Wet Hill Flip. Flop.

"Do not run down that wet hill in flip flops!" 
I yelled it, half between a beg and a demand.

You've seen a Looney Tunes character get ready to speed off?
Apparently, my daughter was doing just that before she passed me, full speed, down "wet hillside A" to "grass valley B."
I saw the blur around her, a funny paper's cloud with stars and question marks (a flip flop or two present between the punctuation).  What else could I do? To catch her, I ran full speed-down the wet hill, IN FLIP FLOPS!  Blue birds and asterix orbited my child's dish-water-blonde head like she was the sun itself. 



No blood.
Bones intact.
A perfect moment for a
Mommy-Monologue?  
I just said..!  Didn't I just, at this very moment, say...?

Alls well.



That night, while I was putting a dishwasher load away, my daughter was upstairs sifting through emotional layers of her heart like a toddler in a tipped over laundry basket.

I went to her room.  My eyes adjusted to pitch black lit by alarm clock numbers and I wrapped myself around my curled up six year old.  She wept.  "Mommy, I wanna be a big girl," she spoke half between a sob and a yawn.  "I really wanna listen."
With my head on her chest, I was wrapped into her beautiful heartbeat.  Not so long ago, I could only see it pulse on an ultrasound screen, and I most wanted to hear her heart was "good" and "strong," and she was going to grow well until she made the journey from where she once lived-to 'right before our eyes.'

"I wanna listen to you, because you know a lot, especially about flip flops and stuff. I don't know why I don't do what you say Mommy, but I do really love you."
In jerky post emotion breaths, she was coming down; recovering from the big hill she'd talked herself onto, a mental place where she believed she could prove just how I felt about her, and surely there was no other answer but "disappointed."

Not so, Not so, a million times, Not so.
I shook my head. I said, "I love you.  We're in this together, girl."
Then, I told her something about me.  Spoke it right into her neck.  In the dark.
"I just try to see ahead of you, every moment I can, I don't even mean to, but I do it because I want you, I want you to be safe, kiddo."

A bright full color image, a photograph, of me lifting a tiny baby way into the air overtook the dark room for me, she was no bigger than a puppy then. I didn't know how to be a mom.  I didn't trust myself.  I didn't speak her language.  I needed a full-time teacher in order to grow into this role.  And if I was picking--then I wanted someone that believed in me, someone with a heart that was both good, and strong.

This is just what she has given me.