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"What are you doing?"
A storm blew through Grandma's
farm around five-thirty
after we'd all stayed up
way too late.
My wife and I were sleeping
on the beds in the loft of
the A-frame.
My sister and her husband
had slept in the camper
with the kids.
The weather gets to my wife.
She freaks out, and when
she freaks out
it is ugly. Crying, Shouting
vicious, slashing things,
then more crying and
horrible, biting criticisms.
We paced the upstairs and
laid in bed, waiting for
the weather to go away.
There were
huge booms of thunder
and cracks of lightning,
hard, driving rain on
the metal roof
just above us.
I knew we'd be okay
and tried, quite
unsuccessfully,
to calm my wife.
She just didn't want to be
away from the kids.
"I can't go get them right now,
Baby. Not right now."
She'd already found out via text
that the big one was up with her
cousins, laughing and playing
video games and the little one
was fast asleep. She hadn't
even rolled over through
any of it.
The rain lightened up
and my sister drove the two
seven-year olds, ours and hers,
down to the house.
I took her car back up
for our little one, and my
brother-in-law and their eldest,
if they wanted to come.
I drove over the lawn and
parked just far enough away
to open the door and
leap into the camper.
The rain completely soaked me
in that amount of time, everything
except the center of my legs.
We laughed about it. "It looks like
I reverse peed myself."
Teegan was still asleep
in the back of the camper
sheltered in her little cubby.
As we talked the rain lightened up.
The guys ran down the hill to
the house and I waited for
a while longer. I texted my
wife. "Do you really want me
to wake her up?"
"She's going to be
pissed at me."
"Are you
there?"
She'd left her phone
upstairs on the bed and was
down at the kitchen table
acting mostly normal
around everyone else.
Finally, I got bored, so
I grabbed the kid, her blankets,
pacifiers, stuffed animals,
pillows, all that garbage, and I
carried the whole mess through
the narrow hallway of the camper.
I got her down the steps, to the car
and opened the door, leaned across,
and stuck her on the passenger seat.
She blinked a couple times, clearly
perplexed, and without even looking at me,
asked, "What are you doing?"
I burst out laughing. "I …
good question."
She had no idea about any of it.
To her I had walked into the camper,
snatched her up and stuck her in
a strange car -- not even in her car seat.
We laughed all the way down the hill.
She kept saying,
"I've never rided in the fwont seat."
Her Mom was happy to see her
and gave me a big hug, then
just to give me some grief,
said, "You're all wet!"
Created: 08JUN11