What a day today was. I had to take my dear friend to the airport this morning, it was such a tough thing to experience. She is off to serve our country, being deployed into a world that I cannot even begin to fathom. She bestowed upon me her most cherished part of life, her daughter.
In the past when Cherish has had to say goodbye to her mom, I've heard she has taken it very hard, unable to calm herself. Understandably so. So my goal this morning was to ease everything for her the best I could. I had Bear stay with his dad so I could better focus on her. After we said goodbye and headed home, I saw a few tears here and there in my rear view mirror. Once we arrived home Cherish looked at me and said "Sometimes when I miss Mom I feel like I'm going to cry." I replied "That's ok, it's ok to cry. And you know what? I miss your mom too. Would you like to cry with me and then we can talk about all the things we love about her? Let's take six minutes -because you're six- and let ourselves cry. Then when the six minutes are up we can have breakfast and then snuggle while we watch a cartoon, you pick." She looked at me with eyes of what I interpret as amazement, as if she had never been given permission to express her tears over missing her mom. We cried together, we talked about how much we love her mom, what we miss about her, and how much we look forward to her return. The conversation ended on a positive note, with smiles on both of our faces and we were able to move on to breakfast. I let Cherish know that if she needs to, she can come to me and ask for six minutes and we can sit together and cry and talk about Mom.
There was another time in the afternoon that she came to me and asked for six minutes. So again we sat, we hugged, and cried together and really she only ended up crying for a few minutes this time, she more quickly wanted to talk about all the good things ahead. Then again at bed time she asked for another six minutes, which I think we only cried for about one minute of, and spent the remainder of time focusing on the good. I hope this continues, I hope she can feel free to come to me, that I will be here for her and I will honor her feelings.
I see nothing wrong with a child seeing an adult's sadness, sadness is part of life, I feel like when I am sad I am able to model and teach my children how to handle their emotions, to let themselves feel them and then how to recover from their feelings. We are in for a true adventure while her mom is gone. I am excited to have Cherish part of our home, as I have viewed her as family long before now.
As I explained to Colbert back at Christmas when he asked "What is Cherish to me?" in regards to what relation is she, "Friends are the family that you choose. The great thing about life is that we get to choose our friends, who we love like family and treat with the same love and respect as we would our family." He understood, and then told Cherish "I love you."
