I knew him while he was growing up. He was the one who threw my stick, rubbed my belly, ran with me in the fields. I slept at the foot of his bed and rose with him each morning.
Then one day, he was gone. I sat at his father’s side and watched him leave, his bag slung over his shoulder.
I waited every day for him to come back. I watched that same path that he used, expecting him to reappear. I waited on sunny days, and in the rain.
And then one day, he finally did! Even from a distance, I knew that it was him. He walked more slowly, his shoulders were hunched, his clothes were torn and dirty. But he had come back, and that was all that mattered.
His father started running to him, but I rain faster. I would be the first to meet him. I would be first to place myself on him yet again. I would be first to speak, and the first to give him a kiss.
His family is going to have a feast. Afterward, or tomorrow, I will bring him the stick, and we will play again.
I am now happy and complete because he is home.
He was lost, and I found him first.
Jeffrey A. Nelson 