Michelle and I wrote this piece in 2000, when we had just got back from working on cruise ships with kids. I found it today in my "art file" (a stack of papers sitting beside my computer, in my messy office which I really should be cleaning up right now). It's interesting to read this over again now, ten years and three kids later. Is this still what I believe about how to celebrate children?
Well, yes. In many ways. I definitely believe in celebrating the small moments as well as the big ones (for example, when Mama just feels like a cupcake). I still believe it's important to believe in their dreams (even if one child (who still skates on his "outside edge") believes that he won't even need to be drafted, he will just go right on the Canucks team at age 19; and the other one wants to be a peacock (or maybe - maybe - a zebra, when he's older). I still believe in building castles (especially when one child is digging a big hole and his brother keeps filling that hole up again); and telling stories (especially when it's bedtime and one of them is about to have the tantrum of all tantrums because he wants Dadda to put him to bed and not me).
I've learned that you don't have to "let" kids colour outside the lines. They'll do that anyway. And that splattering paint on the walls is a wonderful activity for art class, but not my living room. I've also learned that "coddling" doesn't 'cramp their style', as I once thought, but is lovely and important and necessary for both children and their mamas. (By the way, that particular line was there because I had just been on a plane with a little boy with an "unaccompanied minor" tag around his neck sitting next to me. He was eight. An hour into the plane ride, he looked at me and said, "You know, this tag they make me wear is just crampin' my style! I gotta take it off!" I was so impressed by his bravado that I had his spirit in mind when we were writing the piece).
There's a hilarious book about parenting that's called, "I was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids", and sometimes, I couldn't agree more. Weren't we all? And though I worked with children for many years before having any of my own, I never really knew what it was going to be like to be a parent. So when I read this "Celebrate Children" piece now, it makes me smile a bit at what I now see as naivety (and maybe a bit of smugness?) on how simple I thought it was going to be to be a parent. I don't blame myself. I really did believe all those things. I just didn't know how difficult it would be some days to do them all.
And yet, when all is said and done, I can honestly say that affirming them, and playing with them, and asking them questions and listening to their answers, and loving them unconditionally and, yes, being a constant reminder of how marvelous they really are...are all things I still believe all the way down to my toes, and still try to do every day. Some days are better than others. But still, I try.
It's all a Mom can do, right?
