Imaginary Friends pt 2


Riley jumped into the backseat, her large backpack thumping against her small body. Before she even pulled the seatbelt across her shoulder, she was already talking. Spilling all the gossip about her day and I smiled at her in the rearview mirror.

“- and Steven told Lillian her shoes weren’t pink, they were purple. So then Mrs. Gallagher told us all about how sometimes people are colorblind and don’t see the colors the same as everyone else. But Lillian still said she thinks Steven was being a butthead. I said, yeah, probably. But mom, what if he really thought her shoes were purple?”

Barely a pause before she continued. I nodded at the teacher at the head of the pickup line as we drove out of the parking lot.

“At recess today, I wanted to play four square. But when we got out there, all the squares were taken. So then I thought I’d play tetherball. But all of those were taken too. And then I sat on the bench by the soccer field, hoping someone would get bored of the tetherball. And that’s when I met Sasha. She’s a new girl at our school. I told her I liked her bow, which was pink, and definitely not purple. And she said she liked my unicorn leggings. So, we’re friends now.”

And so her chatter continued for the entire seven minute drive back to the house. Even if she never let me get a word in edge-wise, I cherished this alone time with my daughter. And I hoped that as she got older, she’d still be just as eager to share her day with me when she got home from school.

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