Evie had a blank piece of paper. A pencil. And a very grumpy face.
"Time to write your thank you note to Grandma," said Mom.
"I don't WANT to," said Evie.
The paper sat there. White and empty. It didn't do anything. Evie didn't do anything either.
"Grandma knitted you that hat," said Mom. "The purple one with the pom-pom."
"I know," said Evie. She slumped in her chair. She slumped so far down she was almost under the table.
"Just write something nice," said Mom, and she went to wash the dishes.
Evie stared at the paper. The paper stared back.
She picked up the pencil. She put it down. She picked it up again. She drew a tiny dot. That was it. One tiny dot on a big white page.
"This is boring," she said to nobody.
Evie walked away from the table and went to find something better to do. She found her purple hat on the coat hook by the door. The one from Grandma. She put it on because her ears were a little cold, actually.
The pom-pom bounced when she walked.
She walked bouncier to make it bounce more.
She passed the mirror in the hallway and stopped. The pom-pom was enormous. It looked like a purple snowball sitting on her head. She wiggled. It wobbled. She shook her whole body and the pom-pom went wild — boing boing boing — and Evie laughed even though nobody was watching.
"That's a pretty good pom-pom," she said.
She thought about Grandma making it. Grandma with her yarn and her big needles that went click click click. Grandma always had the TV too loud. Grandma always said, "Come here, let me see your face."
Evie touched the pom-pom. It was soft. Grandma made every bit of it.
She walked back to the table. The paper was still there. Still blank except for that one tiny dot.
Evie sat down. She picked up the pencil.
She didn't know how to spell much. But she knew some things.
She wrote:
DEAR GRANDMA
Big, wobbly letters. The D was backwards. She didn't care.
Then she stopped. What do you even say?
She looked at the hat, still on her head. She touched the pom-pom again. She thought about the boing boing boing.
She drew a picture. A girl with a big round purple thing on her head. The purple thing was way too big. It took up half the page. She gave the girl a huge smile.
Underneath she wrote:
I LUV THE HAT
Then, smaller, squished at the very bottom because she was running out of room:
THE POM POM IS KRAZE
She looked at it. The letters were all different sizes. The picture was a little bit silly. The whole thing was smooshed and lopsided and very, very Evie.
She added one more thing — a row of purple hearts across the top. They looked more like lumpy grapes. That was fine.
"Mom! I'm done!"
Mom came over, still drying a bowl. She looked at the note. She looked at it for a long time.
"Evie," she said. "Grandma is going to put this on her fridge."
"It's not even good," said Evie.
"It's so good," said Mom.
They put the note in an envelope. Evie licked it shut — BLEH, envelope glue tasted terrible — and she wiped her tongue on her sleeve while Mom laughed.
She wrote GRANDMA on the front. Also backwards.
Mom stuck on a stamp and Evie carried the envelope outside to the mailbox with both hands, like it was something important.
Because it was.
She opened the mailbox. She dropped the letter in. She closed it with a clank.
The pom-pom bounced once more in the cold air.
And Evie bounced with it, all the way back inside.
