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I held the umbrella close to myself as I walked down the block with my lab Sam. The rain on my umbrella sounded like marbles falling on to a hard wooden tile. The rain was falling down hard, sinking into my galoshes. Sam enjoyed it and the harder it fell the faster he ran, pulling me to where we were going. Once we came across the park though he and I stopped. In the park dancing happily was a young girl in a pink flower dress wearing no shoes. Her wet blonde hair splattered all around. Her arms were thrown up in the air and she was laughing and apparently did not care how completely drenched she was.
Sitting a couple yards away from the dancing girl sat a little boy that looked between the ages of six and seven. He watched her dance with a smile on his face. I smiled too and became unaware of my surroundings. Before I knew it I felt Sam's leash become lighter and finally noticed that he slipped out of his collar. He too ran into the park to dance with the child. He barked excitedly while running around the girl who started laughing even harder.
The next day the sun shined out brightly as Sam and I walked back to the park in hopes of seeing the children again. They were not there. I took off Sam's leash to let him prance around for a bit. After what’s been about ten minutes I saw the two kids walk up to the gate where the sidewalk met the park. When they saw Sam they're faces lighted up like magic and they ran as fast as they could to see him. Just before they were about two feet away they stopped and looked at me. I understood their faces and nodded and the children hugged Sam. Immediately after that the girl started to dance again laughing even more happily than the day before. The boy sat at her side and watched her smiling ear to ear.
After that, coming to the park each day became a daily routine. Sam and I would come and the children would always be there in open arms. I always wondered if the girl would ever get tired of dancing day after day but she never did. Each day she would dance faster and laugh harder. The weeks flew by and before I knew it autumn had come.
Orange leaves fell off the trees one by one as I walked to the park that morning. I opened the gate and as I was unhooking the leash from Sam's collar I noticed that the girl wasn't there this morning, there was just the boy pulling grass out of the ground. Sam ran up to the boy and licked his face. For the first time ever the child was not smiling, his face was tear streaked and red. I walked up to him and asked him what was wrong but he only started crying. Suddenly I felt a hand grasp my shoulder. I turned around and saw it was a man. It was their father. We talked awhile and it turns out that the girl, Amanda was her name, had passed on just this morning, she had leukemia. She was diagnosed just the week before I first saw her but her parents couldn't afford to do anything to cure her. My mouth had literally fallen open while he was telling me this. I just couldn't believe that we were still talking about the smiling, laughing, happy girl that I saw each and every day this past summer.
Each day he said that Amanda would go out to the park and each time he asked her where she and her brother were going she would say "to feel the world". He thanked me for bringing Sam each day and making Amanda the happiest she's ever been in her life.
With that he took the crying boy out of the park and to their home. I stared after them not believing what I just heard. After five minutes or so I noticed that my face was damp and realized I was crying as well.
I called Sam back to me and slowly we walked home, thinking about the two children. I'll never forget about the first time I saw that girl-Amanda dancing so happily in the rain.

----yeah i sorta had a writers moment there...please leave comments