My daughter is a witch. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.
***
I’m sitting in a chair at the kitchen table. My head is aching, a pain like a screwdriver stabbed between my eyes twisting itself deeper every time I blink.
“Are you okay, Mummy?” asks the Bump, concerned as she always is, for the welfare of all living creatures, and often plants as well.
“I’m okay, baby. I have a headache, that’s all.”
The Bump frowns and places her tiny, cold hands on either side of my head. The sensation of it soothes and deters the spinning, grinding pain.
“Yes,” the Bump says, her voice soft and gravely serious. “Headaches are white. Some headaches are red, but most are white.”
She stares at me earnestly, waiting expectantly, the way she does when she’s presented me with a fact of the world and is awaiting confirmation that she’s correct.
For a moment, I stare back at her.
“Are they, honey?”
“Yes,” She says, confidently, and repeats “your headache is white.”
And she walks out of the room, the colours of everything in her eyes.
***
Our backyard is overgrown at the moment. Spring rains and general time-poorness mean the grass is too long and the weeds are invading.
Much to the Bump’s delight, we have dandelions. They grow tall, and sprout heavy yellow flowers that puff out into dandelion seeds.
‘Wish flowers’, my daughter calls them. She picks three of them, fat and perfectly spherical. She brings them to The Most Amazing Man and I, and announces that she is granting wishes.
She passes one to me, instructs me to make a wish. Most days I’d play along, closing my eyes for the required second or so and then, selfishly, blowing the wish flower into the wind without an ethereal request for it to carry.
Today, I don’t. Today I close my eyes and think hard, verbalise my wishes internally. I make a wish that we’d settle here, and quickly. That we find our groove, not miss our TinyTrainHouse in the TinyTrainTown quite so much.
I open my eyes, and blow gently, smoothly. I watch the tiny seed pods attached to silken parachutes blow off into the distance, tumbling against the wind, caught in incremental updraughts until they’ve become invisible in their smallness, smattering themselves into the grass to replicate and grow again.
I toss the remaining green stalk into the garden. “No!” says the Bump. “You have to break it first!”
She hands the stalk back to me and I snap it. “Again,” the Bump declares. “It needs to be three.”
I do as instructed, and request my cranky ballerina’s permission to throw it back into the grass.
“Yes…” she says, and watches as I toss the three pieces back into our veritable urban jungle.
“Now it will work,” she promises me assuredly, and goes back to her fairy business.
And, it seems, it does. For the Bumpy girl, if no one else. She’s getting used to her new everything, making friends at her new school. Finding her groove, settling in. Piece by iridescent piece.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
How magical it must be to have her. It is funny the way children can see the world. They make it all seem so simple.
What a precious little girl you have. It is so nice that you encourage such a special gift. You are so blessed to have such beautiful children ❤️
I have become addicted to your writing Lori. That’s a good thing
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How profound! Special little Bump you’ve got there
Indeed she is
She’s got a talent there.
Hope you’re all settling in
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