Author Archives: PearlS

With Such a People You Can Do What You Please

If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please. 

Hannah Arendt, 1974

I am observing the swirling current of today, trying to find a foothold, but coming up empty.

Isn’t it interesting how folks who were rioting elbow-to-elbow only a month ago are now pressing their concern for social distancing onto our consciences? 

Those who railed on guns are arming themselves. 

Those who made their kids hold signs promoting life that matters are once again numbing themselves with legalized drugs and trash TV.

Those with anxiety disorders and emotional support animals plunge daily into the very animosity that caused their problem in the first place. 

Those who want freedom of speech are the first in line to silence the person who challenges them. 

Those who want government protection are obliterating their local enforcement agencies, destroying any sense of justice.

We want laws, but only if they are bendy.

We all want privacy, but every cell phone video that captures a public evil is simply “holding people accountable”, so we have ours handy.

We point fingers heavy with blame, but we deny we are the ones who have gotten ourselves into such a pickle by ignoring the small fact of personal responsibility.

We applaud others for finding their own truth, when finding one’s own nuanced truth only ripples out, effectively destroying another’s truth.

We whip up sweet, lovely, kind and benevolent versions of ourselves to parse out, but just under the skin our blood boils hot hate, unfiltered.

I am one-hundred percent certain you can identify with one of these sentences.
 I’m afraid it smells fishy. A flood of contradictions. It seems like there ought to be a great reckoning, but all I hear is anger. Anger aimed at people who don’t budge, don’t bend, don’t follow whatever rules seem to be “saving lives”.

I’ve been reading some Hannah Arendt lately. She dipped her toes in book reviews for magazines and eventually pumped out the massive tome, The Origins of Totalitarianism. (If you think I spelled that word right the first time, you are wrong. If you think I’ll read anything but the Cliffnotes version, you’re wrong again.)

But Arendt came to a particularly interesting conclusion when it came to ideology. She was Jewish, writing post-Holocaust, English a second language, sorting out thoughts into words that could be digested by the American public (especially the ones who were enamored with Communism). It’s pretty striking to read 75 years later, when we think we’ve really progressed.

She did not think life could be simplified to a set of rules enforced by the government, nor could a society be healthy with only one particular “code of behavior”. Once banded to this ideal, the individual spirit is lost.

You are coordinated not with the powers that be, but with your neighbor—coordinated with the majority. But instead of communicating with the other you are now glued to him. And you feel of course marvelous. Totalitarianism appeals to the very dangerous emotional needs of people who live in complete isolation and in fear of one another.

This, more than anything I’ve yet read, speaks to our modern times. I spent a sweaty hour on Facebook Live this week, listening to our school district’s plans on reopening, and had to turn it off because the comments were so heated. No one is communicating, though Twitter might like you to think everyone has a voice. All have been physically isolated at one point or another, and fear is pulsing through our veins. More than one person commented (ahem, sneered), “Who do we blame when our Grandma dies because you weren’t careful enough in reopening schools?”

Arendt warns of a totalitarianism evil that isn’t limited to regimes, but becomes a way of life because people are reduced to a “bundle of reactions” and therefore find a common anchor in politicism. If that doesn’t scald the conscience, what will?

And here I am, trying to keep my kids from sneezing. Here I am, a white, stay-at-home mother stifling every little instinct to clear my throat in public.Trying to take up less space than ever before, lest I step on a toe and offend. Maintaining my distance, discreetly taking precious sips of fresh air. Slinking around the parking lot of grocery stores and libraries to retrieve the small necessities: food and books. Retreating to my house, minding my business. Withdrawing my children from the local school because the rules have become oppressive for both teachers and kids, the public arena a vicious screaming match, a la damnatio ad bestias.

This is what is becoming oppressive: it is not the wearing of masks.

It is the silencing of the fellow man, the regime totalitarianism. The lie of making things “equitable”, when making things “equitable” inevitably forces someone to be stepped on, someone’s mouth to be covered.

I’m finding out that, for a person like myself (and quite possibly you), a rule-follower, respectful to a fault, ever conscious of how one should act responsibly and committed to the greater good–we can not be good enough. We are labeled fragile and unaware.
And if you are tired of this (like I am), you cannot, obedient as you try to be, equivocate or distill it to a passive turning of the cheek maneuver. You cannot afford to be idle, a cop-out Christian. We are given marching orders to “not grow weary in doing good”–and this forward motion compels us. 

To do good, not to be better. To do. To let our light shine before men, that they may worship God (Matthew 5:16).
This is what began revolutions. This is why the Israelites left Egypt.

But we must not wage war the way the world does. As much as we’d like to, being in the flesh and tempted all the same–the old man (and woman) has died. The reflexive nature, reactive, hateful, spiteful–has been crucified with Christ–she is no longer welcome to throw a pity party or daggers or sulk in the corner, bemoaning her circumstances. She is not fragile. She doesn’t need to rant or add comments or doubt and feel ashamed.
The new being has been brought forth, Spirit-controlled and lovely. She hopes. She endures.

I have often quoted G.K. Chesterton, because I can think of no one who can put it more aptly:

The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.

Despite what the world is saying, there is more freedom to be had in every oppression.

And when I remember this, I’m fully aware: no matter the circumstances, I know what I believe. I believe in God’s rule and order in my life, that He has made me a new creation. We weren’t meant to swallow lies. We weren’t meant to argue with the old creature, the nature of man who loves to hate and hates to love. We are not a people who, as Arendt puts it, cannot believe anything or make up its mind.

And it is right here I can finally understand it, in the eye of the storm where everything around me is topsy-turvy: there is still capacity for us to think, act, judge, and not fall prey to reactive, nervous messes. There is still plenty of darkness to let my light shine–and that, indeed is what we’ve been called to do.
There is still plenty of room for good things to run wild.

Notes to a 13-year old self

Sometimes I sit on a blog post like it were an egg, coaxing it to hatch. I love it, love writing as a form of expression. But, “the making of books is many and much study wearies the body”–my friend Megan (and King Solomon, the dear chap) wisely reminds me. I regularly pay no attention to this proverb. I’m obsessive, a veritable cliff jumper, plunging into stacks of notes and quotes and verses and thought. Then I abandon them and fuss about my scattered ways. I get lost in another hobby and mosey my way into my paint, my music, my garden, my books, kid stuff.

But lately there have been several turning over for awhile, warming up in the incubator of my brain. It takes us space; it won’t vacate the premises. I’ve got this image of my younger self, wishing someone would explain things to her, holding out for a nonjudgmental person to unleash some explaining. I had a million questions and I was too afraid to ask them, thinking I ought to know it all intrinsically, as if it were a matter of human experience. If I didn’t know the answer, perhaps it was just because I was stupid. I doubted my own ability to become a person who held any water. I doubted I mattered. I thought I was a menial, unimportant consequence inflicted on the earth.

Then I grew up.

I found I am not unimportant, inconsequential. I’ve been bought at a price; my life is not my own (1 Cor. 6:20). I learned asking questions is a good thing. I learned I wasn’t stupid, wasn’t just a silly afterthought. And I haven’t forgot there are other people out there who need to be reassured the same thing.

In the front of my mind are the people who read the posts now; in the back of my mind, I am trained on my children. I am out to refute the false messages the world is pouring in my ears, my children’s ears. I am pounding a stake in the ground and pouring a firm foundation. I’m asking you to grab a hold and hang on, because a deluge is in progress.

Two months ago in lockdown, I dumped a load of seeds onto our front lawn. My little girl wanted to sow “crazy flowers”–wildflowers–so I tossed out a mix I had saved from the previous fall. We watched them grow, and surprisingly two un-wild-flowery looking plants stole our attention. The leaves looked like watermelon leaves. We laughed and supposed we had somehow mixed up a packet of watermelon seeds with the flowers (not unusual for us). Sure enough, blossoms. Yellow and cup-like, promising fruit. But the stem was spiky with thorns, and it shot up out of the ground instead of crawling like a vine. We watched closely, and small green globes appeared where the flowers died. Watermelons, we smiled at one another. Lucky for us, we had another growing in our back garden, no doubt the sowing of a child’s hand. It was near the squash and corn. It had plenty of space to grow. A week went by. I watered faithfully, marvelling at the fruity pebble conglomeration of zinnias in every hue, the secret promise of watermelons sprawling beneath the wildflowers. Only us, I chuckled to myself, only our little fun family would grow fruit in the front yard.

It was one night after I’d taken the dog on a walk and picked up the mail that I paused in the flower bed and examined the watermelon plant more closely. It was a curious sight, next to the bunny-nibbled zinnias. The rabbits were leaving my fruit plant alone, and now I saw why. Bright green balls covered the stalks, and each sphere was studded with vicious thorns.

Alarmed, I had a sudden thought. This cannot be a watermelon plant.

Three proofs stood in favor of my hypothesis:

Watermelons aren’t poky. Watermelons are big. Watermelons crawl on the grown.
I did a quick Google search. The results confirmed it. We were not growing watermelons, but a nasty, prickly buffalobur nightshade.

Take care, the article with a matching picture warned, and do not mess with this toxic plant. The prickles with cause long-lasting pain. Buffalobur’s innately evil nature is apparent in its ability to cause solanine and nitrate poisoning.

Here I had let it grow to a foot tall, gleefully thinking we had watermelon just blooming on the vine. I was proud. I’d let my precious little girl meander in the zinnias around it, never having a clue what we were tending.

I love stumbling upon metaphors. Apparently my oldest son does, too. I caught his scribbling words down in the corner of his dot-to-dot book during this morning’s sermon, and he relayed it to me over lunch.

“I thought of a good one today, Mom,” he said. “People are like cats. They try to climb to the top of their scratching post to show dominance. Then when they fall, they scramble to their feet and look around and pretend nothing just happened.”

He is catching on. And both metaphors are timely: beautiful, dangerous weeds and haughty, self-possessed humans. Our world is full of both.

In The Last Battle (Chronicles of Narnia) by C.S. Lewis, the characters suddenly enter a new and wondrous world, one that is “more Narnia” than the last. A group of grumpy Dwarfs have also somehow entered into this post-life Heaven, but they perceive they are in a dirty, dingy and dark stable. They roll and gripe, each complaining over the situation, even as Lucy and Tirian try to awaken them to the Truth.

You are in paradise, the friends assure them. Look! Beauty and perfection surround us!
Distressed, Lucy pleads with the lion, Aslan.
“Aslan, could you–will you–do something for these poor Dwarfs?”

“Dearest,” said Aslan, “I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot, do.”
He then provides a great feast for the Dwarfs, but to them it only appears as rotting vegetables and goblets of dirty water. The whining and groaning gets louder. They are outraged.

Aslan turns to Lucy and says,“You see? They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.”

In a few words, Aslan is saying this: diseased perception is diseased reality. Getting caught up in the ruckus of this world, going along with the flow–is the worst kind of ball and chain. It perpetuates malcontentment. A chasing after the wind. A futile grasp at happiness. A stroll through a field of prickles. Those who see will become blind. They won’t know a weed when they see it.

Friends, we are living in the burr patch, glorious zinnias intermingling with toxic thorny bushes. Confusion reigns, and some are satisfied being dissatisfied. It is confounding, but we might not convince folks of the danger. We might not shake everyone to life while we are here on this earth. We might not coax them into reality, because they have chosen to close their eyes and remain in the dark.

But we can still point it out, for those who are compelled to yank weeds and those not content with just a cat’s social reflex. We can ask questions, we can find answers. For those who want to believe, but need help seeing in the dark.

For the thirteen year old me, who thought she was just plain stupid.
For the thirty-six year old me, who knows she’s not.

There is truth. It is worth clinging to. And you deserve to know it.

Warts and all.

Oliver Cromwell had a massive wart on his chin. If you were to zoom in on his 1656 painting (as I have), you would be astonished that he paid to have such a realistic portrait made. But there he is, chest puffed out, proud and prominent, the nickel-sized bump displayed in its glory.
“Paint me warts and all,” he famously said, “or I won’t pay you a farthing for it.” 

I have heard that Abraham Lincoln quoted him in 1860, ordering the artist to “flatter me not”. He, too, had some striking facial features, not to mention a possible diagnosis of Marfan syndrome. These two figures demanded accuracy, and I think it was partially due to their appreciation of history and the value of preserving clues for all posterity, but certainly it was a nod to their integrity. Lincoln, of course, shines brilliantly in history, his emancipating, martyr’s life and death provoking praise nearly two hundred years later. Cromwell, we know, comes out a tad less distinguished in remembrance: He might be best known for his quip on warts.

I bet both men would be surprised today–surprised about the photoshopping, the adjectives added to journalism, lengths of extortion, our disdain for flawed people in history. The truth is, Cromwell hated the Irish and helped murder a king. Abraham Lincoln, like it or not, made decisions that contributed to the death of thousands of soldiers–surely his presidential foe, Stephen Douglas, tried to smear him for provoking the Confederacy to secede. 
People die as a result of any and every noble and ignoble cause. No one is left unaffected by poor decisions, especially in politics.

(I suppose if there had been potential to exploit these men, the modern media of their times tried to find it. We just have more efficient ways of digging for dirt these days, and sneakier lawyers for finding loopholes to the law. Plus the payoffs are higher.)

Our warts will show, like it or not.

Several years ago a gorgeous, talented singer vowed to stop wearing makeup. She was beautiful without it–no surprise there–but for some reason it was a huge deal for her to make this notion public. Those Dove soap commercials, they wanted to display natural beauty, too. Sure I saw women of all sizes and color, but I never saw any warts.

These aren’t good examples of what we need. It is a marketing of false humility, the kind where one looks angelic on the outside but filthier than a pig on the inside. Totally on brand for our culture, don’t get me wrong–just dangerously courting insincerity.

That said, I think it is time, now more than ever, to live as transparent lives as possible. By this, I mean: show your warts. 

Don’t go off growing new ones or plastering on cosplay makeup. There’s no need to tattoo, pierce, brush up,or put on display. Standing out is a secondary concern, a discretionary pursuit of fools.
But go ahead and show your warts. Let them be a part of the portrait.
Live a life that doesn’t flatter. 

The world is flawed, more flawed than a Dove commercial, and we are all a part of it.

The warts must show, the body must age. 

The kids and I have been carving rubber stamps as a new hobby this summer. On my first try with the Speedball tool, I realized just how difficult it is to carve out negative space with a tiny craft knife. Around every curve, whittling out an imprint of an image, scratching bits of texture into the rubber. This is an exercise in tedium, but if I eliminate too much material, the stamp won’t print my image at all. 

Likewise, beauty is in contrast to that which is ugly, and we are losing sight of what is truly lovely by erasing the warts. In fact, we are erasing ourselves, because negating every sin doesn’t make us look more adept–it makes us look fake. 

I’m not sure a graver sin exists.

Where to begin? How do we undo the image we have carved of ourselves? How can we become honest when we’ve been fake? How can we add back the warts we once edited so the world would be fooled into thinking we had it all together?

This will turn to Jesus, like I hope every post always does. Jesus, a man in whom was found “no beauty or majesty to attract us to him; nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” For us, He was “marred beyond human likeness”. (Isaiah 52 and 53 are the best chapters in the Bible to memorize.) This is the God-man we are encouraged by Paul to imitate.

Follow His example, as dearly beloved children. Walk in love, just as Christ loved you and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Ephesians 5:1-2

How can we possibly imitate a person so selfless He let men mutilate his body to death?

I’m so genuinely grateful to say it: we can’t. 

We cannot do this upright, holy, blameless, perfect, spotless, wartless life. He did it for us. That master Painter put his portrait on top of ours, covering all the blemishes, creating a new image of us; His very own image superimposed on ours. 

He carved a new stamp. We are his righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21).

The warts are simply where the light gets out. They are conversation starters and pivot points. It’s true, you might have married the wrong person. You cared more about alcohol and sex than your kids. You lied. You fell into that old habit. You had an unhealthy relationship with food. You battled with depression and blamed your parents for it. You said something, did something, are somebody that is very, very warty. Guess what–so is every politician, every activist, every parent and child, every historical figure who has ever lived.

But you are holding on to Jesus and letting Him put His image on you, every day. In Him, you are a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17).
This is how we follow Christ’s example. We are obedient to God, we agree we need Him to make atonement for our sins. We say yes to Him creating beauty out of our ashes.

Old blemishes don’t make us more beautiful–they make us real.
Keep this in mind as the world airbrushes its way into faux freedoms, as it tries to flatter itself into a waxy, two-dimensional version of real Life.

Show your warts. Jesus paid for them.

P.S. You should already know it, but for what it is worth, the stamp is Benjamin Franklin, not Oliver Cromwell. Or Lincoln. Nope. I’m working on it.

At Home Ed 104-108

cartoon104(When I posted this to Instagram I was immediately flagged with a “since your post includes information about COVID-19, we have included a link to cdc.gov”. It is a little outrageous that some vague powers were able to discern my scribble enough to post a warning to the fifteen followers I have on Instagram. As a tooth fairy, I especially resent this idea that I am possibly spreading false information. If your tooth fairy cannot be trusted, who can?)

cartoon105cartoon106cartoon107cartoon108

Earwax.

If you don’t know, I used to write a daily blog. It was back in the ‘00s and ‘10s, when ye blogs were the way to stay in the know and everyone who was anyone linked their way around the internet. You probably don’t know, because I never let anyone know about it. I made it private as soon as it began picking up steam, for reasons I will hopefully someday divulge. Only seven people had access to it, and not even my mother was one on the list.
I fancied myself a young mother David Sedaris type. I only ever wanted to make someone laugh. Essays on the ridiculousness of a certain mother who cleans out a car jam-packed with old french fries and thirty tiny lost monkeys from a party favor barrel. In her vacuuming rage, said mother forgets to shut the door, allowing for two feet of snow to fill the drivers’ seat overnight.

I wanted to be a funny writer and tell goofy stories like the time I sat on my back porch one evening in Colorado and a huge monitor lizard (non-native in every way) with long toenails scooted up to my chair and I screamed in shock, clambered onto the outdoor patio table, and began banging on the window for Joe to come save my life. Word got out, and I was the new crazy lady on the block, claiming to have seen tropical reptiles scurrying through my yard. Preposterous until finally a young neighbor couple admitted their pet had escaped through their doggy door. What kind of people let reptiles run loose in their house?

This weekend was straight out of a Sedaris book, menial and absurd. It was after my shower and I was fishing in the bathroom cabinet for the Q-tip package–the kind that has 500, the kind I buy once every three years, maybe (if we haven’t drained them for a craft project)–and I blindly found it and dug my fingers in to grab a couple.
I knew as soon as I touched them, something was wrong. It felt familiarly sticky. Disgusted, I yanked several out. They were covered with orangey goo, like Bigfoot or Big Bird or some nasty giant had experienced a massive eardrum explosion and cocked his runny head over the Q-tip box. I couldn’t imagine what child of mine would have this much wax buildup in his ears unnoticed, let alone decide, unprovoked, to dig it out with a Q-tip. However, it wasn’t improbable that one of my kids would put a used Q-tip back in the box, so I had to consider this could very well be a possibility.

A quick look in the box revealed a dozen more with the tips completely saturated, the entire cottony ends bearing the weight of a thimbleful of ear wax.

A thimble-full.

Whoever did this must be bleeding out, whatever it could mean in the realm of ear wax.

It was horrific, but I felt a quick empathy, because I, too, am a prolific waxer.

My own ear wax woes began quite young, since I was an ENT’s dream patient. Tonsils out before the age of five and a burst eardrum shortly after–I knew exactly what it was like to wake up in the morning with my head glued to my pillow. The electric heating pad sandwiched in my pillow case on many a night coaxed the jelly right out through my ears like a melting candle.

Who knew there was so much goo in a person’s head? Who knew the ear itself was a faucet of some sort under certain conditions?

After the early on waxing, the most peculiar thing I became aware of was a strange gift for popping my ears. Some folks struggle, on planes, or with a cold, or at mountain altitude, to banish the pressure building in one’s ears. They chew gum and tug on their ear lobes and complain of discomfort. I’ve been able, since I was a child, to pop my ears on command. In fact, I pop them when I’m nervous or bored. It is a habit, not unlike a good knuckle cracking session. As far as I know, no one can hear me popping my ears, but throughout the years I have flexed this secret talent to every lucky physician who has ever examined me for a routine physical. When they peer into my canal with their black tipped otoscope, I get to clicking, pop pop pop. Not one doctor has ever mentioned it, to my disappointment.

At the age of twenty-three, I began doing senior care. This is where I met Bernita, a precious elderly woman with cats that ate tuna and pooped right on the carpet near my feet out of spite. The cats, I mean. They didn’t like me playing Yahtzee, and they likely knew I was in it for the monthly trip to Coldstone Creamery, when Bernita paid. Bernita had a wonderful Tuesday routine, as reliable as All-Bran. On the first Tuesday, I’d take her to K-Mart. On the second, she had her nails done and her stray hairs plucked. On the third, we went to the mall. And on the fourth Tuesday of every month, we had her hearing aids checked at the technician’s.

The first time I took Bernita to get her hearing aids serviced, I didn’t quite understand why we were going. I had no idea why she needed to leave her house to have someone change out the batteries. It turned out, the technician’s main job was to check on a patient’s ear health. This included removing wax buildup that increases as a result of pushing the hearing aid into the canal and consequently backing it up like a plugged toilet.

I watched, fascinated, as the technician weaved a long plastic stick down into dear Bernita’s ear and fished out an impressive hunk of wax. Bernita sat quietly and patiently. She was nearly deaf without the aids, and so I stumbled into the awkward small talk that comes with routine ear wax removal. I asked the tech thoughtful questions, apparently good ones. Or maybe she had never met someone so interested in hearing aids, and something deep inside her was stirred.  At the next appointment, she asked if I loved doing senior care.
“It’s alright, I guess,” I said, non-committal. She looked me in the eye with the utmost sincerity.

“Well if you ever tire of it, I’d love to have you work for me.”

You will understand, then, that every visit thereafter was weird, so I stuck to the waiting room while Bernita had her ears freed up and batteries checked. I never tired of senior care, but I did get pregnant and we moved. Thankfully I was rescued from my potential-filled future of excavating ears.
But the ear problems were just beginning, again. Pregnancy had a sneaky little side effect on me.

At thirty-two weeks, when a woman is starting to feel huge and uncomfortable, I couldn’t get out of bed. It was like my head could not get off the pillow. I felt terrible.
Joe, filled with concern over the pregnant condition and impatient at best, whisked me to the emergency room. Vitals were taken, fluid was administered. It seemed I was just a tad under hydrated. I laid in the bed, apologizing to Joe for getting us into this situation, and he patted my arm.
“Why don’t you ask the PA about your ear while we’re here?” he prodded. I could barely hear out of one ear and mostly assumed it was one of those crazy symptoms a woman didn’t bother asking about. But Joe was right–why not ask now?

The PA looked in my ear and wordlessly left the room. When he returned, he had a long, flexible plastic stick in his hand. I remember where I had seen those before. Bernita.

He stuck it down into my ear and the relief was instant. But when he pulled it out, I was mortified. A huge plug of ear wax clung to the tool.
Joe laughed.

He laughed. I could have killed him.

When the bill from the ER arrived, I couldn’t believe it. It had been charged–itemized, even. I’d gone to the emergency room to get earwax removed. I could’ve died of embarrassment. I could just picture the PA going home that day to tell his wife about the nasty clump he’d pulled from my ear.
“And to think,” he probably said, and they’d probably howled with laughter, him probably giddily stumbling to the punch line, “she thought there was actually something wrong with her!!”

To be honest, my ears have never been the same. Each pregnancy was more miserable because of ear wax woes. I’ve spent nights pouring warmed olive oil into my ears and lying on my bed, trying to melt out my sorrow. I wear pod-style headphones every night when I walk my dog, and it makes me uneasy, because I’m confident I’m backing up my ear canal by repeatedly shoving the little speakers in. My poor ears are trash compacting ear wax.
My ears are never far from my mind, and probably even less so than yours, if your head is even comparable in size.

This is why, after my disgust, I had immediate compassion when I lifted those filthy Q-tips from their wax-encrusted box. My poor child. I’ve passed these faulty waxy genetics on. My poor, poor baby, I thought, and then I caught a whiff of a strong scent rising from the package.

I lifted an orange Q-tip to my nose and sniffed, then pulled off a clump of the wax and rubbed it between my fingers.

Soap.

It was soap. Dial, to be exact, liquid and orange. An entire bottle of hand soap had been spilled into the Q-tips. It had evaporated and solidified, the exact consistency of earwax, the usual color, the perfect storm.

I stormed into the hallway.
“Kids!” I bellowed. “Get in here!”