two

Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring – it was peace.— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of BeingEva's second birthday began with a pilgrimage of sorts.Months ago, back when the year still looked orderly on paper, and the future had not yet revealed what it had in store, I booked leave so that The One and I could spend the day celebrating our girl properly. There would be no hurried pats before work, no guilt about deadlines waiting on the other side of the weekend. Just the three of us and an entire day set aside in honour of a small black Labrador who has somehow become one of the fixed stars by which we navigate.Our destination was the park that has featured here in the past: a place of frost and sunlight, of coffee and long grass, of discovering that contentment sometimes arrives disguised as ordinary rituals. We packed…