SERA
“It smells like outside.”
Zara said it the moment she stepped through the garden gate. Not as an observation requiring response. As a statement of approval delivered to the garden itself.
She was five years old and wearing yellow trainers and had her father’s focused quality of attention applied to every surface she encountered. She looked at the overgrown beds and the cleared paths and the large silver-green mass of rosemary on the left and she moved toward it immediately with the directness of a child who had identified the most interesting thing in the room and intended to investigate it.
Sera stood back.
She did not reach for Zara’s hand or direct her attention or offer commentary. She simply let the garden do what gardens did with people who were paying proper attention.
El
