What a three-year-old remembers

Over my bed is a framed folk art piece, a row of embroidered children.

"I used to look at that when I was a baby," Elena said yesterday.  "Because it's so beautiful."

"Is this your country?" she asked as I pulled her down the street.

Later, she told her daddy, "There's no house anymore in Yenna's country.  A man died and they broke his house all down."

The last time I saw Allen in his hospice bed, I took Elena with me.  She took one look at him and her eyes filled with tears.  She was less than a year old.  "Oh yes, I remember him," she said.