Simple “girl” times

This morning I spent time with my little girl.  We had a tea party and we sat at the table, coloring pictures together.  I am very thankful for these ‘simple’ times.  It has been a great blessing and instrument of healing for me to have a daughter.

My mother did not spend a lot of time ‘playing’ with me when I was a little girl.  I don’t hold this against her – she wasn’t in the most ideal environment to be able to be nurturing.  I was actually a lot closer to my grandmother who lived on the same farmstead.  We did a lot of ‘playing’ together.  I remember getting into my grandmother’s sewing kit and playing with all her buttons – there’s a picture somewhere of me sitting on the floor with all her sewing things on the floor around me.  I also remember helping my grandma make bread – she would make it by hand (without a mixer, until her arthritis got too bad).  And she’d let me punch down the dough as hard as my 4 year old arms could.  I am incredibly thankful for these moments with my grandmother.  I could be a ‘little girl’ around her.  She was more of a ‘mother’ to me than my own mother.

I lost the ability to simply be a ‘little girl’ as I was growing up.  I became hard and would not show emotions.  I tried to behave much older than I really was.  I became very ‘serious’, trying so hard to please my father and live up to unspoken expectations.  I was so ‘hard’ than when my grandmother passed away when I was 13 years old, I would not cry at her funeral.  I stuffed all the pain and grief inside.  It’s only been in the last few years that I have been able to honestly grieve my grandmother’s passing.  I miss her a lot.  I wish I could talk to her now, about everything that’s happened in my life.  I think she would have liked my daughter and had a lot of fun with her. (I’m tearing up as I think about the fact that my daughter won’t ever know my grandma – she was such a great woman)

That’s why I cherish these ‘simple’ moments with my girl.  It allows me to ‘go back’, as it were, and become a ‘little girl’ again myself.  And I hope that when my daughter grows up, she will look back on these moments with fondness.

3 Replies to “Simple “girl” times

  1. It’s true. The little things are what end up being the big things. I remember my dad doing my hair before school, his clumsy hands trying to get my (VERY) fine and slippery hair into pigtails… He would get so frustrated. And going to school with crooked hair. All those little moments that I’m sure he would have never thought were important enough for me to remember, or moments that were frustrating to him, but special to me…

    I’m an obsessive picture taker for that reason. I want to capture and keep all of those moments so I can have a tangible reminder of them forever. Sometimes though, I need to be better at just being present in that moment so I don’t miss it. I wonder which moments will be the ones that my children remember. I hope I can give them WAY more to cherish than regret.

  2. What a great reminder for me to slow down and enjoy my children. Sometimes I get so focussed on trying to teach them what is right that I forget to have fun.

  3. Hello, glad to see you are back to writing in your blog, but I might mention that you need to increase the size of the font, as these old eyes have a hard time reading it. It also might be the color of the print who knows.

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