Give me wonderment. *Flash* Give me innocence. *Flash*

On my walk to the cafe just now I was enjoying the mittens I'd just purchased, but still felt, as they say, under the weather. It was cold. Cold cold cold. The sky was grey and murky like a swamp filled with frog legs and alien brains. Wind blew the last leaves around the pavement, and the branches waved them goodbye. The scene was, I think, to express it in a word, "bleagh."

Then a woman crossed my path. She was carrying a toddler into the daycare next door, and had the child's jacket, but had foregone the struggle of putting the jacket on in the car only to take it off again indoors. The little girl's back was open to the cold air.

And she was laughing. A gigantic grin wrought her giggles into an echoing cackling, and her hands drummed on the woman's breast. She loved it; the cold was a new sensation, not yet bothersome, and she loved it.

They went indoors and I crossed the last half block to the cafe. But I was smiling.