Just a Slice of Life

Lizzie nestled back, her shoulders squirming slightly, fine-tuning the comfort dial for maximum reception. She closed her eyes and felt the sizzle of sunlight on her face and bare arms. She imagined herself to be a little brown ginger girl baking plumply in nature's oven.
She relaxed every part of her body but her mind and ears. With concentrated effort, she cast a silent feeler through the swaying grass and shimmering branches searching for a bird or bug to unwittingly serenade her with the magnificence of what must seem to them no more than mundane conversation. Finding her target, she locked on to its melody, stealthfully riding the notes as if they were some magic rollercoaster.
Eventually, a brief flurry of wings brought finality to the piece and their flutter faded into the distance. Spent from ingesting such beauty, Lizzie napped beneath the growing shadow that covered her like a cool blanket.
When she awoke, she forgot and opened her eyes, expecting to catch the sun slipping behind the horizon. What she saw instead were pale walls and the half-curtains suspended from the ceiling in the middle of her hospital room and her mother restlessly sleeping in the chair next to her.
Sensing her child's awareness, Lizzie's momma started awake and nearly flailed to reach out for her.
"Are you alright, Baby?" she asked doubtfully, brewing a fresh batch of tears.
"I'm fine, Momma," Lizzie answered with a smile. "I've had the best dream!"
The remarkable optimism of her dying child loosed the dam that withheld her tears. Choking on torrents, Lizzie's mother gushed the words, "My girl is so very brave! Where do you go to find such dreams from a hospital bed?"
The nine-year-old blinked innocently. Then as she contemplated the question, her expression mimed her train of thoughts, all the while her eyes remained fixed upon those of her mother.
Finally, her face stopped shifting ideas and wore her best impersonation of her teacher from school. She phrased her answer in the form of a leading question, "Do you remember that time Daddy brought home that coffee cheesecake? The very expensive one?"
Now as her mother swayed between the supposition that her daughter's mind was perhaps finally fading and the possibility that she was merely confronted with normal pre-adolescent logic, her face waltzed a brief dancestep of its own. The grand finale was a blank stare.
"Well, it's like that!" the little girl insisted, matter-of-factly.
Lizzie's momma studied her shoes like a child who doesn't understand but is too afraid to raise her hand and publicly humiliate herself.
To save her mother's feelings, Lizzie coaxed a little more softly, "It was SOOo GOOOD so I asked you for a bigger piece and you told me 'the richer the cake--the smaller the slice...'"
"I remember," she admitted although Lizzie still saw no trace of the light bulb so much as flickering above her mother's head, so she continued.
"I was dreaming about our picnic spot. It's my favorite place."
No glimmer yet.
"You told me it wasn't because it was so expensive, but because it was so tasty. I've had a tasty life already. I'll just get sick of it if I ask for a bigger one, so don't be sad any more, Momma."1