This book was a surprise for me. The cover looked adorable so I picked it up and threw it on my library stack. That night Elyssa handed it to my best friend to read to her. So we all cuddled up on the couch for a "cute" story; me, my friend, and our daughters. She finished the book and glanced my direction, both our eyes held the sparkle of a captive tear. The girls, two and six, were ecstatic, "read it again!". Of course as mothers the idea of someday is a little double-sided. We obviously want the best for our children but at the same time why is so hard to see them grow up?
"One day I counted your fingers and kissed each one..." Oh the memories of her birth..., "Then you were my baby, and now you are my child." Is she really almost three?, "Sometimes, when you sleep, I watch you dream, and I dream too..." What will her future hold?
In Someday, Alison McGhee leads us through a young mother's hopes and dreams for her child. From, "Someday you will swing high - so high, higher than you ever dared to swing." to "Someday you will hear something so sad that you will fold up with sorrow.". She helps her daughter look forward to what fearful yet exciting adventures lie ahead.
This beautifully illustrated book is so simple and yet so profound. I almost didn't write a review on it because, after all, why would I tell anyone else to go get a book that would inevitably make them weep?! Well, as it lived in our home for the weeks that followed, Elyssa continually requested it. Slowly it occurred to me how excited I was as a child to dream about my future, and as a young adult to begin to s
ee some of those dreams come to fruition. Although this seems obvious, it occurred to me that I could also be excited for her dreams! Meanwhile my own dreams for her future can become these simple prayers; that when she swings high, she will feel no fear, when she hears something sad, she will know an Ultimate Comfort, and when she is feeling a "small weight against her strong back", she will have built a foundation of hopes and dreams for her own children in the one that sustains her.
