Love Letter to the Zoo...

We love the zoo.  I love the zoo.  I love how it makes me feel eight and thirteen and how it reminds me that how I felt then was just as important as how I feel now.  It reminds me that we, us, ourselves, get to choose what matters to us, and what we ingest, and soak up and in.  I love the zoo because it's quiet, and peaceful, and on Fall days it's uplifting in it's solitude.  I love it because my daughter loves it, and I love watching her fall in love. I can't wait to watch her do it with a place, and maybe a husband, and a job, and with her own children.  I love the zoo because my grandchildren will come to this same zoo...because my children's grandparents came to this same zoo.  I love walking all day, and daydreaming, and ooohing and awwwing, and having the snakes give me chills.  I love the Tigers, and the penguins, and I stare wide eyed at the Polar Bears.  I love the zoo because it melts my daughter into a puddle of cute and excited, and I love the zoo because it's one of the only places we go to that doesn't feel ruined by less romantic hearts and minds.  It's as pure as we can imagine it to be, and someday the saddest part of watching these little girls grow up will be that they won't run the ramp to the gates and beg to ride the carousel, and not care about giraffes, or alligators, or peacocks at all.  That, I'm suspecting, will be the saddest day of my life.