Thursday

The bucket of ladybugs is sitting on Ford’s lofted bed in the cool north exposure, the hundreds of ladybugs awake now in the advancing daylight and ravenously crawling over each other in the mysterious nutrient-shavings the were packaged with. I lay on Ford’s bed looking out the window now into the sunny patio as the boys flip pages in picturebooks atop the bed beside me in the quiet spot of our schedule just after lunch. At the top of a middle pane of glass, just under the white wooden frame, a bright red ladybud scales the perimeter and it is surely looking for that colony of aphids in that cluster of chives on the other side of the house. Or just a way to get outside, I reason. I roll my head back towards the bucket of ladybugs on the bed. Crawling as they ever were, teeming with purpose. A few unfortunate bugs are carelessly macerated between the clear lid and the bucket. Ford.

I pick up Island of the Blue Dolphins and leaf to the first page of the first chapter and begin to read. Words cascade off the page while I stand on a remote island in the Pacific northwest somewhere on a typically windy day, and I look out onto the glassy sea to find a ship with two red sails. But I know what a ship is. And I wonder what I would imagine this thing to be if I had never seen a ship before, and as I wonder out loud I ask the same question of Ford, who has begun to watch Seti ram his wet nose into the glass window at the foot of the bed in a senseless pursuit of a housefly. Chas is no longer listening either, and he has cracked a smile at the dog, along with his brother, as Seti continues to buffett the windowpane with ears all a tonic and the tenacity of an inbred terrier. I lay the book on my chest and the boys reel in delight as Seti smacks his lips and eats the stupid fly.