That morning I worked like the careful assassin who leaves no trace at the bloody crime scene, with the walls and floors scrubbed and sanitized, the clothing rinsed and washed (and sometimes thrown away), the washing machine sterilized with hot bleachy soapy water, the trash deposited in a distant dumpster, a squirt of Febreze.  No one would ever know the bathroom was anything more than a bathroom and not a crime scene.  Back in his recliner, Dad lamented his nighttime desperation for his children and grandchildren—he had prayed all night for their protection and triumph over tragedy.  What can he do, he asked, but trust in the God he loves?  Desperation for the same children, my children, worries me at night, too, and during the day, too, and what can I do but toil and trust?  But last night I worried about the deer plucking my mum blossoms and nibling at the arborvitae, and I braced myself, shivering, for the stink of putrescent eggs sprayed liberally.  In the kitchen, the warm slimy aroma of raw onions rises in moist billows, roiling the contents of my stomach, which never sees raw onions.  Another trip to the trash.  I shiver again in the quick darkness and chill of the moon crossing before the sun, the fusion globe a mere crescent in my eclipse glasses—but even ten percent of the sun’s surface blinds without the dark plastic.  How fascinating that the rocky moon can be precisely the size and the arc to neatly eclipse the giant gaseous sun to reveal the coronal “ring of fire.”  Home from work, I found Dad in his chair with only his red velvet throw over his legs.  “Your dad had an unfortunate accident,” Mom announced, matter-of-fact, and I braced for a crime scene cleaning.  But the “accident” was merely that he had fallen asleep with his icy glass of Coke Zero in his hand, which had slowly tipped in his slumber until it spilled fully into his lap and soaked his pants and his undergarments and his sitting pillow and his chair and his No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books, now drying wrinkled in a row.  “He was so upset!” Mom grinned.  Yes, an unfortunate accident, but one we can handle, anytime.

Photo by Brian Baker, October 14, 2023