Visionary Powers

My mother called this morning to say how sorry she was to hear about my second-oldest son almost having rabies. "What?" I laughed. "Rabies?"

"That's what I hear," she said, coyly.

"Where did you hear that?" I asked. Before she even told me, however, I knew. She heard it where everybody hears everything: in the car with my daughter.

My 9 year-old daughter, upon whom God has put the pressure of meeting a daily quota of words and who regularly asks, without taking a breath, "Okay, what do you want to talk about now?" reported to my mother that my 13 year-old was bitten by a fierce, feral cat that pounced on him from the woods and tore his flesh in two perfect X-marks.

As my mother told the particulars, the incident, which happened about 2 years ago but which my daughter told about as if it occurred yesterday, returned to mind. It was a vaccinated cat belonging to a neighbor and my son had been playing with it. It did bite him and break the skin and I did have to call the neighbors to confirm that my child would not contract rabies. The entire episode lasted all of about 20 minutes one evening around dinner. I would think the memory of the dog putting a dead mole on her brother's pillow, and all the screaming and shouting and recoiling and sheet washing that accompanied the gift, would be far more vivid and interesting to share.

"She told us that luckily he doesn't have rabies," continued my mother. "It was a close call, though." My mother asked my daughter how I could tell that my son didn't have the dreaded hydrophoby. Another little girl riding in the car wanted to know to which veterinarian we took my son to get the diagnosis of almost rabies.

No vet needed, the youngster informed them. She assured them that I could tell from looking at him that he didn't have a full-fledged case, only a near case. Just like, I suppose, I could look at that mole the dog left on the child's pillow and tell that it was all-the-way dead and rancid, not a little bit dead. God gave her a word quota, but he gave me visionary powers.