Laura’s Gift

Photo by Caroline Hernandez

Her name was Laura. She stood barely 3 feet tall, but I guess we all did in second grade. She was chubby with extra thick glasses that made her eyes too big. When she spoke to you, her cloudy gaze drifted somewhere over your head. She had braces that sank into the soft enamel of discolored teeth and often caught food and held it there. She didn’t notice.

Laura was the kind of kid you avoided. My heart breaks to say those words. But second grade was the launching point of the rest of your years, and if you didn’t get cool in second grade, you might never get there. So, when Laura singled me out to be her friend, I slipped away as gently and as quickly as I could. And when the other kids teased, I didn’t join in, but I didn’t stand by her side either. How could I? 

As kids, we didn’t understand what was going on with Laura, why she looked that way or acted that way. But the teacher told us one day, or her mom came to explain– I don’t remember—that Laura had a brain tumor. A brain tumor at eight years old. That the tumor was taking her sight. Her sight first. And soon it would take her life.

But second grade wasn’t about lives and years and tragedies. It was about seconds and hours and the cutest boy in class. The one, you hoped, would give you the special valentine card—the one in the pack that was just a little bit bigger than the rest. Instead, I received a gift from Laura. She handed it to me in the middle of class and said, “Happy Valentine’s Day. Thank you for being my friend.” I nodded, a little confused, and looked around to see who else had received her gift. Maybe her mom had made something for the entire class. But no one else had a gift from Laura, so I shoved it in my desk, out of sight. 

When I got home from school that day, I opened the gift. It was a little blue fabric circle embroidered with flowers, tiny flowers, and fringed with lace. It had a fragrance sewn inside, like a miniature bar of soap. When I asked my mom what it was, she told me to place it in my drawer and it would make my clothing smell nice. 

I did. I put it in my drawer and buried it under the clothes—hid it from sight. But every time I changed out my dresser or moved to a new home, that little blue embroidered circle went into the top drawer. And, somehow, year after year, though its color faded, it never lost its scent. Never.

Laura never made it to the third grade.

One day, some time in my twenties, my mom introduced me to a woman at church. She said, “This is Laura’s mom. She wanted to say hello to you.” All the guilt I had carried with me, boxed away, and lay hidden in that drawer, rose into my throat as the woman embraced me. She cried and said, “Thank you for being there for my daughter so many years ago. She spoke often of you.” 

I didn’t know what to say to her mom. I wanted to say that I never deserved Laura’s love. That I had failed her. That I could have … should have done so much more. 

“She gave me a gift,” I said finally, in barely a whisper. “I still have it.”

“I know,” her mother said through her tears. “She made it for you. Just for you.” 

She made it for me.

I mourned her then, more than I ever had. This little girl who could barely see, who lived her short years with a tumor ravaging her body, had embroidered tiny flowers on baby blue fabric to give to a girl in her class who never understood until years later what that sacrifice meant.

But I do now.

I don’t remember what Christmas presents I got that year. Or birthday presents. I have no recollection. They are gone from my mind. But I remember that little scented pouch that remained in the top drawer of my dresser. 

The pouch that marked the fragility of life.

And the true meaning of friendship.