Flying Through the Air

"Mommy, my heart is blue. Sparkly blue." Elspeth said this, and I'm glad to know her heart is not melancholy but glorious like the ocean at noon.

Tonight we hit a deer on the way back home from Washington, PA, where we were celebrating my making a deadline for a short story contest (just a submission, understand, but making a deadline is no small thing for a parent of three). The children were safe at home with a babysitter, and we were chilling to some Flaming Lips songs, when

Gracefully, rapidly, like a ballerina with muscles rippling under smooth brown skin, luminous eyes--

WHACK!

We've never hit a deer before, and we count ourselves as lucky, since we lost only our right headlight and now sport an enormous dent that continues back to the passenger door. A minivan next to us just missed contacting the doe, and the driver pulled over immediately, and then, somewhat casually, strolled back to see us.

"I knew it was going to get one of us!" she said with a smile. "I've hit two before! I'm from West Virginia and they've got to do something about the deer population. There are people starving. . .how about opening deer season for an extra week?"

In the cool weather I was trembling but Martin was smooth and sensible until we reached home, whereupon he shuddered twice and put on the tea kettle.

Elspeth was still awake upstairs, and when I kissed her goodnight, she said, "I wish I could fly through the air back home." (Her babysitter reads the girls installments of Wizard of Oz).

Then the baby awakened, and when I went in to feed her, I was glad that I was there to hold her in her distress. And tonight, I'm just glad we didn't fly through the air, and that we're safe at home.