A Confectionary Life

Have I told y'all I live next door to a cupcake? She is 4. Nearly 5. Miss Lil is not one of those vegetables-disguised-as-dessert kind of cupcakes. Not a speck of carrot or zucchini in this kid. She is like spun sugar on a windy day. With sprinkles.

Miss Lil was playing with Miss M the other day. It is worth mentioning that Miss M is the only one who notices the 8 year gap in ages but doesn't mind it one bit. She really enjoys playing with cupcakes. So they walked through the kitchen while I was making dinner and I showed her what we were having and invited her to join us. After checking with her mother, she skipped back over and helped set the table. (You think that is something, I had her 2 year old sister washing my windows this week too!)

We were all on our best behavior and having a genial conversation when she asked me this:

"So, Alpha, were you fired or something?"

Which is, I guess, her way of asking why I am home during the day when the women in her family work outside of the home like the men do. It was a tricky thing to answer because, yes, I was fired from the last job I held. I was fired for being pregnant. In 1998. No shit. But that seemed a sullied path to drag a 4 year old cupcake down. I didn't want to be responsible for smudging her frosting or knocking some nonpareils off the top. So I frosted my answer too.

But I am sitting here today with my kids back at school and I miss them so much I washed curtains and upholstery this morning. But now that the afternoon is here I feel my mind settling and thinking about why I stay home. Not what I do or how I fill the time. But actually why.

And I don't know how to answer that completely. For myself or for her. As the morning's sun gives way to the afternoon's gust with the smell of rain on its heels I am remembering a day like this almost a year ago...

I was just home from the morning deliveries (both boys AND both lunches thank you very much). I picked up our Netflix movies and grabbed an umbrella to go take them to the mailbox on a cold and rainy Fall day.

But when I looked out there was now a kid's bike in the road that was not there just 2 minutes ago. It wasn't parked. It was thrown aside.

At first I thought it was our neighbor Teddy's and I was going to walk it up to his house. But then I had a horrible premonition that I should not touch the bike.

I'm looking at this bike, up and down the street, and back to this bike with its handle bars at a drastic angle.

A neighbor pulls out of his driveway and sees it too and stops me. "What's wrong?" the lawyer asks when he sees the bike in the road and me with my concern under a frog umbrella. "I don't know, Dave."

And just then the neighbor boy comes out from between two houses. Riley is a good kid. He should be in school. But it is his week on for chemotherapy so he is home.

Last winter Riley's family had to put their old dog down. And Riley LOVES dogs. He had spent months asking for a dog.

Then in June, he doubles over at a soccer game and they ran him to the ER thinking it is his appendix. Nope. It is a grapefruit sized, very rare, and very aggressive cancerous mass in his abdomen.

Riley is Miss M's age. He is smart and polite but with an edge of sass to him--just the way I like them. And I have ALWAYS had a soft-spot for this kid who never stops smiling. Who will wave every time he rides by.

From falling on the field, to arrival at the little ER in Wisconsin, to being taken by ambulance to the Children's Hospital, to surgery took about 4 hours.

They had a new puppy in the house within a week.

The pup is SO cute. And I totally understand why they bought the red headed golden retriever. Oh, he is so vintage golden! None of that square-headed blonde thing going on. Snipey and shiny golden-red. He is a good puppy. He will be a great dog. But the dear family does not have the time to train him. And even if they did the dog is 6 months old and SASSY.

Anyway...Riley comes around the house with an empty leash and I tell the lawyer in the car it is ok. The boy stumbles over. He is wearing pajama pants and a t-shirt and a stocking cap. His feet are bare with bits of grass and leaves pressed to the wet between his toes.

And my heart just cracks down the middle.

He has no eyebrows and he is pale and bloated. And he is standing in the rain in his jammies, crying.

He won't take my jacket. He won't get in my car and drive around with me to look.

But I go to get my car anyway to help him look. I grab a jacket to make him wear it. And I planned on finding the pup and then calling his mom and making the boy hot chocolate.

But...

When I stepped out after grabbing my keys and a coat for him, his mom is stopped with her car in the middle of the street.

She came home from running an errand and Riley was gone. So she drove around looking for him and found his bike in the middle of the road.

And then my heart shattered.

I yelled for Riley and he came around from behind another house, she looked up and saw him with the empty leash in one hand and the puppy in the other. And she fell to her knees. In the leaves. In the gutter. In the rain.

And here is this beautiful boy. His tears hidden by the rain. Smiling and holding his puppy and waving at his mom. The puppy which, more and more, seems like a symbol of this battle they are fighting.

He put the dog in the car. Picked up his mom. And then picked up his bike.

And if I'm not here who would see this? Who would hold this in their heart and never forget it? I am reminded, once again, how lucky I am to have this time at home. This sweet, frosted time in my life.