Of Fairies, daughters, and motherhood - of poetry and ideals

Years before Tansy was conceived I was looking through a book and fell upon this picture of The Tansy Fairy. I was so taken by it (this was right at the time commercialized fairy-mania started charming the west) that I imagined my child looking just like this. I was so captured by this picture that I vowed that I would name my first daughter after her...I did just that.

I thought to myself at the time, ‘my daughter is going to look just like this fairy. She is going to have round rosy cheeks and dimpled knees and I am going to love her.’ Curiously enough, she did grow to look like this fairy but she also grew in ways I hadn’t thought of at that time - that time before I began to look with a mother‘s heart.

Here is my first born - my only daughter. She is so much more than rosy cheeks and dimpled knees (which knees she has outgrown). She is a writer, a mentor and my spiritual advisor in many ways. Her spirituality catches me off guard so often that I wonder at her. And I am to be her guide? Maybe I should just sit back and be the student. Didn’t Christ tell us to become as little children?

I know that sometimes I forget His words. I get caught up in preparing my children for adulthood. They grow so fast - why do we push them? We sometimes get so caught up in the pushing and preparing that we miss the point. “And a little child shall lead them”.

Sometimes looking with a mother's heart becomes distorted by expectation, worry, guilt and pride.I think that looking with a mom’s heart and looking with a poet’s heart are the same. A poet normally looks for the beauty in life and finds it in the strangest places. Out of pain a poet finds beauty. In the mundane a poet finds art.

Robert Frost wrote, “Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom’. So should looking with a mother’s heart!

I heard that children are like flowers and I liked the analogy. I wonder if, ‘children are life’s poetry’ is not more fitting. Not poetry we write but poetry we delight in and then gain wisdom from. And if that is so - if we can see our children as living poetry doesn’t that make us the same as well? Didn’t someone somewhere write, “If you can’t be a poet, be the poem”?

Troels wrote something that impressed me very much, ‘Like with some shy animals that will not allow you to approach them, but if you turn your attention elsewhere they may choose to approach you.”

I contrast that against something Dr. Phil says (yes, I do watch him now and again, I’ll admit it) - he says that we write on the slate of who our children are. I wonder at that comment.

Why should we try? I mean, wouldn’t it be better to be the best poem (or example) we can be and let our children approach us (or learn from us)? I guess that happens regardless. But I know that I tend to ‘go after’ my children to clean their rooms, mind their manners, do their homework, say their prayers etc etc. And I am not saying that these things shouldn’t be taught a child...I guess what I am addressing is how these things are taught to a child.

Using Troels shy animal analogy, an animal will run off when you go after it but if you turn your attention elsewhere - I suggest inward- it will approach you. That makes the thought of being approachable take on a whole new meaning for me. I think that being approachable means living the life I have the best I can. It means doing what I know to be right. It means stopping what I know to be wrong. It means seeking out the beauty and enjoying it where ever it is.

My adopted philosophy is to leave the child to explore and seek, guiding her through example. Of course I am not suggesting that we leave a child to explore danger and seek where evil intent prowls, I am just saying that we need to check our expectations and our plans so we are not smothering our children with them. I am saying that we need to watch with poets eyes at the children around us.

Oh dear, have I exposed myself as an idealist. It is true, I am. I try not to go over the top but I am prone to rant and rave. I can’t let go of the ideal I’m afraid, it is the north star to which I navigate my life.