detective for what's not yet missing

As our time dwindles in this home (we move in three weeks), I’ve become a sentimental pre-detective for all the things I’ll miss about it most.

-Spring and summer mornings spent wandering beneath the pergola, gathering the passionfruit that had fallen the previous night. Chucking back into the grass the ones that have already been punctured or chewed by squirrels — or worse, p_ss_m, of which I’m not allowed to speak because of Tyler’s irrational (?) phobia. Our Australian friend Victoria bought Rowan a delightful book called Possum Magic when he was a baby, but Tyler has never opened it and has to walk out of the room if I’m reading it to the kids. Even I can handle the Hungry Caterpillar, or, worse, the Itsy Bitsy Spider Books. I try and tell him that p_ss_ms are placid creatures, not given to attack, but it all falls on the same deaf ears as when someone tries to placate to me with the old “spiders are harmless” stratagem.

Horrifying is harm enough, I say. Tricky. Unknowable. Bugs are miniature, slithering Machiavellian ghouls among us all.

-The hot pink bougainvillea we planted on either side of our gate entrance when I was pregnant with Rowan, which in the years since has curled over to meet the other so that when you walk beneath, you are treated to a neon floral halo, your ocular sphere emphatically bursting with pigment.

…I mean, just look at these artless young things at my baby shower, right after we planted them! Time is outrageous!

-The small flower Tyler’s mom planted right in front of our house when Rowan was three weeks old. Every year, right before his birthday, it begins to bloom with purple flowers. Our new tenants won’t know those are Rowan flowers, that a grandmother, all full of love and sweat bent over and dug into the dirt to bring that perennial to life again, and again, multiple generations of purple trumpets bellowing its beauty. The rest of the year, it looks like a weed and grows so big it slaps you in the face when you walk by, but in spring, it’s abloom with joy, a reminder of the wee Gemini we have all bowed down to in adoration for nearly 5 years now.

-The hummingbirds that hover around our bedroom window, the way the afternoon light envelops our room in warmth, but somehow makes me look truly decrepit in the self-tapes I attempt in the frantic minutes before school pick-up. Doesn’t look good on me, but looks great on walls and duvet covers.

-The vintage 1930s Swedish wallpaper an incredibly gruff woman named Kathy installed in our bathroom. I showed her what I wanted before rushing off to an audition, and she didn’t look at me or tiny baby Rowan once before I left her alone in my house. Already on her ladder, she bid me goodbye from her perch, staring intently at the wall. I vaguely waved Rowan in her direction, waiting for the inevitable “What a CUTE BABY” that never came. Two hours later, when I returned, she was gone, and in her stead, the walls were abloom in illustrated flowers. She left me a note: “You may notice I repeated a small section of the wallpaper at the end of the bathroom wall so that I didn’t have to use the second roll. You work DAMN HARD for your money, and I’m not about to waste it.” I laughed, such a strange and funny display of respect from a person who refused to look at me or mutter more than a few words when inside my home.

That evening brought an email from her: “Oh and by the way - came home- flipped on the tv which I'm not kidding you, was tuned to Islands Without Cars. And who should be hosting? Hmmmmm. Paper looks great- good choices!”

I think about her often, because the memory of her is so humorously entangled with my walls. She has apparently refused to get vaccinated or wear a mask inside, and as such is now wallpaper installa persona non grata in my online mom group (along with the hot, hot kids’ swim instructor who was so beloved pre-pandemic). I’ll probably hire her to come make the walls of my new house beautiful, anyway. It’s not as though she’ll be exhaling many words. That’s how science works, right?

The other night, in bed, in the dark, after another long, dark day of news from Ukraine, Rowan whispered:

“Mommy? Who is watching over the earth?”

My breath caught in my chest. And so it begins: the Colossal Unanswerables.

I immediately found myself becoming careful (not my natural state around my kids), toeing my way around.

“I’m not sure. No one quite knows, and everyone believes differently. Who do you think is watching over the earth?” I asked him.

“I think there was a huge battle where knights and fairies fought the Bad Guys, and the knights and fairies won and they watched over the earth for ages and ages and ages, but then they all DIED, and now no one is watching over it.”

Reader, I might…agree with this theory??????

My mouth was left agape in the dark, luckily he couldn’t see it. “I think some Good Knights are still looking out for everybody…” I began, but he interrupted me.

“Mommy, today I asked Mega Manoa (his science teacher, a very silly and engaging man whom the kids all ADORE and who makes funny videos they watch during breakfast sometimes, cracking up over their cereal) a question. I said “Mega Manoa, what is in DEEP, DEEP SPACE????” and he said CHICKEN NUGGET and I asked again, I said, “I really want to know what’s in DEEP SPACE!!!!!” — and he began to burst into tears here — “AND HE SAID CHICKEN NUGGET AGAIN. AND I JUST REALLY WANT TO KNOW WHAT’S IN DEEP, DEEP SPACE!!!!!” he cried.

I held him, his hot tears coming out of absolutely nowhere (deep space, I guess?????), and promised him we would investigate deep space together in the morning, at a more reasonable, non-7:58pm time.

I closed his door quietly and padded down our vaguely sloping living room floor and exhaled onto our couch, looked around at the packed boxes. We all just really want to know what’s going to happen next, and whether the Good Guys are going to be there.

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