In my house I have a beautiful teenager. Now there are days we love each other and days we love to hate each other but we always keep moving forward. She will be the first to ask me how my day has been and I, to ask her, "Is your room clean?" My point being that we are secure in loving one another but we still try to keep our independence. Like I said, she is a teenager.
A few days ago her and I set down with my granddaughter to color. Now, as most of you know that's the perfect time to bond. Just us ladies, young and old, coloring and discussing life. My daughter brings a handful of coloring books out of her bedroom that she has collected over the years. As I set there and watch her I see her flipping through pages and then she stops. She picks up an envelope with a card in it and opens it and reads it silently and then puts it back in her book and moves on. It took me a few minutes but suddenly I realized that I recognized the card. As I looked up at her she very nonchalantly says, "Its one of the cards you send me every year when I go to camp. I hide them in my stuff so I can be surprised when I find them. I like to read them and then put them back in their place so I can find them later and do it all over again."
At that moment, I wanted to cry. She has been going to camp two times a summer since she was 8 years old. Each trip I would hide a card in her bag for her to find and drop one in the mail every day until she was due to come home. The first few years it was a way of building up her confidence and letting her know that I loved her more than life itself. This last summer was her final summer before she became an eighth grader and I decided it was time to get her to think about other people as much as she, as a teenager, was starting to think about herself. So, I gave her daily task to do that involved others. My hope was to try to keep her a little humble yet also a little wise. I wanted her to think more about her morales and who she was becoming.I never dreamed that she would treasure them so much. It was an "Awe" moment for me and a reminder that we never know just how much we are actually impacting our children. One of life's full circle surprises. Time with the ones we love, whether its in person or written, is time well spent....How are you spending your time?
