LJ Idol Christmas Week - Holidays, Joy and...Irish Revisionist History??
This evening, after dinner, my daughter and I were cleaning off the table and singing Christmas carols. My personal favorite is "Oh, Holy Night" so we did that one, raising our arms dramatically in the air at the "Fall on your knees" part. We like to ham it up when we're performing together.
Then she asked me to sing her the "Twelve Days of Christmas." Now that's a heavier request. I know the first four days very well, and love to belt out "FIVE gooold rings..." with the best of em. Much beyond that I can never remember if there are twelve pipers piping or six ladies dancing or nine lords a leaping. It gets all garbled in my head!
But, I did my best, which is often all you can do as a mom.
Then Peanut asked me "What's a tulip?"
I'm thinking, 'What does this have to do with a partridge in a pear tree?'
"Well, it's a flower, kind of shaped like a tall bowl." I cupped my hands and held them up to demonstrate. "They can be red or yellow or purple, lots of colors...Oh! And there's usually just one blossom on the end of the tall stem. I can look one up online for you if you want to see it?"
"That's o.k., mama," she responded. (I know sometimes I try to give her more information than she really requires.)
"But, why do you want to know about tulips, honey?" I asked
With a studious look she said, "You know, because in the song it says 'On the first day of Christmas my tulips gave to me...'
Kids are so cute. I giggled.
"No baby, not tulips, like a flower...True love. The song says "On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me..."
She looked at me inquisitively. "What's a true love?"
I'm such a romantic. For a moment, images from literature and Disney movies and ancient history flooded my mind. Cyrano and Cinderella and Cleopatra...but I needed to put this on a four-year-old level.
"Your true love is your soul mate. They are the person who understands you like no one else, who loves you like nothing else in this world."
Understanding dawned on her little heart-shaped face.
Slipping down from her chair she grinned.
"Oh! So you're my true love, mama!" she exclaimed and scampered off to do some little girl thing, like make a sticker-picture or color in her Tinkerbell coloring book.
That tiny utterance, nonchalantly tossed to the wind, almost made me cry. My joy was unsurpassed.
For all the times I feel like I have screwed up, spoken too harshly, made the wrong decision on little things, like should I give her dessert, to big things like should I go back to work full time, none of it has damaged her, broken our bond. She knows how important she is to me. That is my greatest goal in life, for my children to know without a doubt that they are my world.
My child said I am her true love. She believes I'm the one who understands her best and loves her better than anything else... and she's right.
(As for Irish revisionist history, I dated a guy who was from England my freshman year of college. I'm Irish Catholic and whenever he was being an ass I'd make really rude comments about car bombs just to watch him simmer, muwahahahaha. That's all I got...)