The girls and I walk home. We play red light green light. I am sick, I am tired. I am getting sick. But that's not the end of the world. They make medicine for that. Once at the bottom of our hill, the hill down Reeds which ends maybe 150 ft from our front door.
“Red Light!” I shout. They stop in
their tracks
“I'm going to say green light one
more time. Whoever gets to the door first wins the race and gets some
candy. Green light!”
They are excited. They run past me
quickly. I audibly observe how fast they are. Gleeful giggles, over
the shoulder glances. Up the steps now, half a flight to get to our
floor. Maya loses a golden shoe and begins to despair.
(Her whiney voice has been catered to
for a year. Give her anything she wants just to make the loudness
stop. Just so he doesn't have to hear that whine right now. God. So loud,
so whiney. Can't take it.)
I encourage Maya to keep going, “we'll
get it later!” I say, Emery catches up to Maya as Maya hesitates to react about her shoe-dropping. Without missing more than half a step, though, Maya kicks off her other shoe, laughing in surprise at the events.
Maya is about six feet in front of Emery when she touches the door
and is so excited, so proud of herself. Emery dramatically throws her
tiny body onto the floor. On her belly. Sincere, sad sobs crescendo
out of her mouth and onto her face. “I wanted to win, I wanted the
candy.”
“Get up," I say! "Get up, the race isn't
over yet! It's alright Emery!” I help her up and we take two more
steps to get to the door. She wins! I touch the door just a hair of a second after she does. “Guess what,” I say. “Guess what, the first
place and the second place winners BOTH get candy!!”
I make a huge deal about presenting the
candy (they actually requested popsicles instead). I get the stool out
for Maya to stand on. They have these construction paper heart
flowers, one with a glitter “E” the other with a glitter “M.”
I have them wait by the dining room table while I get the scene set
up. I try to make my mouth sing a celebratory, respectful,
patriotic song but the only thing I can come up with is a mouth horn sound singing some dark, villainous theme. Ah, well.
They don't know much of a difference.
They are invited to stand on the prize
podiums. Emery's “E” is on her spot on the floor, Maya's “M”
is on the stool, the highest spot for the first-place winner.
I make an announcement speech dedicated
to each one of them. Emery's speech highlights how she never stopped
trying, never gave up (even though she did). Really she got the better, longer speech. Maya's speech just says that
she was the best, first-place runner. But her pedestal is a little higher so that
probably gets the point across sufficiently. Cancer: you know how
you're scared to dig underneath layers and layers of wet, soggy
leaves? Well, that's kind of like cancer. Like, you can never know what you're going to find underneath all that excess. I'm so
tired. I can't even lift up my head. I'm getting sick, fast. I'm so
tired.
