With routine days spent in such proximity, my daughter and I
live in a unique world where a toddler and an adult inhabit the same space. At times I’m overtaken by my connection to her-
my firstborn. Even though our contact is
constant and overwhelming, I still want her close. At night, when I wake scared (When despair for the world grows in me/and I wake in the night
at the least sound/in fear of
what my life and my children's lives may be –Wendell Berry), my first thought is to slip
into her bed, cuddle close, imbibe the rhythm of her nighttime breath, and
whisper thanks over and over and over for the moments I’ve had with her. And I beg for more, for as many moments as we
can have. Sometimes I hold her so close
I imagine absorbing her back inside me so that my body might again be her safe
place where she is closer to me, and a bit more removed from that ‘outside’
world I find so hard to trust.
She dances around the house creating her own small worlds
from blankets, discarded papers, stacked books and any old thing she imagines
life into. She talks through her every
thought and I have to guess nothing about her ideas, fears, hopes or intentions. I listen to her soliloquies and notice how
she will weave in such little details of the day. When I listen, I can hear what she’s learned
and how she absorbs it all through play:
- Once, when I fix her toy with glue she pretends to break and repair household objects for several hours thereafter.
- After a trip to the hospital and the pharmacy she carefully explains to a throng of dolls and stuffed animals that they should be sure to drink lots of water and juice so that they can feel better.
- I drop my phone in frustration grunting, “What the heck?!” A few hours later she tells me in snotty frustration, “Mom, I have boogs. What the heck?!”
- I can hear her arguing with Luke in the dining room and he tells her she’s ‘unbelievable’. So she climbs the steps to the second floor to report, “Mom, I’m undeliebable”.
Always learning, repeating, asking, refining, testing.
Exasperating and illogical as her toddler world may be, I
feel privileged to spend my days in and out of its periphery. I can feel- it’s palpable- that in her world there is no pretense or hatred or
dishonesty. In her transparent
curiosity, she is light to me. She is
love and hope and every good thing I long for in the adult world I generally inhabit. She and her 30 lb ilk are beyond
precious. There is no word for it. Sometimes I just think that if every person
in the world would look a toddler in the eyes and listen and hear – Oh, how
could they do any of the ungodly things that we do? How could anyone do an ounce of evil to
threaten all the shiny, hopeful, unblemished goodness of a tiny human who’s
just piecing it all together?
There’s no war in those eyes. No rape.
No industrial mayhem. No slavery. It’s a world of possibility. I teach her, true. But it’s no cliché to say that perhaps she is
the true teacher here.
And yet daily I find myself faced with the task of letting
her go (because surely she belongs to no one, not even me), of walking near
her, but not an obstacle to her growth, independence or strength. And worst (scariest, hardest?) of all, I must
find some way to loose her into a world I do not trust with her. Obviously she’ll meet countless loving,
wonderful, art-ful others who will feed her soul and buoy her. But what about that one or two or three who
might mean her harm, or see her as a means to an end?
Oh world, let her live fully here. Let her be free in as many ways that there
are. And let her shine through whatever darknesses
lurk on her path. Help her know herself,
trust herself, love herself deeply. Give
her clarity and assurance. Let her and
her peers teach us all, for we need to inhabit their curious world more than we’ll
ever acknowledge.
