By Her Word

“A fairy lives in my yard,” she said with eyes that were intense.

“What?” I said without even thinking.

“A fairy.  It’s been living there for awhile.  I even built a house for it,” she said, looking me straight in the eye.

I had to think for a minute when this child spoke of fairies.  I had never once thought her to be a tale-teller.  She had always been honest with me since the day we had met.  And now, right before she was to leave my life forever, she tells me this. Something that she may have never told anyone else.

“How do you know it’s a fairy? ” I asked, with eyes that were, no doubt, widened by an inch.

“Because it looks like one,” she said with even wider eyes that pierced my question with a sharp arrow, causing it to drop like a pine cone to the hard ground.

She didn’t think I believed her, and she was looking at me like someone who desperately wanted approval, but would also be willing to put up a good fight for it, if necessary.

And, that’s when I started thinking about my own life.  It was one of those swift slide shows of images of experiences that someone has, that goes by so fast that it makes a person wonder if they’ve lost time.

Later on that day, I thought about it again.  I thought about how children are raised with fairy tales, and angels, and magical worlds that the rest of us have lost.  And,  I wondered again if I should have been more respectful to that beautiful child, who believed it all.

But, then again, just because I’ve never seen a fairy, doesn’t mean that none exist.

Perhaps they do.

But, of course, in order for me to recognize one if I saw one, I had to ask one more question of that child with the determined spirit.

“What does it look like?” I asked, trying to believe.

And, without even a glimmering moment lost, she answered as only a child would.

“Like a  fairy……“