"AHHHH! Mommy help me!" Ava screeches through our door.
Brig shakes his head with a long suffering only a lone man in a houseful of girls knows. I couldn't blame him for his lack of response. Just that morning Ava had barged into our room, alligator tears pouring from her Norwegian green eyes (eyes that are both blue and green at the same time, coined for the descendants of my immigrant Grandfather Carlsen).
"Daddy! Daddy!" she sobbed in anguish. Surely a truly tragic declaration was about to unfold. "Daddy I need you! NETFLIX ISN'T WORKING!" The truly tragic news now delivered she threw her torso onto the foot of our bed, her arms outstretched as if a pilgrim come to worship at some holy shrine after a long, dusty journey. I watched all this with one eye open, stifling the urge to bend it like Beckham on her head resting only a few inches from my feet. It's Mother's Day! I complained silently in my mind. Brig grumbles something under his morning breath as he reluctantly rolls out of bed to help our beleaguered daughter.
We lock eyes in shared empathy. Here we go again. I sat on our bed, ankles crossed and a powder compact in one hand while I finished applying makeup. Brig stands in a state of undress, perusing his choice of ties, his long hair curling over his ears as I again admonish him to get a haircut hippy! We flirt in our own way. A mix of witty innuendo and teasing personal putdowns, usually having to do with the other's intelligence. Interspersed with subtle compliments about the other's appearance, it makes for a brew of mock scorn and shy adoration that we conjure when we are in one of our "mountains" phases of our relationship. Those cyclical seasons when you've pulled out of the valley of divorce-might-be-a-good-option-I-can't-stand-the-way-you-eat-your-cereal and decide you don't really despise your spouse and you just might keep them around awhile. They amuse you after all, and when they smile the beauty of said smile scorches your eyes.
Yes, we were tempted to ignore our eldest daughter but there was something in her voice I recognized as authentic panic. "Go Honey," I urged my husband. He still looks undecided. "Go see if she's okay. She sounds scared." He opens the door. Down the hall Ava is stock still and petrified, her head turned to her left and her eyes focused intently on her left shoulder.
"A bee!" she yells, "I have a bee on me! Get it off!" From my vantage point on the bed I watch as she turns slowly toward her dad revealing the loathed insect. To my amazement he reaches down and squeezes the bug from off her shoulder like a stray piece of lint and makes for the bathroom.
The questions begs to be asked and I ask it, "Is it a bee?" I yell, leaving the rest of the sentence hanging in my head where it belongs...you big fool! Bees have stingers you know?
"No! It looks like a flying ant," he answers. Ava now saved, pads back over to the couch where she resumes the viewing of a deeply enriching program...My Little Ponies. My face now on, I hurriedly tend to brushing my teeth and finding shoes and socks for Brielle who is loudly protesting the choice of programing in the living room.
"My show! My show! My show, Mama!" she yells turning to me in appeal. I smile and brush her complaint off as I am wont to do in matters of sibling relations. I am thinking about getting to church so I can help set up the assembly stations for our Mother's Day butterfly pin the primary kids will be making for their moms.
As I'm brushing my teeth I notice movement in the toilet to my left. This is never, ever a good thing. Ever since I watched Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets I've had an unnatural fear of a snake emerging from the toilet pipe, it's head breaking the water directly beneath my unsuspecting buttocks. WHAM! Fangs sinking into my vulnerable backside. I'm Moaning Myrtle.
For a split second my eyes glaze over as I imagine all this taking place in my mind. My heartbeat quickens like it does when I fear the slimy, synthetically configured Jabberwocky from the 80's made-for-tv movie Alice in Wonderland will round a corner in my house and run right into me. It's tiny arms permanently outstretched, vaseline drenching it's clearly plastic body. It still terrifies me. Things like the toilet asp and the Jabberwocky...I tell myself they are not real, but it doesn't stop the fear blooming in my fertile brain.
I shake my paranoid head and inch towards the toilet. My wondering eyes reluctantly plumb the watery depths of the family lavatory. The winged ant, much like Custer, is making it's last stand. Or Custard's last stand as I used to believe it to be. I always pictured a recently slender woman after months of dieting and thigh-jiggling miles on the treadmill, walking past an ice cream shop. The woman stops in admiration, drool forming at one corner of her mouth. Nary a drop of custard has touched this woman's lips in months and she feels the absence like a babe ripped from her newly toned arms. But that's neither here nor there. The poor insect is swimming for it's life.
I spit the foaming glob of toothpaste into the sink. "Brigham! It's swimming. The least you could have done is flush it!" I yell leaning over and pushing the shiny silver lever.
Ava enters the bathroom and asks innocently, "What's swimming, Mom?"
"Oh, that bug that I thought Daddy had squished. Poor thing was just paddling around hoping for a life line," I say loud enough for Brig to hear, hoping he'll be shamed into admitting he's a bug sadist.
Ava's eyes well with tears. "What's wrong, Honey?" I ask.
As the deluge begins again for what seems like the tenth time this morning she moans, "KILLED ON MOTHER'S DAY!"
Taken aback I ask, "WHAT?!"
"That might have been some bug's mother!" she shouts.
"But I thought you wanted Daddy to get it off. What did you think he'd do with it?" I ask perplexed.
"I thought he'd squish it quick. He could have put it outside too," Ava cries.
Brig takes this opportunity to stride into the bathroom like some conquering hero, "Well that bug messed with the wrong family. That bug did not deserve a quick death!" Ava's hysterics are resurrected anew.
Sheesh. You're really helping, Honey. I look down at my phone. It's time to go. I want to tell them they're both being ridiculous but I don't. Instead I offer, "That bug wasn't a mother. I'm sure of it. Don't worry, Ava."
Ava glares at me. "Then it was a Daddy! Or...or a big sister! Or a little sister! Killed on Mother's Day!" she swiftly stumbles over the words like a fall down the stairs.
"No!" I say in my best no-nonsense disbelief.
"You don't know!" Ava yells, clearly in some sort of Irish mourning for the bug, recently dispatched to a watery grave.
"Ava. It's OK," I begin.
"KILLED ON MOTHER'S DAY!" she shrieks again.
"We've got to go!" I tell Brig who is ignoring us both as he mops his mane with my precious hair gel in a bid to control the chaos that sits atop his head.
Ava is still sniffling as I herd the girls out the door to our waiting decade old champagne - colored Corolla. "Ava, bugs don't live in families like humans do. You're making too much of this, Sweetie," I patiently explain.
She gulps but says nothing. As we pull away from the house I see her splotchy forehead in the rearview mirror, a dead giveaway of her distress as it has been from the day she was born. Her red-rimmed eyes meet mine in the mirror, "Some bug's mother," she whispers accusingly. I reach back and pat her hand, sigh and shake my head. Happy Mother's Day Mother Bug Murderer, I think to myself.
