- Aunt Lilly
waved goodbye to Emily, the girl she tutored every Saturday morning
before needle-time. She tutored five kids now.
- “Aunt
Lilly, you must be rich.”
- Her auntie crinkled up her
nose at Molly as if she just sniffed a really sour bottle of milk.
“Why would you say that?”
- Molly’s friend’s sister
made $40 an hour tutoring Jimmy Fisher after school. “Because you help
a lot of kids with their school work.”
- With her
hands skirted around her waist, Aunt Lilly nodded her head and lowered
her eyes into an exaggerated blink. “I’m richer than you can imagine.”
- Molly reached up for her
auntie’s hand and met her eyes as they began to walk towards the
couch. When she saw the familiar sparkle in her auntie’s eyes, she
knew right away that she wanted to be just like her when she grew up
someday. “When I get bigger, I am going to be a tutor so I can have
lots of money, too.”
- Aunt Lilly’s smile faded
as she stopped short. Molly stiffened as her auntie spoke to her
firmly. “It’s not always about the money, sweetie. I don’t make money
tutoring.”
- No money tutoring? “So,
you’re not rich like you said?”
- Aunt Lilly’s smiled
returned and the sparkle lit her eyes again. “Not with money.”
- Molly searched her
auntie’s face for understanding. Brianna’s dad was rich because he
made lots of money. Julie’s mom worked in Denver all week long so she
could be rich with lots of money. And even her dad worked long hours
every day, or as her mom called it, sacrificing his time, to
make lots of money to be rich. Everyone she ever heard of that was
rich had lots of money.
- “How can
you be rich without money, Aunt Lilly?”
- “I’m rich
with happiness, that’s how.”
- They
headed to the couch again and once they sat Molly watched her auntie
rearrange the items on her coffee table. She slid a cone of
Ombre
thread and a crochet hook in front of her. How could happiness make
her rich?
- Lots of
things made her happy: ice-cream, watching cartoons, playing with her
dolls, and especially her Saturday needle-time with Aunt Lilly. She
may have been just a kid, but she was old enough to know that none of these
things would make her lots of money, at least enough to make her rich.
- “My mom
says that happiness doesn’t pay the bills, Auntie.”
- Handing
her some
hand lotion, the one auntie insisted she use every week prior
to stitching so that the thread wouldn’t snag on her dry fingers, she
explained. “Being rich has nothing to do with money, Molly.
- Aunt Lilly
didn’t make any sense. “I don’t understand.”
- Gathering
pink yarn from out of the side table near the couch, Aunt Lilly’s face
brightened. “When I see the kids I tutor happy because they finally
understand math, I am even happier. I overflow with happiness. That
makes me rich with something more special than money.”
- All the rich people Molly
could think of in that moment never had a smile so pretty on their
faces as Aunt Lilly did. Actually, they all wore frowns most of the
time. She didn’t want to be a frowner. “I want to be rich like you
too.”
- “Let’s start, then.” From
the messy pile of project books under the coffee table, she pulled out
one for crochet. “One of the kids I tutor could really use a new
blanket for her bed. We could work together to make her one.”
- “Will it
make me rich like you?”
- “I
suspect, even more so. Once you see her smile, you’ll feel richer than
you’ve ever been before.”
- And so,
the next few weeks, Molly would work side-by-side with her auntie,
crocheting a pink afghan, with a hint of
Ombre, for a girl that she
didn’t know, hoping to make her a little happier one stitch at a time.
