Each square of the cement was a blank canvas waiting to be filled. A monarch butterfly seemed to hover at eye-level, for a moment, before flying on, as if daring me to sketch it. It wouldn’t be hard—two triangles and a couple of lines. The roots of an old oak tree pushed up gently but firmly from the ground, the cement slanting up at an angle, so that it felt as if I could fall into it. I had recently read Mary Poppins in the Park but realized there was no way I could create the kind of picture Bert the Chimney Sweep had that would allow me to step into and travel to an alternate world. Or, at least, I didn’t think that was a possibility that spring afternoon. I saw her walking across the street, down the expanse of lawn from the neighbor’s house. She was a wearing a finely starched uniform, her figure trim, the skirt above the knee, her hair tucked into a lace bonnet, and she looked as if she had stepped out of the Bankses’ house in London rather than a Spanish Moorish house covered with tropical vines in Beverly Hills.
