It has been a “frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” (from Lewis Carroll’s JABBERWOCKY).

We spent the entire afternoon at our son Randy’s house, cavorting in the pool with his little boys, Jack and Jamesie, under the relentlessly sunny Arizona sky. (Phoenix gets 211 days of sun per year, and another 85 partly sunny.) It is unusually humid, maybe 55%, and storms threaten. (It is, after all, monsoon season in the southwest.) But now we are indoors, after having a swell supper cooked by Randy. Laura, our daughter-in-law, is at work as a pediatric nurse at a Chandler hospital.

I am seated on the couch with a small boy on each side. My husband ,Dave, and my sons Nick and Randy, look on. I am reading aloud from HOW I BECAME A PIRATE by Melinda Long, a terrific children’s book Nick found at our local Goodwill store. (Why have I never heard of this book? I was a librarian, for God sake!)

Once. Twice. Typical kids, they can’t get enough of this story. The third time through, Jack (who is almost 5) is losing interest, so he hangs on the periphery, preferring to see what the men are talking about. Not Jamesie. This time through, Jamesie (almost 3) wants to read the book backwards! Well, not really read.  He is so enamored by David Shannon’s whimsical illustrations. We’re actually just hunting for the recurring images of the Captain’s peg leg, the Jolly Roger flying from the ship’s mast, the frantic, wild-eyed parrot, and the mangy ship’s cat on every page we turn.

Jamesie couldn’t get closer to me unless we mingled our molecules. He is warm and sweet-smelling, a squirming bundle of soft skin and wispy hair. While Nick snaps pictures of us, Dave and Randy try to goad Jack back to the book. “Oh, no, Jack, they’re finding the pirate with the hook for a hand!” Jack weasels his way under my arm and over my lap to see. Also sweet-smelling, Jack is becoming long-limbed and angular, all elbows and knees, but still a great joy to snuggle against.

We also read MUSTACHE BABY, a board book by Bridget Heos. We make cardboard mustaches (both good guy and bad guy mustaches!) for the boys to wear. We discover Dave’s beard, because the next-door baby in the book has a beard! Dave has always had the beard, but the boys never paid it much mind until now. Wow! Whiskers!

And then, too soon, it’s time to go so little boys can get to bed.

Exhuberant, running-and-jumping hugs are had as we kiss goodnight these precious children.

These are the reason we packed up our worldly goods, bade good-bye to Wayland (our home for 34 years), and trekked 2,000 miles west during the dog days of August last year with 11 cats to live in the Arizona desert.

West Virginia may be almost heaven, but this is the real deal.