She is a tiny girl with three ponytails with the hair woven neatly into braids clipped on the ends with plastic ducks, bears and hearts. They always match her clothes. Her mother puts the clear plastic balls around the base of the ponytails as a cover to the colorful rubber bands that hold the evenly distributed hair in place. Her scalp is clean and shows only the light glisten of the blue hair pomade from the small rounded pyramid shaped container. It smells kind of sweet. I think it's called bergamot. I remember the scent and when it hits me now, I feel comforted like I did when I sat in that hard plastic chair while my mother put those parts and braids in my own hair.
She is slim and wears pants with elastic in the waist because otherwise, they will fall off of her tiny frame. Her thin feet struggle to carry Mary Janes because they are made for wide little girl feet. Hers are narrow and long. She will grow up being reminded that she has big feet; feet too big for her body. They are actually the perfect feet for her frame. She will figure that out eventually.
She hears that her hair is too nappy and that she should have had hair like her mother instead of like her father. She chose - as if it were scientifically possible - to have her father's slim physique, his hair texture, his smarts and to some extent, his coloring. She did not choose any of her mother's lighter, brighter attributes. She is reminded of it at every opportunity. Each time, the words take a little scrape of her protective skin as if for a strange sort of biopsy. She will develop a thicker skin, but it will take a long time to get there.
I wrote her a stack of letters. I wrote a stack of letters in an attempt to thicken that skin. I wrote to her to help her remember herself before she decides that forgetting herself is the most viable option. It is not easy to repair what is not yet broken but hindsight is a valuable gift.
I wrote her a stack of letters on handmade paper. Pink paper. The pink paper with the visible fibers. The pink paper which I put in a drawer with a cotton ball soaked in my signature scent. That way, she will know what I smell like. She will know that the scent is not merely perfume but it is part of her older self. She will be able to taste the scent on the back of her tongue where the scent leaves her nose and travels toward her throat. She will remember me though she has not met me. She will see glimpses of her future self and become something even better! She will hear and read and smell and experience that love that she longs for. She will be swaddled in it.
I included audio clips for her ears to take in the sound of my voice. I drew pictures and included photos so that she might find herself in her future self. She will see, taste, smell, hear and touch the future. She will find herself inextricably tied to the love of her older self. She needs that love. That will resolve many of her issues. She will find that there is a kind of love that supersedes everything else in life. she will learn how to experience love and also to give love. She will teach others how to love as well. She will become the model for loving and for love itself. That's what the world needs and she will be equipped to give it. I love her already. She is here and she is becoming and she is loved. She is loved in ways that cannot be described just yet. She is already being perfected in love. Love of self. Love of others. Love of life!!
I love her enough to tell her about herself so that she can become more of herself. That’s love.
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