When I Hear You Play

These days, you LOVE playing with your miniature people and Barbies. I can hear you in there right now, in your room after school, playing with them, making up dialogue, staging a play of sorts, entering into that Make Believe world that you create so well that I often have to call your name several times to get you to disengage...

But I love listening to you play. I love hearing how creative you are. You're already writing plays of sorts, already knowing who says what and when...You're brilliant. Really. And I'm proud of you.

You're only 4 years old, but it seems you have a wisdom beyond your years, a gift, a talent...You can create and replicate characters of all types--assign to them new abilities, jobs, because you don't have to mimic their presentation.

For example, sometimes, you can make your Veggie Tale characters into characters that they aren't. They become, rather, whatever you need them to become.

When I hear you play, I am inspired. It makes me want to sit and write. It's as if you spark a creative chord in my soul, and I feel like I can write again.

[And here I am, with keyboard in hand...]

When I hear you play, there are moments when I realize that you are using conversations that we have had during the day--you and me, me and dad, you and dad, you and sisters--and that's when it suddenly occurs to me that nothing much is getting past you--and that you are learning MANY, MANY things from us. Good AND Bad.

One day, I heard you in there with your characters, and one was saying to the other that he/she didn't want to go to church:

"I don't want to go to church!"

"You have to."

"But I don't WANT to go."

"It doesn't matter what you want. You're going!"

Those kinds of conversations in your play make me wonder if I'm explaining things enough, reasons, rationale. And I wonder if you're old enough for that. Is it time to expound upon my decisions, time to explain the WHYs and WHY NOTs?

[Sometimes, I really wish there were a manual for this parenting thing.]

When I hear you play, darling, ultimately it gives me great cause to THANK THE LORD for the opportunity to be your Mommy. I LOVE my life since you have entered it. You will NEVER know (until you have a child of your own one day) how much you delight me, inspire me.

I love you, always and forever,
Mommy