Tonight, our campground neighbors are two of the kind of older folks I aspire to be; tanned and fit, beginning and ending their day with a kayak and a robust walk. This is not their first camping rodeo as evidenced by the rug over the dirtiest part of the campsite and the use of pool noodles to soften the edges of the popout parts of their trailer.

Two days we have been adjacent to each other when a Happy Birthday banner appears across their awning. I think - that's cool, they are really doing up the celebration. Good for them for loving their birthdays, something that some folks their age may not want to recognize. As if age is something that could be forgotten or ignored. As if a lack of celebration makes it makes it not real.

Later that afternoon a minivan arrives bearing a woman and her two tween sons. One brushing up against adolescence with that lanky and self-conscious gait. The other is a year or so away but already mimicking his older brother's affect.

Aha. I get it. A birthday party for a grandchild. There are hugs all around as the children tumble from the minivan and beverages are distributed. Everyone plops into a campchair to chat followed by a jaunt down the to the water. They come back, sit around the campfire, walk the loop. All the typical camping things.

The next morning the daughter and her sons make the motions to leave. The three of them go down to the water for, presumably, one last dip. While they are away the parents take a can of window cleaner and two rags and carefully wipe down the windows of the car. Inside and out, very thorough and meticulous. They do this in the unmistakable way of a team performing in concert for decades.

The children pile in to the car, the mother says goodbye and off they go, waving out the crystal clear windows. It occurs to me that now she can see the lines of road in front of them a little easier. There’s a bit more clarity than they had before they came. Those two parents made it a tiny bit simpler for their daughter to see what was in front of her.

At a certain point that's all we can do for the children, biological or otherwise, in our lives. When they are young it's the physical touch and fulfilling of eating and cleaning and sleeping needs. (theirs: clearly ours come a distant second). The next phase is about feelings and relations to others on the rudimentary that-toy-is-mine kind of level. Then gradually more cerebral as numbers and words start to coalesce into them learning stories and figuring out problems on their own.

Then there's this. The separate lives, the physical distance. The conversations over the phone but maybe not much more sometimes. The moving on and handling the cycle for themselves. But even then, parents can still wash a window. Can still bring a modicum of clarity to what is still a scary, impossible, heartbreaking world.

All I can think is that maybe she saw them a little more clearly too as she pulled out of the campground. That her ride home was a little easier because of what they gave her.

Seeing clearly is a gift that we can give ourselves. Guiding others to see something a little clearer - that's the work of heroes. It's the work of parents and friends and those we hold dear. It's the work of the authors of our favorite books and musicians whose work we turn on when we’re in the depths.

And every now and then it's the work of a few strangers in a campsite next to yours on a hot July day in southern Idaho.