the shape of you sleeping in our dimly lit room. you shrieking, chasing the cat pretending she is a coyote. chase me, chase me you run, narrowly missing every corner, taking the stairs two at a time, leaping off your stool each chance you get. you are most contented with: your dump truck a shovel, and mud. you walk into puddles as though kissing the sea. orcas can live here, you say on a rainy day in April about the puddle in our backyard. you spend all afternoon there despite the weather, hauling coffee-coloured rainwater from one end of the yard to the other. finding worms to show me, gleefully, running at me with your muck-splattered face. your right eyelid is still purple from Easter Sunday. lately, i’ve been dressing you in jeans and a t-shirt, overwhelmed by how old you look. you know, i see it all so differently now, my love. a muddy backyard, full of puddles and limitless potential. i see the dirt under your nails, a sign of time well-spent. i see you, moving that brown water, sloshing around the back of your dump truck over tree roots and all that muck. i see you, i see you, i see you.
we teach our children the way we think the world should be we show them the way we believe the world could be
we teach our children to be curious. we teach them kindness and gentleness. we tell them of their own innate goodness. we teach our children to pay attention: the call of a bird, a dog barking, the moon; we teach them patience and acceptance. we teach our children that all their feelings are welcome, it’s safe here, you are loved. we say to them, this is a beautiful place, isn’t it? look at the sun my love, did you know when it rises here it sets in Thailand? listen to the sound of the snow crunching under your feet squish the mud with your fingers trace your name in the sand listen. did you hear that? it’s the sound of the wind a train a helicopter. we let time stand still and we exist in that moment only, with them. we play, we laugh, we sing so much. (we never knew we would sing so much.) we teach them to be themselves. we tell them they can be whatever they want to be in this world. we tell them to listen to their hearts their bodies their inner wisdom. we don’t want to lay it on too thick, but we tell them to listen to their true selves. shhhhh… listen.
we believe in magic, with them. with them, we don’t hold back, we are unconcerned, we are not self-conscious. (the singing for example, we really didn’t know there would be so much singing.)
we are reminded daily, almost hourly really, of how incredible and abundant and miraculous life here really is. that they are that. that life and our constant little reminder. we try to convey this to them on a long drive home one afternoon during the why why why phase every three-year-old goes through. but, well, just end up singing a song about the sun, the moon and the stars. shhhh… can i tell you a secret? you are that, my love.
mama musings 