Molly the Perfect Mom

You know what I say to my daughter?

I say--what I say is--

You're the most perfect daughter in the world

Because she is

My daughter is the most perfect daughter in the world

And I simply have to tell her everyday

Because otherwise
She might forget

Wouldn't it be terrible if she forgot?

Do you know Faith, the little girl who's throwing this party?

She and I are the best of friends
And she tells me that her mother
Hardly ever speaks to her at all

Can you imagine?

It's one thing to forget to buy your daughter presents everyday
That happens to the best of us

But to not even speak to her!

I asked Faith how she and her mother were joined
And she didn't know what I meant

Apparently her mother just had her
As if she were a sneeze or something

So I told Faith that when I wanted a daughter
I had to walk into the ocean
Into its deepest part

And wait there until somebody told me
That my little girl was ready for me

Then I swam up to the top
And when I got there
I found a thousand boats waiting for me

It was a city of boats

Some big, some small
All of them filled with people

One boat was eighteen stories high
And there was a little rope ladder that went from the deck
To the bottom of the ocean where I was

And I didn't know why
But something told me
That my daughter was on that boat

Because that boat was the hardest to get to
And if you want the perfect daughter
You have to travel the longest road

(Or scale the tallest boat, as the case may be)

So I climbed the rope ladder

(By the way--did I mention that I was wearing a blue evening gown?

I wanted to look nice when I met my daughter)

Up I went

Up all eighteen stories

And when I got to the deck of the ship
There were children everywhere

Hundreds and hundreds of children

All wearing little tuxedos and evening gowns
Like the one I was wearing

All sipping apple cider from tiny little glasses
And laughing at jokes I didn't understand
Because it had been quite awhile
Since I'd been born

I went around the deck of the ship
Looking for my daughter

I knew I'd recognize her
Because she'd be the most perfect daughter on the ship
But I still couldn't see her
In the crowd of so many children

I kept searching and searching
From one end of the ship to the other
But I couldn't find her

Then, I heard it...

A small sound coming from a boat
All the way down
Back at the top of the ocean

I looked down over the deck
And there she was--my little girl

Standing in a tiny ship
Looking eighteen stories up

That's when I realized...

While I was looking for her
She was looking for me

I ran to the rope ladder
To go down and get her

And that's when the storm began

The boat started rocking from side to side
And the rope ladder flew away from my hands
And then slammed back into the side of the ship

All the little children started getting in lifeboats
And dropping down into the ocean

I saw a dark cloud ahead of me
Dip its hands into the water
And pull up a wave
That was thirty-six stories tall

All the other boats that were in the ocean
Were getting swallowed up

And the little children in their lifeboats
Were pulling out oars
To try and row away from it

The entire city I had found
Was about to be pulled underwater

That was when I looked down
And saw my perfect little girl
With her hands reaching up towards me

Lifeboats all around her
With the other children
Trying to pull her into their boats
And save her

I looked at the blackness before me
The cloud and the storm and the wave
All becoming one imminent danger

'Imminent' was on my word-of-the-day calendar years ago
And it means 'something's going to happen whether you like it or not'

I remembered that word
And I jumped

When I woke up
I was laying on the sand

The little lifeboat half-buried next to me
On the deserted beach

In the distance, I heard the sound of a ship's horn
My rescue boat
Coming to save me

But nothing without my little girl

Then I heard that soft sound again

This time from underneath the sand

I started digging
Digging with my bare hands

I knew that once the rescue boat got there
They were going to tell me that I was crazy
That I never had a little girl
That it was all in my imagination

The ship
And the storm
And the children in tuxedos
And blue evening gowns

I kept digging and digging
And finally, I saw it

A little face wrapped in a golden blanket

I lifted the blanket out of the sand
And there she was
All of her

Safe in my arms

It was like I had found a buried treasure

And I looked down at her
And I said--

'You're perfect'

It was the first time I'd ever said it to her
And I've said it everyday since

My mother used to tell me
That you could always tell if a love would survive
By the size of its story

So I feel lucky to have such a large story
And I feel bad that Faith's mother just had her

I suppose even in that instance
A love could survive

But you'd have to work so much harder at it

You have to listen
To hear the sound
Of someone with such a small voice
Asking you to find them

Otherwise the voice is lost
In the noise
Of the storm