A year ago a city wild fire swept into Santa Rosa, a fire driven by huge winds throwing sparks over the city and county. About 40 people died. The morning it started, my wife called me from San Francisco at about 6 AM and said that she smelled smoke. San Francisco is 60 miles to the south. So I got up in the dark and went outside and saw that the mountain east of us had turned red.
We're in a huge apartment complex, but the only people we knew were a young couple from Italy with a small daughter. I was a little worried about them not knowing what to do, so I knocked on their door and told them what was happening. We all had to leave, but our place did not burn, just lost its electricity etc.
Anyway, last night I was home alone. My wife was staying with a friend who is recovering from a hip replacement. The young Italian woman knocked on our door and told me that she had to go to a parent-teacher's conference, and her babysitter had canceled. She asked if I would sit with Sophia, her three-year-old. This came as a considerable surprise. Sophia does like me, for no good reason, and I said yes. But how strange. Here I was, an 83 year old, suddenly with a 3 year old to entertain for 90 minutes. We did fine. I found SpongeBob on the TV, and when Sophia said she wanted to draw, I came up with some printer paper and pens, and she did about ten portraits of her mother and several of her father. She found a collection of rubbery plastic bugs my wife has, so I gave her one bug and told her she could use it to scare her mother. Some music came on the TV; Sophia did some dancing. When her mother returned from the meeting, Sophia immediately began chasing her around with the fake bug and so on. Sophia is very lively and self-assured (and bilingual).
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