The Tutu and the Wand

I don’t know if it was pink or sparkly because the picture I was given was black and white. I just wanted to believe her tutu was cotton candy pink and her magic wand was a sparkly rainbow of color. I argued hard for this image to be used for the cover. I wanted to hold in my hand a book that had this little girl’s promise of hope we’d get through this. It was the height of the pandemic and Sam kept documenting scenes of people wearing their masks. This was an uncomfortable new way for us to look at one another. There were two other images we considered for the cover but hope for the future was all I could think about. Our older son Max was in Canada, our younger son was here distance learning, Sam was out chronicalling the daily lives of other people carrying on while wearing a mask, and all I seemed capable of was worrying. I needed the wand of hope for the future.