DOLL

SCENE ONE: Backyard. Early morning. I am watering the gardens surrounding the patio. The air is stifling, the dawning sun is baking exposed skin. Listening to bees, birds and breeze, and scanning a cloudless sky, I wonder, "Will it ever rain again?" I lift mug to lips, and glance down at my coffee - intent on sipping the day's alertness. The caramel-colored liquid is teeming with Japanese beetles; swirling, climbing, hopping, swimming, one on top of the other. Ceramic shatters on cement. Beetles disperse to rose bush as several black crows settle on the parched lawn and begin digging for grubs.

SCENE TWO: Backyard, the evening before. Dusk turning to darkness. Band of twelve-year old baseball brothers - who spent afternoon on dustbowl diamond, battling in black uniforms for 3+ hours in 90+ temperatures - have taken refuge in the pool. Younger sister of one of the boys, in bathing suit and ponytail, suddenly dashes from pool to house, screaming, "I am out of here!" I grab her, slowing her steps before she wipes out on wet cement. "What's wrong?" I ask. "The pool is full of bugs. And BOYS!" she shrieks. "Bugs and Boys. That's redundant," I whisper. Steering her into the house, we call for my daughters - because they will make it all better.

Fact: SCENE TWO actually happened last night. SCENE ONE I dreamed last night. 

Horrors. Japanese beetles are now haunting my backyard (pool, flowers, hair) and my slumber. 

I loathe Japanese beetles. Despise them. Snip them in half with gardening clippers as they snack on my rosebuds. Crunch and grind them beneath my flip-flops whenever they are dizzy enough to land on pavement in my presence. 

You must understand that I am the kind of person who scoops displaced spiders off the bedroom ceiling and carries them outdoors to a patch of grass or dirt where they can live another day to eat mosquitoes. Or snow. 

I am not a killer. I am a lover of all, make that most, living things.

So if I gleefully grind your green and black, crunchy beetle body into the ground - you have become tremendously annoying.

Japanese Beetles, I'm talking to you. 

And even though I am now dreaming about you inhabiting my beverages, I am nevertheless going to give you a ONE DAY reprieve from death and destruction.

Because your presence in the pool last night set in motion a delightful moment and memory that I shall reflect on and treasure long after my baby girls have gone off to college - one short month from now.

Rewind to last night. I hand off Boys-n-Bugs Younger Sister to my daughters. A couple other little sisters eventually join them in the house. I return poolside to watch flips, dives and basketball water polo. The boys are soon full of pizza, refreshed and happy. So I sneak inside to check up on the girls.

Our family room - usually cluttered with laptops, I-Stuff, DVDs, drums, guitars, books, sneakers and sporting equipment  - has been transformed.

Into American Girl Place.

Dolls that have been settled and silent in the corners of bedrooms and closets for years have reappeared; dresses, shoes, ribbons and other dolly accoutrements have carpet-bombed  the room. Girls, big and small, are dressing and undressing the dolls, chattering and laughing as they brush cheeks with sparkle blush, and twist hair into thick, long braids.

I stand in the doorway, viewing my daughters in present and past; profoundly grateful for the hours, days, years of dolls and make-believe. For their childhoods of delight, that I shared and cherish.

Japanese Beetles, I owe that moment to you.

Truce, then, Popillia Japonica. 

Stay out of my coffee, my gardens, and my dreams.

And I might even decide to like you.  

QUING HEREBY DECREES: Even Pests can be Gift-Givers if given a chance.

QUING DOUBLE DECREES: Dolls, Trucks, Costumes and Legos are not meant for closets and crates. Take them out. Pick them up. Be a kid again.