One evening, when I thought Lili was asleep, I heard whispers coming from her room. I walked closer and saw Clara sitting on the floor with a book in her hand. Her voice trembled slightly.<\/p>\n
\u2014 I know I\u2019m not your mom, she said, but I\u2019d like to be your friend. And if, one day, you decide to let me be your mom too, I\u2019ll be here. Always.<\/p>\n
Lili lay there with her eyes open, without making a sound.<\/p>\n
The next morning, something had changed. Small, but noticeable. Lili asked Clara if she wanted to eat with her. And when Clara brought a plate and said: \u201cI couldn\u2019t make animals, but I found your favorite cereal,\u201d the little girl smiled. For the first time in a long while.<\/p>\n
Within a month, Lili started calling her \u201cClara.\u201d Two months later, \u201cMommy Clara.\u201d<\/p>\n
And one evening, as I was tucking her into bed, she asked me:<\/p>\n
\u2014 Daddy, do you think Mommy up in heaven is proud of me?<\/p>\n
\u2014 I\u2019m sure she is, sweetheart. Because you\u2019ve learned how to love again.<\/p>\n
And in that moment, I knew that our family, though different, was whole again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One evening, when I thought Lili was asleep, I heard whispers coming from her room. I walked closer and saw Clara sitting on the floor with a book in her hand. Her voice trembled slightly. \u2014 I know I\u2019m not your mom, she said, but I\u2019d like to be your friend. And if, one day, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":889,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1297,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296\/revisions\/1297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}