We wait a whole week to return to the magic forest, my daughter and I. She is eager to see how her dinosaur is doing. We left him in a tree trunk, munching on ferns, beside other whimsical figurines left by others. She talks about him the entire way there.

We almost race to where the path turns off. Oh, there’s the eagle, there’s the stone eggs, there’s the mouse, but…no dinosaur. Wait a minute…is it the wrong tree? Maybe he got knocked over? We hunt around for him for about half an hour because she is tearfully concerned for his welfare despite my assurances that he’s probably off playing hide and seek with the gnomes. While hunting we also notice the blue cat is gone, so is the red owl and at least one elf…

Thieves

Then to make matters worse, my little girl steps on a wasp nest underneath one of the logs. She shrieks in shock and pain before I realize she’s simply covered in them. I madly brush them off, hold her up in the air and run as fast as I can away from the swarm. I drop her down and pick off the remaining dozen curled into her socks, her shirt, down her pants. Poor little thing. Nasty swollen red bites on her soft pink skin. Despite the stings all she can repeat between sobs is, “Die sore, Die sore not there…where is Die sore?”

On the way home I try explaining why people steal (“they wanted it for their house, but it isn’t nice to take what doesn’t belong to you”), why wasps sting (“they were scared and didn’t understand you didn’t mean to step on their house”). Nothing is a consolation.

Later that night, I take a bath with her, with bubbles. We have a good time giggling and laughing and squirting each other with rubber duckies. Then she slides over to me, puts her little chubby hand right on my belly, pats it a bit, almost as though she’s listening. Then she declares,

“There’s not a baby in your tummy, right Mommy? Baby went away. Why?”

“Well…sometimes babies go back to heaven.”

I didn’t mean to get religious with her so young, but I didn’t know what else to say.

“Why?”

“Well…I guess they didn’t feel ready to be born. Or it wasn’t their time.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

She looks at me a bit warily. How can I not know?

But I don’t. I don’t know why I have this idea of wanting to live forever when I know we’re all going to die. I don’t know where I get this idea of justice when there’s no reason why anything in this world should be “fair,” it never has been before. I don’t know how I conjured up the idea of love when it mostly turns out to be a big crock and people end up marrying someone who is impossible to live with and wonder why they ever came to the stupid conclusion it was a good idea in the first place.

I don’t tell her that. I just put her to bed and tuck her in.

In the living room, my husband is watching Planet Earth and the stupid wildebeest leaves her calf behind…how do you leave your calf behind? The abandoned baby brays while taunted, circled and then ripped open viciously by a pack of hyenas, a nasty bunch of bastards if there ever were any. This is the last straw, I scream with anger, tears running down my face, “I hate nature!” My startled husband started to chuckle and pontificate about the life cycle, balancing the eco-system…I tell him to piss off.

A month later, my daughter and I go back to the magic forest. I have to carry her because she’s afraid of the wasps. We leave two yellow fairies there, maybe the thief will only take one. We see the mouse, the eagle’s nest and…lo and behold…a white rabbit! A red troll! Five plastic hound dogs sniffing bark and lounging in ferns! I am so happy to see the regeneration of magic I want to shout out in joy over my restored hope in humanity. My daughter asks to be let down so she can walk over and cradle them all in her hand.

Then she comes to a long log she calls “the mushroom tree” because it has several ear lobes of fungus growing along its side. I explain, “This log used to be a tree but it fell over and now it’s dead. But it makes a great home for all these other little plants and creatures. You see, honey, sometimes something’s gotta die for something else to live”.

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Photo by pberry041655.