Magical Creature Lessons: #24
It’s been a couple of months since I visited with my daughter and her family. The Magical Creatures are getting older, their world is expanding. They enjoy several sports, have loads of friends, and work hard at school. We have a lot less downtime these days when I do visit simply because they all have lives now.
As we learned in Magical Creature Lesson #5 — growth is inevitable. And so they grow. But even in their jam-packed, busy lives — they still will take time to let the adults in their world know how important we are to them.
Phrases like, “I love you”, and “I miss you” and questions like, “When are you coming back again?” pepper every FaceTime conversation we share. In the times between visits, I receive (and send) note cards of just a few sentences so that we know we are thinking of each other. I have kept every single one. And their mommy tells me that they have done the same.
I’ll not lie to you, it’s been a tough weekend. For some reason, Mother’s Day this year was harder than usual. I’ve had over five decades of practice being a motherless daughter, but grief has its own agenda. And it can reappear out of nowhere, even if you think you’ve finally laid it all to rest in peace.
But, I’ll share with you what got me through this weekend — I had a lovely FaceTime chat with all The Magical Creatures. After we disconnected, I read each of their notes again. Some of them more than once. And I knew, deep down in my heart, that I was loved.
It wasn’t a mother’s love, nor the romantic love of a life partner. But that doesn’t make the love any less sacred. Any less healing. In fact, it was just the opposite — the unconditional love of children, the unfiltered declarations of love and longing, the trust that their feelings are reciprocated — it was miraculous.
How many kinds of love give us that sort of sacred love? Adults with their own traumas hide from love. We filter and analyze our words and actions. We put on masks and present our best selves. We work very hard to strike the correct balance between attachment and independence. We seldom simply open ourselves up to the love that is right in front of us.
And that is our loss.
Learn from the children, they give love, attention, and affection without apprehension. If you want a child to love you the recipe is simple — all you have to do is love them. And perhaps, just perhaps, that’s a recipe that could heal the entire planet.
Namaste.
