That's What Little Girls Are Made Of

My family often recounts a story about my grandmother that goes something like this.

My mom had just come home from an outpatient surgery that left her quite loopy. She and my grandmother and sister were sitting at the table in the dining room of my mom's house, where a door leads from the dining room to the back deck. A neighbor who had stopped by to check on my mom was chatting through the screen door. At one point, my mom started talking what seemed like nonsense about the snake crawling up the door. Except, it turns out, it was a real snake. It had oozed its way from under the deck and was crawling up the screen.

The neighbor, a lifelong male friend, screamed and jumped. My sister tried to make her way around the table. But my grandmother ... my grandmother jumped up, grabbed the snake by its head and took it behind the garage where she was seen chopping it into bits with a garden tool.

Now I tell this not to make you think my grandmother abused animals. But to show that she was tough and quick and with the exception of baby birds, midgets (sorry, little people), clowns and Jimmy Stewart, she didn't spook easily.

After tonight, I am proud to say there is a bit of my grandmother in Abby. I was cooking dinner when I asked Sam to help out and feed Tag the Dog. (He seems to beg less if I feed him the exact time I feed the kids.) When Sam put down Tag's full dish, he started screaming. There was a dead cockroach near the bowl. Jake wandered over to see about the fuss, and he started screaming.

"Somebody bring me a wet wipe and I'll get rid of the flippin' thing!" I told them, a little perturbed that these boys who dig for bugs and pick up worms and talk so fondly of bodily functions were thrown by a bug. A dead bug.

In the midst of the melee, I hear Abby stomp off to the bathroom. Soon she comes stomping back. "I got paper towel," she says, but in a way that sounds slightly French, "I got pape-air tow-well."

Then she leaned down, grabbed the bug in a single square of toilet paper and threw it all into the garbage.

Meams would be proud.