The sky, mid-afternoon, a beautiful canvas embellished with sky blue and pure milky white. The blue in depth and the sweet, smooth, rounded, sugary clouds in the foreground; February mornings were like this. Stained white wooden porches, green plastic lawn and lawn chairs and a yellow butterfly dancing above the smoky urban sidewalk with an invisible partner to a made-up song. Sitting on the porch waiting for Michele, tall, Southern, red-haired and fiery, I did some much-needed laundry at his house, where laundry is free and dryers don't charge by the minute. I'm on my second and third use of jeans and socks are in short supply, so sandals in cold weather are necessary. Basking in the delicious, intoxicating sunlight, this is one day in Florida's unseasonably cold February when my toes aren't blue and numb from wearing sandals. I rest my twenty-two-year-old English head against the porch covering and wonder; “Does it get better than this?” A little girl appears, having fun, full of energy like a quarter-car bouncing ball, going in every direction on the narrow street past the once-beautiful two-story houses with faded paint peeling in the corners and cracks , old, rusty bicycles cover dying patches of grass. The little girl, five years old, black hair adorned with beads of every color, wearing a faded blue denim dress, under a yellow T-shirt, runs along the gravel road mumbling confused nonsense to her older sister, about seven years old with short hair - like this as short as she was at first it was difficult to tell if she was a girl or a boy; puffy and wrinkled up to the head, blue cotton shorts, a plain green T-shirt with the 7-up logo printed on it. He carried with him only one significant item, a pink backpack, filled to the brim with who knows what junk. The mother, limping slowly behind, with a worn brown wooden cane, is a toil-aged young woman, who adorned her chocolate brown, wrinkled and worried face, wearing a bright pink sleeveless top and faded skinny jeans with leather laces on the sides following the seam, both outlining a voluptuous figure, her black hair styled short, flat, and shoulder-length. The trio passes my observation post on the graying porch and shouts, "Daddy!" "Dad!" I yell excitedly, “This bike is so cute!” The bike is all mine and my father's secret.