My goddaughter is almost nine years old.

She’s always called me “Madrina” (godmother in Spanish) instead of using my name, something I adore. In fact when she uses my name and realizes, she corrects immediately and say “I’m sorry, madrina”, and even if I tell her it’s ok, because that’s my name, she tells me: but I only have one madrina and it is you. And yes, my heart melts.

I’m an awkward godmother, to say the least.

When she was two, I was with her and her mother, and she had a terrible tantrum when we were at the mall. She lied in the floor, screaming and crying and kicking. I looked at her and then lied in the floor by her side crying like her. She stopped immediately. Looked at me amazed, and then at her mum. Her mum was obviously embarrassed, looking at me annoyed: “now I have to deal with two babies”. But the fact was that from that moment, no tantrum ever when she was with me. Ha!

When she was five, she was telling me about her BFF and then, looked at me and asked who my BFF was. “Your mum”, I said. She didn’t believe me. So we had to call her mum, and ask the same question, and when she gave the same answer, she was completely shocked. I think she had discovered that her mum and I had been friends since both of us can remember, and that we had something of our own she was not part of, and she was astonished with the discovery.

When she was seven she asked me for the first time about my mum. I told her she was no longer with us but in Heaven. She gave me a very sad look and said she was sorry. I told her she didn’t have to be sorry, because when my mum left she made sure to send me an angel to love me and take care of me, and that angel was her. And this is true, as my mum died seventeen days after my goddaughter was born.

Now she’s almost nine, and she sends me hearts from her iPod to tell me she loves me.

I’m lucky to have such a pure soul in my life.

To my beautiful goddaughter, to her mum and her dad and her older brother who finds her so annoying and embarrassing.

Love, February