My daughter is going to be turning 9 in two weeks… 9! Almost to the double digits, but luckily I get one more year before I have to face that.
What she wants most this year is to re-do her bedroom… making it earthy and organic and painting the walls light brown, putting up a huge mural of a tree on one wall and a big fluffy bean bag chair in the corner.
So, in preparation for her new room, I’m painting it this week. She picked the color… it’s Interactive Cream from Sherwin Williams, low-VOC paint.
I was pushing all her furniture to the center of the room, clearing off the walls to get them ready for painting, and of course I found all kinds of cute things — stuffed animals fallen under the bed, markers under the desk, dust bunnies, etc… but the best thing in the entire room was this:
I have taken to leaving the kids little notes in their dresser drawers… not as often as I want to, but I’d say I tuck some little message or surprise in there for them every few months. Usually a handwritten note from me with a piece of candy or something.
I love seeing all the little doodles they leave all over the house (I talk about that here and here) so I’ve been having fun with giving them my own version. I love knowing it’s in their drawer, waiting for them to reach in for their PJ’s and knowing that they’ll find it.
This note was like several others… me saying I love you… I never know what becomes of the notes I leave, I guess they get absorbed into the house somehow… but this note was in a pile of stuff on Clara’s table. She wrote me back, and didn’t show me or tell me about it.
My heart still hasn’t recovered. I just love so many things about it… her handwriting… that she wrote “to” instead of “too”… that she wrote it twice, once and then tracing over it again… that she wrote some hieroglyphics at the end… that is so Clara.
But mostly what I love, is that she didn’t feel the need to show it to me. She just wrote it, and allowed it to be. It was the truth… it didn’t need any feedback. She just loves me and she trust that I know it. And I do, Baby Clara, I do. You live in a world full of love and you show it every single day. And it is fact for you. In your very modest, very tender, very real and very honest world, you do things and release them to the universe and never ask for anything in return. The doing of it is it’s own reward for you.
You are a beautiful, shining example for me to witness. I love you to pieces. So my favorite thing in this room? It’s this note, but it’s really what it symbolizes. Trusting in the unseen. She loves me. I love her. Our souls connect. It just is. It always will be. The showing of it and re-affirming of it is nice, but it’s superfluous. Just writing it, without showing it off, is enough. Just thinking it, makes it real. Just feeling it.
Those words, tucked into the corner of her room, sitting there for weeks without me knowing… well, I’ve known any way. And I feel the same, my love. xoxo