“If wishes were fishes, we’d all be in the brook.” If she said it once, she said it a million times, enough to fill a brook, I suppose. We’d pull at her apron. Wishing we had this certain candy, when the lazy susan of the corner cupboard was full of sugary treats. Wishing we had the newest game, when an endless adventure waited for us in a yard filled with apple trees and cow gazes. We sucked in our cheeks, breathing like fish, filled our pockets with Sugar Daddies and Sugar Babies and swam out into the summer sun.

Not truly knowing what it meant, I think we wished around her, simply to play our own fish game. As she sent us off with this string of words, we would swim for hours in a wheat field. On a gravel road. And this was one of the greatest gifts we received — the gentle shove out gratitude’s door into all that we had!

It still makes me laugh sometimes. I say under my own breath, puffing my frustrated lips, keeping my teeth clenched, “Well, I wish I had… then, I’d be… and the words puff from my angry mouth, and it sounds something like a fish. I shake my head, and realize how silly, stupid really. Then I swim through my list of everything I have, buoyant once again.

It’s so easy to get caught up in what we don’t have, and the crazy thing is, that only takes us away from the wonders that we do. I can still hear her voice as I head out this morning’s door. I am ever thankful.