By definition, an Alpaca is a domesticated, longhaired South American animal of the camel family, related to the llama and similar in appearance. An Alpaca may be in the camel family and related to the llama, but the handsome gene is all his.

My cousin, Mary, of Winterport, Maine, took her mother, my Auntie Anne, of Newburgh, Maine, to an Alpaca farm for her 83^rd birthday -- with her walker. Osteoperosis was no match for her on this day. But, who would have guessed she would adopt an Alpaca? Maybe my cousin, Mary, a woman with a magnificently eclectic thought process. Auntie Anne’s Alpaca is a female named Marylou, and she is exquisite.

Marylou lives at the farm, and Auntie Anne has unlimited visitation. Marylou would not have fit in Auntie Anne’s apartment, and she would probably alarm her neighbors in her senior apartment complex.

I aspire to be like Auntie Anne, an avid Red Sox fan who brings her own Red Sox napkins to a restaurant. After all, why not adopt an Alpaca, especially if its care is elsewhere? And why not bring your favorite napkins to a restaurant, if you happen to have favorite napkins? I will be 44 in April, and I have worried that my best years are gone. When I think about Auntie Anne, I realize my best years could be to come.

To be more specific, my best moments are to come, and my memory hold’s yesterday’s moments. As the clock ticks toward midnight on New Year’s Eve, the previous year seems a jumble of different emotions and experiences – difficult to describe with one word. But, if you have a collection of individual moments that make you stop and smile – like the moment the coach presented my son with the game ball after a playoff game -- life is good.

So Auntie Anne continues to live every moment purposefully, with a picture of Marylou to admire and a Red Sox scrap book that dates back to the ground breaking of Fenway Park. And she flips through the scrap book wearing scarlet red!

By Erin Heffernan

Erin Heffernan is a photographer in Scituate. Her Wink South series, "Shutter to Think", explains how looking at life from a different angle, even if it's via the viewfinder, can offer valuable lessons (and sometimes comic relief!).