Broken Promises

I went to the pool today and watched both time and neighbors lazily move under the azure sky until puffy white clouds dotted the horizon. The star attraction was a little girl with wheat colored pigtails wearing a pink bathing suit with pink tulle. She topped off her outfit with bright aqua sunglasses and a shy grin. Her nerve grew bigger than herself and she proclaimed her readiness to splash into the deep end of the pool as long as her mother held her hand and jumped in unison. Holding hands, mother and daughter stood poised above the sparkling water and leapt into the clear depths. Mid-air, the mother let go.

The little girl cried herself into exhaustion screaming, “You let go. You let go. You promised you would hold my hand.” The mother shared her logical rationale. She told her daughter that she was a big girl and could jump by herself the next time. I didn’t see the little girl get any bigger. She was the same little girl experiencing the big pain of a broken promise.

In our hearts, we are all little pink tulle princesses but in the mirror, we are indeed bigger and we typically don’t cry in public. We’ve experienced a lifetime of promises made and broken; friends who have come and gone; love lost and found. The biggest difference between us and the little girl is choice. We can choose to live in the brokenness shutting ourselves off from others or we can choose to live with hope linking arms with others before leaping into the vast unknown. When we choose hope, we again interlock fingers with those we trust won’t let go. We hold hands with like minded people who keep getting up for more even if our tulle splits and we land with a resounding splat.

A friend recently gave me a booklet entitled Eat Your Peas. It contains several promises stating in different ways that she would never let me down. She never has –- she never will. I believe her and two big princesses choose to brush off our tulle and use the strength of combined hope to leap into a world where fairy tales come true for those who believe.