outwitted

Grace is standing on a chair that she pushed up to the kitchen counter. She found a bag of Easter Eggs that I had not yet taken back to the basement. She works quietly so that I don’t notice what she is up to. She reaches into the bag carefully choosing an egg. She shakes it, but there is no sound. Undeterred, she slowly twists it open – there is nothing in it. She sighs, drops the egg on the rug and moves on to the next. Again, she finds an egg to shake – no sound – opening it she finds there is nothing in it and the egg is again dropped on the rug. I sit down at my computer watching her – certain that as she continues her work she will not find a thing.

I am quiet — a voyeur as she works her way though each egg. Turning away, I check my e-mail keeping my ear carefully tuned into what she is doing– feeling entertained by her determination and stubborn search for the forbidden candy.

When she is done I again watch as she turns to the mess of plastic pastel egg shells littering the rug. “Oh my” she says imitating the way she has heard the phrase used on a Little Bear cartoon.

The chair is left pushed up to the counter and the bag gently falls to the floor as she walks past where I am sitting.

For a moment I am sad that a child with such spunk would not be rewarded for her disobedience. After all isn’t the birth right of the fourth child to be indulged and spoiled. Shouldn’t I, as her parent, be more relaxed and easy going by now? I begin to soften to the idea of becoming the parent that I thought mine were with my own baby sister.

At that moment I notice that Grace has turned away from me. She is hard at work trying to open a tootsie roll wrapper. Instantly, I am filled with older sister disgust – appalled by the injustice of the baby being rewarded for such naughtiness. Yet, I am unwilling to spoil her fun at having outsmarted her mother.