I have a boxing injury. It is actually called a boxer's sprain. I suppose I shouldn’t have been fighting with S. N. again.
My hand, mildly pink and swollen on one end, looked all the pinker when held up against the sunset sky. The cicadas were singing their autumn song as loudly as they could from the pine trees. It always seems a bit mournful this time of year, as though they know they should really let it all out, before the long silence sets in. The children seemed to share that sentiment.
“There are fleas on me!” The boy shouted with way too much enthusiasm for someone being nibbled by tiny mouths. He sat in the grass, where he had sprinkled little black grass seeds across his legs.
“That’s nice, son. They suit you.” I rested my head against the driveway and let the warmth still lingering from a sunny day get soaked up by my body.
Something must be done about S. N. We can’t keep fighting like this. I could try to be accommodating, but…
Venus was shining brilliantly just above the pine trees, really giving meaning to that line like a diamond in the sky. Dragonflies whizzed by, a foot above my head, as I took in a long, slow breath.
There is a solution to this. There is always a solution to conflict. There must be a peaceful one. But…
“I’m going to put a flea on you!” The boy charged toward his sister, apparently not having received the reaction he was hoping for earlier. The girl had been peacefully poking at a piece of broccoli so thickly covered in cheese that it did not have the option of rolling off her plate. It just swiveled a little, totally trapped in all that white goo. The broccoli was in luck—she dropped her fork and let out one of her ear piercing screams that is reserved especially for sibling conflict.
“Eat your dinner,” I grumbled, accidentally making a terrible clatter with my foot against my own empty dish on the driveway. I focused back in on beautiful Venus.
There is a peaceful, easy solution. There must be a way that S. N. and I can co-exist without all the angst. There has to be. I can’t keep doing this.
I thought about the hot afternoon. The sweat trickling down my chest and settling in a puddle at the middle of my shirt. The grappling. At least we were fairly matched at an equal five feet two inches.
A new scream jarred my mind out of the peaceful evening and bolt upright on the driveway. It was one of the screams reserved for things unrelated to her brother.
“There was a spider on my plate!” The girl stared downward, wide-eyed, to her plate set on the grass where the beast had apparently left its creepy spider mojo, because there was no other sign of him. The boy scurried over like a chicken excited about an easy snack.
“Where did it go!”
I suppose it has to be some sort of compromise. I leaned back into the warmth of the driveway. No. I refuse. I don’t have to live my life this way—eradication from my life is the only way. Hand injuries or worse, it must be done.
“I think it was a brown recluse,” the boy said, standing over me, and looking like a giant for a change.
“It wasn’t a brown recluse.”
“You didn’t even see it. I think it was.”
“Brown recluses are reclusive. It was a wolf spider.”
The boy shrugged, unwilling to concede. Clearly I have a lot of that in my life. And that’s fine—I am equally stubborn.
The boy started chasing his sister with some new imagined torment, and it was clear supper under the sky was done. I began collecting the dishes, and looked down at my shirt.
The bottom half of my shirt looked like it had sequins sewed tightly together in some gaudy design, but instead of sequins there were about a hundred tiny little brown needle-like seeds hitchhiking their way to new territory.
Damn those Spanish needles! Roots that grow off every stem and cling to the earth like a thousand tiny arms, on stems that break off casually when under great duress only to leave behind the primary root structure so that it can regenerate in a matter of days and stretch to the sky, smothering every other plant inside the garden—that’s bad enough. But to spread its seed by way of its opponent? That’s fighting dirty.
“Mom, are you done getting the garden ready yet?” The boy said as he passed by his baby plants, which he had carefully sprouted himself, set peacefully on the porch.
“No,” I said darkly. “Not yet.”