The Little Girl Who Laughs, Cries
By Elena Elison (RelSt'92)
(Newman Springs Publishing, Inc., 78 pages; 2021)
Mareva is about to have her seventy-eighth birthday. She resides in a senior living facility and sits in her room all alone, looking out at the beautiful blue sky with its puffy white clouds and the beautiful, majestic mountains. As she sits quietly in her chair, memories and emotions are beginning to appear before her. She is seeing a very sad and fearful little girl, knowing this is the little girl of her own childhood. The memories are very clear, and the feelings within these scenes are very real and very, very emotional for her.
From these memories, Mareva sees the dreadful moments of fear and abuse this little girl endures. She is wondering how it could have been herself who survived the terror. Each memory is a scene that brings about an emotion almost unbearable to bear in the present and a wonder of how she survived them all in her past. This little girl's life is colored in grays and blacks with no hope of love and happiness as in the colors of the rainbow.
Somehow Mareva survives the first twenty years of her life. Today, she is amazed that she actually did live these events. Then, somewhere along the way, she gains the strength to begin a journey, unique to herself. She moves on to being able to reach for the wonderful colors in the rainbow to color her life, leaving the grays and blacks behind.