LollyPop Chalk

Like colors of chalk upon peppered cement, words wait for fingers to draw a story of a different kind.

In yellow and pink with blue and turquoise too, colors fill lines with shades of waiting….  

LollyPop colors to catch everyone’s eye.  Squished in the middle between hues of blues is a purple head poking up and out towards the right.  Slowly it sneaks apart waiting for a chance, like horses in a race or dogs soon to take chase.  If an innocent’s hand should move for a minute, sweat with one bead, scratch on the side or open wide a LollyPop head shall loft up, up and away.  Into the sky. Gone for good.  No coming back.  Not a chance.

“NO WAIT….It can’t!  There is a wish inside!  Come back!!”

Through green of trees the LollyPop head of chalk soared above blue bird’s nests of brown made of twigs, feathers, paper and mud.  Onward and upward it flew above chimneys and rooftops. Whee, so free it floated over hillsides of roaming cows and meadows of flowers. B.a.c.k and f.o.r.t.h like children on swings!  Push higher still to soar above woods and valleys with rivers so deep.  Shadows passed by the daily sun and soon the silver moon just so.  Yes, a purple puff of round carrying a single string below….Climbing above until it touched Heaven where golden keys unlocked a gate hidden behind clouds of frothy white.

“I’m sad to see you go, to say good-by, to let you go,”  said the little girl who clenched her fist so tight.  She wiped a tear, sorry that her purple balloon of chalk was gone.

Just then an angel appeared, dangling a broken string beneath her feathered wing.  A printed wish was tied to one end.  The angel told the child that all LollyPop’s chalk passing through the gates of Heaven magically turned into poofs of fairy dust.

Eyes of wide gazed at the angel in awe.  “Does this mean that my wish might still come true,” she asked, with hopefulness?

“It already has,” replied the angel,” looking back knowingly, as she flew toward Heaven.

My Baby on Angel’s Wings

Children often have imaginary playmates. I suspect that half of them are really their guardian angels.”~ Quoted in The Angels’ Little Instruction Book, by Eileen Elias Freeman, 1994

I didn’t know I was pregnant.  I lived with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.  My body released an average of only 1 to 3 eggs per year, making the odds of having a baby on my own highly unlikely.  My first baby was conceived with the help of fertility drugs together with a very patient doctor who lived in Michigan.  I wasn’t taking any fertility drugs.

That night, me and my husband sang our made-up song to our little guy.   We did every night before tucking him into his crib.  “It’s time for our boy to go night-night…night-night, my boy.”  A silly song really, but it was a bedtime tradition that he loved.  The three of us sang as we scampered down the hall, hand in hand.  We kissed our son’s rosy cheeks before quietly shutting the door behind us.

Crawling into my own bed, cramps gripped the core of my womb that night.  Turning to look at my husband in the shadows of the desert moon, I remember telling him it felt like, “labor.” Pressure led me to the bathroom while I held the small of my aching belly, no bigger than ever before.  My husband was asleep by then.  Feeling the cool of  Spanish clay tile under my bare feet, I saw imprints upon the floor when I sat down on a seat of porcelain white.  In seconds, what would have been my baby slipped out.  A small part of me, the size of the palm of my hand fell into my own.