It had been meant to make Lucy happy.
And there she was on our porch, laughing with jelly on her dress while Noah guarded the rest of his sandwich.
A few days earlier, I had believed my son was simply trying to buy a birthday present for the little girl next door.
Instead, his small act of kindness had reminded an entire community of something adults forget far too easily.
People do not need our assumptions about what they can understand.
They do not need us deciding in advance what kind of happiness is meaningful enough for them.
Sometimes they simply need to be seen.
Included.
Celebrated.
Loved.
Noah had looked at a little red dress in a shop window and imagined Lucy spinning in it.
And somehow, that simple picture in the mind of an eight-year-old boy had become real.
Lucy spun.
Hannah remembered that joy mattered too.
My mother-in-law learned to ask instead of assume.
