Mama!” she screams. “A fly!” And with that, Teresa is wrapped around me, all big eyes and tight muscles and heavy breathing … and not crying. I’ve learned that when she cries and says she’s scared, it’s usually more that she wants my attention. So I tell her it’s all right, a fly can’t hurt her, a great big girl like her is much more likely to hurt the fly than the other way around. And she proves my point by asking me to fetch the flyswatter. It’s time for Mom the Hunter. I set her down, wait for the fly to settle on something and quickly dispatch it, displaying the curled corpse like John the Baptist’s head on a plate, letting her know it really is dead. We settle back into the chair and resume our Winnie the Pooh story, on this night the one about Roo and Kanga coming to the forest and Rabbit trying to drive them away by kidnapping Roo. That doesn’t scare her — maybe because, being a Pooh story, Kanga isn’t frightened and Roo and Rabbit end up fast friends. Before we get to the end of the page, it starts again. “Mama! A fly!” Bedtime is once again delayed, and I silently question the statement I made earlier in the day, about the little wading pool being the best $11 I’ve ever spent. No doubt, Teresa loves it and it provides hours of entertainment. But when we spend the afternoon in the backyard, the door gets left open, by Teresa running in to get toys off the porch, by Caroline and Frank coming to rest their feet in the water or ask for something, by me carrying things in and out. With the door open, the flies get in. When there are several, I find their flying and buzzing annoying, but certainly not frightening. For Teresa, it’s different. Maybe it’s genetic. Caroline developed a fear of flies when she was 3, just the age Teresa is now. But it is inconvenient, especially since it got more difficult to find and dispose of the flies as the sun went down and the room grew darker. No more bright window to attract them, and as they flew, their bodies seemed to disappear against the purple walls. Still, I knew that if I did not somehow rid the room (and, since Teresa will not sleep with the door closed, the entire upstairs) of them, no one would be getting much sleep. So I persevered. In the end, Tony took on the last fly, and Teresa eventually slept. But not before she asked me why God made flies in the first place. I wasn’t about to start a discussion on their place in the ecosystem. I just told her that she should ask him. “OK,” she said. “Next time I visit I’ll ask.”