You are enough.

The other night when Elena decided she did not want to go to bed until midnight, I decided instead of fighting her I would snuggle her, play with her and pop in a movie in the background for my own enjoyment.  The movie I popped in was Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.  Let me warn you the movie is sad.  You will most likely cry.  It is about a boy whose dad dies in the World Trade Center on 9/11.  The boy and his dad were very close and the boy spends much of the movie searching New York City for a secret message the boy believes his dad has left him.  I do not want to say much more in case you have not seen it, however I will tell you about one scene that I have not been able to get out of my mind since.  At one point as the boy cries in his mother’s arms, he tells her, "I don't tell you I love you enough, do I?”  Throughout the movie the boy has been incredibly difficult with his mother, even to the point of telling her he wishes she was the one that died.  Yet she simply replies, "You tell me enough."  For some reason this hit my gut hard.  She never took her sons actions personally, she simply understood and gave him the room to grieve the way he needed to.  She accepted, and loved, and cared for him, despite his resistance towards her. 

This is the kind of love I am determined to give my children.  Honestly, because I am not sure I am capable of controlling a whole bunch more.  I cannot promise I won't get short tempered, or be able to plan an educationally enriching activity each day, but I can promise to accept them.  Embrace them.  And cheer them on, on the paths they choose.  I want to be able to look outside myself enough to know, not everything they do is about me.  It is about who they are trying to be.  And the best thing I can do as a parent, is support them.  My children, even at their very young age truly are amazing people.  They are smart, compassionate, funny, and kind.  I love who they are.  One day Franklin says he wants to be a firefighter, another day a trash collector, another day a construction worker.  And on the most heartwarming of days, a daddy. 

This is a big job Nick and I have been given.  These two amazing, complex, fragile, yet resilient beings are in our care.  I worry more often then I should that I am going to screw it all up.  But, I am going to remember to trust their own journeys.  I will try to remember to say, "You are doing enough.  You are enough.  Just as you are, you are enough.”  And hopefully in teaching my children that they are enough, I as a mother, will be enough.