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Up at reveille, which in the late spring met dawn – Sgt. Vincent Trent stepped out onto his back porch to a bright red sky over the Blue Ridge to his west, and stepped back inside to get his camera.

Son Melvin was up as well, and was just stumbling into the kitchen to get some coffee.

“Come out here, son.”

“OK – whoa, wow!”

Both men got their cameras and went clear around the house, the red sky over next-door Fruitland Memorial Park to the east also stunning and being joined with gold as the sun continued to rise.  Father and son documented all of it in pictures – complete with the silhouettes of local birds as they went about their morning – until the sky was silver-white-spangled blue, a lace of altocumulus slowly thickening upon the sky.

“Gonna rain this afternoon,” Sgt. Trent said.

“Yep,” Melvin said, and then hugged his father.

“Thank you for waking me all the way up to see this with you.”

“You're welcome.  I would have awakened the rest, but, Vanna stayed up late working on a project, and the other three … crabby, sleepy kids who can't go out and play in the afternoon … no thank you.”

“Thank you again, Dad,” Melvin said.  “I don't think I've told you this, but … .”

He hung his head, and then raised it.

“Vanna and I didn't think you'd make a good single father, because there was no way you would know how, and you've been away a lot and so don't know us like Mom does.  We were wrong.  You're a good father and it still works without Mom.  We want Mom back, of course, but … but I needed to say that to you, Dad.  You're just the best, and that's all there is to that.”

Sgt. Trent reached out and embraced his son.

“Melvin, you've just made my whole entire day – my whole entire life and at least a century into my eternity.”