Two little girls from Salt Lake City have folded 1,989 paper cranes in an effort to wish away Taylor Swift’s mother’s cancer.
Sisters Sam and Jo Brady, who are huge fans of of the Blank Space artist, first began folding their cranes back in January, inspired by a Japanese legend that claims if a person folds 1,000 paper cranes, they will be granted a wish. The girls, who are aged 11 and 8 respectively, originally planned to wish for tickets to see Taylor on her world tour, but changed their minds after the chart-topper announced earlier this month that her mother, Andrea Swift, 57, had been diagnosed with cancer.
‘They came to me one day and said, “You know mom, we want to change our wish,”‘ the girls’ mother Laurie Brady told KSL. ‘We want to send these cranes to Taylor Swift’s mom. We think that’s what we should do. That’s more important.’
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It all started when her eldest daughter Sam began to take an interest in origami and mom Laurie decided to introduce her to the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, which tells the story of a young Japanese girl who was diagnosed with ‘atom bomb sickness’ after surviving the nuclear blast in Hiroshima and tried to fold 1,000 paper cranes in order to be granted a wish like the legend tells.
Inspired by the story of Sadako, Sam and Jo went on to try and fold 1,000 cranes of their own in hopes that they would be granted their wish: tickets to see Taylor Swift in concert. They eventually upgraded their goal to 1,989 cranes, to match Taylor’s birth year and the name of her latest album 1989.
The folding started in January, taking up to about an hour of the girls’ time every day and resulting in the completion of around 30 cranes each day.
‘I believe we watched the whole Star Wars series and the whole Indiana Jones series because we had to do something while we were folding cranes,’ Laurie told KSL, adding that her daughters had earned money themselves to purchase each one of Taylor Swift’s albums.
But, after the singer’s announcement earlier this month that her mother had been sadly diagnosed with cancer, the girls have been trying to direct the fruits of their labor to a greater cause.
Now, four months after beginning their original challenge, all 1,989 cranes have been completed.
And in an effort to get their message out to Taylor and her mother the girls, who are both competitive dancers, have handed out flyers and also recorded a YouTube video showing off their mass of cranes and explaining their choice to gift the paper creations to Taylor’s mom, as well as their wish for her to ‘get better and kick cancer’s butt’.
The family are now trying to find a way to ship the cranes to the Swift family directly by trying to get Taylor’s attention on Twitter.
Mom Laurie explained to ABC News: ‘I’m not on the Twitter scene but it would be great if people just blew up her Twitter page because I know she’s on there a lot.’
