This morning there was a panicky scream from the kitchen.
(Oh crap. Another poop that didn't make the toilet.)
To my surprise, though, Carter hadn't pooped on the tile, and urgently led me to the site of the crime.
We stooped under his kiddy table and he pointed it out:
a withered and dried up mosquito corpse.
It's okay, Carter, I assured him, It's dead. He won't bite you.
Long pause...I could see the wheels in his head turning.
He's dead...so he'll be nice to me?? If "dead" means the bug won't bite, then "dead" must mean he will be kind. Pretty decent logic to me.
How does one explain death to a two year old?
I logged onto to my email thirty minutes later and found a more-sobering-than-the-death-of-the-kitchen-mosquito message.
Grandma's in hospice.
I texted Mom, thanked Aunt Cath for the update, and excused myself from Daddy and Carter's sacred morning ritual of jumping on the bed and watching Mickey together.
It comes, this thing called Death, for us all. For the 8 day old insect and the 89 year old matriarch. And while we can expect and come to terms with and read literature in college and watch the headlines every night,
it's no less sad.
it's no less broken.
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