When most people use the old saying “it takes a village to raise a child” they have a particular child in mind.

As I wandered around Callicoon early Sunday morning, capturing photos of the participants in this year’s Delaware Youth Center River Race and the volunteers who make it happen each year, I lost count. 

Settled on the floor of Grover Hermann Hall was one little girl pinning a race bib to the fabric of her tank top. Her sister stood just a few feet away, waiting patiently as her mom pinned a nearly identical bib to her own top. Theirs’ are faces I've captured with my camera lens at Delaware Youth Center Halloween parades. 

Outside the hall another little girl came to chat about her school year to come, just a few hundred feet from the spot where I watched her clutching a bucket in her hand as she waited for an Easter egg hunt to begin just a few months ago. 

Walking up the street, I saw a not-so-little girl hunched over her watch at the same starting line where I've captured her ready-to-run stance year after year. 

Exchanging hellos with the men from the Callicoon and Hortonville Fire Departments who were blocking traffic along Main Street conjured memories of a grandchild clambering up the plastic playground equipment in the Youth Center's backyard, a little boy handing Santa his Christmas list, a daughter helping create holiday crafts inside Hermann Hall. 

Spotting the volunteers from the Upper Delaware Volunteer Ambulance Corps, I quickly tallied two kids who've snuggled up with Santa at the Youth Center's holiday party in recent years, two just barely grown-ups who were once familiar faces in the Youth Center pool, a dad whose kids, long grown, were on those grounds.

By the time the first runner had run all the way to the 5K turn-around and made his way back to the finish line, I’d stopped trying to count us all. 

I never did settle on a particular child. 

There were just too many, and there I was standing in the middle of them, a little girl who once waded in the DYC pool, a mom who once walked her daughter in the Halloween parade, camera ready to capture our village.