Embracing My Journey ~ Living with passion & purpose!

This past weekend I found myself in an interesting situation and for the first time in a long time, actually having to censor what I chose to say as my darling daughter Sami, all of 8 years old, and I walked passed the Valentine’s card display in the local store.  The initial conversation went something like this:

Sami:  “Mommy, we should get daddy a Valentine’s Day card”
Me: “How about we make one or use one of the zillion cards we have at home already?”
Sami: “But daddy bought you a card” (with this comment she smiles as if she has a secret)
Me: ” Don’t you mean he bought TWO cards?”
Sami: “How do you know that?”  (in total disbelief)
Me: “Your daddy and I have known each other a long time, and for every holiday he buys me two cards, one funny card and one romantic card”
Sami: “Oh, ok.”

By now we have long passed the card display and have moved onto shopping for the items we came into the store for in the first place.  Sami appears to be paying attention to other things, and to have let the Valentine’s Day card issue drop.  Then, out of nowhere I hear “Mommy, did you have boyfriends before Daddy?”

To know my daughter is to know that she is very persistent and has a memory like a steel trap.  To this day, she can view a photograph of an event from years ago and turn around and share memories from earlier or later that same day….her mind is just amazing to us, so I knew I could either answer this now or it would come back to me later in the day.  I choose to answer it now……the answer of course was “yes, I had boyfriends before your daddy.”  Which lead to “how many?”

Me: “Two serious ones.”
Sami: “What were they like?”

Here is where my dilemma came in, those of you who have read my story know what these two men were like, between physical and emotional abuse, neither was a positive situation and yet, there was something about each of these two men that drew me in, attracted me to them and allowed me, at least for a brief moment, to love them both.  My story has been written, I share it frequently with the world in various venues (calls, speeches, writings, etc) and the only “secret” to the majority of the world are the real names of these two individuals…which were changed as their names are not important, it is the experience and lessons learned that were important.  And yet, I don’t feel comfortable sharing these lessons with my 8 year old, who still thinks it’s “yucky” when her parents kiss.  So for the first time in a very long time, I censored myself and the rest of the conversation went something like this:

Me: “They were different.”
Sami: “Did you love them?”
Me:  “Yes, for a little while”
Sami: “But then you met daddy?”
Me: “Yes, then I met daddy.  And we fell in love, got married and had you.”
Sami: “Well, really you had Sophie and Skylar first (our cats) and then you had me.”
Me: “Exactly, then we had you and Zoey (her kitten) and now we’re all set.”
Sami:  “Ok”

And so that is how our conversation ended, with a simple “ok.”  Three days later, it has not come up again.

The mind of my daughter will never cease to amaze me and her actions continue to remind me daily that an adult, my brain can sometimes get in my way…

Today, I release the rationalizing, justifying and being logical that ever-so-often, sneaks back in and reeks havoc in my life.

In gratitude,
Caryn

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under Caryn's writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.