Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters

by Annie Dillard

“One time,” Noah is saying, “when my children were little, and we were all living where I live now, I looked out of the window and saw the children playing by the river. There is a little patch of sand on the bank there. The children were all very young, very small, and they were playing with buckets, and pouring water, and piling sand on each other’s feet. I remember thinking, ‘This is it, now, when the children are little. This will be a time called “when the children were little.”’ I couldn’t hear anything through the window; I just saw them. It was morning. They were all three blond and still curly-headed then, and the sun was behind them.” I looked closely at Noah, who was looking at the child. “I said to myself, ‘Noah, now you remember this sight, the children being so young together and playing by the river this particular morning. You remember it.’ And I remember it as if it happened this morning. It must have been summer. There are another twenty years in there I don’t remember at all.”