Rana is a tiny, blond eight-year-old with persistently bruised knees and a lisp. After church, we sat in a Sunday school classroom coloring cardboard Easter eggs with markers. We talked about her favorite book, how unfair it was that her brother went to the dinosaur museum, and what she wished she could have for supper.
“Ice cream!” she shouted.
A murky memory surfaced of myself at her age, lighting our gas oven with a wooden match.
I studied her hands with their fragile fingers streaked with Spring colors, thinking: give her all the markers. All the museums. All the sweets.
Cynthia Hamill 