I sighed inwardly and shifted Dragon Girl onto my
hip. “Okay, should we put him outside?”
“Yesss.”
Thence followed a one-handed search for an appropriate buglift.
We concluded that a paper Dixie cup would do the trick. “I wan’ take him out
my-SEF,” He’en insisted.
“Okay, but stay on the porch, please.” We are enjoying a
mild day after the recent snowstorms, so I released He’en and her Dixie cup
onto the front porch. She sat there for
a while, turning the cup this-way and that-way, examining its inhabitant. I
settled down to feed Dragon Girl, which was just foolish, because Helen
immediately reappeared inside, still cradling both cup and cargo.
“Please can I yook at him on da utha pawch [other porch]?”
Sure, why not. So I relocated both He’en and stinkbug* to
the sunny south porch. She sat out there for quite a while, lifting and turning
her hands in the mellow afternoon light while the stinkbug climbed up and down
her aqua sweatshirt with the sparkly butterfly on the front. (Being no idiot, the stinkbug had, by this
time, abandoned his Dixie cup for warmer climes.)
I watched through the window, wondering if stinkbugs
really do stink. I figured we would find out pretty soon. Helen’s outdoor mania
regularly requires me to research things that hop and crawl; I knew the bug wouldn’t
bite or sting. I frankly was more
worried about the bug than my child. Helen’s ROR with insects has, in the past,
resulted in more than one mortally crippled fellow-traveler and subsequent mercy killing. But she was very gentle with this one.
After a time, she re-entered the house with the stinkbug perched
on her wrist like a microscopic falcon.
“He’s pwiddy,” she announced.
The stinkbug twitched an antennae in cheerful agreement.
Surprised, I agreed as well. “Yes, he is pretty. What is
your favorite part of him?”
She raised her wrist to her nose, went a little cross-eyed,
and decided, “Da gode [gold] on his back.”
I took a closer look myself. Indeed, he had a beautiful
pattern on his back. “I like his little stripes. Helen, it will be a great gift
to you, your whole life, if you can see something pretty where other people can
only see an icky old bug.”
She huffed a short laugh, a disconcertingly adult sound
from a four-year-old.
“I can see da pwiddy,” she assured me with total
confidence.
May it always be so.
