Catch Your Stories While You Can

It was a light and carefree afternoon — for the gnats. They circled my toddler’s head, drawn by the scent of strawberries and nap sweat. A few weeks ago, her face had turned to sandpaper in reaction to an ill-chosen sunscreen, so you can understand my hesitation with the bug spray. I held the bottle in my hand and lost myself in a mental flow chart of events and possibilities.

The six-year-old, meanwhile, referring to herself as “the little ripper,” cannonballed into the deep end of the inflatable pool in blatant disregard of the warnings printed on the plastic: “NO DIVING!” When I say “the deep end,” I’m referring to the area where the water had pooled up to three inches — possibly even four — because of our yard’s slope. “The little ripper does it again,” she hollered, effectively hurling herself onto the ground.

Still, it was a moment of triumph. The little ripper had woken us up at 5:58 a.m., impatient to inflate the pool. After crawling through the morning logistics of dog, breakfast and grooming, my husband and I had spent nearly an hour each sitting in asphalt heat near the butt of our car, creating a manual seal over an ill-fitting pump nozzle, getting the thing to a mushy half-ass version of itself before he gave up and took the girls to Home Depot for an adapter. “What kind of drill do you have,” he called to ask, though he was unable to hear my answer…