Lessons From the Floor

Before I had kids, my ideas about motherhood were cheerfully naive, almost like commercials for a Hallmark movie. Pillow fights on a sun-dappled bed with feathers floating down around laughing faces. Baking cookies together and smiling as little noses are dotted with flour. Building forts with pillows and stuffed animals for stories before bedtime.

Is anyone else snickering yet, because I sure am. Baking cookies with kids is close to psychological warfare if you’re a perfectionist. Forts are only fun until someone complains they aren’t warm enough or comfortable enough and everyone wants a drink of water. And raise your hand if you’ve ever seen a pillow fight that didn’t end with someone crying, because Heaven knows that’s how they always end up in here.

Something else I believed was that education was a top-down process. It was my job to teach my kids everything. And, naturally, there’s a lot of truth in that. It is my job to teach my kids, and that job started the day they were born. What I didn’t know is that education is a river that flows in both directions. I had absolutely no idea how much my kids would teach me on a continual basis or how different they would all be. I knew God had picked me as their mama for a reason, but I never even considered that those reasons would be for my benefit as well as theirs.

Take Bean, for example. Bean is very, very much like me on an emotional level. We also tend to struggle with the same emotional challenges. When she was younger, I could understand her emotions before she had the vocabulary to explain them because I felt the same emotions. And I thought: ahhh, this is why I’m her mom. But now she’s older and both the challenges and her emotions are more complicated, so coping mechanisms need to be as well. Helping Bean navigate deeper waters has taught me about the gaps in my own bridges and how important it is to be real with our kids. Our kids have to see the truth – that life is messy but we figure out how to cope regardless.

Now, my boys teach me far different lessons. Self control and patience will be lifelong lessons thanks to Noodle and Roo. But I have also learned how to laugh until tears run down my face, developed a wide variety of accents and learned more about superheroes and dinosaurs than I ever wanted to know. Boogie teaches me how to just chill out and let things go. Nothing ruffles Boogie, so long as he’s got some milk.

And then there’s Pook. Pook is perhaps the best teacher I’ve ever had. I’ve learned things about myself, my strengths and weaknesses and fears. I’ve learned how to leap when I can’t see the ground beneath me. And I have learned how to find joy in what feels like impossible darkness.

Pook got her cast off today at the children’s hospital. Not one but three different staff members told me she’d not be able to walk after the cast came off – her leg would be too weak and she’d be too used to depending on the cast for support. The third person, who was the actual doctor, was still expounding on how to help Pook reacclimatize when she slid off my lap and walked across the room. Because of course she did. She’s Pook. And she knew I needed to be reminded that we are the only people who set our limits. That there isn’t anything I can’t do if I want to do it badly enough.

Life According to Pook: yes, it might hurt and yes it might be scary, but we’re gonna do it anyway.