Page 32 of Eleanor & Grey
Mom was never one to make promises she couldn’t keep.
“Your dad went out to clear his head and will probably be out for a while. You want to drive over to Laurie Lake?”
“Are you OK enough to travel?” I asked warily.
“I promise, Ellie. I’m OK.”
“OK.”
We headed to the lake and walked out to our secluded area. It was hot that late morning. The high was supposed to be around ninety-five degrees, but it already felt like it was triple digits.
We sat under the sun, melting and drinking from the water bottles we’d brought. It was quiet for a while. I wondered if we were quiet because we didn’t have anything to say or because we didn’t know how to say it.
Mom tilted her head up to the sky with her eyes closed and felt the sun beating against her skin. “I was thirty-three the first time I found out I had cancer. You were two years old.”
I turned to face her, stunned. “You’ve had cancer before?”
“Yes. You were so young, and I remember crying with you in my arms, because the idea of leaving this world was too hard toface. You were so new to me, and your father and I had fought so hard to have you in our lives. You were just becoming your own person. I was watching you grow into this beautiful little girl with her own personality. I thought about all the things I’d miss, all the firsts you hadn’t even discovered. Your first day at school, your first dance... your first boyfriend, your first kiss. Your first heartbreak. I remember getting so mad at the world, at my own body for bringing you to me only to take me away. It felt unfair. I felt as if I’d betrayed myself. One day when my worries were so loud and my heart was breaking, do you know what your father said to me?”
“What?”
“‘You’re still here, Paige. You’re still here.’ That changed everything for me. I just need you to know that, too, OK?” She took my hand into hers and patted it gently. “I’m still here, Ellie.”
“I can’t stop thinking about if you weren’t, though. I thought yesterday was...” I shut my eyes and inhaled hard. “I thought you were gone...”
“I know, but even if a day comes when you can’t physically see me, I’m still here. Always.”
I took a breath.
That was a difficult concept.
“I’m really scared, Mom,” I confessed.
“Fear’s OK, as long as you don’t let it drown you.” She looked down at her hands. “Do you know the story behind the dragonflies?” she asked. “Do you know what they stand for?”
“No. You’ve never told me.”
“In almost all parts of the world, the dragonfly stands for change and transformation. They live most of their life as a nymph. Do you know what that means?”
“Like a fairy?”
She smiled. “Well, that’s one of the meanings, but in this case it means an insect with incomplete metamorphosis. It’s the stage before it gets its wings. Dragonflies only actually fly for a small fraction of their lives.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Crazy, right? When you see dragonflies, you would believe they fly all their lives, but you don’t take into account the number of flightless days that came before. The dragonfly never gets down on itself for not having wings, though. It never overthinks when they will come. It just lives fully in the moment. That’s what they mean to me: living in the moment. They live each day moment by moment, not overthinking the future.”
I knew what she was getting at. “I’m not a dragonfly, Mom. I can’t help but overthink everything.”
“I know. I’ve been overthinking things, too, but I also want to find the good moments. I don’t want the next however many days to be filled with sad times, Ellie. I want to know the good things. I like to think you can find a reason to smile every single day if you look hard enough. So can you do that for me? For us? Can you find a reason every single day to smile?”
“Yes,” I promised, even though I didn’t know if it was true. For her, I’d try. I fiddled with my fingers as dragonflies buzzed around in the distance. “You didn’t miss one of the firsts,” I told her. “Greyson kissed me two nights ago.”
Mom’s eyes lit up, and for the first time in the past twenty-four hours, she smiled, a real smile filled with happiness. “Oh my gosh.” She placed her hands on top of mine. “Tell me everything.”
As I told her, she kept smiling ear to ear, and I realized I was smiling too, not because Greyson had kissed me, but because Mom was happy that day. Seeing her glow felt so amazing. Seeing her not crying was what made my lips curve upward.
She was my reason to smile.
