OCTOPUS ATTACK!

Molly Gaudry

Crawling around searching for Shasha’s lost shoe, I think about how cute I still think it is that Godfrey’s four-year-old can’t properly say “Sasha,” and so Shasha she is and Shasha we call her. Godfrey thinks it’s time to for us to start calling her “Sasha,” though, and that just makes me wonder if my opinion matters here at all and whether or not I should voice it, especially when my opinion is that “it’s cute, though.” If I do voice this sentiment and Godfrey looks at me like I’m not being helpful, is that because I’m just the girlfriend? Would he react differently if we were married? I’m thinking now, of course, about the engagement ring in my jacket pocket out in the foyer, and about my longstanding doubts about whether I’m the kind of person who should ever get married to anyone, if someone like me is even capable of being a wife or a mother. But it’s feeling like a good day, even if we are running late and I’ve abandoned all hope of ever finding Shasha’s shoe. “Shasha, when’s the last time you had both of your shoes on? Do you remember?” 

She actually throws both of her hands up in the air like an exasperated adult and extends her shoeless right foot and wiggles it in my face. “Where is it?” 

I go back to crawling and craning my neck and using my phone as a flashlight to squint into the dark corners under her bed. I don’t know when exactly I became the official Shoe Lady around here, the person who buckles the buckles and ties the bunny ear loops, but I remember the first time Shasha emerged from her room and crawled up on the couch with me and stuck her foot on my leg and said, “Can you tie it?” That was our first real physical contact—a major milestone for a kid who’s touch averse and highly sensitive. It was a major milestone for me, too. Because of the way my mother died, which will haunt me forever, that moment on the couch with Shasha was the first time in my life I’d ever let anyone outside of school or work need me for something. Seriously. So even though Godfrey has casually mentioned that maybe I should stop tying Shasha’s shoes for her so she can learn to do it herself, I still do it. “I’m Shoe Lady,” I said, and after I explained what being Shoe Lady meant to me, we agreed I could keep buckling and tying until I was ready to become the person who teaches Shasha how to do these things for herself. “Sooner than later,” Godfrey said, raising his eyebrows at me. “Okay, Shoe Lady?”

“Time to go,” Godfrey says, “we don’t want to miss our appointment.” He’s standing in the doorway holding Shasha’s sneakers, the ones with the light-up soles. “Will you wear these instead?”

I try to stand but it takes a minute because my back doesn’t like being bent over for any length of time, so I wait for Shasha’s answer at a 120-degree angle. She doesn’t look thrilled about wearing sneakers with her new dress, but she can be a surprisingly analytical kid sometimes and I can almost see the gears turning in her facial expressions. New shoes vs. seeing Queenie? She plops on the floor and sticks out her left foot. I unbuckle the strap of her dress shoe and Godfrey tosses me the sneakers one at a time, which I double knot. Shasha hops up and eventually I’m fully upright again, too, and following them to the door, where I actually hear myself say, “Right behind you,” as I stop at the coat rack, trying to decide whether to grab my jacket and bring his ring, or leave it here for the day, out of sight and out of mind.

I am not by nature an optimist. This is because my mom died when I was five. We were in the car when a deer hit us. I don’t know how useful it is to share that I watched her die, slowly and painfully. I will never know if I could have saved her if I’d just gotten out of the car and walked along the edge of that highway until either someone stopped for me or I made it to an exit and a gas station to ask someone for help. I could have even just stood there on the highway pointing to our car in that ditch, and someone might have stopped. I have been told repeatedly that even if I had done any of those things, she probably still wouldn’t have made it, but the question remains unanswered and lifelong doubt, in addition to an irrational fear of death, dead bodies, and highways, is my price to pay for having failed her that day. 

As it always does, the topic of family came up on my first date with Godfrey. Technically it was our third (the first was coffee, and the second was cocktails), but that was our first real time-commitment of an actual date. We were in his car heading back to the middle of Long Island after a long, chilly walk on an empty beach in Montauk followed by a late lunch at Tillie’s. For the record, a walk on a beach is not an activity I will ever enjoy because the chances of something dead washing up onto the shore is very high, at least in my mind, and who wants to walk into that? But as Godfrey handed his keys over to the Gurney’s valet, I slipped my emergency Xanax out of my tiny Altoid’s tin and worked up some saliva and got it down, and then we went and took the walk and everything was fine other than some lumps of seaweed shaped into possible carcasses that made me slightly anxious as we passed by both coming and going, and then we had lunch, and then we were back in his car and heading back. About twenty minutes into our hour-and-a-half drive to my place, he told me he wasn’t divorced, he was a widower, and that even though they were living with Miss Sara, his wife’s mother, he had been on a few dates over the past couple years because he was slowly becoming more comfortable with the idea of moving forward. “What about you? Are you close with your family?” 

Ordinarily, I deflect and say, “It’s complicated,” and people usually take the hint and change the subject. 

Not Godfrey, though. “Why’s it complicated?” 

I didn’t really want to get into it because it’s a terrible conversation to have to have, repeatedly, every time you get to know someone well enough to want to let them in. But I had a choice to make that day in the car, and it’s possible too that the Xanax and the long walk and my omelette and waffle had numbed me into a more receptive state. So I told him about my mom, and how I couldn’t handle dead stuff in real life, and then after all that I said, “That’s why I asked you to drive, too. Thanks, by the way.” I explained how I once slammed the brakes on the highway after passing a dead deer because I panicked and couldn’t breathe and after who knows how many cars blared their horns as they passed me in the other lane, I pulled over to the shoulder and parked, hyperventilating and staring at the deer in my rearview mirror. I couldn’t look away. Just like with my mom. I was frozen in time and space, just staring. Ever since, I’ve stayed off highways. There are dead animals on regular roads, of course, but I’m less of a danger if I tap the brakes going only 30 or 40 miles an hour instead of 80. 

“You should try singing,” Godfrey said. 

“Huut?” 

“What?” 

“Sorry. I think huh and what both came out at the same time there.” 

We laughed, but then he explained. “If you’re driving and you see something in the road and you know you can’t stop because you’d be a danger to yourself and to others, turn on the radio and sing along. It’ll force you to breathe, and it’ll give you something to focus on as you keep on driving. Because you have to keep going, right? You can’t just stay parked there forever.” 

It was absurd, but it made a kind of sense to me, too. Also, because I’m one of those people who screws up all the time trying to solve other people’s problems instead of just listening—although lately I’ve gotten better at asking, “Do you need me to listen or to offer suggestions?”—I really appreciated that on our first date here was this guy just flat out telling me an actual strategy to try out. Later, I learned that although he’s an ER nurse and loves a lot about his job, he gets squeamish at any eyeball trauma that comes in, and if breathing exercises don’t work for him he’ll just start humming in his head to get through it. When I asked what song he hums, he shook his head and said, “I can’t say. It’s terrible.” And then he blurted out, “Eye of the Tiger,” and now anytime there’s eyeball or vision trauma in a movie or on a television show we’re watching, I’ll lean in close and whisper “thrill of the fight” in his ear and usually he elbows me back into my own space. Lately, I can’t help but think about these things we do—these intimate and personalized exchanges that, I don’t know, as these tiny moments in our daily lives just pile up, I mean, if these aren’t proof of our ability to stay, to stay and be happy and last, then what else is? 

This morning, we’re on our way to the Aquarium, and in the spirit of our big adventure, Godfrey and I are both singing along with Shasha as she belts out the chorus to “Wiggle Jiggle Octopus,” which is one of those obnoxious children’s songs from YouTube and basically just repeats the words “wiggle” three times and then “jiggle” three times and then lands on “octopus.” Of course, Shasha can’t get enough of it, and since today is our first day out in public together in a long time we’re really letting loose. Godfrey and Shasha and I are trading off “wiggles” and “jiggles” like some kind of round robin on speed, and the song lyrics make a tiny tornado in the car, individual words circling around and around between us. “Octopus!” we all shout together, and I don’t know how many more of rounds of this I can take. I’m silently counting the number of repetitions in my head when we merge onto I-495 and without even being aware that I’ve been holding my breath, I let out a sigh of relief and stop counting. Just like that. It’s weird. I’m weird. I don’t know how anyone can even deal with me, honestly. Either it’s the Interstate where you’re bound to pass something splattered or torn apart, or realizing, during this particular time of the year, that being on the Interstate means we’re off residential roads, and being off residential roads means not having to see gory Halloween decorations everywhere.

“That’s enough, Shosh,” Godfrey says. 

Miraculously, Shasha stops singing and looks out the window, whispering “I spy” to herself. 

Godfrey reaches over and squeezes my arm. “Okay?”

“Yep.” I squeeze back. “All good.” It’s impossible to hide anything from him, though, so I try to change the subject back to whether or not we’re going to hand out candy ourselves or just leave some in a big bowl and put it out on the porch for kids to take: “So I’m thinking we can just bundle up and sit out on the porch, right? We don’t have to actually hand it out. We can put it all in a big bowl on the bottom step and kids can come and take whatever they want?” 

“Ab,” he says, and I’m both thankful that my subject-change was effective but also worried that it was too effective. In real life, people rarely ever say someone’s name when they’re already talking to each other. Unless they’re about to get very, very serious. “Can’t we just wait and see how we feel about it next week, when we actually have to decide?” 

I want to say yes, because he’s right, this isn’t a now problem. It’s only Sunday and Halloween isn’t until Saturday, and we have a whole week before then, and also it’s not like I forgot about the ring in my jacket pocket, which I reach for now hoping some kind of electric answer will zap its way into me when my fingers touch the velvet box. Predictably, no magic zap. Here’s where I’m at, though. On one hand, it’s too soon to get engaged, and the pandemic forced us to move in together way before either of us would have ever agreed to otherwise, so things have kind of always felt like they’re moving too fast with us. But on the other hand, we have been living together for seven months, and it’s been a great seven months, the best, really, so I don’t know why I wouldn’t just say yes and make our arrangement permanent. “The thing is, though, I just really want to sit out on the porch. Plus it’ll keep the big kids from taking all the candy.” As soon as I say all of this, I regret it. “I don’t want to be difficult. I don’t know why I can’t let this go.” 

“Who cares if they take it? We can refill the bowl.” 

In the back seat, Shasha’s stopped spying stuff and we’re all really quiet. 

“I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s just weird thinking about last year. Going to the store and buying candy like it was nothing.” I pause for a second, and the silence in the car gets louder so I start rambling: “It’s weird to think about how we just came into contact with total strangers for a couple hours and never thought anything of it. Little kids, too, with sticky, candy-covered fingers reaching out for your Kit-Kats and Snickers, and shouting into your face, ‘Trick or Treat!’ all night long, screaming at each other and coughing and sneezing right out into the open air. And their parents, all bare-faced and mask-less, just nodding at you and making conversation about the weather, if they said anything at all. It was so perfectly normal and banal.”

Suddenly it hits me. “Ohhh,” I say. “I just realized what all this is about.” 

Godfrey takes his eyes off the road and turns to look at me. 

“That’s the night we met.”

He smiles like I’ve just said the sweetest thing, but right then Shasha belts out “Wiggle Jiggle Octopus” and Godfrey just reaches and squeezes my arm again and then puts on his turn signal to try and get around the Subaru in front of us. Although I’m getting better at saying what I feel when I feel it, old habits die hard and I’m still pretty avoidant when life makes it easy to be avoidant. I turn around to look at Shasha and say, “Hey, how many legs does an octopus have?” 

She stops singing and says, “Eight!” 

“How many hearts does an octopus have?” 

“Three!” 

Godfrey joins in. “How many brains does an octopus have?” 

“Nine, ugh,” and with that, Shasha lets us know she’s tired of answering questions that she knows we know the answers to and she goes back to spying things through her window again and her voice fills up the car and gives us something to do and pay attention to outside of ourselves. Shasha says, “I spy something purple.” 

Godfrey points out my window toward a burgundy minivan and says, “Is it that car next to us?” 

I think back to last Halloween, to Godfrey in his lavender scrubs and looking tired but standing behind Shasha, who was so cute in her little homemade cardboard truck costume as she held open a pillowcase for me that I gave her a gigantic handful of candy and then reached into my bag to give her some more. “Peanut butter okay?” I asked her dad, who nodded. “OK, how about some peanut butter cups then?” Shasha nodded, so I dropped in one, and then fished around in my bag and found another and dropped that in too. Shasha turned then to look at her dad, which I appreciated, because yeah, I was totally breaking the social contract and being the weird grown up giving too much candy to a little girl and so I blurted out the least helpful thing I could’ve said: “I teach writing.” 

Godfrey tilted his head like, “Okaaay?” 

I hurried on: “So, moments like these, I tell my students to draw attention to the obvious, to whatever flaw there is in their story, because sometimes the easiest and fastest fix is the best fix.” Godfrey’s mouth opened and then shut, which I took as a sign for me to continue. “Like, if I were my own student right now, I’d be telling myself to just have the idiot say what she isn’t saying, which is: I don’t know how to keep you here any longer, and giving your kid more candy seems like a total creeper move, so I’m going to stop that now, all right?” 

“Why’s she talking so much? What’s she saying?” 

By this point, Shasha had stepped backward off the steps until she bumped into her dad, where she was taking refuge, and there I was looking down at them from up on my porch maybe a little too Wonder Woman power-pose menacingly, so I sat slowly on the top step to make myself smaller and said, “Do-over?” and then I looked into the sky and said, “Lucky it’s not raining tonight, huh? My name’s Ab.”

“I’m Godfrey,” he said, and then, patting Shasha’s shoulders, added, “This is Shasha.”

“Hi, Shasha,” I said. 

“Hi,” she said. 

“Nice to meet you, Ab,” Godfrey said, after a beat.

A month later, on our long, cold walk on the beach in Montauk, Godfrey told me, “I can’t believe I came back and gave you my number that night.” 

“You’re just telling me this now?” We’d been texting and FaceTiming for the past month, and suddenly I was really embarrassed and worried about how awkward our drive back might be because it was definitely going to take over an hour to get home. Not to mention I had a ton of grading waiting for me and I wasn’t entirely convinced yet that dating was something I had time for, so if this was headed downhill suddenly it wasn’t even the loss of this guy’s potentially life-changing human company that I was concerned about but the loss of six hours on a Sunday before my Monday-morning senior seminar. “Wait, why did you give me your number?” 

“You were our last stop—and the only person she took candy from all night.” 

“Really?” 

“She’s not good with people. They can be too loud or maybe they smell too strongly of perfume. Or they talk with their hands too much. Basically, anyone who doesn’t look right or smell right or sound right, and it’s over. She’s in occupational therapy. It’s helping.” 

“My parents ran a PT clinic—they had OTs and speech therapists on staff too.” 

“Really?” 

“It’s true.” I relaxed a little and pulled out a pack of Bubble Yum. “Want some?” 

“You know, you’re good at sharing,” he said, before he kissed me. 

This was true, too. I was good at sharing. On the verge of forty, finally out of grad school and finally employed as a professor with a salary and benefits, I decided that maybe it was time to finally own property, so I had done it. I found a three-bedroom condo with central heat and air. For a while, I debated whether I really needed three bedrooms. But after a lifetime of studying and working at a desk or a card table crammed next to my single bed, or working on a lap pillow in bed, I wanted a bedroom to sleep in and an actual office in a separate room. I just didn’t know if my office should also function as a guest room. In the end, I just went for it—three bedrooms, not two. And while I didn’t know who would ever come to visit, I made my decision based on some inkling of a future life I hoped to build for myself. Whoever it was that might need a place to crash, or might come visit me for the holidays, that’s who my third room was for. 

Now, because of the pandemic, it’s Shasha’s. 

In the backseat, she gives up her game of “I Spy” and starts up with “Wiggle Jiggle Octopus” again. Godfrey’s on autopilot and I honestly think he doesn’t even realize that he’s singing along, which makes me laugh out loud, so then, to hell with it, I join in again, too. One hundred and seventy-three rounds later, we pull into a parking space outside the Aquarium.

About four months into dating, Godfrey brought up the whole “what are we?” conversation. Valentine’s Day was right around the corner, and when he asked the question it was snowing. I remember because every time it starts to snow I stand in front of a window and stare out at the flakes floating in the air, and I think morbid thoughts about how we all just die like death is nothing at all, and when I look at snow like that I always wonder if I’ll ever get to see snow falling again or if that’s going to be the last snow I’ll ever see because it was going to be my last winter on earth.  

“So what do you think?” Godfrey said. “Should we say, It’s been nice knowing ya? Or do we want to proceed?” 

The moment was right for a big talk like that. It was snowing and I was in my morbid mood and there he was in my condo handing me a fresh hot toddy, and I turned away from the window and away from my winter thoughts and I followed him into the kitchen where I stirred my mushroom barley soup and checked the sourdough in the oven. “I’d like to proceed,” I said, “but let’s talk about it?” 

So we talked about it, and we came to an agreement. Proceeding meant: we would go out together for Valentine’s Day, somewhere nice; then I should start spending more time with Shasha; Godfrey and I would start meeting each other’s friends; and we’d start taking for granted that we would be each other’s plus-ones. It did not, however, mean: starting, on Godfrey’s part, to expect any parent-like favors from me. “Such as, for instance, picking up Shasha from school even if I can’t, for any reason. Not even if I, like, really need your help, OK?” 

Godfrey was very clear about wanting to be super clear about this, about having boundaries around how much help he needed where Shasha was concerned. “Not that I don’t need help sometimes, a lot of the time, but for now I just need you to be kind to Shasha, get to know her better, so she knows she can trust you.”

“Of course,” I said. “Yeah.” 

Godfrey was quiet. The gears were really in motion there for a minute, and then he said. “Maybe therapy. That’s one thing I can use your help with, getting her to OT on Tuesdays? I don’t think Miss Sara should be driving her all that way, especially in weather like this.” 

Miss Sara was Shasha’s grandmother, and they had been living in her house since Godfrey realized he couldn’t live in his own anymore, not without his wife there too. He’d intended to rent out the house and find an apartment to live in, but Miss Sara insisted that they move in with her instead so she could help take care of Shasha when Godfrey was at work. After thinking about it, Godfrey decided it was probably what was best for Shasha, if she didn’t have her mother anymore to at least have her grandmother, and so he agreed. Early on when we were dating, when Godfrey first told me about his living arrangement with Miss Sara, he said, “It ended up being what was best for all three of us, without her.” 

“Okay,” I said, crouching down to check my bread, which was done, and while I was facing the oven pretending the loaf wasn’t quite there yet I let out a deep, silent breath. In one evening, I’d gone from just a woman who was casually dating a man with a kid, to a woman suddenly in a relationship with a man with a kid and a dead wife’s mother to meet in two days. Her daughter had been an infectious disease officer in the Army National Guard. I write stories for a living. I didn’t know what Miss Sara was going to make of me.

On Tuesday, I drove to Miss Sara’s and knocked on the door. Shasha opened up, and Miss Sara stood behind her with her hands on her shoulders, protective. 

Shasha smiled up at me and said, “Hi, Ab,” matter of factly. 

I said, “Hi, Shasha.” And then I looked up at Miss Sara and said, “Nice to meet you, ma’am.”  

Then, no longer smiling but suddenly completely serious, Shasha kind of shouted at me, “I like dump trucks!” 

That moment, if it had even been headed at all toward something uncomfortable for either of us, ended up being one where we both chuckled in relief and Miss Sara said, “Ab, now you get in here out of that cold,” and I said, “Thank you, ma’am,” and she said, “Shasha, come get your coat on,” and Shasha held out her arms and rotated her way into her little coat as Miss Sara held it open for her, and I said, “We’ll be back by seven, ma’am,” and Miss Sara nodded and zipped up Shasha’s coat while Shasha sang, “Dump truck, dump truck, dumpyyy truck!” and I swear that’s the moment I fell in love with the little weirdo, without any help from the emergency Xanax I didn’t end up taking to help me get through what promised to be an uncomfortable conversation that ended up not being so bad after all in Miss Sara’s foyer, even if there was a giant deer’s head mounted above the door, looking down at me with its wide open glassy eyes.  

It was only about a month later that the pandemic hit, and it quickly became clear that Godfrey and Shasha needed somewhere else to stay because Miss Sara is in her seventies, and Godfrey’s an ER nurse and he couldn’t keep coming and going and potentially exposing his mother-in-law to the virus. That’s where I came in. My condo was more than big enough for all of us. Shasha got the guest room, which was empty because I hadn’t got that far yet, furnishing just one room at a time. But that made it even more perfect, because we loaded up all her stuff and made that room exactly how she wanted it. And she was happy enough with the final result, and so we were happy, too. 

I don’t know how we lose Shasha. The LI Aquarium has all kinds of social distancing protocols in place, which means each viewing area is cordoned off for each family group to stay together in its own little traveling pod. There isn’t even anything resembling a crowd. Ordinarily, it might be conceivable to lose a child in a busy public space like an aquarium, but with limited reservations and family groups sectioned off and traveling together from marked section to marked section, there isn’t any excuse for it, especially when it comes to Shasha who requires a little extra supervision. Not to mention we bought her tennis shoes that light up with every step she takes, for the express purpose of our being able to track where she is all the time out in public. 

 “Has anyone seen a little girl?” I shout, loud and much shriller than I’ve never heard myself sound before. “She’s got a dump truck. Has anyone seen a little girl with a dump truck? She has pink hair.” 

But then one of the other moms waves down at us from the mezzanine and says, “Up here, hon!” and sure enough when Godfrey and I get up there, there’s Shasha, perfectly fine, mesmerized in front of Queenie, the aquarium’s newest octopus. The mom hustles her own family along, which I notice consists of a dad and two Asian kids. Anyway, the kids walk out trading shark facts and their dad follows them as the mom who found Shasha for us turns back and nods at me and I nod back at her and then they’re gone and Godfrey and Shasha and I have the whole Treasure Room to ourselves. 

“Shasha!” Godfrey drops down to her knees and tries to make Shasha look away from Queenie, and when Shasha won’t turn away and look at her he gets a little frustrated. “Shasha! I’m talking to you! Look at me!”

Shasha turns and looks and sees Godfrey’s face and my face too probably and she lets go of her truck, which clunks on the ground, and she starts crying. And then she’s really crying. 

“Shit,” Godfrey whispers. “Meltdown.” 

And I know what that means. “Can I help?”  

He nods, and I bend myself over around the other side of Shasha’s tiny little body and squeeze. Not too hard, but just enough to create some pressure against her back, as her dad presses too from the front. And as I stand there with Godfrey holding Shasha close with her, I just keep thinking about how sharing my condo with them has made it feel like home. Like a home. And I like it. And we’re here, together, everyone’s safe and found, we’re all okay, and it’s just like any other day at the aquarium. The only difference is right now we’re huddled in a three-person tangle of arms and torsos, and Shasha’s struggling to self-regulate between me and Godfrey, who’s shushing her in a low, soothing voice, saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.” 

I’m still trying to understand how the two of them have become completely integrated into my everyday life, and how I don’t mind it at all, being here for them, holding them, looking like a family. I mean, not looking like a family, but just being one. A family. A cute little six-armed family, holding each other in the Long Island Aquarium while the other families that are also here for today’s sensory-friendly morning just walk by us like nothing at all is wrong, which is never the case when this happens anywhere else in public, and it’s really nice to be ignored, to be just another family doing our thing, which at the moment is still deep-pressure squeezing Shasha to help her calm down. 

But she does start to calm down, slowly. She stops crying, her breaths become more even. Godfrey releases my shoulder and slowly raises his right arm and starts waving it in the air like a wobbly tentacle and he says, “Oooh, Shasha, what’s this?” 

Shasha looks over and hiccups and after a hell of a long time of Godfrey wobbling his arm slowly all over the place finally Shasha says, “Octopus [hiccup]Attack!” 

This is my cue to stop squeezing and stand up again, which I can’t because of my back but I don’t care, and I just start crying. I’m getting the top edge of my mask all damp with my tears because for the first time in my life I feel like I’m okay? Because every once in a while something happens, maybe it’s something big, but I think usually it’s something not big at all, like “octopus attacking” your boyfriend's kid one Sunday in October—and the recognition of who you are and who you want to be hits you right in the throat and you start thinking about fear and how you don’t want it to run your life forever and keep you from ever moving forward, right? 

So here I am squishing a little kid who hates being touched by anyone she doesn’t trust, and whose comfort object is a dump truck, and I’m holding her tight and holding onto her dad and both of us are squeezing as hard as we can but not too hard and I’m bent over and kind of face-to-face with Shasha, too, and behind her I can see Queenie’s soft body pulsing gently in a kind of waltz time with the beating of her three hearts and eight legs and nine brains, as she moves away with ceremonial slowness, all solemn and glittery, and I turn my attention back to Godfrey and start smiling behind my mask, and just like that, with a couple of little hiccups and Shasha’s glass tinkle of a laugh, I’m full on sobbing and reaching into my pocket, and they can’t see me smiling but I am, even though I’m crying, I’m just grinning like a fool in love because I’m okay, Shasha’s okay, and the three of us, we’re going to be okay.