After a hurried morning of getting the boys off to school; I slid into my new pleather (plastic + fake leather = pleather) desk chair to write. One problem, my coffee was in the kitchen…and that is a rather serious problem. But, that was not my worst problem of the morning.
I grabbed my coffee, did an about face and stopped to greet the frogs. I screeched to a halt. Sonic was belly up. I tapped the tank numerous times. Mr. Frog was still slowly swimming around as normal. But not Sonic.
What about the boys? Their hearts are going to be broken. What am I going to do???
I stopped to breath for a second. I had a choice to make:
A. Take the next 2 hours and haul to Sterling and get a replacement Sonic.
B. Write (cause this is going to be my only time to write all week with the holiday).
C. Get a dog, the boys wanted a dog anyway and the dog would distract some of their grief process.
I called Dave.
We choose “A.”
I’m not advocating the kind of parenting where you lie or protect kids from all pain. But some pain, yes. And, this pain we chose to protect them from. Getting a pet after losing Romeo and Juliet was a long time coming. Though Sonic and Mr. Frog were in the family only nine days, we’ve all gotten quite attached.
I scurried like a mouse in a cheese puzzle, back and forth and all around from tank to tank, looking for a dark spotted, spunky, spastic, Sonic look-alike. Too long, too fat, too light, not enough spots, not enough dark spots, too chill…
It was in the middle of my Sonic quest that I realized a most important truth. God made each and every creature on this earth special and unique. Trying to find an exact Sonic would be like saying there are two exactly alike snowflakes or people.
While I didn’t abort the mission, I did lose some hope after seeing Dave’s face after he examined the tank. He whispered, “It doesn’t look like Sonic.”
“It was the closest one they had honey…” was all I could muster.
The boys noticed nothing. And that’s just fine with Dave and me.
Rest in peace Sonic.
