Space… The final front tear
I had lunch yesterday with a truly awesome, very gorgeous friend (who is wise way beyond her years and is very quickly becoming my a-muse).
One of the main topics of conversation was her almost 3-month old daughter’s baptism this Sunday and her commitment speech to her daughter. She has committed to creating a space for her daughter. A space where she can be whatever she wants to be until she is big enough to create her own space.
I had to work very hard at holding back a river of tears (they don’t suit the boy-bimbo image I’m working on this week) and it wasn’t just because of the beautiful way she thinks or the soft-spoken, confident way she talks; it was because the sentiment of space cuts very deep into me.
I know all about spaces.
I had a gem of a Grade 2 teacher, who besides making it clear to my parents every time she saw them that I was the worst child she had ever taught, would threaten me daily that she was going to put me in a little cardboard box at the back of the classroom until I learnt to conform. I was fed the little box story so regularly and in such detail that its threat still lingers vividly in my mind over thirty years later.
I think she would have been impressed by how very well I did conform after that. It was clear that if I ever wanted my own space… It was going to be a very isolated, lonely one so it was much better to conform and fit into everyone else’s space.
But it wasn’t MY space and I have never felt comfortable in it. It’s full of rules, mostly, that don’t make sense to me or don’t allow me to live a full life, like I want to. But… I learnt to obey all the rules. I sat quietly in a corner of this paint-by-numbers space, observing, sticking to using all the right colours and painting within the lines.
Until I was big enough to create my own space.
That all seems sad but it isn’t. I have my own, very weird, very beautiful little space in this world that I love and I am trying to help my sons feel big enough to create their own spaces… And they have. That delights be beyond words.
Most important, though, for today; is that I have the kind of gorgeous, beautiful friends who have their own beautiful spaces and believe in letting others have theirs.
And one of them is committing to letting her daughter have hers.
It’s a really good day.
