Wishes for Sunshine

"All thoughts create thought-forms. When you think about anything, an electrical impulse is released. Its charge gathers into a form that appears clairvoyantly like a soap bubble. The thought-form creates, manifests, and attracts that which is similar to it."
— Doreen Virtue

Wishes for Sunshine

Susanna stared intently down at the piece of paper in front of her at the kitchen table, and reached for a crayon. Over the next few minutes, her picture slowly took shape, and with an appraising, critical eye only a six-year-old can possess, she laid down her crayons and sat back in her chair. She brushed a wisp of stray hair out of her face and sighed, picking up her picture for closer inspection. A fuzzy blue-grey mass complete with wide, dark eyes and short, twisted horns returned her gaze.

"I wish you were real," she said softly, gently touching its waxy fur. "You could protect me and nobody would be mean to me ever again."

She jumped in her seat as she heard the garage door start to rise, and hurriedly shoved the paper and crayons into the backpack at her feet, pulling out her math homework and a pencil instead. "Three plus four is...seven..." she whispered, and carefully wrote her answer in her workbook. "Two plus seven is...nine..."

The back door opened and slammed shut and Susanna winced. She had learned to tell what kind of an evening it would be by how her daddy closed the door when he got home from work. If he shut it normally, they would have dinner, he would help her with her homework, and maybe there would be time for a board game or a couple episodes of cartoons. He would tuck her into bed and kiss her forehead goodnight, making sure to leave the door open just a crack the way she liked it. In the morning, she would have breakfast and lunch waiting for her, all packed up and ready for school.

If he slammed the back door, well...it wasn't pleasant. He would lock himself in his bedroom with a bottle of something that smelled horrible. Sometimes she could hear him talking on the phone and yelling or crying or throwing things. She would make herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, do her homework as best she could and as quietly as she could, and put herself to bed. In the morning, she would get up early and make her own breakfast and lunch, making sure she was on time for the bus, and hope that her daddy had a better day at work.

He tried to be a good daddy, she reasoned. He was just sad all the time. And work made him sadder. She did her best to stay small and quiet and out of the way when he was in a bad mood, but sometimes she couldn't help but be noticeable, like the time she needed new shoes for school, or the time she accidentally tripped on the porch stairs outside and snagged a hole in her tights.

Lately, though, there had been more of the bad days. Susanna didn't know why. Her mom had left them when Susanna was just four years old, her daddy had told her. She just didn't want kids, he had said. So for the past couple of years, it had been just the two of them. But still...it had been two years. She barely remembered her mom, and she wasn't sad anymore. Why was he?

"Hi, Daddy," she said carefully and glanced up, as her father entered the kitchen.

"Why isn't your homework done yet?" Kyle asked, ignoring her greeting.

"It's almost done, Daddy. Just five more questions. There was a lot today," she replied.

Kyle grunted in response, opened the small cabinet above the refrigerator, and grabbed a half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon. Susanna quickly averted her gaze and turned back to her homework while Kyle stalked out of the kitchen and down the hall, slamming his bedroom door shut.

A few minutes later, her homework finished, she quietly packed her workbook back into her backpack, and carried it over to the back door where she hung it up on a low hook on the wall. Her daddy had installed that hook last year when she started kindergarten, just for her, so she would always know where her backpack was. He really did try hard to be a good daddy sometimes.