a true story about loss & repair
She Drew It All Morning. The Rain Took It First.
She's dragging chalk through a puddle, trying to push her washed-out sun back up out of the gray.
the realization
I finally stopped cheering her out of it. She didn't need a better drawing tomorrow. She needed me to sit down in the wet and see the one she lost.
She'd been out on the driveway all morning with the chalk. A whole sun, big loopy clouds, something that might've been our dog. Then the sky opened for two minutes and it was gone. Washed down toward the drain before a single person had even seen it.
have you ever felt this way too?
She kept dragging the chalk through the puddle, pressing hard, trying to push her sun back out of the gray water. It just smeared grayer. Coffee still in my hand, I said the easy thing. It's okay, baby, we'll make a better one tomorrow.
But the more I cheered, the more she curled over that spot. I heard it then. The more I talked, the smaller she got. She wasn't crying about tomorrow's drawing. She was crying about this one, the one nobody got to see.
So I set the coffee down on the step and sat in the wet next to her. You worked on this all morning. She pointed at the gray smear and showed me exactly where the sun had been, this whole corner of it. I looked where she pointed. And I stayed.
what I found myself saying
"You worked on this all morning."
"Show me where the sun was."
"I set the coffee down and just sat in the wet next to her."
