Butter Fly

Mom had spent the entire day cooking Escarole Soup. It was summer and at the time, we had no air condintioning in the house.

That night dad was playing softball and so it was just the three of us sitting down to eat Escarole Soup, our kitchen windows wide open to let in the cooling evening air.

I'm not sure who noticed first, my sister and I weren't the biggest fans of the soup... we were doing more stirring than eating... but one of us noticed mom looking a little too carefully at her soup. And then she did her best to covertly pick something out... and then a few seconds later she was looking way too intently at her soup and again doing her best to secretly remove something from her soup.

And after the third time one of us finally wanted to know, "What are you doing?"

Mom swore she wasn't doing anything.

I told her I saw her picking stuff out of her soup.

She told me it was spices.

Mom was a terrible liar.

I grabbed the napkin.

There were flies in the napkin. Three flies to be exact.

Absolutely horrified, my sister and I ate cereal - utterly refusing the soup.

My mom ate the soup, said it was totally fine and that we were being ridiculous.

And I never got that maybe WE WERE the ones being ridiculous until one of many days when I was an absolutely dog tired mom with three kids of my own and had just mustered up every ounce of energy I had to make everyone lunch when an errant stream of sugar ants happened upon the trio of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and neatly cut fruit I had just left on the counter before quickly running to the bathroom...

It wasn't long before my kids were yelling, me in the bathroom, them in the kitchen about 'nasty ants' and not wanting to eat lunch and me telling them to just wipe the ants off and to quit being ridiculous...

And when they wouldn't let the whole ant thing go...

In frustration I told them all to just grab a bowl of cereal...

The birds greedily carried chunks of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (with the occasional sugar ant) off in their sticky jellied beaks. They later came back for cubes of pineapple, watermelon and cantelope, squawking loudly at their good fortune on our front lawn.

I know a thing or two about Ridiculous.