Head Lice and Other Quality-Time Makers

“P, stand still. If ya don’t stand still, it’ll take me longer to do your hair and we’ll be late. Do you want to be late for school?” Head shake. “Ok then, stand still!”
Our morning routine doesn’t vary much. My kids fill the morning with superfluous chatter. In between the noise, my husband and I insert commands and proclamations, most of them unheeded.
Fortunately, none of my kids likes being late, so in the end, my husband and I hold the decisive trump card.
“P, please hold your head st….” I stop in mid-sentence. With the sudden break in the usual edict, my kid’s attention is on me.
Did I? No, it couldn't have been. I did not just see a bug in her hair. For a moment my thoughts review yesterday's afterschool agenda. Did it involve rolling around in the grass. I can't remember.
Another brush stroke on the other side of her head and...no, that wasn't. It couldn't have been. It's probably the same bug I just thought I saw. Yes. Yes that's it and a very fast bug at that. One that is not only speedy but able to navigate quickly and nimbly through the thick strands of her hair. Fast enough to...get to....the other side of heeerrrr..... I knew the answer.
“Mom, why are you making that face?”
“Shit” was my next thought “LICE.”
Lice, lice, lice can be so nice, nice, nice. That’s what my kids were singing in the car on the way to school.
At my son’s preschool, my diagnosis was confirmed by an “expert” (read pre-school teacher). Thankfully, I had two “nit” free children to deliver to school.
I picked up the “lice kit” from the pharmacy, called the friends we had been in contact with in the last few days and sat down for a 3 hour session of combing through ½ by ½ inch sections of her hair with a doll size “nit and egg” comb.
We sat and talked. We watched television together. We went to the bank and to the library. She lay quietly on the couch drawing in my office while I wrote. When it came time to get her brothers, there was a sense of let down.
Spending alone time with any of my three kids, when they are not sick, is an occurrence that happens on the same cycle of cicadas. That is, every seventeen years. Since they are 8, 6 and 3, they still have to awhile to go before they each get their time.
Yes I know “experts” say I should spend quality time with each one…blah, blah, blah. The point is I don’t and that’s that. So when the unplanned, lice infested, quality-time day came, I took it, relished in it and enjoyed the heck out of myself and her.
On the way to pick up my youngest son, I found myself singing lice, lice, lice are so very nice, nice, nice. When the boys got home from school, I shaved their heads, putting up a “No Lice Allowed” sign. I mean you can only have so many quality-time days in a row. .