*Over breakfast, Isobel and I were discussing if we slept well last night. I didn’t, but she did. Is had a suggestion for me…*
“Well, Mom, you can just think about what it would be like to be a squirrel before you go to sleep. Or an owl.”
“A squirrel?”
“Yeah, like, I have a tiny toothbrush and a little tiny tub with tiny bubbles, and then! Fall asleep.”
“Wow. That’s how you put yourself to sleep every night?”
“Yeah. You should try it.”
“I’m totally going to.”
*Isobel is home sick today with a cough and a cold. We curled up in bed for cuddles and I started to fall asleep (guess I’m coming down with it too), but then she made some funny noises and I opened my eyes.*
“Nyuuuuuyyhhhhhh. Urrrghhhhhnyuuuuh.”
“Is, you better not fart in my bed.”
“No, Mommy, I’m not farting. I’m trying to float up to the ceiling.”
“Uh…”
“NYUUUUUUUUHYHHHHHHHH.”
“Okay, good luck.”
“Thanks! UUURRGHhhhhhhhhhh…”
*Most mornings, I get up between 5:30 and 6 am. I get to have a shower (alone!) and start preparing for our day before Isobel gets up, usually around 6:40. Today, Is got up a little early, so we were in the kitchen together at 6:40. I noticed the sun rising outside of the east-facing window, and called her over to look. She was amazed.*
“Oh, Mommy! Look at the sky!”
“That’s sunrise, baby. Pretty, yes?”
“It’s like a tie dye! It’s pink and orange and that’s like turquoise…”
“I see! Look over there, purple, too!”
“Oooooh!!! It’s like a different rainbow.”
*Isobel, like most kids, will sometimes come to me and complain that she’s bored. I used to try and point her to things she could do, or offer to teach her to clean the toilets (she always demurred, hmmm…) anyway, I try to distract her, or tell her to find something else to do.
About a year ago, I shared an epiphany with Isobel that I’d had when I was around 10. We were visiting my aunt for Christmas, and I went up to her and told her I was bored. Now, this aunt was a professional journalist, tall, slim, and imposing, with flame-red hair and icy blue Irish eyes. She smoked constantly, and had a modern house full of books. She had a sheltie and I just loved her. But I complained, as all kids do, and what she said to me stuck with me forever, and I haven’t been bored since. She said, “Boredom comes from within,” turned on her heel and walked away, leaving me there with my mouth open and my mind blown.
Now, when Is comes to me with boredom troubles, since she knows the story, I tell her, “Boredom comes from within,” and leave her to it. She usually finds something else to do.
Not today.*
“Mom, I’m bored.”
“Boredom comes from…” I pause, because Isobel holds up her hand to stop me.
“Look, Mom, I don’t want any of this ‘boredom comes from within’ stuff. I’m just bored.”
“Want to learn to clean the toilets?”
“MOOOOOOOOOOOOOM….”
*A few weeks ago, my friend gave me some caterpillars to watch for her while they were away. The bugs were supposed to make chrysalides and become beautiful Monarch butterflies that we could then release in her pollinator-friendly garden.
The first one hatched as we watched in awe, and then with mounting concern as the thing flopped around on the bottom of the jar, unable to right itself. I carefully poured the hatching butterfly and all the other chrysalides (all but 1 were on the floor of the jar) into the butterfly net habitat I’d bought in case they hatched while my friend was still away.
The butterfly, whom Isobel named Beauty, managed to climb up the side of the netting, where she hung for a day or so. Her wings were misshapen- curled up at the edges and stuck together. We decided that Beauty would be Isobel’s first pet. Yes, Is had been begging for years to get a kitten, but her first pet ended up being a disabled butterfly. Life is what happens when you’re making other plans, right?
Isobel and Beauty were the best of buddies- Beauty liked to sit in Is’s hand and just hang out and flutter a bit, then go back in her habitat and climb on leaves and enjoy sugar water.
3 days ago, the other one hatched. The other 3 chrysalides didn’t work out- 2 died and the last was a hideously deformed monster that only lived for a few minutes after emerging… who knew so many things could go so wrong with butterflies?
A lot, as it turns out. The new butterfly, named Shippy Whippy, can’t fly- it fell down the stairs yesterday when we released it, instead of gracefully flying away to enjoy an outdoor life pollinating the flowers. We returned Shippy to the butterfly habitat after I caught it as it flapped pitifully in circles on the ground.
Beauty died yesterday. When I broke the bad news to Isobel…*
She came over, looked at Beauty, who was sort of tipped over on the floor of the habitat, and asked, “Mom, are you sure she’s dead? She might just be sleeping.”
“Okay,” I said. “Should we just leave her there for a while?”
“Yes. Maybe butterflies are really heavy sleepers.”
“Okay.”
*Today, we got Beauty ready for her funeral. I sprayed her with a few coats of lacquer- Is wants to keep her body in the butterfly-shaped trinket box I bought to serve as her coffin. But, she doesn’t want to bury it- she wants to keep it in her room. I said okay. Is had a few questions while we prepared Beauty…*
“Mom, I’m really sad.”
“That’s okay, babe. It’s totally normal to be sad when your pet dies.”
“But, I don’t want you to try and cheer me up.”
“Okay. Can I just sit and be sad with you?”
“That would be okay.”
*She put her head on my shoulder and we sat a step down from the box Beauty’s body sat in, drying after the first coat of lacquer.*
“I wonder what it’s like to be dead.”
“I guess we’ll all find out eventually.”
“I bet it’s like sleeping, but never waking up.”
“That sounds AWESOME. Sign my ass up right now!” I slowly tipped over on the steps, eyes closed, next to Beauty’s box.
Is laughs.
“No! Mom! There’ll be no more hugs! You won’t be able to read any more books!”
“Wait a second. No snuggles? No more hanging out with you and Dad?”
“Nope.”
“Ah, then forget it.” I straightened up and turned Beauty over for another coat.
“Mom… And when you’re dead, the birds eat your blood… And you have to hang out in a coffin that’s hard, like Dracula, and there’s not even a blanket.”
“Oh, no way. I’m out. I’m gonna live forever, then.”
“Me, too.”
*I get up at either five thirty or six in the morning. I grab a shower, then head into the kitchen to start breakfast and make Is’s school lunch. Is usually gets up at twenty to seven and wanders into the kitchen soon after. Friday, I was standing at the sink, cooking Is’s lunch and drinking my tea. I hadn’t really used my brain yet; this is all automatic setting stuff I do in the morning. When I turn to ask Is what she wants to eat, I catch her standing in the middle of the room, in sun rays, wildly waving her arms. It’s that time of year when the sun streams through the northeast-facing kitchen windows before seven in the morning.*
“Um. Is, what are you doing?”
“There are so many of them!”
“Of what, baby?”
*At this point, I think, o shit, sugar ants… But no. She starts waving her arms again in the air, batting at invisible things like a cat does.*
“What is this stuff?”
“What stuff, baby… oh, oh, it’s dust! It’s just dust motes in the air. You can see them because of the way the sun is shining in here.”
“I want them out of our house!”
“Ha, dude, nobody has a dust-free house.”
“But what IS it?”
“Dust? It’s made mostly from our dead skin cells that slough off… and bacteria we bring in from outside, and stardust from comets and meteorites.”
“What? That’s crazy.”
“I know! But it’s true.”
*She runs away, I think to go to the bathroom, but she returns with the crappy little plastic microscope I bought her years ago for looking at leaves and whatnot. She holds the microscope in the air and looks through it.*
“Is, what are you doing?”
“I’m gonna see which is which!”
“Um…”
“I can’t tell!”
“Haha, of course you can’t, not like that. Okay, lets have breakfast and I’ll tell you all about how microscopes work.”
“Okay. Can you make me some oatmeal?
“Of course.”
*Isobel is watching ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events,’ while I am attempting to finish my paper for Philosophy (Descartes and dreams, what fun!). Anyway, she stops the show on her iPad, looks over at me working on my computer, and says…*
“Mom. It’s nice they have a navigator telling the story, so you know what’s happening.”
“What?”
“A navigator. You know, he tells the story so you know what’s going on.”
“Oh, no. Not a navigator. A narrator. A navigator is a person who finds directions for a trip, usually using maps, and decides the way to go. A narrator is a person who tells a story, like they talk through a movie, so you can follow the plot.”
“But a navigator tells the story.”
“No, baby, the word you want to use is narrator. But in a way, I guess a narrator is like a navigator- they both help you find your way. In a story or a movie, the person talking over the acting is usually a narrator.”
“Okay. I almost got lost in this movie.”
“Very cool. Enjoy!”
*Every day Is comes home from school and has a snack, then does her homework, then she can play or do whatever she likes. Today, I was cutting up apples for her snack (she requested apples with peanut butter and some popcorn), when I noticed that the apple had a scar. Isobel had two long scars on her leg from previous hip surgeries- one along the bikini line from several open reductions, and one on her outer thigh from a femoral osteotomy and subsequent hardware removal. Most of the time she’s fine with her scars, but sometimes she doesn’t like them. I told her that scars are just a way that you can see how strong you are- that you were stronger than whatever gave you that scar, and now you’re healed. So I pointed out the apple’s scar.*
“Hey, Is, look at this apple- it has a scar!”
She looks. “Just like me!”
“That’s right.”
“Huh.”
“I’ll be done making your snack in a minute.”
“Should we eat it?”
“Sure, it’s fine. It’s just a spot where the apple rested on a branch or something, that’s why there’s a scar in the skin.”
“So it didn’t do anything to get the scar?”
“No, I don’t think apples don’t do much except grow, right?”
She smiles and leaves the room to put her homework on her desk. From the other room she calls to me, “Hey, apples don’t even have a way of life!”
*This morning, Isobel wakes up and doesn’t come right into the kitchen. I putter around, preparing her lunch for school for a bit. When she still hasn’t come in a few minutes later, I find her in her room, sitting on the rug, looking thoughtful.*
“Hey, babe, you okay? What can I make you for breakfast?”
“Mom, I’m thinking.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I’m thinking about a giant eye test.”
*I get a picture in my head of a regular eye test poster, you know the kind, with the capital letter E facing different ways, but the poster is as big as a door, or the wall. Then I remember we’ve been reading a lot of fairy tales lately, so I wonder…*
“What do you mean? A giant eye test, like the test itself is giant? Or an eye test for a giant, like a test for Grawp, Hagrid’s brother?”
“An eye test for a giant. Like, ‘Can you see this house? Can you see this book? Can you see me? Or am I just a tiny speck?'”
“Isobel, that’s amazing. I wonder if anybody else has ever once thought about that.”
“Hmm.”
“Babe, we’ve got to get to school. Want some oatmeal?”
This image is a photo of an opera stage, built for a festival in Bregenz, Austria. Read more about the fantastic stages here: http://twistedsifter.com/2011/08/outdoor-opera-on-the-lake-stages-of-bregenz/
*After school today, Isobel is sitting at the kitchen table finishing her snack. I join her with a cup of tea and we talk about our days for a few minutes, and then, apropos of nothing, she picks up this little Nutcracker ornament she bought the other day, looks at it thoughtfully, and says…*
“I think that families are like flowers. The petals that fall off are like the people who die, and are dying. And the petals that come on are the new people being born. And there are a lot of flowers in the world, and there are a lot of families in the world.”
*I’m silent for a moment, taking it in, turning it over in my mind, then I get up and grab a slip of paper and a pen and write it all down. I don’t want to lose this.*
“Is, I think the inside of your head is the most beautiful place in the world.”
Why, Mommy? 