Only sunlight

On short winter days, I remember a little girl I met over ten years ago. I was her home health aide, in other words, I was a babysitter for sick kids.

She couldn't speak, walk on her own, had respiratory problems, and was almost completely blind, except she could tell shapes in light and shadow. I still picture her standing at the window of her house, barricaded into the living room by couches and other furniture so she wouldn’t hurt herself. She's a lean girl of five or six, propping herself up with one hand on a tabletop and one on the entertainment system. Her mother has combed her hair into three little ponytails, then twisted the hair into tiny barrettes. She is wearing a neat pink shirt and overalls. Her nostrils are already beginning to crust even though her nose has been suctioned twice. Her tongue is hanging loose out of one side of her mouth, and her breath comes out in raspy pants. She is looking through the slits in the window blinds, playing with the sun, rolling her head around on her neck, letting it trace a design somewhere, some surface. Instead of white and grey matter, I picture a screen like an etch-a-sketch where the ink is instead light, and the drawing is only pieces of spaghetti, some straight, some curled, with a splash, here and there, but she is smiling.

You can argue that she will never actually be happy, that she doesn’t understand what happiness is, or that this not living. She will never write, never make friends, never hold a job, never fall in love. And in so many ways, she does not exist. Although her mother and one brother who love her fiercely--then six, I watched him carry her from her stroller up a ladder and down the slide--would disagree. I had the same thoughts, quite often, and if I saw her now at 15 or 16, perhaps still in overalls, with a diaper bunching up underneath, I might still. But sometimes you have to let go of every sensible doubt, resist the clever comeback, the scientific rebuttal, and hope for that one small thing that for no reason means infinitely more than you think it should.

(Photo: courtesy of Mornby's photostream on flickr)