Year 3, Day 219

Jaclyn called while I was on my way home from work tonight because Miles had something to tell me.

“What’s in the driveway, Miles?” she asked him.

“Hunh,” Miles replied, his response when he doesn’t know the answer to your question.

“Remember?” Jaclyn said, then elaborated. “We got home, and we saw something in the driveway.”

“Yeah.”

“What did we see?”

Silence for a moment, then, “…a football stadium!”

“No, Miles, in the driveway!” Jaclyn said.

“Oh,” Miles replied. “A dead bird.”

“Yep,” Jaclyn said, more to me than him at this point. “A dead bird fell out of the tree.” She said that she tried to move Miles through the yard quickly to avoid it, but Miles’s keen eyes immediately spotted the body on the ground.

“Daddy need to hose off the driveway,” Miles added.

“Wait…hose it off?” I asked. “How messy could it be?” Maybe there was a reason Miles couldn’t avoid noticing it.

“You got to clean it off, daddy,” Miles reiterated.

Ultimately, no hose was needed, just a bag to scoop the body into, and I have to admit — Miles took this early encounter with death in stride.