The
Epiphany of Tiffany E. Poh:
A Child’s Treatise on Healing
By Susan Lowery/copyright 2004-2011
Chapter
One:
Tiffany’s
Sleepy Day
After 2 hours of putting together puzzles, redressing her dolls,
painting rainbow pudding onto her new dress - and licking it off, Tiffany was
bored. She’d already done most of the things that she liked to do and it
wasn’t even noon. And even though she was tired, she didn’t want to take a nap,
and she was getting crabbier by the minute but didn’t know why. She started to
sulk, then to throw herself around. It seemed that she couldn’t control
herself at all and worse yet, her horrible behavior felt good! She was
having a temper tantrum of the highest order. After doing this for about
an hour, she finally became very sleepy, much to her mother’s relief. But
before she fell asleep, she dangled herself rather precariously by her knees
over the back of the sofa. She looked up and imagined that the floor was
the ceiling and that the light fixtures (also hanging down) were her
tables. She thought about her feet touching the ceiling and about the
ceiling becoming the floor. She always did look at her world a little
differently. What a great time it would be to walk around on the ceiling
upside down, right side up! She then closed her eyes and began day dreaming.
As she did this, she could smell the orange-raspberry cake that Evelyn, her mom, was baking in the kitchen and
could hear her whipping up the creamy vanilla frosting with the hand
mixer. It was going to be glorious and she could hardly wait to sink her
teeth into it tonight for dessert. This made her mouth water in delight.
While day dreaming, she thought how wonderful it would be, to be
able to fly. She loved watching the birds outside soaring and then
careening straight down from the wires to the ground, and then scooping up at
the last second and shooting up to the sun. Oh, how she wanted to be able
to do that.
Her mother had left the big windows open in the living room and,
the wind whipped and tumbled through the room, tousling her hair to and
fro. She started to feel a warm, soft breeze against her cheek, and with
her eyes closed, she could feel herself start to tumble through soft cotton
like clouds, lulling herself to sleep. With this, she also started to
experience the cool splash of tiny raindrops gently glazing her skin, and
dampening her dress. Have you ever smelled the air after a summer’s rain?
To Tiffany the smell was so fresh that it even smelled a little bit like
vinegar! Soaring through the clouds, she was ecstatic and care
free. She was also very happy to know that since she was flying -
although she was daydreaming, she’d remembered to put play shorts on under her
dress! Now she could do anything! At this, she turned up her nose
to the sky, wrinkled it all up, and smiled toward the heavens.
The next thing she knew, she was doing every kind of loop-de-loop,
spin and dive imaginable. As she caught up with the birds that she’d just
been watching diving and careening here and there, she matched them with aerial
spins and swoops.
"Try and catch me, round robin! Try and catch me blue,
blue bird!" She shouted
while her belly bubbled with laughter.
After half a day of this, she finally wore herself out and decided
to let herself down to the ground.
"Hew!" She sighed. “I never knew flying would make
me so tired and hungry."
Instantly, her dress became a brilliantly colored puff parachute
filled with air. Slowly, it delivered her to the slate roof of a building. The roof had lots of bumpy
places on it, so at first it was hard for her to keep her balance.
"Oh boy, luckily I have lots of bubble gum stuck on the
bottoms of my shoes! Hopefully it’ll in turn help me stick to the
roof!" She gloated. "And mom said that all my
bubble gum did was make me look like a cow chewing her cud..... I sure
wish she could see me now!" She had made quite a bit of
a habit of talking to herself of late and yet continued on.
After she gave herself a little bit of time and a few deep breaths
to gather her composure and balance, she got down on her hands and knees,
crawled to the edge of the roof and looked over the side, to the ground.
With the gum still sticking to her shoes, it stretched and stretched and yet,
kept her securely attached to the shingles.
"I knew that I chewed Double Bubble for a reason!" she
said aloud.
As she leaned out over the shingles, she could see earthworms that
had been brought up by the rain from underground.
"Oh Grandma, where are you? I wish you were here!
They’re wriggling around everywhere and they look just like live
spaghetti!" "They're too amazing to be true."
