Adrift

Every morning when I check on the progress of my late-summer garden, I discover the empty cicada shells, dark brown and crunchy, clinging to trees and fence posts.  The shells are neatly split down the back where the insect, transformed by nature and time, emerged new, all silver-bodied and long-winged, to fly to the tops of the trees and join its brethren in a scratchy wooly song:  irritating and pleasant at the same time.

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My neighbor sent me an email the other day; asked me if I was interested in adopting the rabbit she’s been babysitting for another neighbor.  Actually, she used the word bunny.  Bunnies are cute.  Bunnies are soft.  Bunnies are fuzzy.  Rabbits, you eat.

She told me that with two dogs and two fish and two cats living in our house, the hamster might be feeling a bit unbalanced.  She thought that our family ark was listing to one side.

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Gift

Well, for some reason Squints thought the living room floor would be a suitable place to store his retainer.  And, of course, Filibuster found it with her foot and snapped it in two with a sickening crunch.

Squints called the orthodontist, inquired about the cost about a replacement.  “We don’t have that kind of money hanging around, Squints,” I said, thinking about the four new tires on my husband’s car.  “You’re going to have to help pay for it.”

He frowned.  “I don’t have a job.”

“You’re going to have to work it off.”  And suddenly, Squints’ pocket money; the money he makes from moving the lawn every week, has disappeared. 

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Argument

It’s a gorgeous first day of spring.  Seventy-five degrees, with a gentle breeze that carries on it the perfumes of the budding trees and flowers. A girl approaches with her camera and snaps a close-up of a cherry blossom.  The clouds are etched into the blue background of the sky.  Here and there, though, darker clouds muscle their way to the front.  And far over there, in the western horizon, the sky is a cake, layered in white clouds of frosting so thick that no blue can get through.

My daughter crosses her arms.  “Every girl in my class is going on senior week.”

“You’re not.” 

She demands to know why.

I have no ready answer.  It just feels wrong.  I return to my own childhood, the way my parents raised me, a place I often retreat to when I need parenting advice.  “Some things should be saved for college.”

“You can’t stop me,” she tells me.  “I’ll be eighteen.”

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