Crossing

by Karen DeBrulye Cruze

The bridge shakes. Four-year-old Emma screams. It is a rope bridge with wooden slats for flooring and it bobs and rolls like the deck of a small rowboat moored in a breeze-ruffled pond. In other words, it won't pitch my daughter over. Emma doesn't know that.

"Keep going," I say. She is halfway across, was carried there by the momentum of her gait, half-run, half-skip, before she realized she was not on solid ground any more. I am behind her carrying the baby, Sam. We came to the prairie path to walk and look for butterflies. Emma has a new net she wants to try out.

"Look, Emma," I say. "Up there. I think I see a white one, a cabbage butterfly."