In which we deal with one of the crappier parts of parenthood...

6:27 a.m.
Our bedroom

sotto voce
Me: Wake up.
Leroy: Huh
Me: Wake up!
Leroy: What?
Me: Ruby's dead.
Leroy: Oh no.
Me: What are we going to do? Do we tell her?
Leroy: I don't know -
Enter Eva
Eva: Mommy, you know what -
Me: Eva, did you rinse your toothbrush?
Eva: Oh, I forgot!
Exit Eva
sotto voce
Me: What are we going to do?
Leroy: Don't tell her now -
Me: She wouldn't be able to go to school...
Leroy: No.
Me: What are we going to do?
Leroy: I'm trying to decide if this is a good lesson about death, or if we should just replace her.

And that's the question. Do we tell her the truth, or do we protect her? Our parents wouldn't have replaced her - pets died, it was sad, life goes on. Our parents didn't have to raise Eva.

Eva knows about death. She cried for two years when the dog died. Not a figurative two years, but an honest to God two calander years. We would be sitting at dinner, or at the grocery store, or where ever and she would suddenly start to cry. To sob. If you asked her why, she would say it was because she missed her puppy.

She still isn't over her Grandpa and her "Little Grandma" dying. She has the prayer card from Leroy's dad's funeral stashed in her desk and sometimes she just takes it out and carries it around. My grandmother knit her a wild pair of socks, and everytime she pulls them out she gets teary and talks about how she always has to remember her Little Grandma.

She knows about death. The choice is do we be honest with her or do we try to protect her from being hurt? And that's what parenthood comes down to, isn't it? Deciding when to let them be hurt. Of course you never want them to feel any kind of pain, but it happens and they grow and learn - but if you can spare them, do you?

Leroy is the one who let her have it - I'm still not sure how it happened. Went to PetsMart for a new dog collar and came home with a yellow and white bird cage, accessories and a blue parakeet that Eva christened Ruby.

The name drove Aidan crazy.
"Mom! It's blue."
"I know."
"She can't call it Ruby."
"It's her bird. She can name it Ruby if she wants to."
"Make her call it Sapphire - or Blue Flash. Hey Eva! Don't you think Blue Flash is a cool name?"
"No," said Eva. "I only like Ruby."
"M-o-m!"

I have countless portraits of Ruby. Ruby standing next to a mushroom. Ruby in a tree. Ruby and Eva (the same size) playing. Ruby and the American flag. Ruby, towering over our house.

When Eva played dress up, she attached huge, gaudy pieces of jewelery to Ruby's cage so that she could play too. Each day when Eva left for school she put a CD on repeat so that Ruby wouldn't miss her - usually yodeling or ABBA. Ruby had diverse tastes.

Leroy put her in the garbage this morning. I didn't know until it was too late. I can't help thinking that it was not the best idea. Granted, we don't want a dead animal in the house all day, but still...

When my brother Kyle was four or five, one of our parakeets - Admiral Bird - died of a chill. When my father came home, he asked Kyle if Admiral was in bird heaven. "No," said Kyle. "He's in the trash can." A very different kind of child.

RIP Ruby, you will be missed.

In which I am amazed

We are not particularly religious. I'm of the "there is one Truth, the wise speak of it in many ways" school of thought and Leroy is more in the atheistic, abandoned Catholicism school. As far as the kids go, we've always given them information and let them do with it what they want. My thought is, spiritual belief is personal and as long as yours doesn't involve harming other people, then no one is allowed to tell you it's wrong.

Consequently, Aidan believes in Evolution and scientific proof, Emma is a little more Eastern, and Eva is a firm Creationist. Cool with me.

Well recently, Aidan and Eva have been clashing over where people came from. They are both Scorpios, so you can imagine the passion each one brings to the table. I just keep reaffirming that everyone gets to believe what is right for them and it is not ok to tell anyone they can't.

Eva has started requesting that we "pray for the food." Ok. No problem. We don't eat with anyone who does this, I don't know where it came from.

The other day she told Aidan, "there is only one True God." That sounds like something straight from the Nicene Creed. She hasn't been in a Catholic Church since Leroy's Dad died over a year ago.

Then this morning, I was combing Eva's hair and Emma was looking at an old National Geographic at a picture of a warrior's death mask and we were talking about how they used to put things like that in tombs and I said, "they put that there so that he could use it in heaven or Valhalla, or whatever afterlife they believed in." And Eva said, "when I die, I will return to my God who made me, and I will be happy because I will see my Grandpa and my Little Grandma again. But you won't be there." I asked her why not and she said because she didn't want me to die.

She's not even 6 yet. But she sounded so... almost like someone else was talking through her. It wasn't like she was saying, this is what I believe, it was just a statement of fact. This is True. But the phrasing - "I will return to my God who made me..." Where did she get that?

I have to admit that I was a tiny bit taken aback. It made me think of that little Catholic saint that always has the roses who said that God started talking to her when she was 6 (I cannot for the life of me remember which one it was). I mean, I could see if she was spending a lot of time with someone who was particularly devout, but she isn't. And then I though of Life of Pi, when he just started adopting religions - but he at least was being influenced by various people he came in contact with.

I'm certainly not going to discourage her, but equally, I don't know how much I should encourage her. Do you know what I mean? Like do I need to take her to Church? My mom says no because if they tell Eva that anything she has to offer God is like unto dirty rags, or that she is sinful, or that the unbaptized go to hell (me) it would crush her. I can see that.

I'm just rather in awe at the profundity of my tiny daughter.

In which a nightmare is had and a blog is begun

Horrible pregnant dream this morning. I rarely have bad dreams in normal life, and if I do, they are are about trying to get away and my legs don't work. I save the really hideous ones for pregnancy. They are never about babies. Instead they are like episodes my own bizzare Twilight Zone. With Eva my teeth feel out every night and I would be left with a handful of teeth and bloody gums while all the men in my family laughed silently and grotesquely. Good stuff.

So this morning I was at a house that in my dream I knew, but it's not one I've been to in real life. All my extended family was there (like Tevia). My Grandma Shaffer was alive. My mother in law was there. My cousins, only they were children again. We had been having a barbeque and everyone was sitting outside eating and listening to my Aunt Patty talking about her trip to Paris. Someone (I think it was Gail) started handing out fish. Betas in Dixie cups swimming in tight circles. Naturally she gave one to each of the kids.

"I don't want any fish," I said. But no one would listen.
"Go get some tupperware containers," my mother told me, "and put them in there."
"But I don't want them." It didn't seem to matter. So off I go to look for tupperware. I searched and searched through all the cupboards and under the sink but I couldn't find anything, and then Patty came in and said it didn't matter anymore because it was time to go to bed.

I was asleep when I woke to pounding on my door and when I answered it, two of my cousins (as children) were on the other side. Could they sleep in my room? There was a noise and they were afraid. I left my room, in one of those long flowy nightgowns - which I've never owned - and went downstairs. As I descended, the Colonel (? yeah, I have no idea) came bursting out of the study with a flashlight and a gun leveled at me. He berated me for leaving my room in a sort of turn of the century-esque fool of a woman kind of way. Didn't I know I couldn't go back there now? Didn't I know we would have to switch rooms because I'd left my warmth there and "he" would find me?

The Colonel told me to go into his room and he went into mine, but in a moment he burst into the hall and called me back into my room.

"Who was in this room?"
"My cousins and I."
"Is that all?"
"Yes."

And then he showed me three bodies lying on the floor. Two were my cousins and one was a young woman I don't know, but in the dream she was a friend of mine. My cousins were dead, but the woman seemed to breath though her eyes were open and dead.

"Oh, she will die," he said. "I've seen this before. He's perforated the ___________ and the bile is oozing into her blood stream. A slow and painful death. Nothing you can do of course."

And although I was horrified, I did nothing. The Colonel said he would keep watch and that I should sleep, and somehow, the way things do in dreams, it seemed natural to sleep in a room of dead people. Then, in the sleep of my sleep, I felt a presence in the room and when I opened my eyes a hand was emerging from where the light bulb should have been on the lamp. In the hand was the electrical cord of the lamp, but where an arm should have been - there was nothing. The cord was coming to strangle me. Absolute terror. I lept from bed and the hand dissapeared, but I grabbed the lamp and took it to the bathroom where the Colonel was watching. I tried to explain, but he didn't understand. He started to say that it was all my fault and pointed at the bodies on the floor. The hand in the lamp grabbed my wrist and forced the cord around and around the Colonel's neck - pulling tighter and tighter, and at some point, I stopped struggling against it until the Colonel fell to his knees.

That's when I woke up. My heart pounding, afraid to let any part of myself leave the safety of the bed, afraid to stay in bed alone. Finally I forced myself up and downstairs where I found Leroy asleep on the couch.

Seriously. What brings on a dream like that?

It's time to get the girls up for school. I've been up since 3:45ish. I'm going to be very tired later.