High Five

Some mornings i wake up and sing while i pour milk and toast bagels and chase small people around holding polo shirts or hairbrushes.  Those mornings, the smiles come fast and hard and from nearly all corners of the house.  Jokes are told at the table and nobody rolls an eyeball.  Cream cheese is smeared in someone's hair, but nobody is crying about it.  Occasionally those mornings get effed.   Like, I step in dog vomit on the wood floor and go down like a bag of hammers banging elbows, head, and ass bone. For a second, I think this will change the vibe in here.  I think I might cry.  More because of the gaggy feeling that rises up from my guts because my heel is wet and slimy than from the pain in my elbow and head.  My face starts to warm starting at my ears and moving in toward my eyes.  But I quickly snap them shut and inhale deep.  So deeply that instead of red, my face should start turning blue.
And then I feel a hand on my cheek, small and a little sticky. She says, "mama, is your butt going to be okay?"
I try to remember the vibe.  The cool, swinging and singing thing I had going on just seconds before- where nobody seemed phased that the favorite cereal was gone because their mom was so happy and sunny.
I say "yes" instead of "shit".
And then my darling four year old daughter, holding a bit of bagel in one hand, reaches out with her other hand, finger pointing down at the vomit shmear on the floor and says, "What the hell?"

                    And we all die laughing.

Some mornings, not even dog vomit skating can't ruin things.