Amid the myriad of books which
line the shelves in the playroom sit a couple of items, little gems, I couldn't
help but share with my boys. They're powerful, sentimental, and all around
important to me. These loosely bound, lovingly used and aged, weathered and
worn allegories are lessons I desperately want to teach my tinys.
One of them is The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams:
“Real
isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to
you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but
really loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does
it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,”
said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real, you don’t
mind being hurt.”
“Does
it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It
doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. ”You become. It takes a long
time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have
sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are
Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get
loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all,
because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t
understand.”
I'm often surprised by the
lessons I work so hard to instill in my little men, and how I can be so focused
on teaching, wrapped up in molding and creating powerful and confident men,
that I forget to stop and listen myself.
Teaching them to believe in
their authenticity. Teaching them it's okay to be vulnerable, to fail, to not
be as good as others. Teaching them there are lessons in every action. Teaching
them that making a mistake and hurting someone you love is natural, it's a
process, and as long as it comes with remorse and genuine contrition, it's
fully acceptable. Teaching them that play is as important as work. Teaching
them that allowing people to treat them poorly is doing a disservice to both
sides of that equation. Teaching them that they are not defined by society but
merely by what they find in themselves.
Those who know me well know that
I don’t really do emotions. I’m not a
crier, and I don’t tend to share the things which I associate with
emotions. I don’t like to sleep in front
of people, I don’t talk much about how I’m really feeling, and I often smile
and say “I’m fine. No Worries. I’m stronger than I look.” As major life changes unfolded, I told very
few people of them. I don’t talk up
things I’m excited about, and I don’t disclose the things which upset me.
Except with my kids.
They see me laugh. They see me
cry. My boys know the anger in my voice,
the dread, the concern. They know when I’m
worried. My dynamic duo play on the
floor next to me while I sleep, curl up in my arms and wish me well when I’m
ill, remind me that I’m everything when I feel like nothing.
When my baby was less than
three, he’d walk up to me on days where I wore a dress, swing around holding on
to the hem of the skirt, and smile up at me with his chubby cheeks. “Mommy, you
a princess? You’re boooootiful.”
To them, there are no
flaws. I’m not cracked, damaged,
soiled. I carry no extra pounds, wear no
scars, adorn no wrinkles. My laughter is
music, my soft spots are perfect places to land. To my boys, I am real and
anyone who doesn’t see it through their eyes simply doesn’t understand.
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