By the Grace of God

I'm blinded for a moment. An unobstructed ray of sunlight flashes over my eyes. I close them and wait for it to pass. My eyelids glow a shade of garnet. I make a conscious effort to relax my brow and allow the light to be bright without squinting. My eyelids go black again. A cloud most likely, braving a journey across the sky. I ponder for a moment where it's headed. Perhaps to the coastline, and then to cascade into salty, blue waters. Or maybe the desert, to save a starved, sweating soul at the mercy of the sun. I open my eyes.

There she is. My Grace. She hardly resembles me. Her dark, curly hair and piercing blue eyes are her father's. It doesn't matter to me in the slightest. She is my world. No. She is the sun. I'm a planet religiously revolving around her. I rely on her to melt the snow in the summers and dry me after I've walked too long in the rain. Frozen. That's where I'd be without her. Stuck in a dead-end job, in a dead-end relationship, praying, hoping, wishing for a swift death.

Her head turns to look at me, a short, chocolate strand of hair tickling her nose. Perhaps I shouldn't have given her curtain bangs. But that's what Grace asked for. She said, 'I want to look just like you, Mama.'

I find my lips curl into a smile of their own accord. She has a way of making that happen. Any sense of control I had over my emotions dissipates when she looks up at me with her cobalt blue eyes. I searched the internet for hours trying to find a name for their color. I had to find a word to put to her eyes. It's not perfect, but it helps me explain to her why I love her when she asks.

She flashes me a smile as well and stretches a hand outward to me just to wave it furiously as if saying, 'Hi, Mama! I'm right here in case you were wondering!' With that, she crouches back down in the grass, eyes immediately entertained by something of great interest in the soil.

I can't help but let out an amused huff at her antics. I rise from the white, plastic lawn chair I had been sitting in for the past twenty minutes. It wasn't the most comfortable, but the sentimental value made it unbearable to tape a "FREE" sign onto it. 

Grace and I had gone to the hardware store. I was buying door knobs for her closet and she insisted on helping me. How could I refuse? We had just painted the closet blue with bumblebees. I've always told Grace never to fear bees. I never needed to tell her that. She doesn't fear anything. Another thing she gets from her father.

As I searched through the drawers of doorknobs, Grace found the patio furniture section of the store. Suddenly, Grace came running to me in tears with a white piece of broken plastic in her hands. Cobalt was glossed over by liquid guilt and helplessness. 

'Mama, I broke it, I'm so sorry,' She cried, her face morphing in a way that mirrored the twisting of my heart. I assured her that we needed a new chair and she could help me break off the other three legs to match. 

I scrunch my toes, a few cool blades of grass poking out between them. I inhale. I exhale. I walk to Grace and crouch down. She is sitting in the dirt of the garden we planted earlier in the year. 

She turns her head to me and points at the ground. A wordless exchange like so many we've had before. She's very outgoing but knows I'm not good with words. She does the talking for both of us. I guess she doesn't get nervous asking waiters to put the cheese on the side as I do.

Sometimes I wish she would need me to talk. Maybe then I could learn to be a better parent for her. She enables me, and she doesn't even know what that word means yet.

"What did you find?" I ask, placing a hand on her back. The fabric of the little yellow sundress she's wearing is warm from the sun.

"Here," she exclaims, scooping with her tan hands a bunch of flower buds she had placed in a pile. Dropping them into my hands, she wears a proud smile, one of my favorites in her closet of many expressions. "I picked these flowers for you!"

"Thank you so much, Love!" I gasp and bring the clump of yellow flowers to my chest, bottom lip poking out a bit further than the top as if to show I'm on the verge of tears from her kind act. "Come here," I say and hold my arms open wide, fragile, yellow petals squashed in the fingertips of my left hand. They are already forgotten by Grace and me. It was all in the gesture.

She bounces into my arms in a way only a five-year-old can do. My arms instinctively wrap tighter around her little body.

I smile as I vow to never tell Grace she picked the cucumber buds off of the plant. She doesn't need to know. We probably won't grow any this year now because it's too late in the season. I couldn't care less. I only worry Grace will be disappointed when there is no fruit on the bush. I'll buy cucumbers from the store and lay them under the plant.

She's too good for this world. A world she's barely beginning to understand. A world I thought was over until she came into it.

"Do you love me, Mama?" She asks, lifting her head from where it was tucked against my heart.

"With everything, baby."

"What do you love about me?"

"Your heart. It's as pure as the mountain air and as soft as Christofur's fur," I reply, nose burying into the crook of her neck.

Grace giggles upon hearing the name of her squirrel. The squirrel she "rescued" from our front yard and then invited into our house. When I asked why she let a squirrel into our house, I was fuming.

'He was cold,' she had explained to me like it was the most obvious thing in the world. I remember at that moment my anger dissipating into thin air. I know for a fact that the squirrel was completely fine where it was outdoors and would much rather be there. But she showed so much kindness.

"I love you, too, Mama," she says, pulling away from the hug and turning to the garden. "I'll make you a 'bookie' of flowers." Grace begins picking the last remaining golden buds from the cucumber bush. I don't stop her. 

"Bouquet, Gracie," I correct.

"Buh-kay," she repeats.