I fill the trough with feed and the sisters rustle and squawk and flap their landlocked wings. A few black-and-white feathers go flying over the shed beams.

On my first time down as a certified scuba diver, I marveled over an extraordinarily large manta ray with its twenty-five-foot-wide wings until it aimed for me head on, its broad mouth open.

I’m two, maybe three, wearing a baggy diaper and standing in shin-deep puddle water. Leah’s here too, all pigtails and chubby legs and chubby cheeks.

The pastor raises his hands and loosely smiles at the Sunday regular crowd. Satisfied, he begins his prayer. "Dear Lord, let our children find prosperity . . . "

Remember when our dreams were simply slips of paper, scrawled in minutes, torn with careless confidence, and tacked to beams that crossed through darkness overhead in the attic above your room?