This Girl…

I know I really ought to be starting the promo work for the new, fresh-off-the-presses book (The Quilt Design Coloring Workbook), but something happened last night that clearly takes priority, a story I simply must share about that girl of mine…

You see, yesterday was her birthday (she’s eight now, can you believe it?) and when it came time to make a wish and blow out her candles (thank you grandma for the cake) she closed her eyes and wished with all her might, a look of absolute determination spreading across her face…

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After blowing out her candles she asked us all, “Do you know what I wished for?” I guessed she had wished for a bunny, because she is desperate for a pet bunny, but my MCAD makes a bunny a rather bad idea right now. Her response floored me, “No, Papa. I asked for what I use all my wishes for, for you to get better, to be healed.” Cue the waterworks, obviously. I sat there at the table on my daughter’s eighth birthday in tears. And of course she came over to give me a hug and comfort me.

This is a complicated world; I often find myself at my wits end or physically broken or just plain exhausted from the effort of navigating each day with MCAD and HKPP. The ups and downs of trying to make some kind of living in the quilt industry is more often than not beyond my meagre abilities. But then there is her…

It is heart-breaking that this wee girl uses her every wish, the birthday candle wishes, the wishing well wishes, the shooting star wishes, and the eyelash wishes, in hopes of me no longer being sick, of coming to a point where we are not in constant worry over what my body will do. As I look over my life there are very few things I feel I have done just right, but obviously Katherine and I are doing something profoundly right with this girl. The word infinite does not even begin to cover just how much I love her…

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And do you know what my wish is? I too wish to be better, to be healed, but for me it is so the burden of my illness can be lifted from this little girl’s shoulders, so she can know what it is like to simply have me there…

That and a bunny for Bee…

More later,
-t

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