the sun we appreciate the deer we took. Sorry if we messed up anything. Youve gone to a lot of trouble and well try to be good guests.Like a note youd send somebody after you stayed in their houseExactly like that. Thanks for letting me sleep on your couch. I took some beer out of the refrigerator and I broke a coffee cup. Sorry I hope it wasnt your favorite one.

You can curse the dead or pray for them but dont expect them to do a thing for you. Theyre far too interested in watching us to see what in heavens name we will do next.