Little One comes around the corner of the house on Labor Day, the day before the labor begins in earnest again, her hair still bedraggled wet from running through the sprinkler and the last of summer’s heat, and she finds me under the shade of the lilac bush, to show me this penny she’s found, her eyes big and round too, glinting over this piece of gleaming copper.
And I stroke her cheek in the heavy afternoon light, the bees buzzing thickly, lazily, droning over dahlias, and this sadness rips me open and I whisper, raw and ragged with all this emotion, “O Child, I just want the sunflowers to keep blooming… and your hair to keep curling those tendrils around my heart…. and this summer, your third, to never, ever move on….”
And her face blurs with my surging, teary ache and she grabs my hands and squeezes her eyes shut and prays, “God, help Mom. She wants this to…”
She’s trying to find those words I just said… And there, she finds them. “She wants this to never, ever move on. Help her. Amen.”
And then Little One, button nose freckled and sun-kissed, wraps arms around this neck, looks into brimming eyes and says, “I asked God to help you. So don’t be sad about it.”
Yes, Little One, I’ll smile and not be sad about it, as Summer packs her bags and you grow up and I’ll remember your prayer, the best prayer I’ve ever heard.
Lord, help us Mothers not to be sad about it, any of it. Amen.
Related: Run the River
Photo: Shalom sleeping on Labor Day, feet dangling out of stroller, almost too big…
