A Wish on a Fish

Matthew was awakened by a ray of sun shining directly into his eyes. But he just grunted, rolled over, and went back to sleep. Yesterday at dinner, when they were all sitting around the table, he told his mum and dad that he didn’t feel like going to preschool the next day.

“Oh Matt, my darling, it’s all good,” his mum said. “We will go to work, you will go to preschool, and afterwards we’ll all meet back here and enjoy the rest of the day together.”

His dad added: “That way, we can look forward to seeing each other — even more than usual.”

“But I want to go to work! I’m tired of being little!” In a huff, Matt threw his spoon onto his plate — as he did so, the spoon clinked against the picture of the goldfish on the bottom. It was actually Matt’s favourite plate — he and his mum always laughed about it, saying that one day the goldfish would grant him three wishes.

Back to today. Matthew was waiting for his mum to come into his room and gently stroke his hair to wake him up, but she hadn’t come in. He could tell by looking at the wall clock that it was time to get up. Has Mummy forgotten? he wondered. But he knew that was unlikely.

Or maybe this meant that he could stay home today? That would be great! Then he remembered that his friend Kay had promised to teach him how to make a whistle out of a sedge leaf (which is like a wide blade of grass). A whistle out of grass?! Matt would really like to learn how to do that. But staying at home would be even better.

The boy crawled…