ONCE I wrote: No one really teaches a small child to walk. You can only show it how. Perhaps the most one could do would be to hold both its tiny hands above its head as you gently guide it along the path. Along with some gentle words of encouragement, that will completely be the closest thing we get at teaching the basics.
The same could be said when cultivating their confidence… One simply cannot just say ‘be confident’ and then expect them to right away understand your “lesson”. You may have to take into account factors such as the grownups or models they look up to, or tools like sports or the arts to indulge in. Last will come the intangibles, like relationships, and then some. In the end, gaining confidence, especially in unfriendly atmosphere, can be very daunting indeed for a child… more complex than learning to walk.
It has been a long fifteen years since you have left us, mom. Alas, some among your precious grandchildren whom you have witnessed growing up, have gone on to bear beautiful babies of their own, with some already past their walking stages. Like their parents before them, they like running around the lawn with toys and stuff.
We may have been fortunate enough to witness how you doted on your first batch of apos, yet how we wish you could have met these latest editions. As I see them during much-awaited family get-togethers, I always wish that you could have seen their antics too. Then, there are those in their self-conscious teen years. Even with their parents, aunts and uncles, I am sure it will always be different when life lessons straight from a grandma and in your case, a great-grandma at that, are given them. I always wonder what advice or admonition they’d get from you if you were still around today. Surely, us the old people are slowly being overrun by these young ones and perhaps in the next fifteen years, some of us might be there, sighing with you, as we both look back.
Location, location, location. I know the saying hardly applies in this situation, but I meant to link it in the context of any place where one is looking from. I reckon a world of difference between looking back and looking forward. As I look at your grandchildren, great and great-great, from where they are, they have a whole world to look forward to and am just thinking…how would you have shared with them a piece of your wonderful being had you still been here today? Fifteen years or twenty, I’m still here. Still missing you mom.
