My Funny Valentine
Before dinner on Valentine's Day, realizing he'd done nothing with hearts or red construction paper at school to express his love for the family, my middle son sat down and feverishly began cutting, gluing and drawing on a piece of paper he'd snuck from the printer. When we were just about to eat, he shyly nudged his card toward the center of the table and looked around to make sure we'd noticed.
It was covered in blue and gold and silver hearts and said we were "the best family he could ever whish for," and went on to say something sweet about every member of the family. Of course I loved it, I'm a sucker for anything homemade like this. But what struck me most was the individual pictures he drew on the card of each of us (and not because I'm looking a little more bulbous than usual).
To each of us he assign a thought bubble proclaiming our identity, "I'm Mom," "I'm Dad," etc. and on our chest was our key identifier, at least in that moment. His sister "loves unikorns," his brother "loves basketball," his dad "loves sparkling water" and he himself "loves Snorlax" (a favorite pudgy pokemon character). But mine simply said,
"I love me."
Hmmmmmmm, I thought. And in that moment, I couldn't decide how I felt about that.
I love me. Does he see that I am sometimes a selfish mother who thinks of herself before her children? Does he feel like I pay so little attention to him that he couldn't think of anything more suitable for me to love than my own self? Or that I put my needs above all others in this family, and most definitely above Unikorns and sparkling water?
He would not be wrong, I do this sometimes.
When I asked him later what he meant by this, he grinned and said very matter-of-factly, "you just love how you are, mom" and then added, "except when your back hurts."
I am choosing to believe that my son sees me. Really sees me - in so much as a 9-year-old can see his mother. He sees that I do my own things. My podcast, my morning writing and meditation time, my reading time, the time I escape take to meet friends in the evenings, the weekend mornings I take to myself while his dad makes pancakes, the guitar I strum and the songs I sing, the dancing I do most days when my back is not hurting.
Though I doubt he gave it this much as much thought as I now have, I am choosing to believe that "I love me" means that he sees that I am more than just a mother, a chef, a chauffeur, a cheerleader, although I am those things too. That he sees the importance of self-care and that this is his way of acknowledging that he's okay with me filling my bucket first, so that I can spill over and fill his too.
It's easy to worry about getting the balance right when it comes to parenting. As a mother who chose to let go of her career to stay home and raise kids, it's sometimes difficult not to feel the occasional twinge of resentment or to feel seen as anything beyond the household concierge. So I'm grateful that my son gave me the gift of being seen this year - I'll take that over a box of chocolates any day!
My takeaways:
DO a thing! If you have kids, let them see you DOING a thing. SHARE this thing. TALK about this thing. TAKE TIME for this thing. And if you don't have a thing, FIND a thing.
What is your thing?
Doesn't have to be a big thing. In fact, I've been thinking more and more about how this idea that we need to be doing big things sometimes scare us away from doing things at all. So start small. Write about this thing in a journal, whisper this thing to someone you trust, or tell it to a stranger. See what happens.
OR TELL ME! Comment below and let me know about your thing! I'd love to hold that small thing for you and cheer you on! You deserve to do a thing too!
