Last week, the little angel started crying at bedtime. Howling, actually. Because she was the only kid in her summer camp class that failed the swimming test.

Swimming has been a challenge for her.

My heart broke, again, as it does every time. I'm not a great swimmer myself, and I know that feeling of being the one who can't seem to get it in the pool. I manage to get across the pool and back, but part of my paranoia about her in the water stems from my marked inability to save anyone from drowning, almost not even myself.

The next morning, I talked to the swim instructor at camp. I asked what we could work on with her. She started to tell me, and I started to seize up, because I knew I would be useless at teaching my daughter what to do -- I hardly know how to do it myself. I think the instructor thought I was trying to convince her to let the little angel go with her friends even if she wasn't ready, but I wasn't. I was asking for help.

She offered to give the little angel one emergency lesson before she goes out of town on vacation for three weeks and before the little angel's two-week intensive swim lessons start in mid-July. I thanked her, moved some stuff in my schedule around, and girded my loins for the water. The lesson is in a few hours.

This morning, the little angel tried to talk her way out of the lesson. She said she didn't care if she was the only kid with the babies in the shallow end. She said she hated swimming lessons. But I know she was upset this weekend when I made her wear her life jacket in the deep end when none of her friends had to. And she commented at least eight times how happy she was that everyone was wearing their life jackets when our neighbors took us out for a surprise boat ride last night.

"It's done," I told her as we got in the car this morning. "You have to. There are a few things in our family that are nonnegotiable, and wearing your seatbelt and learning to swim are two of them."

After I dropped her off, I started thinking of other things that are nonnegotiable in my brand of parenting: reading/writing/arithmetic, learning to drive, learning about credit, basic first aid. Then there's a deep gray chasm filled with things I want her to master: how to cook, how to sew on buttons, how to iron and do laundry, how to break down sales pitches, how to blog -- but these things don't fall into the life-and-death arena for me.

Swimming does.

She'll hate it, I'll hate it -- but this? This could be the year. She is so close. She can dive for rings and dog paddle -- she just can't do the crawl across the pool yet.

Hoping for salvation this summer.

She stood on her tiptoes to put the Father's Day cards in the mailbox, her pigtails so long they hung halfway down her back, blowing occasionally in the hot summer wind already sweltering at eight in the morning. From the back, she could've been my seven-year-old sister back in 1984.

 

Most of my childhood memories are of summer -- on my grandparents' porch or under the weeping willow, visiting Gran in the hairdryer heat of Arizona or running around my own yard barefoot. Hot wind blowing through my pigtails.

Sometimes, when the wind is just right, the memories come back with such clarity, I can taste the rhubarb pie or feel the upholstery of my gran's ancient car. I can see the firefly jar.

What will she see when the hot winds blow on her at 37? I wonder.

I've been to urgent care twice and the ER once in the past week with my family. Nobody died (though Beloved's going to have a scar), but after a long stretch of no doctors, we were due.

Yesterday morning the little angel woke up clawing at her neck, which was fiery red and covered with bumps. I immediately thought she'd gotten into poison ivy down at the lake. Hydrocortizone didn't work, so I reached for the only thing that saved me from insanity when I had chiggar bites last time -- baking soda.

As we drove to the pediatrician's office for early morning walk-in hours, she complained only slightly as large clumps of baking soda fell off her neck onto her clothes.

The examination room was decorated like an ocean, just like my girl's room. There were metal crabs hanging from the walls, just like hers. I wondered where they shopped. I liked the seahorse.

The pediatrician told us it wasn't poison ivy, just some sort of bug bite -- or rather, about 35 of some sort of bug bite. Just on her neck. Totally weird. What kind of bug? Did it really matter? No.

So she prescribed some steroid cream to put on it and recommended Benadryl or Zyrtec -- which I totally could've given my girl when I first noticed the bumps on Sunday. Could've spared her a day of frantic itching.

Now, I realize this doesn't make me a bad mother. I'm not beating myself up over forgetting Benadryl. But sometimes I wonder where my common sense went. Did it get stuffed down under Internet Volume or Job Stress or Why Haven't I Heard From Those Agents Yet Worries? Is it hiding under my swimming suit? Did I sell it at the garage sale last weekend?

Why didn't I think of this completely obvious solution myself? Damn.

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Speaking of novels, I was totally jealous of Jane Austen when I read my last BlogHer Book Club selection, A Jane Austen Education. Review (and jealousy explanation) here.

The little angel pulled the shower curtain closed so I couldn't see her in the bathtub. Her voice held a very firm edge, the one she'll use when she's in upper management, I'm sure.

"I DO NOT WANT TO GO TO THE DENTIST."

"I understand that. I don't particularly like going to the dentist, either. But if you don't go, all your teeth will fall out."

"I WOULD RATHER LOSE ALL MY BOOKS THAN GO TO THE DENTIST."

"You have to go to the dentist."

Splash. Something that sounded like a bar of soap bounced off the tile.

"I WOULD RATHER HAVE TO LEAVE MY FAMILY AND LIVE IN THE FREEZING COLD WITH PENGUINS THAN GO TO THE DENTIST."

"I WOULD RATHER BE SUNBURNED ALL OVER MY ENTIRE BODY THAN GO TO THE DENTIST."

"I WOULD RATHER NOT HAVE ANY FOOD FOR A YEAR THAN GO TO THE DENTIST."

At this point, I was shaking with the exertion of trying not to laugh out loud and extremely grateful she'd closed the shower curtain. My stomach hurt from containing the giggles threatening to totally blow my cover.

"ARE YOU LISTENING?"

"Yes. But you still have to go to the dentist."

"OR ALL MY TEETH WILL FALL OUT."

"Right."

"THEN I WILL GET DENTURES."

I whipped the shower curtain open. She was laying on her stomach, glowering in righteous indignation up at me. Or as much righteous indignation as you can muster when your hair is clipped to the top of your head in two places.

"Child, WHO DO YOU THINK MAKES THE DENTURES?"

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Tonight there's a free happy hour at The Writer's Place, 3607 Pennsylvania in Kansas City (on Pennsylvania behind the Uptown) from 6-8 pm. Free beer and nachos and the chance to hear about all the programming and perks of The Writers Place with a side of peer pressure from me to become a member. (Which is totally not required in order to schmooze with writers and drink our beer.) Door prizes! Win books, Spin! Pizza gift cards and more. Thanks to Muncharoo, Chelly's Cafe, KC Hopps and Spin! for their generous donations to feed starving artists.

Remember when I wrote about the Santa/Easter Bunny/Tooth Fairy mess?

After the Easter weekend, I went into the little angel's playroom. Ma had drawn a picture of a bunny on the little angel's white board when she left. The next day, Ma's bunny was replaced with a headline, "Things I Believe In," and three pictures: Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.

We've talked about whether or not she should believe in them several times since the kids at school told her they weren't real, and both Beloved and I keep turning the conversation into a question for her -- what do you think? Neither of us wants to lie to her, but neither of us sees the harm in a little magic in childhood.

But this picture -- this picture made me sad, a little. The clinging, the need to write it out, to validate something I know won't last much longer. Often I'm shocked that she's seven. Birth to three seemed to take ten years, but three to seven shot by in an instant. I just taught her about Santa, didn't I? Is it really time to let it go already? We were just getting good at it!

It may seem contradictory that I'm writing about letting it all go as she's drawing pictures of it on her white board, but I see the pictures as evidence of her internal struggle. Are they real? Aren't they real? Should I believe the other kids? Why are my parents being so wishy-washy about this?

And there's a big part of me that just wants to get it over, to tell her it's a lovely fairy tale, that yes, it's us, it's always been us. Who could love you more than us? Who takes more satisfaction in your joy than us?

But that's another message that loses its magic if you shoot it straight. She needs to figure it out on her own.

This morning, I went to take a picture of the white board. Three dirty tissues lay on the floor, and it was all wiped away.

Yesterday, some kids told my daughter that Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny are all frauds. She asked the lunch lady, and the lunch lady told her that her sons still believed.

The little angel cried a little bit and decided she didn't want to play with those friends just then.

My husband told me this story after our girl went to bed. I asked him what he said. He had told her that people believe all kinds of different things, from religion to politics to bunnies. You can still like other people even if they didn't believe the same as you do. I thought this a brilliant response.

I personally can't stand the Easter Bunny because Easter is the most important Christian holiday -- there is no Passover Chick, and I don't see why we need a bunny. I've never really leaned on the bunny and would be relieved to just tell her it's us, man, it's us. We know you like chocolate.

So she still believes. For now.

She was wearing a white skirt. The bus seemed to take forever. So I handed her a badminton racket and a birdie. She frowned at me.

"What do I do with this?"

"Throw it up in the air and hit it."

She threw it wildly to the right, snapping at it with her right hand.

"You're left-handed. Put the racket in your left hand."

"Why?"

Why indeed.

"Always use your strong side in sports."

We practiced her throwing the birdie in the air until she could hit it. I told her not to worry about aiming right now, just hit the birdie. At first she held the racket and swiped laterally without connecting the flat part to the birdie at all. She is my daughter -- unpossessing of sports common sense.

"Just bounce it on your racket and get used to how that feels."

She smiled as it started to pop up and down without falling off.

"You're a natural, honey."

"Yeah, I'm a natural!"

Now, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I've never played badminton competitively in my entire life. I'm not good at ping pong, I don't know how to play tennis or golf. I never played basketball and don't know the rules to volleyball. I lasted two seasons in softball Little League playing right field when nobody could hit past third base.

There is nobody more unqualified than me to teach a kid any sport at all, whatsoever.

And I taught my little girl to hit the birdie yesterday.

Damn, I did it!

I spend a lot of time saying "you can't have that" to my daughter. That she asks for everything is a function of being seven, of being a kid, of not quite understanding the boundaries yet, how money works, how time works, how practicing works. That she's starting to get it sometimes breaks my heart.

The other day she said she wanted a cookie, but she knew she couldn't have one until after dinner. As she stared longingly at the cookies made by her grandmother and trucked 500 miles across Iowa, I realized that I could probably leave them out and leave the house and she still wouldn't eat one, because she is starting to get it.

Yesterday she brought home a baseball card she'd made for herself at school.

I thought about what it means to want anything, to wish for a magic genie to grant your heart's desires. I remember wishing for that, hell, I still wish for that. It's not even about money, it's also about accomplishments or love or friendship.

It stuck in my head, and as I went to bed last night I thought there are junctures in life where you probably could have anything, but to get to what you want, you sacrifice other things. You sacrifice time for money, money for time, family for career, career for family, dreams for peace, peace for dreams, relationships for autonomy, autonomy for relationships. It's all a trade-off. But you probably could have anything if you single-mindedly went through life focusing only on that one thing. I have a quote that I often read that says something like "the reason more people fail instead of succeed is because they sacrifice what they want for what they want right now." And what I want right now is usually a nap or a big Kindle download.

I've started saying more often to her, "You can't have that right now." That toy she wants? She might get it for Christmas or with her allowance or piggy bank money. That cookie will be hers in a few hours. That perfect turn-out might come with years of practice. It all boils down to what makes sense right now, in this moment, and maybe the key to happiness is accepting that.

So perhaps it's not "you can't have that," but "you can't have that right now." Or "consider what you'd give up to have that and decide if that's what you really want."

I can teach her to eat healthy food before she eats a cookie, but I can't teach her what her heart desires most. Only she can answer that for herself.

I carried my niece on my shoulders, bouncing her up and down as we walked along the sidewalk in the fading light. The little angel and my other niece raced ahead, then back, and I saw something new in my daughter's eyes.

Jealousy.

She clung to my waist, asking to be lifted, all of her seven years. I shooed her away, clinging to the little waist above my head, making sure I wouldn't drop the two-year-old who squealed above me.

When we got back to the house, the little angel crawled under the deck and sulked.

I put down my two-year-old niece, keeping one eye on her as she raced about the yard, bouncing off grass blades and seeking, as two-year-olds are wont to do, anything dangerous that might exist in the world.

"What's the matter, Baby Duck?" I asked, as I peeked under the deck.

She buried her face in her knees.

And I knew. It kind of made me laugh, but not really. But sort of. Especially since it's not really my problem. I don't have any other kids. I knew it was all temporary. And my heart went out, a little, to those who have birthed more than one child.

I'm spoiled, you see. Sure, I have to play with her a lot more than my friends with more than one child have to don Zhu Zhu gear, but I really never have to deal with this.

At last Beloved appeared on the scene to chase our nieces and I crawled under the deck to assess the little angel's degree of sulk.

"You know you're still the Baby Duck," I said.

"I know," she said, to her knees.

"What are you doing? You don't even have to share me, ever! You should be happy to play with your cousins."

"I'm mad at you."

I sighed, picked a piece of grass from between the rocks.

"Okay," I said. "If that's the way you feel."

She looked up.

"But you could be my tickle monster assistant if you like."

And so it went, me the tickle monster, her my minion, chasing down nieces for tickling.

And then we came home, and it went back to the way it's always been, just the three of us rotating in our little solar system. We don't know how to be any other way, really. It's just us, it's always been just us. And I wonder how other families do it -- I see the pictures on Facebook, I hear about how lovely it is to have siblings love on each other, I see it with my nieces and nephews, and my heart sometimes wishes the little angel had a sibling to love on her.

But it's fleeting, because really I think we're sort of stuck in our ways. We like our family just the way it is.

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New review of The Murderer's Daughters on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews!