{Originally posted on Poot and Cubby}

Dear Elliot,

One day when you are older, I will tell you about the day I rode the subway with tulips in my arms.  I will tell you how people gave me sideways smiles thinking that someone had bought me flowers.  But they couldn’t know what I really held in my hands – that I was carrying fairies to my four-year-old.

A few weeks ago you told me that a fairy lived inside every tulip.  And that if you placed the flowers in your room and made a wish, the fairy would grant your wish while you slept.

So today, I brought you fairies, believing that you were incapable of coming up with an ungrantable wish – that anything you muttered before you said goodnight would be chocolate-related or something equally easy.  Instead, you told me you were going to wish for wings.

In the morning, I will wake up holding my breath.  I will hope that the absence of wings sprouting from your back won’t convince you that beside your bed stand ordinary tulips.  I will tell you that the fairies are so magical, that they gave you the power to imagine your wings as if they were really there.

Then we will look into the center of a flower and if we squint hard enough, we will see one.  Tiny and covered in glitter.  Able to hear only the voices of children who might wish for wings or candy or decent splashing puddles.  Her ears too small to hear the too-big wishes that someone older might have – to reverse the irreversible.  Cure the incurable.  Create the uncreateable.

I know the fairy won’t grant my wish – that you will always see a world of possibilities inside the smallest thing.

But in the moment, I’ll thank you for inviting me into that world.  A world where only we can see that flowers are not really flowers and where little girls can grow wings in their sleep.

Love,

mama

Editor’s Pick by MommyTime at Mommy’s Martini. Andi at Poot and Cubby is relatively new to me, but I was drawn immediately to her delicate way with words. If you liked this post on mothering an imaginative child, you will also love her beautiful take on mothering a boy. In addition to these older children, she has twin nephews that she adores, and so has scaled back her blogging a little bit in recent months. But her three years of archives are rich, and you will not want to miss anything new she posts. So, subscribe already! You’ll be glad you did. And if you want to see the comments on the original post, you can find it here.