We were in Julie’s room one night, my eldest daughter and I.  I wanted to show her how the canvas painting she had carefully labored over for Julie’s Christmas gift was framed and hung on the wall.

I said, gazing at her masterpiece with no small amount of motherly pride, “Now it looks like a real work of art”.

Bella looked at my quizzically, wondering yet again how her mother could possibly understand so little about the world.

“Mama, every time you make something, or draw something, or paint something, it is already real art. There is no such thing as art that is not real”

And so I said that she was right, and didn’t it look nice, and once again, daughter became guru and mother became willing student.

Which is, I sometimes think, the way it was meant to be.

~~~~~~

{art is always real. all of it.  even the stuff you don’t understand.  even the stuff you don’t like.  even the stuff that you made that you would be embarrassed to show your best friend}

that photo that you took when you first got your DSLR, when you captured her spirit perfectly but the focus landed on her shoulder?    still art.

the painting you did last year the first time you picked up a brush, the one your mentor critqued to death?  it’s art.

the story you are holding in your heart and so desperately want to tell the world?  definitely art.

the scarf you knit for your son with the funky messed up rows?  art. art. art.

the poem scrawled on your dry cleaning receipt at the red light.

the dress you want to sew. the song you want to sing.

the clay you’ve not yet molded.

everything you have made

or will one day make

{it’s all real, every last bit.   because there is no such thing as art that is not real. bella said so}

I’m on my way to bed, but I leave the hall light on for a moment to tiptoe into her room.  Every night I do this right before bed, sneak into their rooms one last time, my light kiss on the head a prayer to the universe to keep them always safe.

On impulse, this night, I climb into her bed and curl my body around her sleeping form.  Her long legs are tangled in the sheets and her thumb has just fallen from her mouth, a little girl habit held onto only at bedtime.   I press my lips to her hair and breathe deeply.  She smells of chlorine and sweat and little girl summer and the plea leaps, unbidden, into my mind.

I have broken so many things along this journey. Please, please don’t let her be one of them.

And for the millionth time I make a silent promise to be better, more patient, more loving, every last little thing she deserves.  My only hope that she will find herself whole at the end.

Bella and Julie in July 2007: No matter how much they fight, there is a connect between sisters...

Teachable moments.  As parents we know to look out for those fleeting instances where life and learning come together effortlessly.   A trip to the grocery store teaches colors and counting to a toddler, a donation to the food bank brings opportunity to discuss poverty and hunger.

Life swirls around us willy-nilly and when we pay attention and grasp the lessons as they come, we have a chance to pass them on before the moment is lost.  There’s an underlying assumption that we – with the benefit of advanced years and accompanying wisdom – will be the teachers, while our children are the ones being taught.

~~~

When we wake up from a deep sleep  there is often a moment where our sleeping souls and our waking souls hover separate for a moment before settling into our body.   I’ve felt it, that moment poised on the brink between dreams and daylight, just waiting for all of me to fall back to earth.  But there are days when the meshing doesn’t quite happen right, things don’t line up like they should, and we wake up feeling the effects.

~~~

Julie is miserable from the moment her eyes open this morning.  She tantrums and clings and cries and whines her way through the morning routine.   Nothing is right, nothing tastes right or fees right or sounds right. But we rush through the routine of dressing and eating and lunch packing and teeth brushing, and there’s no time to do anything but drag her miserable little self along for the ride, gritting our teeth as we go.

8 O’Clock (ten minutes from the time we need to leave) finds her lying in the floor of our hallway, kicking her legs and screaming bloody murder again (and again and again).   I hit my overload point, where frustration bubbles out of me and over onto anyone in the immediate vicinity.

Julie, if you can’t stop screaming I’m going to have to put you in your room!

Bella is walking down the hallway at that point and stops to look me in the eye.

B: Mama, don’t put her in her room.  You’ll just make it worse, she’ll get more upset and everything will take longer.  Ugh, timeout – it’s such a… grownup*  idea.  You know, it’s not like what she wants is not important.  It IS important.

J: What does she want Bella? I don’t know, she’s been crying about everything since she woke up.

B: She just wants you to hear her.

~~~

And so we all slow down, and I sit in the hallway with both my girls, my gurus, my teachers, and I take a moment to hear them both, to learn from them, grateful that my oldest girl knew not to let a teachable moment pass unnoticed.  Grateful that she took the time to pass on that wisdom to me. Grateful that I wasn’t so far gone that I couldn’t hear it.

And then we load up the car – daughters and mother and backbacks and lunch boxes and slightly lighter hearts – and head on our way, my teachers and I.

~~~

What do any of us want, really, but to speak and be heard, to exist and be accepted?  Even cranky, even ugly, even when we wake up on the wrong side of the bed, even when we’re pushed to our limits by things that nobody else understands.  We all want someone to hear us.

It IS important.

~~~

*Please note: the word grownup must be read in a tone dripping with disgust and incomprehension – as if grownups were a separate, and not entirely intelligent, species that she is forced to deal with.