Wisdom, they call it, at the root of that reptilian-twitch,<\/p>\n
I put the mundane down, look over my shoulder and slowly follow my body out the door.<\/p>\n
His words are muffled by the back of his bent curious head:<\/p>\n
\u201cMama, I found something!\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course he did. And I immediately know it\u2019s that something that righted my spine like an antenna.<\/p>\n
I tread quickly across the grass and very intentionally throw a thick blanket on my inclined-haste as I pull him closer to my body. To inspect the under-belly of stone we step over daily.<\/p>\n
And there she is. Upside down and in full display of that most-notorious mark.<\/p>\n
\u201cLove, this is a very dangerous spider,\u201d I assess.<\/p>\n
He bends in closer and asks, \u201cIt is?\u201d<\/p>\n
I pull him back, \u201cIt is.\u201d<\/p>\n
After I explain indepth, I ask him to summarize his understanding.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo if this spider bites me, I have to go to the hos-bi-tal. And get lots of band-aids. Dora band-aids.\u201d<\/p>\n
I hesitate. And then concede.<\/p>\n
I send a picture of the red hourglass to my husband and father-in-law.<\/p>\n
They confirm the diagnosis with the echoing commands to kill it.<\/p>\n
Everything in me curls inward. Killing is not my thing and I cling to my standby, transparency:<\/p>\n
\u201cYour papa says I have to kill it. But I don\u2019t want to.\u201d<\/p>\n
An invisible hand clutches my heart as my 2-year literally shuffles a step forward and says, \u201cMama. Don\u2019t worry. You don\u2019t have to kill it. I will kill it for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adoration aside, I get lost in mysterious feelings of gender-challenge, and thus go looking for an appropriate tool.<\/p>\n
A snow-shovel seems to provide me the level of distance from the task that I seek.<\/p>\n
I apologize outloud. And the deed is quickly done.<\/p>\n
But I couldn\u2019t hang my new heaviness up in the garage with the snow shovel.<\/p>\n
And not a day later, I found my toddler thumbing the life out of ants.<\/p>\n
My talk of momma-ants and pappa-ants and their haunted, empty, lives in the absence of their thumbed-out son and daughter-ants,<\/p>\n
did nothing.<\/p>\n
The trip to the science center where a Theraphosidae took huge, hairy, deliberate eight-legged steps up his tiny arm,<\/p>\n
did nothing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a NICE spider Mamma!\u201d<\/p>\n
I praised this declaration with all heights of sing-song recognition.<\/p>\n
But the daddy-long still lost all his legs in the single unsupervised leg of travel between the bedroom and patio.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan I put fire on the bumble bee?\u201d<\/p>\n
My heart stubbs out like a cigarette.<\/p>\n
And just when I have convinced my tortured soul that this might simply all be the natural course of 2-year old boy\u2019s experimentation with life and death, he will say something like:<\/p>\n
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