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I touched them.
I think even my five-year-old self knew that touching them
might not be the best idea. That wasn’t going to halt my youthful
curiosity. I reached out with my pink, Velcro-strap sneaker and
nudged a few of them with my toe.
The way my mom tells it, I was inconsolable. All I remem-
ber is a moment of paralyzing confusion (why had so many of
the ants stopped moving?) and then a wave of what I now know
to be guilt washed over me. I had never known death before, and
I felt terrible for hurting something so small. I hadn’t meant to
hurt them. I was just curious.
I’m sitting here now, applying ice to the swollen knee of my
own little girl. She’s crying more for the sake of the bee that died
stinging her than the pain in her knee. My husband tells me that
she got my good looks, but Mom says she looks even more like
me with her face screwed up in unhappiness. She at least seems
to have inherited my sympathy for life.
She’s beginning to calm down. The pain in her knee’s still
there, but the pain of guilt seems to be dissipating. She gives me
a watery smile, and the light returning to her eyes grows from
the dim glow of the pretzel shop to the brilliant radiance of the
sun in the blue autumn sky. My little girl has never seen the
water wheel, the pretzel shop, the mysterious concrete slab. But,
because of me, it will always be a part of her.

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