Gifts

Sometimes I get annoyed with Sofia for wanting to play with me all the time. I have dishes to wash, dinner to prep, emails to answer (mumble mumble facebook posts to like). But just yesterday, the realization came to me as I begrudgingly took part, but then slowly forced myself to be fully present: by allowing me to play with her, she is giving me a unique look into herself. How she talks to other pretend presences, what she says to her dolls, the new words she's learned, the depths of her imagination. If I listen very carefully, she is offering me the most hidden, truest parts of herself. She is giving me a gift.

There are times when we are with other people and I get worn out keeping up our back-and-forth language game, making a stubborn attempt at only speaking to the girls in English. This requires a lot of translating, as it's important to me that neither the girls nor our Italian friends feel left out of the conversation. It's very tiring. The truth, though, is that when I turn to Sofia or Samina and speak to them in English in the middle of a very Italian conversation, it feels like we are a little team, sharing our own quiet inside story. We are working together to speak our bilingual sentences. They are giving me a gift.

Sofia was born a highly sensitive child. She needs explanations to things, wants to know why and how, letting things settle in her before she can accept them. We occasionally roll our eyes while answering all her questions - the why's and the how's don't always come at life's most convenient times, and we wish she'd just listen to music in the car instead of giving us the third degree. But, when I stop and think about it, these questions she has for me always make me think. I have to analyze what she will understand, how much to tell her, what information will suffice. But, usually, first I have to figure out if I even have an answer for her. And it means I have to think back to when I was her age, just as highly sensitive, and I am forced to find empathy. That empathy is a gift she is giving me.

The ins and outs of our daily lives are so mind-numbing, so frequently tedious and monotonous that I forget. I disregard the fact that my children weren't only 'given' to me so that I could set them on the righteous path - but that they are in my lives to teach me something, for me to receive something as well. I get so bogged down in wanting to make them become the best adults they possibly can be that I forget they are here to do that exact same thing for me.

Our children have gifts to give us. It's not easy to find the energy to even figure out what they are, amid the frustration and exhaustion. But they are there, and we can find them in the quiet. In those moments we allow ourselves - sorry, no, we force ourselves - to just be. To play dollies, to speak thoughtfully, to answer questions earnestly - for the sole purpose of simply playing, simply speaking, simply answering. Because it is in those instants that we can, if we're truly lucky, catch a glimpse of not only who our babies are becoming, but who we are.