Water Girl
and the sail of time
Last year, when my daughter was struggling with her identity and I was struggling with my daughter, we had a poetic conversation that has stayed with me.
It started when I shared a memory of her as a kid — a memory that she’d heard me tell many times before:
“When you were little, you loved playing in water, remember? You were a water ___,” I stopped.
“Girl.” I was going to say, girl. “Water girl.” I’d said it a million times in the before days, but now I stopped. And she heard the stop. She knew.
I was sitting on the carpet in her bedroom, my fingers in the cut pile.
“You know, this is hard to navigate,” I said.
“Then don’t navigate. Just put up your sail,” she said.
I played along.
“What is the wind then? Love?” I said.
“Compassion,” she said, “for me and yourself.”
Then she thought some more, and said, “Time. The sail is time.”
I gripped the carpet.
We were hunkered down beneath a storm that battered us both. Who could say how long before it passed?
I remember dreaming of blue skies.
The sail flutters and fills.
(@walkwithmom)
Many of our kids have no ability to hold compassion for their parents. Some are really unkind to us, even abusive. It is nice to see one kid who still has the ability to acknowledge a bit of how a parent might feel.
And yet, I sense the girl is still waiting, perhaps demanding, to be viewed as a boy, and that is troubling to me.
Sometimes a few words say the many things that are wordless. Thanks for sharing this precious moment with ....I'll say it ....the water girl in your life. All PITT parents have these moments.