There she is in a sea of bodies floating down the Lazy River, but the name is a lie. There is nothing lazy about this tangle of limbs and inner tubes squirming below me. I hike up and down its concrete banks holding everyone’s shoes, including hers. I let her go with the rest of her troop and the perky young moms who think this god forsaken place is fun. I wait with the old moms, the tired moms, hungry for shade.

Finally she returns but she’s off again, barefoot and refusing to hold anyone’s hand. She’s gone to find the biggest ride she can muster at her height so I wait some more, shifting to the agreed-upon meeting pool and she’s not there. She doesn’t come and doesn’t come and I don’t even know where she is or who she’s with and I have left my cell phone in a locker and my bathing suit in the trunk. I have paid a lot of money and come a long way for this nightmare in broad daylight. I remind myself to breathe.

She comes finally, her brown bangs flopping over her eyes. She flits next to me then disappears again into the scaffolding of a water slide. She eats donuts and ice cream, drinks red soda. A crash is imminent, brewing like a storm and it pours down at 8:35 p.m. in the gift shop. She has to spend the money Nana gave her for a souvenir, but she melts on the floor by the Tweety bird t-shirts and squalls, “I hate everything in this store!”

I buy her the only toy she will accept, a red stuffed heart with claws and a grimace. Somehow it fits this moment, this day — a fierce, ugly, monster heart. An hour later she uses it as a pillow as she collapses on my lap. We wait for the perky young moms to close down the park, but at least now I can breathe.

Girl says she wants to a chef when she grows up, but lately she’s been showing signs of another profession. Yesterday afternoon I needed a power nap. Girl comes into my room and thrusts of piece of notebook paper on my prone body. It reads: “You get me some food. And you can work or sleep.” It has a line for my signature.

This morning I’m cleaning the clutter on the dining room table and I find this note: “I can wach movis. And you can wach icarly iny time you want to.” Then a line for Boy’s signature.

Thankfully these notes are handwritten and not made from clipped out letters from magazines or newspapers. So she’s not practicing to be a kidnapper. No, my baby is showing the signs of a budding young lawyer. May God have mercy on our souls.

Conversation between Girl and me, riding in the car, listening to the radio:

Me: That sounds like Justin Bieber.

Girl: That’s because it IS Justin Bieber.

Me: Wait, did he just say, “You smell, I smell?”

Girl: No, why would he say that? He said, “You smile, I smile.”

Me: Sounds like “you smell, I smell” to me.

Girl: Mom, you have a very bad sense of hearing.

Me: There he goes again. Hear it? You smell, I smell.

Girl: Do you have two ears?

Me: Of course I do.

Girl: I think you only have one. Because one ear hears the first part of the word, and the other hears the last part of the word. I think you only have one ear.

Me: I have two ears.

Girl: Then maybe the eardrum on one of them isn’t working.

Me: Everything’s working but it still sounds like “you smell, I smell” to me.

Girl: Can you hear the “ds” when I say “words?”

Me: Yes.

Girl: Good.

First Grade School Supply List:

- 1 package red checking pencils
- 2 pkgs manila paper
- 2 marble cover composition books, Norcom, wide-ruled, 100 sheets/200 pages
- 3 writing tablets (dashed mid-line)
- 1 one-inch 3-ring binder with cover sleeve

Questions for Lamar Consolidated Independent School District:

- Is this a school supply list or a scavenger hunt?
- Why does Wal-Mart have your supply list but virtually none of your supplies?
- Can I get a permission slip from you for my boss saying that I need to be excused from work so I can get all this bought by Aug. 23?

Here’s what’s not on my list this year: Girl’s backpack and lunch kit. Nana took her and her 5-year-old cousin shopping for these items. Nana suggested Tinkerbell or Hello Kitty.

Girl picked a matching set covered with fire-breathing dragons, which she described to me on the phone.

“They’re 3D!” she said. “They were the only ones that were 3D!”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“You know,” she said louder, as if I were a foreign tourist, “THREE DEE!!”

Her little girl cousin picked a Spider Man backpack and space alien lunch kit.

“I’m shocked. I don’t know what happened to these little girls,” Nana said.

“Brothers,” I said.