"This is fun!" Drew said on his fifth or sixth time passed the couch. His mother looked up briefly from the magazine she was reading. He smiled and waved as he again maneuvered his way backwards through the family room and back into the kitchen. He'd been at it for ten minutes now.

"You're going to get hurt," she said without a trace of severity. "Why don't you come and sit down and we'll read your "Star Wars" book.

"Can't," he said, concentration constricting his face. "I'm trying to do this 100 times."

"So you're counting and walking backwards hmm? Very talented boy." She smiled and watched him for a moment, resting her chin in her hand and letting the magazine fall into her lap. She wondered vaguely if this would be one of those small moments he'd remember in his life. Walking backwards through the house, trying to make it to 100. 

For a moment she dwelled on one of her own small moments -- seemingly random snippets etched, for some reason, in such clean detail in her mind. She couldn't remember what she'd spent on groceries this morning, but the way her black cat's fur felt as he languished one morning 34 years ago in the sun on the kitchen floor was as clear to her as anything. She'd buried her face in that fur and inhaled the warm scent. She remembered the way she could feel his purring against her cheek, and she remembered her mother kneeling down next to her and laughing as she rubbed the cat's belly. No words, just her mother's easy laugh and the cat's rumbling bliss.

She was startled out of this memory by a loud crash in the kitchen, and she knew, with a sigh, that Drew had backed into the dog's water bowl.