For years, her door was always open to me. I would arrive and walk right in. There was never a reason or social protocol to knock first—not in the magical, innocent early years. They were magical years simply because it felt magical when I entered her space—her innocent place, a storybook place where we told each other wonderful stories.
Of course in the early years I alone read and told the stories while she listened in rapt attention to the words and considered the storybook pictures, carefully. Had the artists been present they would have been enormously pleased with her delightful appreciation of each and every one. She was a very good audience.
Then, as it should always be, there came a time when she began to tell me stories. She did it so well with her vivid imagination and irrepressible enthusiasm. What fun it was!
We always had something to talk about, Camille and I, without having to think very hard at all about it. We laughed a lot too. I loved being in my darling Camille’s space.
Many years later she read and told stories to her daughter, my granddaughter, in her magical space. And so it goes … and so life passes.