As Long as You're Wishing

When people ask me to tell them about Sadie, I always start with, "Sadie was never a baby." It's true. She was wise in the eyes, letting me know, from the day she was born, that she was smarter than I, an older soul. By four months, she had a vocabulary of about 50 words. She was speaking in sentences by the tenth month, when I discovered I was pregnant with Georgia.

I didn't know any better--didn't know that this was unusual. I'd never been around babies. (In fact, when Georgia was two and barely stringing a sentence together, I thought she might be "delayed.") It was odd, though, hearing the well-articulated thoughts of an angelic-looking toddler, the "I don't like that lady" directed at the stranger in the elevator, the "She has a jelly belly" at the pool. Kids don't even begin to get their filters until they're four or five, I think (some maybe never--Lola).

They say that memory is tied to language acquisition, which is why Sadie has always been able to remember things from before she was two. Anyway, all of this is just background to give you context for a lesson my oldest daughter taught me a few months after my sister died. Sadie was about two-and-a-half by this time and had had plenty of time to miss Kelly and let the idea of Death sink in. She and Kelly had been very close, lying together in the hospital bed day after day for the long stretches my sister was treated for cancer. Losing her aunt had been hard on Sadie, not to mention the fact that everyone around her was grief-stricken too.

So we were driving around in the car one afternoon and Sadie said, "I wish nobody ever had to die."

Well, being the adult, and wanting to offer her some comfort by way of a logical explanation of why that was impossible, I responded, "If no one died, there wouldn't be enough room in the world for the new babies." Then I started explaining life cycles...blah...blah...blah..., watching as anger and incredulity spread across her face. Before I had the good sense to stop myself, she stopped me, screaming, "THEN I WISH THAT EVERY TIME A BABY IS BORN THE WORLD WOULD GET BIGGER."

Sure. How dare I tread on her wish that way? It was a WISH, for god's sake; why put limits on it?

That moment changed me.

I've always loved Lyle Lovett's "If I Had a Boat." It reminds me of that moment--and of my sister, who was a lot like Sadie and who always wished big.