The Pink Pack
She clung to the backpack as if she could not endure the separation that strapping it across her back would entail. Stick-thin arms encircled the neon pink bundle with such force that I thought the contents would erupt like lava from a caldera. My daughter — my heart knots at the word — was four years and three months old the day I met her, and I’m ashamed to admit that her pack was what the first thing I noticed, not the satiny tresses that cascaded in a black waterfall over her shoulders, or those enormous onyx eyes. I had yet to discover that one tiny scarlet shoe was...
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