June 30 Photo: A Friend

Since I am a stay-at-home mom and there aren’t many preschoolers in our neighborhood, my son doesn’t have the opportunity to make a lot of friends that he sees regularly. Fortunately, being a very sociable and outgoing kid, he is content to make friends with any other kids he happens to meet, whether it’s at a playground or in a store or out for a walk. But he does have one friend that he sees nearly every week when Daddy runs at Fresh Pond: Katherine.

Katherine is a few months older than Ryan, but was much more shy and less talkative than he when they first met over a year ago. But between getting a little older and coming out of her shell a bit, the two of them are now best buddies. Every Saturday, they run around together before the race starts and again after it ends. They hold hands and run through the grass, they examine trees to look for bugs, they play follow-the-leader across the stone walls, and they greet friendly dogs. But their favorite thing to do together is play with the tools.

I love to listen to them explaining to each other what the various tools are for, or watch them helping each other find a particular tool. This morning when I went over to check on them, Ryan was carefully hoisting Katherine up in the air so she could reach one of the tools that had been looped over the top of the rack and was just out of their reach. It’s always good to have a friend around when you need a little boost.