Her Name was Princess Lora

I once knew an adorable little red-headed girl. She lived in a fairy-tale world. She was the baby of the bunch. Everybody loved her gentle and quiet spirit. She also made everyone laugh with the silly monkeyfaces she would make. She was the happiest child in the universe. Her giggles sounded like melodious angel music.

Her mother would put braids in her wet washed hair and let her sleep on them so they would dry throughout the night. In the morning, when her mother undid the braids and loosened the boundless and bouncy, wavy curls, the little girl was filled with undeniable joy.

She called them her "princess curls," and rushed to put on her lacy ice blue play dress and a pair of her mother's white satin high heels. She topped her look off with the lightest pink lipstick her mother could find and a few dabs from a powder puff before she was off to her adventures.

The rest of the day was filled with wonders that she and her friends shared. This included a lovely over-stuffed yellow bunny named Jo-Jo, a life-sized doll named Anna Belle, who wore a red checkered gingham dress and could say, "Mama," and the family cat...a fat calico one named Penny who willingly shadowed her girl everywhere.

There would be tea parties and Mother would make her favorite butter sandwiches with sprinkled sugar, cut into four triangles. The bread ends had been cut away. No princess would accept any less, of course!

The mother savored all the sights and sounds of those closest times to Heaven that she could get before the little red-haired princess would grow up. That was happening all too quickly. Mother had already sent off one Superman, one Sports-car racer, and one dark-haired Princess in a lavender lacy-dress away to school. She didn't want to send this baby one second sooner than need be.

But she had to, eventually. But if you think the story ended here, you'd be wrong. There were grandchildren that tugged at Mother's heart. And one of them was another little red-headed girl that looked just like her mother. She loved bubble baths with her Barbies and her Nana, too!