#TWO. THE TOOTH FAIRY
B lost her second tooth yesterday so the tooth fairy payed her a visit in the night. I asked her if she saw the tooth fairy but she explained, with beautiful demonstration, how the fairy flies in but she’s ‘so so tiny so we can’t see her anyway’. Her eyes were bright and her smile was wide as she showed me the way the fairy flies and what she does with the teeth that she collects. ‘Maybe she uses all the teeth to build a big castle for her to live in’. Dream big little girl.
It got me thinking about how wonderful a child’s mind is. As their mum, I made the body they house inside, I am the one to teach them right from wrong, I am the one to ensure they are safe and in good health, but they are not my masterpiece; they are their own masterpiece and I have been given the grand privilege of watching THEM be the artist. I am the adult who gives them food, I give them clothes, I give them toys and I give them lifts to school or to the park. What they give me back cannot be quantified by anything physical. Someone said to me recently that my ‘joy tank’ must be permanently topped up just watching them grow and that is such a perfect description. I love to leave them playing and listen and watch from afar at where their imagination takes them. I love to write down in a book all the funny things they say and when I feel sad, I get that book out and I read. I like to document a one second video clip from every day with them and when I play the video footage back, I see that there is genuinely joy in every single day with them.
I have to be completely honest and say it’s taken quite some time for me to reach this stage of motherhood where I genuinely love it. I found the pre-school years the hardest; physically it was difficult with my Lupus when they needed so much physical care from me. Doing the majority of these years as a single mother, I found it hard not to resent the situation; and inadvertently the children, but looking back I realise I was suffering with postnatal depression, a broken marriage with significant emotional abuse, a broken body and a pretty horrendous court battle. I was doing the best I could but I didn’t enjoy those years like I would love to say I had. It feels desperately sad to admit it, but for the first time in such a long time I don’t dread going to bed in fear of the next morning being unbearable. I don’t wake up and just want to close my eyes again. I don’t spend the days wanting to sleep away the unbearable hours. I feel free and I feel liberated and its these two tiny humans, only 5 and 6 who have unknowingly taught me how truly precious life is, how there is joy in every day, and that the future may be unknown; but I no longer live in fear of it.
