Mayday

Mayday

I feel as though I have been too hard on the kids, the dogs. My favorite word is No or Nunca. No don’t play in the fountain. Nunca. No don’t bludgeon the roses or the lavender or the guara. No tocar. Something is either sucio or peligroso or both. I take the dogs for a hike to the stream.

Heel. Sit. Sit. SIT. Heeelll.

I think I see a snake roiling in the shadows of the deep end of the stream, long after the dogs have decided to lie down in it and drink.

Come. COME. CUHMME.

It’s a beautiful night two nights in a row and together we show Isabel how to roast marshmallows over the fire pit (clearly an activity both dirty and dangerous) and she has a swell time.

I wake at two A.M. for a six A.M. flight. I haven’t traveled in a few months—since the move, I have been on a plane twice—and my internal clock is clearly way off. I toss and turn in bed trying not to move much, trying not to wake the dogs. At four I wake and before showering I take the dogs outside. They void themselves and then stretch out on the back porch in the darkness.

Lia tells me that she heard Isabel take herself to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I am proud of this but also saddened by it. Proud that she feels at home in the new house now, that we have made a space for her in which she feels safe and secure enough to walk about in the middle of the night. Saddened, of course, because she will soon be five and also because today she is registered for kindergarten.

It’s a beautiful night and the children are riding their bikes and scooters on the deck. The sunlight is failing and the temperatures are falling. I am wearing a sweater and it is time for bath and bed.

Isabel, come on in. Time for bath.
Dad, you are so predictable. You always make us not be out here.