It was one of those late winter days where you'd swear it was spring. The sun was shining and a warm breeze had brought with it the aroma of a distant rain that never arrived.
It was a great day to be alive and kicking. It was a great day to be outside.
Strapped securely into my sister's pink umbrella-style doll stroller, Orwell watched the world go by as if he didn't have a single care in it. Trotting along beside us, sniffing excitedly, first at Orwell, then the trees, then the edges of the sidewalk, was the elderly family dog, hardly believing his good fortune at being freed from the dull routine of the house.
Our little parade must have made an amusing sight, but I didn't care what passing strangers might think. I was following the instructions of my horoscope for this fine day in February and I felt like a million dollars.
The morning after Orwell surprised me with his mastery of our secret knock, the message that appeared in my horoscope was
IT'S NOT WITH THE TONGUE WE SPEAK.
You did not have to be a great detective to see that my messages were somehow being customized for my eyes alone. So when the next day's home-thrown horoscope suggested beneath a familiar smile face moon
WHY NOT TAKE YOU-KNOW-WHO FOR A WALK,
I responded by saying, "Why not indeed!"
What a sight we were! We ambled, we trotted, we strolled. The three of us paraded merrily through the neighborhood, walking all the way to the baseball fields behind the junior college before we even thought of turning around.
We saw birds and squirrels and a big, brown woodchuck waddling near his burrow in a field. A flock of geese heading north crossed over our heads making sounds like the squeeze bulb horn on my sister's bicycle. Gray and white clouds boiled up from the flat prairie like great mountains in the sky. When we finally got home, the poor old dog collapsed on his bed behind the sofa and snored for hours.
I returned Orwell to his hideout, but I did not return the doll stroller to my sister.
"You're really something, Orwell," I said to him admiringly.
Like Punxsutawney Phil, Groundhog Day's famous weather-predicting rodent, it seemed that Orwell also had a gift, a knack for brightening up the day.