The other day, while standing in my garage, I heard a scream and a sob from next door that definitely sounded like an injury.
It was my 2-year-old granddaughter, Mavis, who lives with her mom, dad, and baby brother in the house attached to ours.
I’d never heard her cry from her quite like this.
I could hear that her parents were right there on top of it, and she stopped fairly soon, so I wasn’t TOO worried, necessarily, but later I went up the path and peeked my head inside the screen door to ask what exactly had happened to make her cry like that.
I was surprised to see Mavis bounding to me, grinning, looking completely unscathed:
When I asked what had happened to make her wail so loud,
“A fly landed on her arm while she was eating dinner,” sighed my daughter.
(Flies are Mavis’ mortal enemy)
“She threw her dinner plate all the way across the kitchen,” she continued.
I tried to hide my smirk for the sake of solidarity;
But she kept going:
“Next, I got her down, because of the screaming,
and she PRETENDED TO BE BLIND, and just felt her way around the room to be sure she didn’t have to see it for the next 10 minutes straight.”
Commitment to the bit!
Unwavering dedication!
At this point, I couldn’t hold it anymore.
I laughed, and Mavis grinned at me.
She had been listening to the retelling of her shenanigans.
She is her own favorite story, after all.
She nodded with a smile, satisfied that her mother had repeated it all correctly.
Oh, Mavis.
I smile at my weary-eyed daughter because I remember when she was me,
but I do have to say that this stage Mavis is in is one of my favorites.
I love a good twinkly-eyed character.
I love the mismatched outfits, hair askew, shoes on the wrong feet.
A two-year-old’s inner monologue is unhinged. Their imaginations are set free. It sometimes takes multiple adults to wrangle them.
Every single day you will have a reason to laugh if you don’t take yourself too seriously, and it cracks me up at the things she will allow while thinking a FLY is the thing that is not OK.
All of my daughters had a pet fear growing up that seemed to come out of nowhere.
My oldest woke up one day and just decided she was terrified of all water.
Baths and swimming pools?
She hated them both equally.
She STILL has to be pushed to drink water these days, and she’s 27.
We’ve had fears of dogs, and of birds, and refusal to touch cotton balls,
but never has one committed so hard to moving on from what they fear that they have actually pretended to be blind to do it while they avoid that scary thing.
Enter Mavis: Queen of the Next-Level.
I honestly think Mavis is onto something here, though, when it comes to what we are afraid of.
Maybe the key is all in what we choose to see and not see.
She has taught me repeatedly to focus on what matters.
Sometimes it feels like children are sent to earth just so they can teach…
Today, as we sat through four complete light changes in gridlocked traffic,
as my irritation grew over it, and I contemplated turning around altogether,
She suddenly said from the back seat,
“It sure is a beautiful day, isn’t it, Grammy?!”
It took me off-guard for a moment.
I tucked my irritation in and said,
“Yes. It IS a beautiful day,” then I grumbled to her mom beside me,
“Too bad I’m still about to crash out from the traffic.”
Mavis heard me, though, and said,
“No! You’re not going to crash out, Grammy! You are going to be happy because I am with you!”
I felt myself get put gently in my place.
I knew the reason she said that was because she loves to ask me if I am happy,
and I have made it my habit to tell her, “Yes! I am happy. Do you know why? Because YOU are with me! Grammy is always happy when you are here, Mavis.”
Today, I got a taste of that method coming back to serve me when I wasn’t expecting it.
The work I had put in was being returned to me in that perfect reminder that life is about the view we choose to see.
So much of life is all about perspective. We can focus on the positive, or on the negative.
We can fixate on the thing we fear,
or carry on, blind to any opposition that comes our way.
And I didn’t crash out.
She was right. (As she often is)
I made it to my destination after looking up at the sky for a minute and thinking about what a pretty day it was, instead.
I was able to see the beauty around me when I stopped looking only at what was bothering me.
Life Lesson on Fear and Negativity from a two-year-old, summed up in 5 simple words:
Shoo fly, don’t bother me.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
