Her pink bikini bottoms

I have to admit....there is something seriously adorable about seeing my kid run around in her bikini at the splashpad at the park...with her pump shoved down the front of them. It makes me smile. You would think that it would probably make me want to cry or that it would be some glaringly obvious thing shouting at me that SHE IS DIFFERENT...SHE IS DIABETIC...but it doesn't. It makes me smile. Do you know why it makes me smile? Aside from the obvious immature teenager sense of humour I can have at times...where I see it and giggle inwardly at the whole "package" thing. It really makes me smile because it is a glaringly obvious thing that shouts across the park at me...SHE IS ALIVE...SHE IS OK....SHE IS PLAYING AND LAUGHING AND HAVING FUN JUST LIKE ALL OF THE OTHER KIDS ARE!!! Without that little package shoved down the front of her pink bikini bottoms, she wouldn't be here. Without the insulin pumping through that little tube coming out of her bikini and going into her belly, she wouldn't be alive. Whether it be by injection, syringe, or the little package.....if it wasn't there...I would have lost my daughter long ago. I would have lost my heart, my reason for breathing, my reason for stumbling out of bed in the morning.....it would have been ripped from my soul almost 4 years ago now. So, yes.....there I sat on the grass surrounding the splashpad this afternoon, watching her, with a big cheesy smile on my face. I saw her running and playing and laughing. I saw her soaking wet hair stuck in strands and clumps across her forehead and shoulders. I saw the sun glistening off the beads of water on her little 8 year old self. I heard her giggles and chatter as she found a couple of friends from school. It made me smile.
Sometimes when I watch her play, I find myself feeling like I am watching a movie of some other girl...and I am some other Mom...and diabetes isn't a part of our lives. I am just watching this incredible movie that is carefree and leaves you with all of those warm and fuzzy feelings as you walk back out of the darkened movie theater and into the daylight of the parking lot again. And then I blink....and it fades way...and reality sets in. Well, some days that feeling of reality is harder to settle back into again. Other days....days like today....it's beautiful.
I sat there in the park down the street from our house...the same park we have gone to countless times now...and I smiled. I smiled at her innocence...her beauty...at how lucky we are...but most of all, I smiled at that little package shoved down the front of her pink bikini bottoms.