Fuchsia jellyfish undulate through the waveless tank water. The water sucks the darkness in from the corner of the room, spotlighting its glowing, ethereal inhabitants all the more. The jellyfish turn orange, their stunted tentacles tickling gaily.

Cadence presses her hand against the aquarium glass, reaching for them. In the dark, the glass barrier is invisible.  Her hand is suspended with the jellyfish. The light over the tank changes again. The jellyfish turn blue. Cadence drops her hand to her side, the glass far from stopping her imagination. Her head is tilted back, a cascade of bobbed, blond hair brushing the back of her striped cardigan. Her mouth is open, her eyes are lit, watching the color-shifting jellyfish float in soft circles.

Hana leans from my hip, a curious hand stretched out. A surge of children push towards the glass. Hana’s hand recoils, her body folding closer to mine. She chirps a question in my ear. I nod pretending to understand.

“Jellyfish,” I tell her.

We leave the jellyfish exhibit reluctantly, hopping from one exhibit to the next. At first I keep a casual eye out for the others we met here, but soon we are parted, taking in the different fish at individual paces. We linger by the sting ray pool. When we leave it, mine are the only wet fingers.

The sharks, penguins, and Anaconda hold particular fascination for Cadence. Hana ventures a few times from my hip to the viewing platforms, pointing at different fish with her usual awe for life. Her brunette, half, side pony is motionless with the jerks of her head. I’m still eager for the day that the hair near her face reaches her chin. Until then, short ponies and copious sprays of hair products are my only way to keep her hair looking girly.

We pass by the sting ray pool a last time before leaving.

“Wait, Mom. Wait! I want to touch the sting ray.”

I look at her doubtfully, remembering her earlier eagerness and then hesitance. I lead her to an empty side of the pool. She pulls her sleeves over her elbows following the flapping motions of the distant sting rays. Hana leans forward her hand stretched towards the water. I let her dip her hand in. She looks at her wet hand as if that is all the excitement she needs.

Two sting rays come toward our side, one gliding over the other.

“Here it comes, Cadence. Get ready.”

The sting ray skims the side of the pool, its wing tasting the air a few feet away. Too bad. I was hoping he’d do that closer to us. I get ready to watch him pass by us, too deep for Cadence to reach. I get ready to wrench a disappointed four-year old back to the car. He floats away from the wall, and like a feather, floats back.

His wing curls over the side of the pool in front of us as he skims by.

“Hurry, Cadence, touch him!”

We reach our fingers out, his slimy skin sliding through ours, and then he’s gone. Back to the bottom of the pool.

My hands feel the stinging salt residue. The smell reminds me of Hawaiian beaches. I look down at Cadence. Her face is happy, her expression incredulous. Like a little sting ray of joy.

The morning air is chilly, puckering the skin below the sleeves of my oversize tee shirt.  Stripes of fresh snow run up the driveway.  The lawn, so recently thawed, is hidden beneath a new paralyzing layer of wedding white.  The sigh passes through my lips, involuntary as sneezing.  Winter is tireless, and I tire easy.  A person can only take so much of darkness and cold…

…movement in the snow.

A small spider makes its way towards the street, its black legs standing out against the snow in stark opposition.  I wonder if he’ll survive winter’s last stand.  If he’ll make it another month until true Spring.  I skip over him, running to the garbage and tossing a dirty diaper at its gaping mouth.

When I return the spider has made little progress.  I’ve seen many people wander into the snow.  Like him, they are tempted from their shells by a false Spring, only to find themselves lost and cold.  Helpless to stop it, I watch them go.

I always hope they’ll come back changed as little as possible, but the journey always changes us. Will this error make the spider stronger, tolerant and able in the cold?  Or leave him weak and stumbling in the Spring?

My shoe sinks into the snow where there used to be a spider.  I lift my shoe, examining my footprint.  There is a brown dot on the inside edge of my arch.  I brush the bottom of my shoe on the snow, leaving a streak of brown behind.  I sprint up the steps and into my warm house, rubbing the goosebumps from my arms.

It was just a spider.

My ears are filled with sounds: the kitchen faucet pouring hot water on my rag, Lady Gaga crooning Paparrazi over my stereo, Hana uttering baby gibberish and playful squeals, and angelic strains coinciding with the music.  I follow the last  sound, watching Cadence’s mouth synchronize with Lady Gaga.  She catches me peeking at her, breaks into a sheepish smile, and turns away.

Hana picks up Cadence’s disgarded toys: a half chewed barbie (from when dogs still terrorized the house), and a new Ariel bath toy.  She swings them in the air.  Her bed head mohawk sways in the toy engineered air.  She talks to the Ariel doll, smoothing its hair away from its face.  Her big sister’s trash has proved to be her treasure.

“Hey!”  Cadence has noticed the special attention paid to her toys.  She wrenches them from Hana’s hands.  Hana falls backward, crying, screaming.  I diffuse the situation, each child cradling one doll.  They stare at me and each other with matching expressions, lowered brows, and pouting lips.

So much for angelic.

The table begins to shine under my rag.  I work around the center piece: a glass vase filled with red hybrid roses.  Out in the distance something is missing.  The mountains lurk, half finished, half painted.  The stripe of cloud/smog erasing their base from the painting.  It would be pretty otherwise.

I touch one of the rose petals, recalling to mind Cadence’s warning the afternoon Jake and the girls gave them to me.  You can’t touch them, she’d said, or they’ll die.  Funny to hear her say it.  I’d taught either her or Jake (or both) about how the oils on our fingers will kill the petals, leftover knowledge from high school Horticulture.  I drop my fingers.  It’s hard to resist touching beautiful things.

The small features on Hana’s face smooth as I rock her.  Her eyes drift open and shut with the undulations.  There’s something unspeakable and sacred connected with these calm moments.  They are so rare anymore.  Her arms burrow between her body and mine.  Her knees fold under her round little belly.  She shifts her head from one side of my neck to the other, taking brief seconds to glance over my face before she rests her own against my shoulder.  My kisses patter across her forehead before I push us from the chair on the last rock forward.

She pulls away from my shoulder, puffy eyes curious about where we’ll go.  I lean over her bed.  She leans too, towards the bed.  I roll my arm over her belly and lower her in.  Her hand clamps over the cloth leg of her baby Belle doll, dragging it under her as she lands.  She releases the leg, posing her hands primly under her face, using the doll as her pillow.

Her eyes stare past the mesh border of her bed, pensive.  I tuck a Sesame Street quilt around her bundled shape, wondering what a baby has to mull over.  The quality of apple sauce?  The number of nightlights lining the walls?  What mischief she can unfurl tomorrow?

At the door, I blow a kiss at the back of her head.  There’s a smile in my thoughts.  Mommy needed this.  It’s not hard for me to cherish an easy night.

Light bounces from an endless layer of impeccable snow.  Fresh shoots of spring are hidden beneath it.  Our new trees line the fence, scrawny and barren.  I miss the green patches, the newborn blades of crocuses, daffodils, and tulips.  The first snow of winter brings a calm after a hot and chirpy summer, but this snow is different, lonely.

Hana screams from the living room, the scream that says, “I’m hurt.”  It’s loud, but not a desperate cry, just one that begs for attention.  It nears, her feet tapping down the hallway with a bowlegged, penguin gait.  I wait for her to come to me.  Her eyelids are narrowed in rounded hills of baby agony, her nose flattening into her anguished wrinkles, and her mouth pulling into a wide gaping frown.  I launch her into my arms.   Her cries taper into sniffs, her pain forgotten in Mommy’s arms.

A telltale aroma reaches my less than sensitive nose.  I lay her onto the changing table, taking care of business as usual.   Cadence yells from the electric piano, a clatter of plastic accentuating her distaste.

“I hate when headphones don’t work!”  The clatter of plastic is presumably the headphones slamming into the music holder.

I wiggle Hana’s chubby legs back into her jeans and send her back on her way.  Snowflakes fall in persistent patterns.  I debate postponing my already postponed grocery trip, but I just used Hana’s last diaper.  I guess when it rains, it pours.  Or in this case, it snows.

Hana swings the door shut, looks around, and opens it again.  She smiles at me before crawling through.  Her eye, so swollen and pink yesterday, is perfect today.  Naked apart from a diaper, she crawls back into my room, swinging the door open and shut.

Downstairs the music to Cadence’s movie is blaring.  Hana coughs.  I look over my shoulder to make sure she isn’t choking.  She looks at me smiling, mouth empty.

“Are you okay?” I ask, though it’s clear that she is, and though she can’t answer back.

“Yeah,” says a small voice from the hallway.  “Mommy, I pooped.”

I scoot away from the card table I’ve been using as a desk and pry my butt from the folding chair I’ve been using as a desk chair.  The vinyl upholstery probably has permanent dents where I sit, but they’re hidden beneath a green comforter that serves as extra padding.

My brows sink, my mouth is set in a stern Mommy-means-business grimace.  Cadence waits on the other side of the baby gate, her hair in her eyes.  A blue renaissance, princess dress puckers at her waist, where the seam is unravelling.

“What?”

“Mommy, I pooped,” she repeats quietly.  She backs away from the gate with a guilty smile.  I coax her back, before hurdling the gate and dragging her back with me.  Potty training would a thing of the past if my head wasn’t always in the clouds, or wherever it is.

I fasten a diaper on her.  No more panties today.  And urge her to use the potty now, everytime, and forever.  She agrees.  We’ll see how long that lasts.

Hana waits in the hallway, wailing.  Her eyes scrunch up, her mouth parted and spread in a wide half circle.  Her eyes swell with the tears, making today’s recovery undetectable.  I scoop her to my shoulder.  She clings.  Babbles replace her cries, and she kicks of my stomach to play with her older sister.

My chair is angled towards me.  The comforter warm and inviting.  I sit back down, staring at the blinking cursor and a nearly completed page.

Blue lights twinkle between plastic blue and silver baubles.  Filmy ribbon snakes through the fake spruce branches.  The rythmic blinking is hard to look away from, inducing a tranquil hypnosis that for me means Christmas.  This is no time for admiring, though.  There is too much to nitpick, from the blue that is shades too dark blending into tree, to the poor lighting obscuring the excruciating detail (exscrutiating because it took the entire day to complete).  Trees shouldn’t take this long.

The lighting can be fixed.  The chair screeches across the lineoleum under the kitchen light fixture.  I step onto it, a very naked Cadence calling after me.

“Mommy, what are you doing?”

“I’m fixing the light.”

“But why?”  She’s all about the explanations these days.

“Because it’s broken.”

“Why?”

“Because they get old and they stop working.”

“Oh.”

She doesn’t understand, the confusion just adding to her curiosity.  Her short blond hair cascades over her shoulder blades, her neck curving at an uncomfortable angle to watch my hands twist various pieces.

On my tiptoes, I tackle the circular glass fixture.  I twist the last doohicky cradling the fixture in my left palm.  My balance is not good, wobbling.  My teeth clamp onto my lip with the effort.  I picture the fall, the glass spilling out of my hands, my legs flailing from the chair, trying to land upright, Cadence picking through broken glass.

This was a bad idea.  Keep it together.  I hold my breath until the fixture is on the table.  I replace the old bulbs, and decide I’ll leave the fixture replacement to someone a little taller.  Jake.

Light drenches the kitchen, flooding into the living room.  How have we lived this long without it?  The tree improves very little with the extra light.  I holler for Jake as I dig through the coat closet for an old lamp.  It’s extra light also fails to improve the tree.

Jake emerges from his basement cave.  He steps onto the chair and attaches the fixture with reaching room to spare.  We gather by the tree.

“It looks pretty good.”

“Really?”

My eyes get lost in the blinking lights, awed by the compliment.  It means something coming from Jake, who never compliments lightly.  It’s good enough for this year, I conclude.  I begin a list of possibilities for next year: purple ornaments and a pastel purple ribbon with the blue (although, that might be pushing the limit for Jake), baby blue ornaments, or the more traditional red and gold.

Cadence pounds on the piano keyboard, pretending to play a song from My Christmas book.  I love Christmas.

I tuck the toy skeleton under my arm, where it should be less noticeable. Cadence dug it out of my purse during the service. It had been buried there since Halloween. Hana soon made it her drop toy. She’d handle it, suck on it, drop it, lean over and watch it until someone returned it to her, and repeat the process. My uneasiness lights the skeleton up with blazing search lights, pointing out to everyone gathered around just how inappropriate it is here, at the cemetery. But of course, they don’t notice it, they’re too busy mourning.

In the center of our circle is a pine box casket, draped with the American flag. Inside that box is the wasted body of a man I barely knew. His cheeks have hollowed, the last year robbing them of their characteristic fullness. Surrounding the box are people I don’t know. Some that share my same dark eyes, some that have similar high cheekbones.

I arrived at the funeral home before the casket was closed. Tears were shed, hugs were shared as I looked on with little emotion. The grieving widow said a last good bye with a kiss on the dead man’s lips.

It’s hard to mourn for someone you didn’t know.

During the service the pianist raced through a slow and touching song with a cheerful disregard for timing. The audience floundered over the verses, the song mutilated into an indecipherable mess. I’d struggled not to laugh. My younger brother’s censuring glances helped, but smiles flickered across my face, nonetheless.

Family described my grandfather as a hardworking, loving man. Few hinted at his volatile temper and mistreatment of certain family members.

I wonder if he ever thought about the darker things he did, if he saw any fault in his actions. At first I’m uncertain, like the first few minutes of applause when only a few people clap. There’s a moment of build up, and then the audience applauds as a riotous whole. Just like that, I’m convinced. There’s nothing he regretted more. Like any of us, he regretted his worst mistakes.

Eulogists mentioned stories of his childhood: the medicine man, life on the reservation. I’d never heard these stories. Further down my pew, my dry-eyed dad and uncle listened with a mixture of curiosity and apathy. They’d missed out on their father’s tales too.

In the cemetery, I clasp my hand over my heart as the flag is folded to Amazing Grace. A trumpet plays the solemn melody of Taps, and seven senior citizens fire their guns, one aiming prematurely. The skeleton is pinned under my arm, a symbol of what lies beneath each headstone, a symbol of what we have to look forward to, and a symbol of what we must remember…

Mistakes are best remedied when the heart is still beating.

I check the time on the microwave and survey the damage.  It looks like a parrot was killed in here.  Multicolored feathers are scattered with strings of glue, play dough, and foam stickers clinging to their down.   The mess has stayed in the kitchen at least.

A glance out the window tells me the last mom still has not come.   In her room, Cadence and her little friend are picking through the toys abandoned by the other children as they left.  The porcelain Aurora, Belle, and Cinderella dolls were a big hit, along with the princess dress up shoes. Now the dolls’ synthetic hairstyles, halo from their heads in matted poofs.  Their fragile limbs are intact, a miracle.

Hana bounces again on my hip.  An Autumn cold chases muscous down her lip.  I tack get a tissue on the end of my mental list.  She arches her back over my arm, viewing the bobbing hallway upside down.  I have a perfect view of the roof of her mouth and her vampire teeth.  I nudge her up, closer to me as we pass through my bedroom doorway.  It’s time the dogs were freed.

Roxy shoves her nose into my leg as I open the master bathroom door.  Her tail wags with puppy-ish impatience.  I push against her, forcing her back until I can pull Jules’ pet taxi off the toilet seat.

The two bathrooms share a wall.  The girls have moved into the other, their voices reaching me through it.  Hana squirms in my grip, her coos sounding turning into cries.  Nap time.  Roxy takes advantage of my distraction, darting around me and disappearing, her tags clinking down the hallway.  She’s waiting for me by the back door.

Cadence’s little friend has followed.  Her soft voice tells me to put the dog outside.  Roxy is excited by the smell of someone new.  As Roxy nears the little girl, tail wagging and tongue hanging out, she shrieks.  An expression of panic is on her face, and tears are forming.  The shriek lasts for three long seconds, the girl rooted to her spot and Roxy cowering closer to me.

It’s hard to tell who is more frightened now: Cadence’s little friend or Roxy.   I am amazed a sound so loud came from this girl: the girl who talked in front of me for the first time today, her voice never above a whisper.  I remedy the situation.  The girl recovers in time to smile for her mom, the last mom.

My house is still at last.

The phone peals in the family room.  Jake’s favorite show, Cadence’s phone conversation in the garage, Roxy’s barking are all gone, ignored without effort.  My stomach is fluttering/churning with anticipation, worry, and sorrow.  All I see are the phone, Jake’s concerned eyes, and Dad’s name lighting up the caller id screen.

The call I’ve been waiting for.

“It’s my dad.”  I snatch the phone and retreat upstairs.  My thumb finds the send button.

“Hi, Dad.”

“Hi. Sarah?  This is your dad.”  It’s his usual intro, despite the facts that I know his voice and that caller id is a universal phone feature.  “Do you still want to talk to Grandma?  I’m with her right now.”

“Yes, Dad.  I’d really appreciate that.”  The fluttering/churning heightens.

“Okay, I’ll just put the phone to her ear.  You know what?  I think she knows we’re talking about her.  She just moved her hand.  Are you ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

I wait until the silence on the phone is tainted by rythmic puffs in the background.  I take a quick breath and smile, hoping she will hear the smile on my face.

“Hi Grandma.  It’s Sarah.  I just want you to know how much we love you.  We miss you so much.  I really wish I could see you right now.”  My voice cracks.  Tears are trying to push through the ducts.  I have to pause.

“I really wanted you to see Hana.  She is doing great.  She’s eight months old now.  She has six teeth, but not the two front ones, so she looks pretty goofy.  She’s crawling too.

“Cadence has curly–” my mind is too distracted to get details right, “not curly.  It’s blond, and it’s getting long.  It’s just below her shoulders now.  She just turned three and got a big-girl bike.  We’ve been having lots of fun.”  A thick tear rolls down my nose.

I want to tell Grandma that Cadence still has the beanie babies that she so painstakingly collected, and the Wizard of Oz Tin Man doll in its original packaging that still bares the oily makeup smear from her cheek.  That we’ll always have them, and always remember her.  But it doesn’t feel like the right thing to say.

What do you say to someone you know is going to die?

“I love you so much, Grandma.”  A good bye without having to say it.

I listen to the soft puffs.  There’s nothing else I can think to add.  Dad is talking to someone in the room, probably my aunt.  I can’t make out the words.

Another puff.

Then, “Sarah, are you done?”

“Yeah, I am.”

“Good, I wasn’t sure.”  He tells me that she’d done something with her arm when I started talking.  It’s the most responsive she’s been today.  “You know she always said she looked just like you when she was a little girl.”

My voice is thick.  “Yeah, I remember.  Thanks for letting me do that, Dad.  I really appreciate it.”

We exchange farewells, and I lower the phone.  Downstairs, Jake is waiting.  I curl into his arms and cry like I haven’t cried for a long time.  Inside me is a glass that needs to be emptied, and it’s leaking from my eyes.  The stirring in my stomach is gone, and with it my anxiety.

Later I will bundle up the girls for a trip to the store.  The only jacket in Hana’s closet that allow the seat belt harness to fasten over her will be a cute,  pink pullover that Grandma gave to Cadence for her first Christmas.  A peace will settle over me.

She knows. That’s all I could ask.