Monday, April 16, 2012

Just.Like.Me.

It's a pretty cool thing when your kid wants to be like you.

Toccoa is naturally a very teachable kid. Show her or explain something to her once, and she'll get it. If she doesn't, she'll try her hardest to get it.

She wants to be a "woman of God" like me - but she'll learn soon enough how far from godly I am. She wants to play the sports we've played - so she's gearing up for T-ball soon and patiently awaiting the day she can play volleyball. She loves hiking, biking and running because those are things I do. She loves to swim because her competitive nature drives her to want to beat her dad in swimming as she thinks he's a really good swimmer and brags that her dad's stomach can touch the bottom of the pool - and ... she wants to be a mermaid one day.

She loves watching TV with her dad and sitting on the couch, basking in the gloriousness of eating popcorn. She loves to read because I've instilled in her the magic of reading - that you can learn about anything you want and escape into your own imagination and interpretation of what a story looks and feels.

And she is a lot like her dad in that music plays a huge part in the enjoyment of her car rides. We can't leave the driveway until a certain CD is in and playing. Between the two of them fighting for their music choice in the car (he created a monster, yes he did), when I drive alone, I prefer turning the music off and enjoying a quiet ride.

And so, I was taken aback when she made a comment about the current CD playing in the car. I'm not even sure who the artist is, but she said, "Mommy, I love this CD. It makes me feel happy."

But the strange thing was that the song was far from happy. It might've been Fiona Apple or someone Fiona-ish ... with that solemn melody that kind of reaches far into your heart to find any brokenness inside you and wraps itself around your soul and squeezes until it hurts so much you feel good - like a good memory ... reviving you in a way that makes you feel intuned to your emotions. And empowers you to feel ... and makes it okay to be sad and emotionally weak. Just for those few moments until the song ended.

Then I thought, "Wow - yep, that is definitely MY daughter there."

I didn't teach her that sometimes music can make you so sad it makes you happy ... she didn't know that's what some melodies do to me. Nope - that is my dark, depressive nature revealing itself through my daughter ... something unteachable, but ingrained in her spirit just because she's my daughter ... born of my nature.

And that is pretty darn cool when your kid is like you ... down to the bones of your hidden Self.

1 Comments:

Blogger Body, Mind and the Soul.... said...

I have a sad soul too. I think about my past breakups and sad things during songs too. I totally avoid certain songs that bring me back to a period of my life that I choose to ignore as well. I hope my next baby will be a girl like me. Natalie is like her father. Ryan is like me but I want another girl just like me...well minus the teen years. Hehe...

1:03 PM  

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