Cookie in Speckles

Cool, sunny summer mornings are rare, but if they are not spent outside, they are best spent by the basement door, at eye level with all that’s going on in the back yard, catching the breeze and enjoying the play of sun and shadow.

So says Cookie, a connoisseur of such things. She’s been sitting at this basement door all her life, a considerable time—in fact, her name and pawprints are pressed into the concrete of the step along with her soul-sister Sophie’s because the two spent many hours together, sitting quietly like a couple of stoop-sitting middle-aged ladies watching the world go by from their front porch.

And I love watching Cookie enjoy these things. I was going to photograph the name and pawprints to add to this, but the moment grew a little too emotional when I began to think of Sophie, and of she and Cookie in younger days. I’ll save that for another time.