her world is magical

To be Emma is to live most of the time in a MAGICAL world we cannot see. Can you imagine? Living in a place where you can so easily picture yourself on a distant planet? Where music 🎶 makes you so happy you can FEEL it, rocking and smiling and making joyful noises? Where all around you, you have beckoned faeries and pixies, Sasquatch, aliens and droids, pop stars and glitter, long-gone heavy metal 🤘 rockers bringing down the place with kick drum vibrato you can feel in your bones? A place where Chinese love songs make you light up, your heart flutters?
In this beautiful world you see, and it is NOT ugly, people are to be spoken to. Everyone has a story. You just have to tell them you have noticed them. “You have blue hair.” “I like hot sauce.” “How is salsa made?” “How do prescriptions get in glasses?” “You speak Spanish.” Nearly everyone you inquire opens up to you.
That’s what Emma’s world is like. She doesn’t live in a small world. She isn’t simple-minded. She doesn’t feel sorry for herself.
She lives in a magnificent universe (in a plethora of multiverses.) Questions are to be pondered, spoken aloud, then pondered some more. Everything is full of WONDER.
🦄🦄🦄🦄🦄

I don’t live in her magical realm. Sometimes her questions and topics of conversation are tiring. I answer some. We ask Siri others. The day ends. A new one begins. She asks the questions again.
When I get weary, I have to step back and breathe, take time for myself. Then I emerge from my cocoon of literal blankets, and I can see my daughter with new eyes. I gain fresh perspective all the time. I touch her beautiful face and stroke her soft curls and whisper, “I love you.” She laughs if I tickle her cheek. She does not hug back or say she loves me. Sometimes in Han Solo fashion, she’ll mutter an, “I know.” If I sign “I love you “ with my hand she will return the gesture. ❤️