“I think it’s the start of something,” she said. “You just don’t always get to control the shape it eventually takes.”
I’ve thought about that sentence more times than I can count since.
Paige and I talk every week now, the easy kind of talking we used to take for granted before that hospital room briefly threatened to take it away entirely. She still apologizes sometimes, unprompted, usually late at night when something reminds her of that first terrible hour. I still tell her the same thing every time.
“You were scared. I was scared too. We’re allowed to have been scared, as long as we didn’t stay that way.”
She always laughs a little at that, the specific relieved laugh of someone who needed permission to finally let something go.
Two little girls. Two families that started as one afternoon of pure chaos. One sentence, repeated enough times, that finally turned into something closer to peace than either of us expected to find on the other side of it.
