Consolation Prize

Last year of elementary school.

6th grade is coming for you.

Tuition (times three) is coming for me.

First worry. Worrying the numbers any way I can. More beans and rice? Different phone plan? Side hustle? Still not enough.

Then, anger. Anger that money decides what is possible and for whom it is possible. Or at least how easily those possibilities can be turned into realities.

Worry and anger don’t do much. But. Maybe magic. Maybe magic can be made of the rigid black lines in my Excel spreadsheet. Perhaps they will be turned into excess baskets of loaves and fishes gathered on a shore to prove that the world is His and God provides.

Maybe if I changed the font color to pink…

You love pink.

Pink is prettier. But, the numbers remain decidedly un-magicked.

And then I learn I need to start to pray for a different kind of magic. For you. To live.

And there is more anger.

And money can’t change what is possible. Cancer is god.

Now, I don’t need either Magic. You are gone and the numbers balance.

This is not how I imagined I would gather the twelve extra baskets of loaves and fishes.

I’d rather have you.