Cracks in the Pavement

I walk with her. She is tiny; just a slip of a girl in mismatched clothes. It is what she chose, this blue, flowered skirt and t-shirt with a flamboyant peace sign plastered across it.

I walk with her, although she feels as if she is the only girl in the world, so intent on her task, the task of skipping cracks.

Dangerously, they loom in her path; cracks filled with vagrant weeds sticking their green heads up from such a minute amount of soil. Dangerously, they break the monotony of the cement. Jagged edges, like bolts of lightening, course through the veins of the pavement.

She skips over them, meticulously etching a path through streaks of air laced through stone.

Step on a crack, break your mother's back.

I walk with her, and I feel the fissure, like that through the pavement, break my heart open. It is like a doctor opening up the organ that keeps me alive, and examining it in an inquisitive way. Yes, this woman has signs of heartache. Yes, that should be the diagnosis: heartbreak secondary to life.

I watch her walk ahead of me, my daughter, my Amelia, so serious in her approach to piecing together the mysteries of the world that surrounds her. She could set at a table and attempt to put together a puzzle for hours; her tiny hands, fingernails containing just a faint fleck of glitter nail polish, putting things together gingerly, determining whether it is a good fit, whether it is all wrong. She is patient; she finds the right links, she takes her time, she knows when pieces work together.

I walk with her and watch her, how she approaches the cracks in the pavement, how she steps over the imperfections with precision. She avoids; her sandeled feet are inept at finding solid, unscathed ground. What a perfectionist I have on my hands.

And the fissure in my heart seems to widen. A pain shoots through me, and I cannot be sure why.

Maybe it is because I am almost 35; I have lived nearly half of my life and I have arrived at this point. I am looking behind my child, and I see all the imperfections in the world. I see the pitfalls and the heartache. I see the hardships and the trials. I know they are as inevitable as the cracks in the sidewalk. It just takes time for the cracks to form and spread. It just takes time for them to run a course through your heart when for no reason you stop and grasp your chest and wonder what just happened to you.

I walk with her. Amelia. The sun weaves through her straight hair and sets it on fire with light. She is so serious. She skips over another crack. And then another. She turns around and looks at me with her eyes that are the color of freshly minted pennies.

Momma, I love you.

She says this a lot. Out of no where she pronounces her love for me. Then she goes about the business of making the world orderly. She is meticulous, like she is solving the mathematical equations that will define the meaning of the universe. Maybe she will.

My heart hurts unexpectedly, like a wedge is being driven into it and splitting it open like a watermelon. Sometimes it aches for things that are painful; sometimes it aches for happy things, and sometimes it aches for time to stop. To stop at the moment your daughter is skipping past an imperfection on the sidewalk, copper eyes turned to you, and sun filling her hair. When she opens her mouth and in a tiny voice proclaims her love.

As I type this, my heart is hurting. Maybe that is God making me aware of things that are important. Pain alerts us. My heart, my pain, it shows me what is important.

Amelia, I walk with her. I take her hand and make sure to avoid my footfall on the next crack in the sidewalk.