-
As Aunt Lilly
cleared the
utensils off the grill, she noticed Molly burying her face into her hands at the
picnic table. “Why the long face?”
-
“I don’t want the Fourth of July
barbeque to be over, yet.”
-
Even Aunt Lilly didn’t want it to be
over. “It was fun, wasn’t it?”
-
Molly nodded. “Can
we have another barbeque next weekend, too?”
-
Dropping the dirty cookware from her
hands, Aunt Lilly went to Molly’s side. “If we had barbeques like this every
weekend, they wouldn’t be as special for us anymore.”
-
Molly lifted her face from her hands,
peering up at her with her big, doe-like eyes. “Yeah, they would.”
-
“You would get used to them and then get
bored.”
-
“I wouldn’t be bored. I never get bored
with stitching together and we do that every weekend.”
-
“That’s different,” she said, knowing
this curt answer would not satisfy her niece’s emotions.
-
Molly challenged her. “How?”
-
She dug deep for an explanation. She,
too, often thought life could be more rewarding if they could always
be barbequing. But then, the parties would become routine, and then
what would they have to look forward to?
“We need extra-special things to look forward to in life,
Molly.”
-
Molly stared blankly at her. “But I get
this big empty feeling the days after we had fun.”
-
She, too, felt the same way after
the fun of a big event. The days after seemed like a let
down compared to the fun of planning it and then experiencing it. “I
feel the same way.”
-
Molly’s eyes grew big. “You do?”
-
She did. She often found herself rushing
her life away waiting for the next big thing. “It’s normal.”
-
“So, why don’t we just have fun all the
time so we don’t have to feel empty?”
-
She sat by Molly’s side. “Imagine
coloring a canvas with the same shade of thread? Would do you think
the design would like look?”
-
Squinting, Molly looked straight ahead
into the distance. “Pretty boring.”
-
“Exactly! Now picture a midnight sky
design that is stitched in dark blue and every ten squares or so we
add a sparkle of silver metallic thread.”
-
A smile grew on Molly’s face as she
turned her attention back to her. “That would be much prettier!”
-
She spoke quickly so she wouldn’t lose
her train of thought. “Imagine if we had stitched the whole sky with
this sparkly metallic thread instead of the dark blue? What would you
think, then?”
-
Molly lifted her head high as if
something clicked in her brain. “I think it would be too much sparkle.
Then, the stars wouldn’t be as pretty anymore.”
-
She was actually getting somewhere with
this, much to her surprise. “It would be so much better to have a
little bit of both, right?”
-
Molly nodded her head.
-
“Well, parties are like the sparkly
thread—too much is too much, you know? But—” She paused for dramatic
effects, “a few here and there would be oh so magical.”
-
“Oh so magical.” Molly giggled,
mimicking her. “Wow, Aunt Lilly, that’s a really cool way of looking
at it.” She lolled her head to the side. “But what about the emptiness
I feel?”
-
“If you search deep enough into the most
plain of colors, you’ll be sure to see their magic. Each moment, like
each color, has beauty in it to keep us happy. We just have to look
closer sometimes.”
-
“Just look closer?”
-
Aunt Lilly hugged her niece. Molly would
learn soon enough that life went by too fast. Living one day at a time
wasn’t always easy, but it sure beat skipping over time as though it
were replaceable. “That’s what I’ve been told.”
