The cicada of life

“I want to keep it for a pet,” said The Champ, his attention split between me and a rather large, prehistoric-looking insect that had just emerged from the earth near where he'd been digging in the backyard.

I'd seen the hollow, amber-colored shells affixed to trees where the cicada nymphs had left behind their childish things and flew off with new adult wings to sing their songs, attract a mate, lay eggs and start the whole, long process of life underground again. Yet, with such long spaces in between sightings, a person tends to forget in the meantime.

After all, no matter how amazing these creatures are, cicadas have a face only a mother -- and it would seem a boy, newly five -- could love.

“I will name him Clorindo Ramindino Insectivorianda, and he can sleep in my room.”

Honestly, his declaration surprised me a little, having just hours earlier responded to five-alarm shrieks demanding that a tiny beetle and a slightly oversized cricket – neither of which were close enough to touch him – be inducted into the insect relocation program.

Though perhaps the attraction is something he inherited. As I watch him study the insect's almost iridescent segmented body, it occurs to me that so many big moments in our lives as a family have been marked by the reawakening of these gentle giants.

On our honeymoon, hiking in New Zealand, my husband and I tramped for miles along the coastal track of the Queen Charlotte Walkway as the cicadas made a wall of noise almost as impressive as the scenery and twice as memorable.

After Ittybit was born, five months after to be exact, we travelled to D.C. smack-dab in the middle of the cacophony that was the awakening of the 17-year-cicadas. Everywhere we went, golden hulls and red eyes followed us. It was an event that rivaled the emergence of cherry blossoms a thousand times over.

These bugs – harmless to humans – are found all over the world and are “born” in their own time. Although some are annual, most live underground for years, growing incrementally as they feed on the juices of roots. Once mature they burrow to the surface and shed their skins revealing transparent, veined wings and luminescent bodies. In the five or so weeks they live as adults, they are busy. The song the males sing to attract a mate comes not from air moving through a throat but vibrations bouncing around resonating chambers in their abdomen. The female deposits hundreds of eggs into slits she makes in tree branches. Six or so weeks later the eggs hatch and ant-like nymphs burrow into the ground where the life cycle continues.

It's no wonder they are seen by many cultures as symbols of longevity, love and renewal. They connect the past with the present.

The Champ has heard this all before as has Ittybit, who's been assured we will return to D.C. in May of her 17^th year to meet her cicadas' sons and daughters.

She's got a while to wait.

The Champ can't wait another minute. He runs off to find a box, comfy pillow and fleece for his new pet. And returns to heartbreak.

“Mah-meeeee!” he wails. “You need to get rid of the dog. Clorindo Ramindino Insectivorianda is dead and she ATE him. Look, she sucked him right out of his shell!”

“Ah … honey. She didn't eat Chlorine Ramona Insectivous-er-whatever. He's just gone off to find a girlfriend. And guess what? Maybe, when you are 12, you will see his children. Right here in our backyard.”

Blank. Stare.

“He's going to have babies?!!! Here?!? Ewwwwwww.”

The best part of any movie will always be talking about it afterward

“What was your favorite part, Mama?” she said between mouthfuls of steamed dumpling and bites of broccoli.

We had just seen “Brave,” and were seated at a table in the restaurant next door to the theater, debriefing. I use the word “sitting” loosely. Neither Ittybit nor The Champ could contain themselves. Eyes flashing, mouth chirping, she was practically levitating off the seat. Swashbuckling with chopsticks, he was attacking his meal with the ferocity of a wee Scottish lord.

“I really liked the witch's workshop,” I said, explaining that I loved looking at all the animated carvings and listening to the way they clanked together as the hero of the story, Merida, blew in following the mysterious “wisps.”

“Oh, that was good!” she exclaims. “Yeah, that was good,” echoes her brother as he tries to spear his meal. Truth be told, however, more than the work of foley artists, the thing I loved most was that its hero is a girl.

I loved that “Brave” is all the things you could want in a lifetime let alone a movie, whether you are male or female. It has lush landscapes, a loving family, action, adventure, humor, ingenuity, failure and redemption. And it is as much about acknowledging duty as it is about breaking tradition.

Things we wrestle with for all our lives not just for 90 minutes in a darkened room filled with the rich smells of popcorn.

Most of all, though, I loved that girls as heros won't be as novel a concept to my children as it was to me when I was their age. And that girls don't have to become boys to find or measure their worth.

“What was your favorite part?” I say a little too loudly, drowning out the bagpipes in the soundtrack of my imagination.

“I liked when the free brovers ate all the cupcakes. They were like free little pigs. That was funny,” said The Champ, his own mouth full of dumpling.

“Oh … I liked it all, especially the part where she fixes the tapestry and everything goes back to being the same only better,” Ittybit says.

“But that's not … what happened … not exactly ...” I stammer.

“Sure it is. She didn't sew very well but it was good enough,” she says with conviction.

“It was more than just a ripped picture. It was the relationship between mother and daughter that had been damaged; the tear was just a symbol of that bond. They actually had to fix their relationship.”

“That's what I said.”

It's interesting to watch movies with my kids. To see the symbolism sail straight over their heads, where it will hang around (once the movie is released to DVD and I fall prey to little pestering) until one day they see it with more mature eyes. And something else clicks.

And as much as I want them to see what I've seen, I know we all experience the world a little differently. We come to our understanding with filters … some I've installed … some friends have installed … some they've discovered themselves.

“You know what I really frink the best part of the movie was?” says The Champ, moving on to the fortune cookie portion of the meal.

“Let me guess?” replies his sister. “The sword fighting? The horse? The boy who had a tattoo on his face?”

“Nope. I liked that the mom didn't die. … These movies always kill the mom.”

They both start to laugh, and it strikes me: The best part of any movie will always be talking about it afterward.

Home office

Now that I am ungainfully employed by the Corporation of Cyclical Chores – a completely imaginary Subchapter S corporation -- I am forcing myself to get dressed each morning and face the day (and the school bus driver) at 8 a.m. wearing something other than a bathrobe and fuzzy, pink slippers.

Free of my windowless cubicle, my days are spent milling around the Home Office checking in on the various departments that make CCC (as I like to call my imaginary firm) run like a top … the wobbly kind.

As chief exective of CCC, I wear many hats.

For example, as head of appropriations I usually stare blindly into the shopping cart, wondering what I can throw in there that will magically prepare itself once I get it home. Raw meat during BBQ season seems to be the best option. The head chef is as protective of his grill as the laundry czar is of keeping red items from infultrating the white. All it will cost me is a beer.

More worrisome is how to handle the dishwasher. Sure … he shows up to work consistently (being built-in and all) but he tends to leave everything he washes crusty and unappealing, causing me to have to redo everything by hand.

I'd fire him, but I've asked around. My problem isn't unique. He's just a hollow shell and replacing him would not only be labor intensive and costly, but also unlikely to solve the problem. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Then there's the three-foot-tall house elf who speaks in riddles and is always on some secret mission to empty and redistribute any and all prefolded garments produced by the laundry department, which, turns out, operates at a daily albeit at an inconsistent capacity.

I don't even want to think about the cleaning crew. They are about as organized as a pack of rabid squirrels and only half as tidy. I tend to try and pull that hat over my eyes.

Perhaps, though, the most surprising of the hats I wear fits only loosely and has a wide brim offering a surprising amount of revelation and protection.

Gardening.

Frankly, it's a job that, in my previous life, I had likened to sewer cleaning or carrion removal: Knee deep in dirt, breathing in the rancid smell of defeat.

Whatever I attempted to grow either failed to germinate or choked the life out of every other lifeform around it.

The thought had occurred to me that now, with my hours expanded, my duties varied and my compensation greatly devalued, the only way I could balance the inequity for myself was to grow something with value added.

Food.

Cabbage instead of Cosmos. Tomatoes taking the place of trillium. Peppers where once peeped peonies.

Even the shareholders of my fictitious firm … the people who clamored for pancakes and bacon as I poured yogurt on granola … were sneering at my plans to turn around the company. They beggged me to reconsider.

“What will the other imaginary companies say? What if there's a hostile takeover?”

Sure … it looks out of place – an imaginary corporate headquarters landscaping its entryway with edibles, protruding akimbo, where ornamentals had once appeared orderly.

But I press on. When the greedy shareholders get their hands on the fruits of this labor, they'll be glad they invested. …

Of course, that's my plan. Get them hooked now because next year we're going co-op.

Holding my breath

I often hold my breath.

Not just during the angsty times: doctors visits, teacher conferences, all manner of difficult conversations.

But also when I'm thinking. When I'm listening. When I'm writing. When I'm rearranging my closet in my mind's eye.

I just forget to exhale. It's an unconscious, momentary thing. Like a blink you squeeze shut until you tear up or see stars.

I've always held my breath this way.

Still, it makes my husband nervous.

He thinks it's all about him.

“Are you upset with me?” he asks when the inevitable heavy sigh releases all this pent up air.

I tell him not to worry. “It's not always about you. … And that the exhalation hissing out of my lungs is just my body's way of making sure I don't pass out.

“I'm not mad. Really, I'm not.”

He doesn't buy it.

Truly, I have forgotten all about the argument we had the other day. I can't even remember why we were fighting. It's always something silly.

“Is Jeremy Piven playing all the bad guys in this movie?”“No, that one was James LeGros.”“No, it was Piven. I'm sure of it.”“It's LeGros.”“It's definitely Piven.”“Fine. I'll Google it.”

He barks dog. I hiss cat.

Stubborn we are.

“Oh … I guess it is Piven.”

And that eye-rolling thing? That's just a reflex. Has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I wish Google would break even if, on occasion, it proves I was right.

Win the battle, lose the war.

Anger and resentment can do that to people, small irritations blow up in their faces.

Mountains and mole hills.

I'm sure there are times he'd rather be married to someone else. There are times I wouldn't even want to be married to me.

Like the time I volunteered him to assemble a thousand piece, plane-shaped teeter-totter for the preschool playground. I smiled as I pictured him pulling his hair out over Parts A and C being too small to fit into Slots B and D.

That wasn't terribly nice of me.

But he returned the favor.

He's raised my hand for jobs that would prove equally frustrating.

Dinner? Party? Small talk?

Honestly, I'd rather put together an oscillating jet engine and try to launch him into next week.

But I don't have enough weight to hold my end down.

Marriage can seem like it is balanced on absolutes:

“You always … ”
“You never ...”

But that's a mirage … not marriage.

Nothing is absolute. None of it crystal clear.

Except for a moment or two when you catch a glimpse of your family, the children skipping along a sidewalk in the afternoon sun and your partner close behind. He's holding their ice-cream-sticky hands as they sing some nonsense songs into the air.

Small moments in our lives that are capable of filling the cavities etched by our own moments of smallness.

“Try to focus on this moment” I tell myself. “Let the other moments float away.”

This is why I married him. This is why he married me.

Heart racing once again, I notice I've stopped breathing.

And I exhale.

My son, ladies man

He's not like the other boys his age.

He likes girls. One in particular. And it isn't me.

Don't laugh. I read Freud. I understand the stages of psychosexual development include a period in which my son would develop an Oedipus Complex, try to kill his father and marry me.

Okay, not literally. But I'd played it all out in my mind as if it were the Greek tragedy.

His sister would rib him about some girl his age: “Champ and Girly, sitting in a tree. K. I. S. S. I. N. G. ...

He would punch her, declare his love for me and tell dad to pack his stuff and find another place to call home.

But instead he just looked glum; hung his head and said … “Girly likes The Other Guy.”

Then he stomped away.

Not even five yet and he's professed his undying like for a girl who, for all he knows, still thinks boys have cooties. (Not that she isn't polite when he tries to tell her a joke: “What do you get when you cut an Earthworm in half? Two Earthworms. … ahahahahaa!).

She shrugs her shoulders in the least offensive manner and runs off to play with her best girlfriend.

My son stands there smiling for a bit then inches toward her direction, slowly moving into her shadow, pretending he's not there.

Little stalker.

In the car he says her name over and over. He sings songs about her -- sweet little nonsensical ballads that liken her to a summer day … Only not Summer's day, because that would be a girl who's name is Summer and she's not like Summer. Her hair is a different color. It's black. Or dark brown. I'm not sure.”

He doesn't even care if it rhymes.

Poor kid.

He's in for a world of hurt.

He chatters away at his friends who are boys. Feeling them out while burying his true intent with yards of game theory questions: “What school are you going to next year? What's your favorite color? Do you know that birds come from dinosaurs? Did you know that bears are omnivores? Which girl in school do you like?

And of course the friend hones right in on the main dish:

“GIRLS! I don't like girls. They're yucky.”

He smiles. That's one less rival.

He continues singing: “I like girls. They are fun. They are cute. They don't know how to shoot. Rubber bands in the air. Instead they put them in their hair.

Rhyming gains importance when people who aren't your parents are listening he'll tell me later. “They expect you to know how to rhyme hair and air.”

Watching him watch others, balancing what he thinks they want with what he thinks he needs is like having a glimpse into the future.

“I will paint her a picture. It will be of a diamond under the sea. Then I will show it to her and she will love it. …

And then he whispers to me: “Will you ask her to come over here ? … I'm too shy.”

Little con artist.

I can almost hear him in fifteen years: “Want to come up and see my etchings?”

I hope he doesn't expect me to arrange the showings.

Graduation day

He knows his colors. He can recite the alphabet. He can count to fifteen. He 's memorized his address and home telephone number. He can spell his name and write it so that's it's almost decipherable to the uninitiated eye. He can write with a pencil, paint with a brush and cut with scissors, though he sometimes refuses to perform any of those tasks on demand.

After this day we will say goodbye to the Marilla Cuthbert Academy for Unspeakably Charming Children forever.

A tear may sting the corners of my eye as I see him standing all fidgety-like in the backyard playground awaiting his preschool commencement. But I won't let it invite friends.

I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not cry.

I'm practically a professional at stoicsm. After all, this isn't the first time that I've witnessed a child of mine graduate from play-school to this-is-your-new-job school. It's the last time.

I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not cry.

He's stil my baby, I remind myself … thankful that even at the ripe old age of almost-four he's still a half-a-foot shorter than all of his school mates. He still looks like my baby even if he insists on speaking in full sentences, understands traffic rules and can tell the difference between a Mustang and a Corvette.

He's not ready to drive yet. There will be more than a decade of big, yellow buses in our future. They will come to collect him in the morning and bring him home in the afternoon.

I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not cry.

“My sister will sit wif me on the bus so nobody will bully me,” he says as if he's reading from a script. His sister … standing behind him. … silently mouths the words “He'll be fine.” as her eyes add the context: “sitting by himself … with the little kids … where he won't cramp my style.”

I shoot her The Look, but I'm not worried. I know they'll work it out. They always do.

“Poor guy,” Ittybit says, wryly. “He doesn't know how good he had it in preschool.”

He stares at her, waiting for an explanation. “What do you mean?”

“The work is SOOO MUCH harder in Kindergarten. You have HOMEWORK! And ASSIGNED SEATS! There aren't any TOYS in the classroom or BIKES on the playground. You can't HOLD HANDS with your friends in the hallway and you NEVER get to go on field trips ever again.”

He shrugs his shoulders. “I don't care. I'll get to ride the bus.”

She winces.

She's spent three years working her way toward the back of the bus, where the oh-so-big-and-mature third graders sit. She knows the possibility of being yanked back to the front to sit with her brother isn't remote.

“The bus is nice if you can sit with your friends,” she brightens.

“But I don't have any friends. … My friends are all going to another school.”

“You'll meet someone on your first day … just like I did. You may even be best friends forever.”

“Shhhhhh,” I say in my best I Will Not Cry accent.

Marilla and her school will soon be a memory.

It's bittersweet. Outgrowing things that have been comforting and expanding into new territory, knowing that eventually what was unaccustomed will be old hat.

I smile as he tries to balance a construction paper mortorboard on his noggin while twirling the tassel, a sparkling tendril of curling ribbon, in his never-still hands.

And, of course, I'll cry.

Unwired

A boy. 

They'd exchanged phone numbers at school. Ittybit promised to call later that night.

Which she did. After dinner and before homework.

It was a big deal. ...

To me.

The telephone was my first, tenuous, connection to independence. It offered my mind a mode of transportation and a mechanism for planning that started simply enough with a single universal question: "What are you doing?" followed by the closed-circle response: "Nothing. What are you doing?"

Boy? Girl? It didn't matter who was hanging on the line, it only mattered that the line existed and that it connected me to a disembodied voice.

For the primary school set -- too young for Twitter and Facebook -- Alexander Graham Bell's invention is as relevant as ever.

The rules of communication haven't changed much, either.

"Smile when you talk," I tell her. "They may not be able to see you, but they will be able to hear the smile in your voice.

"Remember to be polite: tell whoever answers your name; ask if you may speak to your friend; always say please and thank you."

Phone etiquette isn't innate. It takes practice, and recently we'd been having our share of practice.

Still, I couldn't listen as she dialed the boy's number and waited for someone to answer.

I clanked around the kitchen, trying to buffer the exchange.

It reminded me ... a little too much ... of my own first phone call to a boy.

I had been in second grade, too.  I didn't even know to be nervous. He was, after all, a friend I spoke to each day. A boy whose name happened to line up next to mine in the alphabet, as did his chair in our teacher's similarly ordered classroom.

To be able to continue the conversation at home, after school, is a strange magic not dissimilar to running into your first-grade teacher at the supermarket and feeling as if your world had been turned inside out. The first time it happens it's disorienting.

Some of that disorientation was happening as I ran through the script I'd practiced.

Hello, I am … , may I speak to … ?

Silence.

The boy's mother wasn't impressed. Her voice, quick and sharp, told me all I needed to know about my mistake. And she wasn't going to let her son talk to any girl so forward as to call a boy at the age of eight.

More than three decades later, I have to wonder if David Sedaris' witty and scathing review of an elementary school nativity play wherein he writes: “6-year-old Shannon Burke just barely manages to pass herself off as a virgin,” could have been inspired by a similar experience.

Honestly, though, I hadn't thought of that moment until this one, in which my daughter was chirping away into the handset asking a boy questions I didn't get a chance to ask.

“What are you doing?”

My stomach tightened even more as she charged my way with the phone.

“Ok, I'm going to get my mom and you put your mom on the phone, too.”

I stretch a tight smile across my face, holding the phone and waiting for a stranger's voice to come on the line.

This is awkward.

Hello? Her smile is stretched, too. I can hear it.

“Hi,” I inject a small laugh into my voice for effect. “I think our kids are interested in setting up a play date.”

Without much fanfare we set a date and exchange information. And within a few days a boy from school is playing in the backyard with our daughter, collecting specimens of rare weeds and putting them in an old umbrella for some convoluted purpose.

A broken bumper shoot is a typical centrifuge for whatever pseudoscience my daughter has devised.

Together they battle a rising wind and a meddling brother until the boy's mother comes to collect him a couple of hours later.

By all accounts it was a success. Plans are made to play some more another day.

He climbs into the car, she bounds into the house.

The phone is ringing.

“I'll get it,” she hollers.

I open my mouth to holler back, but stop mid objection. It's probably for her, anyway.

Mom, enough

Sh*t (Fill-In-The-Demographic) Say videos on YouTube are somewhat addictive, aren't they?

My favorite ones are about parenthood.

A woman or a man (sometimes both) breezes through a series of seemingly random statements while doing ordinary, mundane things such as eating cereal or pushing a stroller or watching TV. The scenes are stitched together to produce a stereotypical representation of whatever demographic filled in the blank.

Formulaic, sure, but funny all the same.

A site search shows virtually every nationality, geographic location and parenting style represented. For all intents and purposes, it's about people laughing at themselves.

I've often mused if I were more skilled with video I'd make one of my own and call it: Sh*t My Kids Say, and it would consist entirely of a single word: “Mommy.”

There would be the whiney “Mahhhhm,” the bored “Mo-ahm,” the “MOM” that signals some kind of imagined emergency and of course, the “Mom” that is repeated over and over again because a response was not satisfactorily immediate.

There is also the Mom that is not meant for me at all … the one that is merely a pretend game between siblings about which my inquiry will provoke ire: “MOM!”

It drives me crazy enough that I find myself screaming: “The next person who yells 'Mom' better need the services of an emergency room doctor … or at the very least a Band-Aid.”

To which they always laugh, “Mah-em.”

I thought about all of this as TIME magazine's cover story touched off small fires in the ever-smoldering Mommy Wars last week with a provocative picture and a taunting hammer head, “Are You Mom Enough.”

I'm Mom too much, I chortled.

Seriously though, the TIME piece wondered why Attachment Parenting leads mothers to extremes: Baby wearing, extended breastfeeding (past the age of one) and co-sleeping.

The sparks that flew around the peanut gallery that is the ethosphere were pretty standard: People felt sorry for the three-year-old boy pictured standing on a chair, nursing at his mother's breast. They lamented the gaggle of coddled youngsters, whom, they believed would, no doubt, grow up to be horribly warped adults unable to detach from their mothers' apron strings.

I didn't take the bait.

Even though I was one of those mothers who wore her babies (it was easier for me than a stroller) and who allowed her children to self wean (one at two, the other a four) and who found co-sleeping helpful with one child but not the other (one slept better with us, the other slept better alone) I didn't rush into Twitterverse to defend my decisions or try to convert the disbelievers.

I didn't think what I was doing was a style, necessarily, I just thought of it as something that worked for me. And I can be honest: It was mostly about me.

“If Mama Isn't Happy, Nobody's Happy,” was my motto. Even wore it on a t-shirt.

Whether meeting their needs in infancy with minimal tears has made my children more secure in their understanding of their place in the world, I can't tell you. I wouldn't expect you'd believe me anyway if I thought it had. How can anyone make such a correlation?

I don't presume to think that the choice of a baby carrier or a stroller could determine a person's whole life outcome. Nor would I be willing to bet a child left to cry it out would be irreparably harmed.

Yet I wonder how we get sidetracked into this narrow media gauntlet time and time again.

Maybe it's easier to point fingers than ask questions. It's certainly easier to yell and rant and rave than it is to let go and assume people other than ourselves are doing their best.

Which, is probably why I can't keep myself from laughing when my son stops himself after his second “MOM!”

“I mean … Siobhan,” he says, addressing me in his big-boy voice and then going silent.

“You can't call her that,” Ittybit chastises her brother.

“But she hates when we call her Mom,” he responds, confused.

“No. She hates when you call her 'MOM MOM MOM MOM MOM MOM' but never say anything else.”

As she usually does, Ittybit wants me to weigh in on the appropriateness of a child calling their mother by her first name.

“I honestly think I'm mom enough. You can call me by my first name sometimes so long as you aren't repeating it like a broken record.

“Like this: Siobhan Siobhan Siobhan siobhan shifawn shibong sifon,” he smiles with his best Sh*t Kids Say grin.

“I take that back. Maybe too much Mom is just enough.”

They just looked at me like they usually do: as if I'd grown another head.

I won't hold my breath waiting for the t-shirt.

Off the clock

It's evening. Twenty past nine to be exact, and I'm trying to ignore the sounds coming from across the hall.

Kids!

Their voices call to one-another as if they weren't sleeping in the same room. She says something. He answers. She tells him why he's wrong. He tells her she smells. Both of them laugh. They are happy and enjoying each other's company. It's not exactly rare. In fact, it's almost predictable at this time of night.

Before-bedtime bedlam morphs a into an up-too-late euphoria.

You'd think they'd be tired with all that preceded this moment:

Chasing the dog around the house.

Getting ready for school.

Chasing the dog around the house.

Did you comb your hair?

Brush your teeth?

Wash your face?

Running after the bus.

School ….

More school …

Did I mention school?

Not to mention getting home from school.

Measuring the garden we planted yesterday to see if it grew any.

Rummaging through the kitchen for food.

Chasing the dog around the house.

Dance class.

Chasing other dance students around the studio.

Complaining about dinner – and how you hate vegetable-chicken-meatloaf-steak-spaghetti-tacos – and why can't we just eat from the four REAL food groups: Ice cream, candy, cookies and pie?

Chasing the dog around the house.

Homework.

Keeping the dog from eating your homework.

Bath time.

Did you comb your hair?

Brush your teeth?

Wash your face?

Books.

Chasing the dog around your …

Oh look, it's bed time.

It's bedtime? Already? No fair!

Even after the last page is turned, hugs are hugged, kisses kissed and the lights snapped off they are not ready to sleep.

Each night it seems their routine becomes more of an improvisation.

On this night, Ittybit calls the dog. The Champ shoos the dog away. Ittybit calls her again, peeling back the blanket to make room. Champ throws one of Ittybit's toys so she will give chase. And so it goes for a while: Up. … Down … Up. … Down. Each time the dog scrabbles across the bed, rustling the covers as she launches and hitting the floor with a thud as she's dismissed. Her collar jewelry jingling no matter which direction she's heading.

Their voices, low at first, build a wall of noise that imprisons my thoughts.

“Be quiet! I can't hear myself think,” I yell, feeling the sting of my own irony slapping me in the face. It's TIME for BED!!!

No more dispute. Only admonished silence followed by the gradual overtaking of sleep.

The dog is the only one still stirring.

I hear her nails clicking across the floor. The lapping of water. And the groaning thud that I've come to expect before she finally settles.

She's not tired either, though she's give up her plaintive, daytime bark and settles into her nighttime chatty banter, which clearly emphasizes her displeasure that her people aren't polyphasic sleepers, too. Soon she falls silent.

I start to relax in this moment of reprieve.

Motherhood, off-duty but on-call.

I don't want to make a move until little bodies settle and I hear the deepening of breath.

Instead I hear the unmistakable sound of teeth shredding what I can only presume is a toy.

Dogs!

I don't know for sure, you see, because I'm trying to stay off the clock, which I can manage if I just ignore the sounds coming from across the hall.

Good grief

It was quiet, as it usually is this time of day. Mid-morning on Saturday can be surprisingly slow at the library.

The Champ clamors into the children's reading room, headed straight for the computer. He is pleased to find it ready and waiting for him. In no time he is scrolling through the programs, looking for his favorite: an anatomy game where you can place organs inside a skeleton.

He's already a font of knowledge when it comes to connecting leg bones to the hip bones, and placing the brain is a no-brainer. Even the librarian whistles under her breath when he drags and drops the spleen in the upper left side of the abdomen. “I didn't even know what that was,” she marvels.

His sister thumbs through the stacks of books, looking for just the right one. School has upped the ante. Pictures books aren't enough of a challenge anymore. They're too easy. No danger. She needs to find something with meat and teeth.

She doesn't want my help. The books I suggest lack a certain spark.

I make my way to the well-worn leather chair by the window and take a load off. I put my feet up on the ottoman and just sink in. There's nothing for me to do but wait.

We all know the drill: Eventually the boy will tire of placing innards where they belong and the girl will find a book to end all books. Of course, there's always the possibility that stomachs grumbling for lunch will make short work of such decisions. Only time will tell.

Practice has made me better at waiting.

“Don't rush them,” I remind myself. “There's no place we need to be.”

I watch as she takes a book from the shelf and slips it back. Another. And another.

Before too long she appears before me and hands a yellow hard-cover to me.

My hand floats along its spine, unable to get a firm grasp. The title repels it. It's a book about cancer.

She flips through the pages excitedly. “This is important stuff,” she says with a maturity I always mistake for misunderstanding. “This is stuff I will need to know.”

I take a deep breath … and fall apart.

“That's not for us,” I say. “Put it back. Get something about the solar system. There must be a nice book on black holes or asteroid storms. … Or avoidance. There must be a book on avoidance. How to keep from getting caught in an asteroid storm. Now that would be useful information.”

Truth is, I'd scanned the new books when we'd first walked in the room and noticed the abundance of children's books dedicated to serious diseases and death. I'd averted my eyes.

“We don't need this book,” I begged, hoping that leaving the book where she found it (and performing a complicated ritual based entirely on superstition) instead of bringing it into our house would keep heartbreak from ever stepping over our threshold.

But it wasn't about me, and she knew it.

Talk was all over town.

The primary school principal was recently diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer, and announced to the school-family that she would remain a presence in our children's lives for as long as she was able. She planned on waging a public fight. She was in it to win.

Parents were quietly upset. They want to protect their children from heartbreak. They wanted to have the right to tell their kids their beloved principal had taken a job on a farm, should the unspeakable happen.

I understood that fear even as I tried to renounce it, spinning on my heel three times and throwing salt over my left shoulder (and then my right just in case I'd muddled the old-wives-tales I was trying to wash down with my anxiety).

Not that it helped. Burying one's head in the sand rarely does.

I wanted to pretend we didn't need to do anything, and Ittybit needed to understand if there was anything she could do.

“Hey, what about this stuff you always say about knowledge and power?” Ittybit asks, thrusting the book into my hand.

She was right. And as usual she was using my own words to prove I was wrong.