23 November 2016
Dreamt I was working with a couple of other people in some kind of disaster distribution center, coordinating and handing out goods to people in need, blankets, socks, water bottles, cloth diapers for babies. People moved through the barn-like building, their steps stuttering softly against the dirt floor. The line seemed as if it would never end. It didn’t feel like I was doing enough. But then, a young woman with two small children, a baby on her hip, and a four or five year old girl holding her hand, stopped in front of me for a blanket. The young mother’s face was drawn and exhausted, and the kids too seemed scared and weighted with whatever disaster it was we were all dealing with out there in the world.
The little girl said, “Blue.”
I smiled, not sure for a second what she meant, but then I looked down. The stacked blankets were mostly green and gray, but tucked into the pile halfway down or so, one blue blanket.
Her mama shushed her, and smiled sadly at me. but the little girl looked up at me, smiling a little around the fingers she had in her mouth, and said again, “Blue?”
Her mama hushed her again, saying, “Missy, we can’t–“
“Sure we can,” I said. I pulled the one blue blanket out of the others and offered it across the table to the little girl. She let go of her mama, and reached out with both her little girl hands to take the blue blanket, wrapping her arms around it like a hug and smiling.
We all smiled.
Make art about small acts of taking care of each other.
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
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