Meadow named worms after rainstorms before carrying them off sidewalks. She cried whenever weeds were pulled because “they were trying their best.” Once, she made Dustin stop the car in a grocery store parking lot so she could rescue a moth trapped under a windshield wiper.
And she adored her hair.
It wasn’t vanity. It was happiness.
Every morning, she sat on the bathroom counter while I sprayed detangler through her golden waves. She told me her dreams while I braided them. She wanted hair down to her ankles like Rapunzel, not because she believed beauty made her better, but because children attach magic to simple things. Some children have superhero capes. Some have baseball cards. Meadow had her hair.
Judith hated that.
My mother-in-law believed softness was a weakness. She raised Dustin alone after his father abandoned them, and she wore that history like both a medal and a weapon. She never raised her voice when a sharp comment could cut deeper. She called my parenting “permissive.” She called Meadow “dramatic.” She insisted little girls needed boundaries before the world “spoiled them rotten.”
