Summer in the boroughs: open windows and gushing hydrants, sitting in the bath all afternoon, sleeping on the fire escape. Picnics on the roof under beach umbrellas that have never felt the sand. Short tempers and broken-down city buses. Sordid newspaper stories cataloguing serial killers.
That's his world, what he's used to. As alien as it seems to us, to him it's mother's milk. He knows nothing of rows of corn or paddocks full of cows, or of forests or ponds. He's never been fishing or skipping stones, he's never eaten wild berries and felt sick, he's never sat and daydreamed on cool moss with the sun dappling him through the leafy canopy.
He'll be lost and bored, at least to start. We have our work cut out for us. He may come to love it, he may not. But we'll love him, and that's half of it right there.
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