Lilly and the Egg

So I had just spent two hours cleaning the stupid pool, which is my other part time job (gardener, housekeeper, cook and nanny not included). (Oh, and writer.) The pool likes to turn green as soon as I finish cleaning it and head into the house. It's the pool's version of flipping me off.

Anyway, I'm leaning over the pool skimmer, the hole in the ground that sucks all the pool water into the filter. I'm adding the DE powder, which makes cloudy white dust into the water and helps the filter. Lilly the newly 2 yr old wanders by. Hep? she says. She's holding the marble fake egg from the chickens' nest which the chickens use to lay on and get them in the laying mood. She had just spent the whole time I was cleaning the pool destroying the chicken area. But it kept her busy.

She looks so cute, I say "Help? Sure, you can help." I give her the bucket of white powder to help pour into the skimmer. As she grabs the bucket, she DROPS the heavy marble egg INTO the skimmer.

"SHIT!!" I grab for the egg, but nope, it goes down. SUCK - I hear it go into the pipe and up and now the pool filter makes a groaning sound - it's blocked. The egg is underground, and blocking the whole pool suction. I jump up and turn off the pool filter. I am now cussing like Al Pacino. Then I start crying. I just can't do it all, I'm saying. I surrender. I officially can't keep up with it all. There is now an egg stuck in a long tube and me with no long, 60 inch tube like fingers. There is no way to get the egg out.

Plus we're late for father's day with Barry's thousand year old dad.

Barry comes out while I'm crying. I need to yell at him because I need to yell at somebody. I don't want to pay 200 dollars to have Will the black pool man come out open the pipe and get the thing out. I don't want to pay any money to anyone.

Lilly has wandered off into the water puddles singing "We will we will rock you." I love that she has no sense of crisis.

Even as I'm yelling, I know it's because there's no money and I'm one feeble person and the plants are overgrown and there are always so many battles, rats eating chicken eggs, have to fight the rats, problems with brothers, but money, I know money is the issue. The baby dropping an egg in the drain, I know, somewhere inside, is funny. But I don't want to feel funny right now.

Nathan the eight year old stands with us, trying to be serious. "The chickens won't lay their eggs," he says gravely. He also can't stay still, he's climbing on the diving board and trying to fit his huge body run with busy mice inside that are always scampering. He's energetic, which is a hard thing to be in a young body. You keep getting yourself in the way.

Of course we can't fix the pipe now. We're late. We have to go. I read a book all the way to the Poppa celebration. I hate everyone in the car.

We get there. Barry's family is gathering because both of his nieces have become doctors of sorts. I stand in the room watching the kids playing, and listening to the family talk about how happy they are for their daughters. I like the feeling of a family that gathers to celebrate. My side of the family is currently so small that we only gather each Sunday to celebrate biscuits and eggs. Our one little victory, but at least we have that - I love that we have at least those moments together, the seven of us.

On the way home, I decide I will fix the pipe. Somehow. The baby has missed her nap and she's exhausted. We finally give Daddy his father's day cards, it's 8 p.m. and this is his celebration. Watching Elmo with Lilly on his lap.

I get the baby to sleep and then I go out in the dark to fix the pipe. I manage to get the faceplate off of the pipe where I know the egg has ended up. But the egg is down at the bottom. I try putting a hose down. It won't turn the corner. How can I get the egg back out the way it came in? Long bendy pipe?

I go back in and check the internet. I find one place that says flush out the clog with water. Block the place the egg fell through with a tennis ball, stick the hose in the other end, let water flush into the pipe and build up pressure, take the tennis ball off the entrance, let the water push the egg out. I think about our crappy hose and the bad water pressure. This'll never work. But it's the only thing I can try.

I go outside and stick the hose in. I try to find a tennis ball in the dark, and settle for a baseball. I wedge the ball into the entrance of the pipe. I turn the water on. Water seems to be pouring out the end of the hose. I knew this wouldn't work. I go over to take off the baseball anyway. It's a heavy egg. The water'll never be able to push it.

And then I hear it. The egg is clattering down the pipe. I stick my fingers jammed way into the entrance of the pipe. I can feel that egg! How the hell am I going to get that egg out of there?? Then I feel it is still moving. I slowly lift my fingers out. The egg keeps coming up. The egg FLOATS UP. It floats all the way out, like magic, and I grab it.

I fixed something. I did it myself.

I start jumping up and down. Staring at the egg in disbelief. I turn off the water, run to tell my mom. I'm jumping up and down, holding the egg up to her ceiling. I did it myself! I'm yelling.

I take the egg into Barry, who's in bed with the covers up to his eyelids. He can't BELIEVE I have the egg.

I did it. Wait til Nathan finds out, he says.

I go back outside and put the pipe back together. I finally finish putting the powder in, that I started six hours earlier.

Even when she dropped it in and I felt that moment of wow, I didn't know everything was going so well until you dropped that egg in there and now everything sucks - even when I felt that, I knew the egg was just a problem that I had to solve. I knew I could be dogged about it. I also knew, as my friend Michael Tucci says, there is a difference between a problem and an inconvenience.

We fixed the inconvenience. The kids are safe. The magical egg is back in its nest. I celebrated my family and Barry's family today. We ate scones and mexican food. The dogs are sleeping. It was almost worth the anguish just to have the jubilation. Maybe this is what challenges are for.