Lost Crab

 Let me set the stage for you. 

All week M has been saying, “Mommy, don’t let Baby P die.  Or J die.  Or O die.  Or you or Daddy or me.”

I’m not sure what has provoked this sudden awareness of death.  But she’s freaked about it.  So we’ve been praying a lot of protection over everyone in the family, including her grandparents and her innumerable aunts, uncles, and cousins.

But we forget the hermit crabs.

So I came down early one morning and decided I’d use the time to clean the hermit crabs’ cage.  And one of them fell out of his shell.  Whoops.  Dead crab.

After I broke the news to her (including the happy news that Hermie, her other crab, was alive and well) she decided she wanted to make Hermie a crab-maze.  Daddy was home for the afternoon, so she and O and Daddy made a fabulous Hermit Crab Maze with blocks and train tracks, and they loosed the crab in the cage.

Later, when Daddy took the three big children to the park, I remembered Hermie…. abandoned in the maze. Luckily for Hermie, he found his way out.  Unluckily for me, no one knew where he was.

When everyone came home, we mounted a full-scale expedition to find the crab.  Only none of my children, or my very talented (in other ways) husband, have any finding skills.  The children must get this trait from their father.  Whenever we are looking for something, they glance over the room once and say, “I can’t find it.  I’ve looked everywhere.”  (My husband offers a more refined version, “Where do you think it might be?”  If I knew where the hermit crab was, do you think I’d be asking you to look?)

Finally I found the orphaned crab, hiding behind the dresser we use as a make-shift entertainment center/CD holder/tablecloth storage unit.  Still in his shell.  Not dead.

Now M is saying, “Mommy, don’t let Baby P die, or O, or J, or you or Daddy or Hermie, okay?”