For years, I granted wishes for sick children. Then one application stopped me cold.<\/p>\n
Rebecca.<\/p>\n
My high school sweetheart had vanished from my life twelve years earlier without explanation. Now her name appeared beneath that of her seriously ill 12-year-old daughter, Sophie.<\/p>\n
When I visited, Sophie surprised me.<\/p>\n
Her first wish wasn\u2019t Disney World or meeting a celebrity.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan I have pancakes at midnight?\u201d<\/p>\n
Soon I was spending more time with them. Then Sophie finally revealed her real wish.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan you be Mom\u2019s wish granter too?\u201d<\/p>\n
She handed me a list of things Rebecca had stopped doing while caring for her:<\/p>\n
Dancing in the kitchen.
\nSeeing friends.
\nPlaying guitar.
\nLaughing.<\/p>\n
I started helping Rebecca rediscover herself, and slowly the connection between us returned.<\/p>\n
Then one night, I finally asked why she had disappeared.<\/p>\n
Rebecca broke down.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cheated on you once before graduation. Sophie is his daughter. I was ashamed, so I ran.\u201d<\/p>\n
The truth hurt.<\/p>\n
But twelve years had passed, Sophie was fighting for her life, and I didn\u2019t want old anger deciding our future.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat if I want to stay?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
Six months later, Rebecca and I were taking things slowly.<\/p>\n
Sophie\u2019s treatment was working.<\/p>\n
And one afternoon, while Rebecca played guitar again, Sophie smiled at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re pretty good at granting wishes.\u201d<\/p>\n
I smiled back.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you granted mine.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For years, I granted wishes for sick children. Then one application stopped me cold. Rebecca. My high school sweetheart had vanished from my life twelve years earlier without explanation. Now her name appeared beneath that of her seriously ill 12-year-old daughter, Sophie. When I visited, Sophie surprised me. Her first wish wasn\u2019t Disney World or …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9291"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9293,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9291\/revisions\/9293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}