So….. a long while ago… Paytan would have been maybe 4 yrs old and Hailey 2 yrs old… we had just come home from a full day of Doctors appointments for their daddy. And the back seat was kindly “Hailey decorated” with McDonald’s French fries… I had unbuckled Paytan and helped her out of the truck. I told her (as I always did), “stay on the grass while I get your sister out of her seat”. Over Paytan went to the bottom of the pine tree to watch the ants and bugs.
As I was getting Hailey out of her seat, I was picking out French fries from inside her car seat and “randomly” tossing them over the roof of the truck. My thought was to share treats with the squirrels, cuz well they’d be digging them out of the green bin anyways.
After a few tosses I heard Paytan’s little voice, as she was looking up into the pine tree, “squirrel! That’s not nice!” Finally, father Hailey and our bag in one hand I grabbed a few more fries and again threw them over the roof of the truck. As I walked around the back of the truck, Paytan stood up and Ella up the tree, “ stop squirrel!” Not connecting the dots, I asked Paytan what was going on with the squirrel…. and her reply to me was…” mommy, the squirrel keeps throwing fries at me!”
I had to hold in my laughs!
K…. I was a “bad mommy”, cuz I didn’t tell her that it was me…… until one of the last days with her in CHEO…. Paytan was re-telling the nurses about this silly squirrel…. I came clean and told her it was me…. big sigh ….
“How could you Mommy?” LOL
Paytan did forgive me 😊
K… having set the stage for you… you might want to sit down (if your not already).
As you know, Hailey’s grade 6 grad was Wednesday night. It was super emotional for us… as this is a another chapter that we are stepping into without Paytan. … and in Sept Hailey will be returning to the previous school that both girls attended for jk-gr 1 and jk – gr 3, now a middle school.
There are so very many memories that will I’m sure be surfacing for us in the coming months as Hailey walks back through the doors of her “new” old school.
Wednesday night at bed time… Hailey said that she wanted to go for the last day of school, even if most of the gr 6’s said they weren’t gunna go cuz grad had already taken place. Great! I said and kissed her goodnight.
The morning was like any other… lol.. slow moving and just making the bell 🙂 … but off she went.
At the end of school I picked her up and we sat in the parking lot, crying, hugging and remembering the earlier days, happy Paytan days at school….
Returning home, windows down on the truck, approaching the lane way… a weird “squawking” noise was coming from the tree in the front yard. As we got out of the truck, I wandered over to the tree to see a squirrel on a branch… he was making all the noise! I started to “talk” to the squirrel, asking what all the noise was about…. lol… and the story above that I told about flashed in my mind! And I started to giggle and tears came to my eyes. I looked down to the ground as the tears started to fall… then I saw a pretty little flower.
The only one on the whole lawn… right at my feet! So I pulled out my phone to take a picture of the little flower (cuz it made me smile)…. and my eye caught a pink colour in the grass!
By this time Hailey was at my side and already reaching down to see what that pink colour in the all green grass was….
and … well, for those of you who knew my late husband…. he was a guitarist. And ALWAYS had these colourful (never boring colours) little pieces of plastic In his pockets, fidgeting with them… almost always had one between his front teeth –
yes, it was a pink guitar pick!
In our hearts… we believe that both Paytan and Roger were letting us know that they were there with us… even if we can’t hug them with our arms…
our ♥️ hearts ♥️ can be full.
Y
