The worth and weight of words.

Tonight we are celebrating the end of National Family Reading Week. No joke, it's on the internet and yes, I'm grasping at straws to find something with meaning for today...not exactly the easiest thing to relate Windmill Day to my parenting style.

       Anyway, my shoes for today are my coziest of all- my fuzzy and warm, furry and natural moccasins. Familiar and easy to slip into after a day away from home, they are the go-to pair to shift the gears from mom meaning business to snuggling and getting sleepy with the girls. 

       It is in these slippers every night that I can climb the stairs to chase little pitter-pattering feet to bed. I pad after them, sometimes quick quick and light on my feet, playful and teasing like a monster chasing her prey. Sometimes I am slow, plodding and pulling myself up by the rail, desperate to fall into bed myself, and barely making it through the routine. Many nights, it is a middle ground, these slippers finding their methodical steps following those six other feet, traipsing haphazardly along, ready to tuck into bed my sleepy little heads and give kisses goodnight. Any which way we find our path to the land of nod, we start with a story. The worth and weight of words is not lost on these girls, even at the end of the night. 

       I'm sure some of you put emphasis in prayer at the close of each day, others in a retelling of the events of before and the promise of tomorrow. For us, it is a four part and simple pattern: story, song, sweet nothings and sleep. Climbing into bed and burrowing under blankets, those little loves of mine are ready for a book or a made-up tale. All for adventure or mystery or laughter, we read what is available: a book from school, the library, or the vast collection that roams around our own home, each book growing legs and traversing the house from room to room. 

       Not every night is different. For the youngest, the predictability is a favorite and she will willingly choose the same words for bedtime over and over again until she has memorized the rhythm and can recite it, even if she doesn't understand. And the older two, it is a mix of the pictures and the voices they hear that they enjoy, the cadence and dance of language leaping about the room. Then after the book we choose a ditty, not a lullaby really, but a silly song they like;"The Farmer Song" or "Sunshine" or "Edel," they'll say, and we'll all sing, never minding the tempo or key. As the last of the tune is leaving our lips, we whisper into the dark those sweet nothings of good night and off they drift to sleep. 

       My goal every night is to have the words they hear in those last minutes weigh them down, like a blanket, wrapping around them in comfort and warmth. I hope that those songs make memories in their minds, plant deep in their dreams and flourish. Words are worth so much in my world, they are the sparks of creativity and imagination but they are the crux of communication and all of my relationships. From a young age we have read to our girls, spoken to them honestly and passionately, and perhaps by luck or really by learning- since their mama never shuts up- they have been trained from a young age to speak and speak well. 

       I have heard other mothers telling their babes to "use your words" and I say it too. Often enough, we might find our children frustrated and having fits, bound into emotion due to lack of verbal capability. That simple adage, "Use your words," is powerful and meaningful and for more than just my toddlers. I have found that in teaching them to speak their minds, I am empowered to do the same. If I expect them to spew their hearts' hurts, I must as well. So for all those times when I am caught in a moment that I feel more than I can say, I am learning to pause and phrase what is bothering me, learning in my teaching, insightful in my parentage that if I can find the words to share, I can release that pent up energy and put it to a purpose. 

       It isn't sleepy dreams in the morning that I hear from my girls, not a picture they pull from their minds, a product of all those stories and songs and sleep. It is their hearts I hear every day, those basic words we have recited and sung, laced together into sentences to let escape those thoughts they might not have let loose before, when they did not know how to share or had not the vocabulary to do so. Seems a rather minuscule thing ,all this talking between us, but I really am hoping that it makes all the difference for now and for the future. They will start to need me less and less to tuck them in at night, to have the kissy-monster hot on their tail. They will need less of my reading to them in their beds as they practice and master it themselves, and the silly songs will be just that, silly, soon enough. 

       In the hear and now, where I still live though it is something I will do every night, using whatever words are there to fill their heads and know that it's opening us up, my girls and myself, to letting loose later the important thoughts that weigh us down.