Wednesday
Picture 2
Kimmydon's Choice: Picture 1
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“Okay, Daddy,” Sarah said, holding out the glass jar. “Will you put the tag on?”
Gold glittered at the bottom of the jar, fluttering as she moved with it. Instinctively, I reached out to steady it.
Sarah’s five year-old face soured. “I’m not going to drop it! I can do it myself!” she reminded me petulantly.
She was right, of course. The jar wasn’t heavy, and even if she did drop it, from three feet, it wasn’t likely to shatter.
“Yes, you can.” She held the sticker label out to me. “What do you want it to say? Happy Mother’s Day?”
Sarah shook her head, blond pigtails waving. “Wishes,” she insisted. “I have dreams in my room; Mommy can have wishes in hers.”
She was still young enough that most of the dreams in that jar belonged to her namesake, my sister. “Have you put any dreams in there?”
Sarah rolled her eyes impatiently. “Yes.”
“Mommy wrote them down?” I was surprised Beth hadn’t mentioned it to me.
Sarah shook her head again, bouncing a little now. “I drew them!” she told me proudly. “Daddy? Who put the dreams in my jar? I put the wishes in Mommy’s jar. Did you or Mommy put them there?”
We’d told her about her Aunt Sarah and her grandparents that weren’t with us, trying to explain their deaths to a child who had never met them. It wasn’t entirely successful, but she understood now why she only had one grandma and one grandpa while her friends had two or more of each. My sister was harder to explain. There was a picture of her in the stairwell, taken in Paris on a family vacation, and another with my grandparents, but they were the only ones in the house.
“Sarah, do you remember what we told you about Aunt Sarah?” I asked, not sure how much I needed to rehash.
Sarah tittered a little. “She looks like me!”
I sighed quietly. That would be the thing she remembered. It was absolutely true. I didn’t have any memory of Sarah at this age, I was only a baby myself, but I had grown up with both of our baby books and photographs. Also, as she got taller and thinner, shedding baby fat, she looked more and more like the teenager I remembered, the big sister I admired so much. Same blond hair, same blue eyes, same sly smile that spoke of something you didn’t know about and were probably happier that way. That wasn’t so bad in a sister. I worried every time I saw that glint in my daughter’s eyes. It usually meant I was in trouble with the wife and cleaning up after.
I returned to the topic at hand. “You remember that she used to live here, in this house?”
“In my room!” she shouted, even more excited. She had loved her ‘big girl bed,’ which was Sarah’s old double. I worried about losing her in all the blankets and sheets, but she had never fallen out, never gotten too badly tangled. She stopped bouncing and twirling, a thoughtful look crossing her soft features. “Those are Auntie Sarah’s dreams?”
My daughter, or more correctly perhaps, Beth’s daughter, was bright. She could probably read some of those dreams, depending on the words Sarah had used. I was constantly surprised by what my daughter was capable of.
“Yes.”
She pouted. “But my wishes are just stickers. No one made them special, not like Auntie Sarah did my dreams.”
I chuckled and scooped her up along with the jar she still held. She tucked easily against my chest, and although I wouldn’t want to carry her more than a few blocks, she didn’t feel very heavy. “Silly Sarah,” I teased. “You made them special. Mom’s going to love it.”
Sarah smiled and kissed my cheek while hugging my neck.
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