Anyway, this is a seven-year-old’s drawing, but I see the care in it. The beauty, too. I pick up another. “This one is good as well.”
“They’re all rubbish,” Daisy says on a whimper.
“Well, of course you think they are,” I say, wrapping my arm around her shoulders and pulling her tiny frame into my side. “Because you’re an artist. And artists are very, very hard on themselves. They want perfection. But you know what?”
She looks up at me with those big blue eyes and shakes her head.
“Perfection is overrated. Finished is much, much better.”
“But how can it be finished if it’s not done right?”
“That’s just the way it is. Perfection is pretty much unobtainable—you can’t make anything perfect, I mean. Because what is perfect?”
“It’s just an ideal,” Prim puts in.
I glance my sister’s way, wondering if it cost her to say that. We both handled the absence of a father in very different ways. I went off the rails, and she made sure not to deviate from them an inch. The wilder I became, the straighter she laced.
Maybe her behavior was more in tune with being my antidote.
The thought makes me so sorry.
“Primrose is right. Perfect is like make-believe. It’s also boring because it’s our mistakes that make us unique. You know what unique means?”
Daisy nods.
“The world would be boring if we were all perfect. Mistakes are real. And real is beautiful,” I say, wiping away her tears with my thumb.
“We have a philosopher in our midst,” Primrose murmurs under her breath.
“Trying to make things perfect zaps all the fun out of shi—shizz. You’re allowed to make mistakes, Daisy.”
“Like mum made Lavender,” my sister chirrups. If she was nearer, I’d probably kick her. Out of love, though.
“Joke’s on you,” I mutter, “because the best portion of you ran down Polly’s leg.”
“Eww,that is disgusting! I don’t ever want to think about Polly in those terms. Or how I came into existence.”
“Who’s Polly?” Daisy asks. Out of all the potential questions, that one is the easiest to answer. It’s also a good reminder of our audience.
“She’s our mum.”
“Oh.”
My heart aches for the little girl who is clearly missing her mother.
“She’ll be here later, and then you’ll see why Primrose is as silly as she is. But for now, I think you should practice making mistakes. Lots of them. On purpose.”
“Why?” By her expression, you’d think I asked her to go out and punch toddlers.
Because it’ll take the pressure off, I hope.
“Can you ride a bike, Daiz?” I ask rather than answer.
She nods her head. “Uncle Raif taught me how.”
Uncle Raif. A dad on the streets and a daddy between the sh—
So not finishing that thought. And really, the suggestion remains to be seen. And experienced. My tummy turns over, but I ignore it.
