At least once a day, my 10 year old, Paige, requests the definition of a thing;
Some word she saw or heard and doesn’t quite know what to do with.
It never dawns on me to look up a proper definition of the thing she is asking about.
I take on coming up with a detailed description as a high-level task, giving her the best, most in-depth meaning I can come up with.
It’s almost a game I play within my own mind.
How well can I craft this definition?
I cherish using my words.
I count it an honor to pass them as an inheritance.
It has always felt so important to me to be able to describe something specific.
Everything else stops when she asks things like “What is agility,” and I work to help her mind define it.
Today I thought about this,
and why this task feels almost urgent to me – Giving her a wide variety of words to choose from –
and I realized that one of the top things I want for my daughters is for them to be able to find the right words for anything that they deal with in their lives;
To be able to draw proper attention to things that hurt, move, or inspire them.
The world doesn’t need any more “Seen and Not Heard”s. This is the time for painting bold word pictures, and descriptive fullness.
Their words are their voices,
and I want their voices heard;
Never only able to whisper from a corner where no one will see or hear them.
I grew up in a culture and time where every staunch protest from my lips was considered “talking back,” and you did as you were told without being allowed to question;
But there WERE questions in me that died inside because I was never able to open my mouth and free them.
It put in me the desire to name every feeling,
to become good at explaining just what I thought, sensed around me, and needed;
And at the core of that ability would lie something simple:
The words to do it, and their definitions.
Every obscure word I teach my girls the meaning of will be a tool they will use one day to describe something greatly important.
They will be heard.
I know they will,
and that they will remember how I tried to never stifle,
but, instead,
to free them.
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.
