SLUG: A08_emma_pink_bands
SET: A
CONCEPT: Emma gets the pink rubber bands this time
HEADLINE: Watch the setup video
WORDS: 652

Emma asked for the pink rubber bands again yesterday and I did not tell her we'd get them next visit.

I just said yes baby, pink it is.

She looked at me the way a nine year old looks when she is bracing for the no.

And when the no didn't come her whole face changed.

That is the part I keep thinking about.

Two dollars.

The pink ones are two dollars more than the plain ones and for almost two years those two dollars have been a whole conversation between me and her mama in the ortho waiting room.

Two years of me saying honey the clear ones look nice too.

Two years of her nodding like she understood.

She should not have had to understand that.

Last Friday morning $1,428 landed in the inbox on my phone.

Same sender line as the Friday before that.

And the one before that.

I make the coffee first now, then I look, because I already know what the number is going to look like and I like the little ceremony of it.

I want to tell you where I was in March.

March 22nd.

Sitting in the Walmart parking lot with a cart in the space next to me because I could not go back inside to return the things I could not afford.

Grape jelly. A four pack of the good toilet paper. A birthday card for my sister with a dog on it that I picked up because it made me laugh.

Nine dollars of stuff I put back in a cart and left there in the sun because I could not carry the shame of walking it up to the counter again.

I sat in my car and I cried the ugly kind of cry.

An older woman came out with her bags and stopped next to my window and just stood there.

She said honey I have sat where you are sitting.

I rolled the window down because I did not have the energy to lie.

She showed me a short setup video on her phone.

She said it runs off the wifi at the house and takes about twenty minutes to set up on a Sunday.

She said the little device is the size of a deck of cards and it just sits there on the counter next to the sugar bowl.

She said honey when the deposits started landing I stopped putting things back at the register.

That is the sentence that undid me.

I set the thing up the next morning before church.

I barely thought about it for the first two weeks because life got in the way and I forgot I even had it plugged in.

Then a small deposit came in.

Then a bigger one.

Then the Fridays started stacking up like receipts I scroll back through when I can't sleep.

Yesterday at the ortho I told the girl at the front desk pink please and I slid the extra two dollars across the counter like it was nothing.

Because it was nothing.

Emma is nine and she got the pink rubber bands and she is going to remember that her grandma said yes without the pause.

The pause was the part that used to break me.

Not the two dollars.

The pause.

That little half second where she watched my face to see if today was a day we could or a day we couldn't.

There is no pause anymore.

If you are the grandma sitting in a parking lot right now with a cart of put backs next to you and a little girl at home who deserves the pink ones, tap the button under this post and watch the setup video.

Same one that woman showed me in the parking lot.

The little device is quiet. It sits on the counter. It runs off the wifi.

And on Friday mornings you make the coffee first, and then you look.

If you have a phone and wifi at the house you can do this too.

Pass it forward to somebody who needs a Friday like mine.
