The Tap At The Window

I worked outside on Saturday, and it was like a get out of jail free card. After being confined to bed/couch rest for nearly a week, and not having the lung capacity to do much of anything once I was up anyway, it was a long week. And exhausting. The lung infection I'm fighting gives me a huge appreciation for breathing. But Saturday I had a miraculous healing (or the steroids finally kicked in, either way) and I was able to not only be outside and get some small chores done, but I didn't have to nap to get through the day.

Small steps. Sometimes the small ones make larger strides than not.

While I was painting the deck of the garden shed porch, I heard a tap on the house window. It was Micah, beckoning to me to come inside. One never knows with that kid how important that beckon is, so I laid down my paint brush and started inside. But I wasn't fast enough. He'd already put shoes on and was heading out to get me, crooking at me with his week forefinger to come inside.

He walked me hand-in-hand to the living room and pointed toward the coffee table. I saw...... a magazine on the coffee table. And a photo album. And his iPad propped against a leg. But he wasn't pointing to any of those things, so I had to ask him what, exactly, I was looking at.

That tiny black spot on the floor. That's what I was looking at.

Micah either killed a bug and was incredibly proud of it, or found a dead bug on the floor and wanted me to take care of it. I made him take care of it in case it was the latter, because teaching independence is a good thing. He got a tissue, at my insistence, picked up that bug, and threw it in the trash. And he was so proud of himself for doing that.

So the question still stands on whether he killed it in the first place or if he overcame a fear of bugs and disposed of a dead one himself. Because somewhere along the line, that boy became terrified of bugs. It's a sad and kind of scary thing.