“This tastes like death!”

“What!” Shouted Julia, while Sybil scolded her daughter.

“Rosa! What an awful thing to say.”

“Well mummy, the last time we had this, I told you it tasted gross and Julia told me if I used those words again then she wouldn’t talk to me for a month, so I used different words.” “Different maybe Rosa. But in fact, they are worse.”

Julia stormed out of the dining room with her wings on her hips, while George sat across the table from Rosa with an amused smile on his face, while Timmy giggled and Brenda lay fast asleep in her cot in Rosa’s room.

“It would be better to use kinder words, young lady,” it was time for George to come to the rescue of his eldest daughter before his wife got a little out of hand.

“Sorry daddy, but this is… this is.. I’m sorry, I can’t find kinder words.” She took a deep breath and pushed her plate into the middle of the table.

Another glorious day in paradise.

“Nirvana! Nirvana! Nirvana!” shouted Pawo at the top of his lungs as he took a deep breath of salty air and extended his wings as far as they would go and looked out over the Atlantic Ocean towards Africa.

“It truly would be nirvana if God realised he made a mistake by creating seagulls and fed them all baking soda.”

Pawo scowled at Elizabeth with whom he had just finished doing yoga, thereby welcoming in a new day. “You don’t agree?” asked Elizabeth.

“No,” replied Pawo, “they are God's creatures. We need to be nice to them and welcome them into our paradise.” Elizabeth disagreed as she bent down to pick up her towel and shook it violently to get rid of all the sand. Pawo covered his eyes as she did that.

“You’ve never been dived bombed by one of those ugly creatures, have you?”

“Daddy, are you as old as dirt?”

George dropped the newspaper he was reading, Julia let out a sharp laugh, Sybil smiled her evil smile, Timmy rolled his eyes and Brenda kept sleeping peacefully in her cot in Rosa’s room.

“Why do you ask me a question like that, young lady?”

“Well,” continued Rosa putting her crayon down and looking at her father laying on his favourite deck chair. “Well, my bestest friend Anjali, told me her father is 50 years old and then she asked me how old you were, and I said 500 years. So, she told me you must be as old as dirt!”

George shook his head in disbelief. By now one would think he would be used to his second youngest daughter’s outrageous pronouncements, but every time he felt he couldn’t hear anything more outrageous, Rosa surprises him. Before he said anything more, George looked around at his family as if he was looking for support, but none appeared to be forthcoming. So again, he was on his own. Sybil as usual looked at him with the same look which meant, ‘she’s your daughter, not mine,’ and so he continued.

“What are you doing little one?”

“Colouring in a Junior Ranger colouring book, mummy.”

“Oh, I see. Where did you get that from?”

Rosa stopped and looked up at her mother with a crayon in her hand. “We had a Park Ranger come to school today and she talked about all the things there are to see and do in a national park.” Rosa smiled at her mother and then blurted out the sentence Sybil never thought she would hear from one of her children. “Can we go camping one day mummy in a national park?”

Sybil nearly dropped her ice cream bowl. George smiled and looked up from the newspaper he was reading. Julia let out a sharp laugh, while Timmy giggled and Brenda remained fast asleep in her cot in Rosa’s room. “That’s a great idea!” Julia picked up on what Rosa had mentioned. “Yes, mama, let’s go camping and I can make dinner on a campfire.”

“And I can roast marshmallows on a campfire,” added Rosa getting overly excited.

One Sunday morning before anyone else in the house had stirred, Rosa woke up and instead as she usually did jump out of bed and begin her day in earnest, she instead lay in bed for a while looking up at the ceiling and then over at the little cot close to her bed and smiled as she saw Brenda laying on her stomach fast sleep.

She smiled for a second and then said quietly, “you know what God, I love my little sister. At first, when my mummy told me she was having another chick, my heart was broken. I knew I would no longer be the youngest in my family and that there would be someone younger than me. But you know what God, it’s all because of you that my little heart is overjoyed with love. You changed my heart. You made me look at life differently nowadays. I can no longer be the brat my brother Timmy tells me I am. I have to be a role model for Brenda. I don’t want her to grow up and be a brat like me. She can be a JAP though just like me, but not a brat. And God while we are talking, you are listening to me, aren’t you? I thought so. So I will continue. Please make my sister Julia stop talking with a strange accent. She thinks that she should wear clothes that make her look like Dolly Parton and my mother, oh well she’s just doing the best she thinks for us little ones. But please can you while she’s asleep come to her like a dream and tell her to stop being bossy and be more like my daddy.”

The alarm sounded. Rosa opened her eyes slowly and smiled. The sun was shining through her window, warming up her bedroom nicely. She looked over at the cot where her baby sister, Brenda, was sleeping on her stomach and took a deep breath letting it out slowly. She then threw off her sheet, sat up, abruptly clapped her wings and shouted, “Today will be a great day! I am a gift from God!”

Brenda jumped, turned over and groaned, but smiled when she saw her sister sitting up in bed. But then their bedroom door opened. An out of breath Sybil poked her head around the corner and first looked at Brenda and then at Rosa. “What was that noise?” she asked. “Nothing,” replied Rosa, believing what she had said out loudly wasn’t noise, but words of inspiration which would alter her day.

“What happened to you? You look like you were in the war.” A question directed to Max when Julia, Timmy and he came out of Chaim’s Jewish Deli walking into the bright, warm sunshine, and had as suggested by Chaim turned left to the taxi stand.

“Well kind of,” replied Max, whose normally pristine feathers were somewhat ruffled.

“Oy vey!” replied one of the two crows standing next to an old dilapidated looking car with the word, ‘TAXI,’ scratched into the paint.

“What happened, tell us?” asked the seemingly more aggressive of the two crows.

“I had a fight with a few seagulls,” he replied, “it was nothing.”

“Nothing!” repeated the other crow, “I know about nothing, and that’s not nothing. That’s pretty serious stuff.”

“And believe me, he knows about serious stuff,” added the first crow. “Moshe here was in the Israeli Special Forces. He knows about nothing.”

“Hi daddy! I have a present for you,” said Rosa as she walked through the front door of the nest, dropping her book bag and handing her father an envelope, instead of allowing him to wrap his large wings around her. Rosa then continued walking towards the kitchen. At first, George was a little alarmed at his second eldest daughter’s behaviour. But instead of asking her to come back, he watched to see if she would hug her mother instead, which would mark a giant change in her behaviour. However, she waved to her mother and continued into the kitchen where Julia was waiting for her with a snack she had prepared. Rice Krispy Pie. George finally had to say something as this behaviour was so uncharacteristic of Rosa, and so he called her back. Rosa sighed as she was looking forward to a slice of Rice Krispy Pie and turned around, walked out of the kitchen and stood by her mother. Sybil of course was delighted with this change in Rosa, misreading it as she normally did.

I stood in front of the door. I read the sign above it for the third time. Sam’s Computer Repair Shop. It just didn’t look like any computer service store I’d ever been to. The plate glass windows on either side of the door were blacked out. I hesitated to open the door. I wasn’t afraid of what I might in there. It was just that I had a peculiar feeling. I couldn’t put it into words though. Maybe it was just that whenever I have wanted to get my computer fixed or updated or something I couldn’t handle technologically, I went to a place called Alphatech Computer Sales and Service, and guess what, it looked like a computer repair shop. This place didn’t. When I peered through the glass door it seemed dark inside and even though it’s located on a busy main street, it looked as if it should be in a back alley in a not so nice part of town. But this was where I was told to go by a friend who swore by the place.

“Where’s Brenda?” shouted Sybil.

“Where’s Rosa?” asked George, not ready to panic just yet.

“They’re out here,” shouted an overly excited Elisabeth who was outside having just finished hatha yoga with Pawo.

“What?” the entire nest shouted, running to look out of the window, where they saw Elisabeth standing with Rosa and Brenda not far from her.

“What are you doing out there?” shouted a still panicky Sybil, quickly putting on her shoes so that she could run outside and grab her two youngest children.

“Rosa told me she was taking Brenda to show and tell.”

“You are what you eat!” announced Rosa pushing her salad topped with tuna towards the centre of the table.

Sybil looked at her over the rim of her glasses, something she decided to wear even though she had perfectly good eyesight, after being told by one of the mothers, that it made her look studious. “It’s tuna, little one,” she said quietly, “you love tuna.”

“Yes mummy, I do. But we’ve had it 500 times.” As soon as those words left her mouth, Rosa shot a look over at her aunt Elizabeth who had joined them for dinner. “100 times,” Rosa corrected herself and shot another look over at Elizabeth who said nothing but steadily ate her salad enjoying every mouthful. Much better than what she had at home, and it was made even more pleasurable by Jeremy’s absence. He was on a business trip. Though no one in the Blau family knew what sort of business trip it was.

“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” shouted Rosa in her usual manner as she opened the front door of the nest and flew in slamming the door shut behind her. She ran right into her father who as usual was standing a few feet back from the door. As she did so, he wrapped his wings around her. “Daddy guess what?” she asked stepping back to look around her father’s portly figure to see if her mother was standing in her usual place, barring her entry into the kitchen before giving her at least a kiss. But her mother wasn’t in her usual place.

“What Rosa?” asked George, but for the moment Rosa had been sidetracked. She didn’t like change much, and to her Sybil not standing guard over the entrance to the kitchen was change.

“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” Shouted Rosa running out on to the deck where she stood next to her father as he lay on his chair reading the Sandpit Times. “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” Rosa repeated, “can you buy me a farm?”

George turned, lowered his sunglasses and looked at his youngest daughter. “Good afternoon, young lady,” he said calmly pretending he didn’t hear Rosa’s request. But Rosa wasn’t having any of it. She stood there with her wings holding onto the side of the lounge chair rocking on her feet. She wasn’t going anywhere until she had heard the answer she expected from George.

The Blau family were in for a shock. They had recently returned from visiting New Jersey in the dead of winter, just so Elizabeth could explain to Rosa the difference between seeing snow in a photograph and actually being in snow, when they woke up one morning to a vast winter wonderland.

“Look!” shouted Rosa flying into her parents’ bedroom and bouncing on their bed which was something she had been told many times not to do, “look daddy, mummy, look outside. The beach is gone.”

It was those last four words that shook her parents out of their deep slumber, believing that while they were asleep a giant tsunami had hit North Topsail Beach and washed all the sand out to sea, on its way to Africa. They screamed and jumped out of their bed. Rosa didn’t know her excitement would cause her parents to panic. She tried to make the best of it.

“It’s not Tuesday!” Rosa announced as she walked into the kitchen where Julia was busy preparing dinner.

“I know that, Rosa. I can read.”

“Then why are we having tacos?”

Julia laughed. “Just because it’s Thursday doesn’t mean we can’t have tacos.”

“Yes, it does. We are only allowed to have tacos on Tuesday. That’s why when they invented the calendar they made it Taco Tuesday. You’re not allowed to have tacos on any other day.” “Ha, you’re wrong,” replied Julia, busily cutting up tomatoes and onions for the salsa. “But that doesn’t mean you have to have some of it. You can just have the meat without the taco.”

“What’s the meat?”

“Chicken,” replied Julia knowing that would upset her sister, and it did.

Rosa yawned.

“Time to go to bed young lady?” asked George who closed the book he was reading to her. Rosa yawned again and lay her head on her father’s shoulder.

“Yes daddy, I think so. I feel very tired.”

“Well, you’ve had a very busy day, haven’t you?”

Rosa nodded and closed her eyes. “Yes daddy, but you know what the best part of the day was?”

George smiled. He had an idea, but he had to ask. “What was the best part of the day?”

“Right now, daddy, when you read me a chapter from Little Women. The book is much better than the movie though.”

“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” shouted Rosa as she flew from bedroom to bedroom waking up everyone. And as the occupants groaned Rosa pulled the curtains aside. She then flew into the living room and opened those curtains as well because the occupant of that room, Elizabeth, was asleep on the couch. She groaned the most and tried though unsuccessfully, to pull the quilt back over herself. “Wake up! Wake up!” Rosa continued to shout and Elizabeth who had fallen asleep on the couch after drinking too much the prior evening, had been allowed to stay the night, instead of having an overly eager Jeremy walk her home. They didn’t trust Jeremy to take Elizabeth home without a detour down by the beach and the water’s edge. Jeremy was crestfallen when he was booted out of the house, even though he had unsuccessfully tried to plead his case.

“Whose idea was this anyway?” asked a shivering Julia.

“Rosa’s!” shouted everyone except of course, Rosa. The Blau family stood on a snow covered Atlantic City boardwalk.

“Yes Rosa, why did you make us come here in the middle of January?” Timmy being the skinniest of the lot tried to hide behind his father, the most corpulent of the lot, but failed miserably. Elizabeth, who had agreed to tag along in the hope of teaching Rosa a lesson about photographs of snow and actually being in the middle of the snow, watched Jeremy begin to move sideways closer to her.

“I can keep you warm,” he whispered to Elizabeth who lashed out with her wing sending him flying through the snow and ending up on the beach. “This is just like home!” he replied grinning from ear to ear. “You need to do that more often.” He looked at a fuming and shivering Elizabeth.

“What’s that doing on the table?” asked Sybil, her voice climbing as she pointed to a round glass container.

“What’s what doing on the table?” replied George pretending not to notice the small glass container in the centre of the table.

“That!” Sybil emphasised pointing even more determinedly with her wing.

“Oh, that,” replied George hoping he could come up with an answer which would placate his wife. However, after scanning all his brain cells and finding he couldn’t, he defaulted to the truth. “Ha,” he began, “you have to ask Rosa, she put it there.”

“Why would Rosa put that there?” she asked this time hoping George would finally tire of going around in circles and illuminate her.

“It’s cream cheese,” he replied looking quickly around the room for his youngest daughter, but she wasn’t there.

“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” shouted both Julia for whom that was unusual and Rosa for whom that was standard, as they ran through the front door of their nest, bypassing George’s open wings and throwing their school bags in the direction of the far wall closest to the kitchen, where Sybil stood to avoid any collateral damage from Rosa flying into her father’s arms. But on that day, it was different.

Both Julia and Rosa came in together, though they finished school at different times, thus completely changing the order of business. George felt dejected. He lowered his wings and turned to follow his daughters’ progress into the nest. He wasn’t yet caught up in their exuberance. “Guess what?” shouted Rosa who was the least out of breath and began the conversation with her trademark question.