Squeak. Rattle. Rattle. Squeak. Rattle. Rattle. Squeek. I looked up. Liam was planted in front of a friend’s supersaucer.
“Aren’t you a little old for that?”
Without looking up, he flicked the spinny-thing. He shrugged.
She’s only 75 feet away from me but I know that she has gone further. Much further.
She’s with a group of kids we met just a few days ago. This amalgamation of youth is camp magic: 5 + 2 + 3 + 1 = 11 children, ages 3 to 12; separate clusters now established as a pack. I hear her voice lifting above the indistinguishable murmur of sopranos and altos. They are gathering sticks to roast marshmallows. Her words are an incomprehensible string, but her timbre is unmistakeable. She sounds thrilled.
The screened porch is my observation deck. I trust that I am unseen in the shadows of the gloaming. She is holding hands with two girls, a forever friend and one newly minted. They are skipping together. Their giggles tinkle on the breeze.
She is delighted by this spoonful of independence.
I am struck with melancholy for the baby she was. She who clung to my breast in what I grimly referred to as my “fourth trimester,” who flatly refused to acknowledge strangers’ salutations even when prompted by a parent, whose outraged screams reverberated in my head long after I had departed from her daycare.
She’s growing up. She’ll need me less in some ways, more in others. My heart swells and minutes pass as I stand motionless.
I dislike being asked questions with obvious answers. It makes me incredulous and cross. In an effort to hold onto my sanity, I often cloak my irritation with sarcastic humor.
It must be said that I am not always troll-like. I do try to modulate my exasperation levels and I will make allowances for persons in my company who have just begun using full sentences.
But when my patience evaporates, and it inevitably does, these are the kinds of exchanges my kids and I have:
“Why do you have to get out of the tub? Because if you don’t, you’ll get sucked down the drain.”
“Are we leaving now? No. We’ll wait until you scrub the floor on your hands and knees with toothbrushes and your brother licks the toilet clean.”
Recently, the kids were dancing on my last nerve. It was bath night and things weren’t going well. Multiple objections, unresponsive zombie stares, and various forms of dilly-dallying had me at wits’ end.
“Liam!” I hissed through clenched teeth. “For the last time, stop reading and go take your shower! Do you want to keep smelling like a goat?”
Unperturbed, he placed a bookmark between the pages of his book and casually closed its cover. Looking me straight in the eye, he shot me a wicked smile. “Ma-aa-aaa,” he bleated.
I started laughing. The kind of laugh that makes your belly hurt. He got me. He gets me. And with that, my goat-boy ambled off to bathe.
Freedom! I was thrilled to be out with my husband, without our kids, for the first time in what seemed like a long time.
Our kids, safe and happy in the bosom of our extended family, were unlikely to miss us. We had spent the day in the lake and on the beach, alternately soaking up water and sunshine like sponges. They were wiped out.
What to do with ourselves?
Dinner? Definitely. Drinks? Absolutely. Parking? Err….excuse me? Parking? Really?
I am not old in the sense that my joints are still working properly; I can choose to participate in athletic activities without fearing a total body breakdown. I like trying new things and consider myself relatively adventurous—rock climbing, skydiving and bungee jumping are all bumps in my past. But truly, I feel too old to go parking.
My husband shrugged. I reconsidered. Exhaustion and excitement dueled with each other. He glanced at me sideways and raised his eyebrows suggestively.
Oh hell. Why not.
We cruised around searching for a secluded enough spot. In the deepening twilight, we traversed the back roads of my youth. He stopped the car and reached for me. And then…headlights appeared in the distance.
Sadly, the moment was gone. We laughed about having to explain ourselves to some law enforcement official or concerned citizen and then drove back to camp.
Fortunately, we had our own bedroom.
I grew up in a place where hunting was not only for sport, where it was not uncommon to hand-raise the animals that would later be featured on your dinner plate, where you might choose to keep the body of the moose that just crushed the front end of your pick-up truck.
As a consequence, when it comes to the death of a four-legged creature, I am a bit more hardy than your average suburbanite.
This is not to say that I don’t feel bad when I run over a squirrel, hit a bird, or squish a frog with my car. (Alright, I confess: minivan. There. I’ve said it. No judging. It’s a practicality that I will be thrilled to discard when the time comes. Let’s move on.)
We were driving to camp late one night. I had Medium and Large with me; my husband was transporting Small separately. I was tired but I couldn’t wait to get to our rented cabin.
I had hoped the kids would sleep on the three hour drive from home but they were equally excited and had kept themselves awake by singing Viva La Vida in rounds at the top of their lungs. I was driving slightly faster than was legally permissible.
By the time I noticed it crouched by the side of the road, it was too late. It scuttled. I swerved. And then that sickly sweet smell permeated everything.
“What was THAT?” called Liam from the way-back.
“Oh, honey, it was…” I felt awful. Poor little thing hadn’t had a chance when my hulking vehicle bore down on it.
“Was it a SKUNK?” he cried. “I know it was a skunk because I saw the white stripe and then I felt the bump and now it smells bad and…” The current of his stream of consciousness carried him to the inevitable conclusion: “YOU KILLED IT!”
“I’m sorry, Liam! Obviously, I didn’t mean to hit him. It’s dark and he ran right out into the road.”
“There he was, minding his own business and then YOU came along and killed him!” He accused me like a prosecutor in front of an attentive jury.
Nora’s softer voice queried, “Is the skunk dead?”
“Oh yeah, he’s dead!” Liam responded.
“Mommy killed the skunk!” The jury had bought it. Everyone but the defendant burst into tears.
I rolled my eyes at all the drama.
“Liam! Nora! Stop it. I didn’t mean to do it. Sometimes, things like this happen. It was an accident.” I paused. The smell was overwhelming. “Ugh. It stinks!”
Liam sniffed and made choking noises. “You know what that smell is?”
I was weary of this conversation. “It’s the skunk’s spray.”
“You know what that smell is?”
His repeating himself was not a good sign. The van reeked to high heaven, we were miles from our destination, and Liam was running along the ridge-line of hysteria.
Nora took the bait. “What is it?”
His voice rang with reproach. “It’s the Smell of Sadness.”
OINKtales 
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