Children remind us that magic exists. Although it sounds like something out of a Disney movie script, it is no exaggeration to say that the joy we can only experience in a genuine and carefree way in childhood is something as genuine as it is unrepeatable.... When we become parents, it happens that we also learn, but this time as a spectator, what it feels like to be someone who authentically loves life and living. Perhaps that is why it is so hard not to be moved by the laughter of children.
Today, Sunday 21 July, is Children's Day in Venezuela. A celebration that celebrates the most wonderful stage of our existence. The same one, that in many occasions we never stop remembering, and that as we grow up and become adults, we forget and foolishly forget what it felt like to find joy, excitement, adventure, fun and love in the simple but pure. I, I swear I'm not lying, sometimes I look at how my daughter has evolved and I'm totally silent.... I still can't convince myself that the same fragile, tiny baby is now a healthy, robust and highly intelligent little girl. She is still a child, but increasingly she is no longer a child....
As a mother, I treasure in my memories and photographs the stages of my daughter's life. Each and every one of them.... From her first steps to the anecdotes with her playing video games on the PC. They are all there. It is an infinite archive of details, smiles, games, looks and sensations that are only experienced in a specific stage; in childhood. Today, before I tell you how we celebrated this holiday, I got out of bed, made some coffee and started browsing through the photo archives I have stored in Google Drive.
I swear, life is that act that is more like water slipping through our fingers than anything else..... It goes too fast. I don't know if it was nostalgia or that everything has been less intermingled in a day that evokes memories of the past with my own sensations. But I felt a bit strange in that sense... To the point of asking myself existential questions: ‘Am I happy, do I recognise true happiness, or am I waiting for one day to be able to achieve it? I emphasise the part about happiness and joy so many times in this post, because I believe that there is no stage where we will be happy more often than when we are children....
All I have to do is say to my little daughter: ‘My love, I'm going to take a little picture of you’. And that immediately brings a smile to her beautiful face. Then I am happy to see her happy, and basically everything is so much better because of this simple action... It seems not very serious what I am confessing here, but any mother, or father, in general, will agree with me and understand me. There is something that goes beyond just feeling good about seeing our children being happy.... We (mothers and fathers) if we could ensure that stage (the one of happiness and joy, in addition to our children being healthy) we would do it, without a shadow of a doubt? I assure you, and I think you follow my lead.
In less than a month my daughter will be 9 years old. She was born in 2015, the result of an extremely complicated pregnancy, but above all, as lonely as anything.... She has been my friend, my driving force and my greatest source of inspiration. Day by day, she fills me with pride and motivation to keep going. The sound of her smile is the most precious and addictive sound I have ever heard. It is simply everything to me. And today, on her day, along with millions of other children, I have learned the value of having a companion? I think she sees it that way too. Yesterday (Saturday) she had a performance at Ballet, and during the week she kept telling me how happy she was because I'm always by her side.
You know how it is for them... Always the most profound words are the ones they express in the simplest way we can imagine. .... ‘I love you, mommy’. They are 3 simple and never repeated words, but we, (mothers and also fathers) simply will never forget the first time they said it to us.... There is a before and an after, to hear something as sweet and touching as those words from the reasons for our existence; as are our little boys and girls.... Oh no, haha, I got emotional remembering as I write. A tear or two runs down my eyes.
Any sadness? I don't think so... Maybe some eserana intertwined with tons of love? At the end of the day, we love to love our children. And not to be commonplace is to give virtue, weight and strength to the action of having children and celebrating with them their purest years, full of strength, life and longing. We love them, but in the same way, we want them to be immensely and intensely full and happy in their stage of growth and formation. We (the parents) also want to remember ourselves when we were the age they are today.... In a way, we make peace and have a ‘second childhood’ by watching them live theirs. Ice cream, walking with mum holding hands, jumping on the bouncy castles and laughing a lot, are some of the celebratory anecdotes I had with my daughter... But what I carry with me the most is what I have written here.
