Chapter 7
On the third visit, Ava walked into the playroom without the pink hat.
She was not without the hat because anyone had told her to be. She was not without it because anyone had made her a promise about how the world was going to receive her. She was without it because she had decided, in whatever private sequence of reasoning a nine-year-old arrives at on their own timeline, that she was ready for the morning without it.
She sat down across from me at the craft table and said, "I want to put a star on the other side this time."
I turned to Luis. "The lady wants a star," I said.
Mateo was already sketching the next dinosaur on a paper towel.
Jalen had started talking again on his school video calls.
Sophie had decided the heart on my chin needed a companion piece, which she had been designing for two weeks and which she presented to Luis with a formal drawing and a brief verbal presentation.
The covered mirror came down for good on a Wednesday in December, when Ava asked Emily to take the construction paper off and did not ask her to put it back.
I do not tell this story because it reflects well on me. I had a beard and some spare real estate and a Tuesday afternoon, and four children told me exactly what they needed without using those words, and I listened. That is the full extent of what I did.
May you like
What I know is that Jalen was right. Nobody tells you what you are supposed to do until the hair grows back. Nobody hands you a map for the in-between. And sometimes the in-between is exactly where something happens that stays with you longer than the destination on either side of it.
I still have the lightning bolt. Luis offered to even it out twice. I told him the lightning bolt had reasonable medical supervision and was staying where it was.
