I got to thinking last night, as I was getting my 18-month-old ready for bed, what a joyous stage of life she is at.
We always say hello to ourselves in the bathroom mirror before she gets into the bathtub, singing a silly song as we go. It struck me, as my wee one grinned at herself in the mirror with delight, that we as women lose that somewhere along the line. Somewhere in girlhood, we quit grinning at ourselves in the mirror with sheer joy in our own being. We start seeing the so-called flaws instead. The frizzy hair. The crooked nose. The pimples. The too-small eyes with the too-big glasses. Then, later in life, the wrinkles. The grey hairs. The saggy bits.
We forget to look at ourselves with wonder and joy for the awesome, amazing human beings we are.
That's just sad.
There's something incredible about watching a little girl who hasn't yet been programmed to find herself wanting.
In a world where we're being bombarded with messages that tell us we're not quite enough - not thin enough, not pretty enough, not young enough, not stylish enough, not glossy-and-polished-and-Photoshopped enough - you can learn a lot from watching one tiny little being who's exploring her brand-new world with panache.
She's always in motion - grooving to the beat of anything from the coffee grinder to the electric shaver to whatever's playing on the car radio - and she couldn't care less how silly she looks when she sticks out her tiny bum and wiggles along, or when she twirls in circles around the living room floor till she falls down. She just gets up and keeps on twirling.
She's always talking - sharing her rapidly expanding vocabulary with anyone who'll listen, saying hi to everyone who passes by, raising her voice to express her decided opinions about everything from what she wants to eat or wear, to whether Mommy should or should not play the piano, or whether Daddy is in fact allowed to share the couch with her.
She's always expressing her own unique style. She demands her favourite socks (the black ones with the pink stars, or sometimes the rainbow-striped pair) and her favourite hat (the purple toque) regardless of the weather or the fashion statement she may be making. She sticks on Daddy's running cap or Mommy's shoes or wears a toy bucket on her head and struts around the house wearing a grin that says, "Amn't I amazing?"
She's always experimenting. Whether it's figuring out how to get up onto the kitchen chair by herself or building a tall tower of Mega Bloks, she's constantly checking out how things work. In her world, if it exists, it is meant to be tried. Picked up. Carried around. Tasted. Climbed. Squeezed. Dropped. Thrown. Nothing is off-limits or forbidden. Nothing is too hard or too scary or too difficult to at least give it a try.
She lives with abandon. She dances. She runs. She splashes in puddles. She raises her face to feel the wind in her hair and claps her little hands with glee when she's walking through the rain.
She often says "no" (about twenty-seven times tonight, at a rough guess). But she never says "I can't."
She never thinks she isn't good enough. As far as she's concerned, she pretty much owns the world.
And she's right.
She does.
Right here, right now, she is everything she needs to be.
As a mother, I'm now facing one of my big fears - that somehow I'll fail to help her stay this way. That I'll inadvertently pass on to her the message that she, like the rest of us, just isn't quite enough. That the so-called flaws that society will find in her will gradually creep in and erode her natural-born spirit and confidence.
It's an awe-inspiring task, this parenting a girl.
How do you define the limits that will keep her safe and healthy while at the same time allowing her the freedom to explore? How do you encourage the behaviour that will lead to a polite and courteous child without teaching her to give in, to try to please at all costs? How do you help her to understand how beautiful she is without focusing too much on the big blue eyes and the sweet little face? How do you help her maintain her independence and let her make her own mistakes while still protecting her from a world where some people will take advantage of her because she is petite and cute and blonde?
How do you let her be herself, whoever that self may turn out to be?
Contrary to the title of this post, I don't begin to know. But I'm sure as heck going to do my best.
Because I'd hate to do anything to change the little being who's nothing less than twenty pounds of amazing.
She is silly. Feisty. Goofy. Happy. Bossy. Chatty. Adventurous. Curious. Affectionate. And gloriously, magnificently free.
So we're going to keep on dancing in the living room and going on adventures in the big wide world and grinning at ourselves in the bathroom mirror because, you know what, we really are just that awesome.
And no one's gonna tell us otherwise.
