You loathe the carseat. Being constrained in any capacity must be fought against with every limb, howled against with every decibel your toddler lungs can muster. Strollers are a nuisance, but carseats are anathema.
I tell myself the stress and ear ache are a necessary tradeoff in order to eschew the comfort of couches and TV screens. I tell myself we are encoding something, deep down in your DNA, when we choose horse trails over ipads. That the real magic waits in secret ponds, pickable flowers, in stumbling upon a tiny fairy door at the base of a giant poplar (a wonder even to me).
We just have to withstand the tantrum-filled drive to get anywhere.
I’m in the backseat, cajoling you into a game of peekaboo, when the car swerves into the opposite lane, pitching my body to the side, then corrects again.
“Damn,” my husband says from the driver’s seat. His eyes flash to the rearview mirror. “That was a turtle.”
His eyes meet mine, calculating, and the decision is made. The Honda bangs a uey, and we race to backtrack before another car comes. A tiny brown dome sits on the pavement, fixed squarely in a groove carved from an endless parade of tires.
Your dad leaps from the car, delicately hooks the sides of the shell with his fingertips. The turtle’s limbs are fully retracted, likely terrified from the close kiss of a hot rubber death. He disappears behind the tree line next to the road, depositing the turtle in wooded safety.
You are still wailing as we roll onward to the trailhead. I tell myself, one day, you will not be crying, unaware, but watching these little acts. You’ll be the one to look at us and know. We stop for turtles.
Mackenzie is a Virginia-based writer with a love of baking, animals, and all things wild. When not writing, Mackenzie is hiking with her dog, baking something chocolate, or cozying up with a novel.
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