The Girl Who Thought The World Of Her Mother

Once upon a time, there was a little, foolish girl who thought the world of her mother. She liked helping out around the house and on the farm, even if her bare feet hurt at the end of the day. But it was always okay, her mother would make them stop hurting with her magic touch. The little girl who loved her mother would laugh, skip and sing a sweet song for all the world to see and hear.

This girl loved to cook, sew and help her mother in the garden. She loved the color blue for it was the color of the sky. She loved this sky; she loved to imagine she had wings and could fly high in the sky with them. Fairy Wings, Bird Wings, even Butterfly wings, once or twice.

She was a happy, spirited little girl. She thought that like in the old story of Peter Pan, she would never grow up and everything would stay young and free forever, and she would be happily youthful and carefree with a flower crown upon her head, with her mother leading her among the angels and fairies.

The little girl was wrong.

She was wrong when the tidal wave of heat crashed down on the country bringing up the hot, grating grains of dust and dirt. She was wrong when the economy plummeted and President Hoover chose to ignore the problem, as if not seeing it would make it go away. (It doesn't in fact, that only makes the problem more likely to sneak up on you)

The little girl was so, so wrong.

She had a fancy french name that she had always thought was made up. Her mother claimed it was given to her by the angels. That the name had appeared in gold cursive writing above her head. Later when that little girl was older and knew better, she didn't bother to correct her mother when she the told story.

She was always caught up in her flights of fancy, playing an eternal make-believe game among sprites and elves. The little girl was caught up in a world where her mother could make the tears of pain go away and could solve every little thing with her soothing voice of a songbird.

The girl in the story is only 6 years old. She had stood frozen in the window of her family's farmhouse as the giant tsunami of dirt, dust, and sand approached over the horizon line. Her Mother, the one she loved so dearly, had to yank her away to help seal all of the cracks in the house so that minimal grime would get in and infect their lungs.

As soon as the little girl finished her Mother grabbed a larger wool blanket and dragged her down to the cooking cellar, where they kept the cans and jars. In that cellar, the girl sat in pure fear and shock with the knowledge that the sky could turn another color than the pretty light blue of freedom.

This little girl didn't know it then, but that freedom would be as dulled as the sky for a long, long time.

I just didn't know that then. I was just a foolish little girl who thought the world of her mother. I was just a folly of a carefree, little girl who believed in hope, dreams, and that her mother could solve everything.