You know, I always tell my daughter that she is my sunshine girl. The sun shines out of her large beautiful eyes and beams out of her gorgeous big smile. She always thinks good of others, even the mean little four year olds at school who say hurtful things to her. ‘I think she forgot she was my friend Mama,‘ she says, ‘or I think she just didn’t know I liked her.‘
‘Did what they did to you hurt you in your heart?’ I ask gently, and the little half smile vanishes from her face and her mouth turns down against her will. ‘No Mama,’ she says stoutly, ‘in my FEELINGS.’
Okay okay. She is such a sensitive little soul. If you tell her off she backs away with a big smile on her face but when you inspect it further her eyes are brimming with tears that are on the cusp of falling over the edge of her lashes, and her smile is wobbly. I ask if she is okay and she nods and if pressed about it the little tears pour down her cheeks in tragic rivulets.
But she is my sunshine child. Her laugh echoes through the house and if she wonders off in a supermarket her high cheery little voice is my beacon to her. She is loud and clumsy and full of ringlets and chubby cuddles. Whenever I looked at her when she was a baby her fat little legs would cycle into a frenzy and her smiles became little squeals of excitement. I never saw such happiness in someone when they looked at me, my heart would rise up with my own joy to meet hers. She is still this way when we have visitors, when she spies me after her day at school, when I surprise her while she is out shopping with her dad, when her grandma comes to visit – little dances of joy and rapture, hugs galore, never stingy with her affection. I missed you! You’re my favourite person in the whole whole world… everyone is her favourite.
People say about her – she is the spreader of joy. Where is my happy little girl, my mum always asks. We named her after the night, a night of sparkling stars and a glorious moon, only made so because of the generosity of the sun.
So when I think about what I hope people say about me, I think, I want them to say ‘she appreciates the good in others’ – and only so because my daughter taught me when she came into this world 26 years after I did, to only seek the good in others.
That is how you be a sunshine girl.
Ocean Bream 