And I held fairies in my hands
{Originally posted on Poot and Cubby}
Dear Elliot,
One day when you are older, I will tell you about the day I rode the subway with tulips in my arms. I will tell you how people gave me sideways smiles thinking that someone had bought me flowers. But they couldn’t know what I really held in my hands – that I was carrying fairies to my four-year-old.
A few weeks ago you told me that a fairy lived inside every tulip. And that if you placed the flowers in your room and made a wish, the fairy would grant your wish while you slept.
So today, I brought you fairies, believing that you were incapable of coming up with an ungrantable wish – that anything you muttered before you said goodnight would be chocolate-related or something equally easy. Instead, you told me you were going to wish for wings.
In the morning, I will wake up holding my breath. I will hope that the absence of wings sprouting from your back won’t convince you that beside your bed stand ordinary tulips. I will tell you that the fairies are so magical, that they gave you the power to imagine your wings as if they were really there.
Then we will look into the center of a flower and if we squint hard enough, we will see one. Tiny and covered in glitter. Able to hear only the voices of children who might wish for wings or candy or decent splashing puddles. Her ears too small to hear the too-big wishes that someone older might have – to reverse the irreversible. Cure the incurable. Create the uncreateable.
