6.13.13 Loveliness, At Each and Every Turn

I’m just finishing up with a three year old client, after a rousing game of marble chute,  and then a particularly funny book read by their parent, as I align their small spine and tonify organs, applauding as great masses of marbles fly about , and then laughing at the silly story their parent finishes as we end. Leaving them to close up the waiting room so they can take their time, I step outside my office and have the glorious surprise of Tessah (1) and her Guardian, waiting for me under the eaves of the front walk as the rain splatters into the garden.

Smiling, she is wiggly with delight at appearing unexpectedly, and we all embrace hello, then decide a walk along the rail trail over the Connecticut would be just the thing for a rainy day like today.

In the car, she explains that today at preschool was a special beginning-of-summer-and-insects fair, complete with special projects. I had showed her a yellow spider I found in my bathroom this past week, who had made a sac to live in. I had looked up ‘Yellow Sac Spider’, and discovered that was her actual name, being a somewhat poisonous and problematic visitor from Europe. We had admired her iridescent body and her finely spun sac, before moving her carefully to the woods, and Tessah reported this and more at the summer-insect celebration.

 I have a fondness for insects and creatures, so she often helps take photos and we sometimes sit and draw what we see after tromping about the yard or woods, on visits, reminding each other of recalled details as we pick up and put down crayons. She is fond of drawing very very large things, so sometimes we use a roll of paper, in order to attain true proportion.

At times, when her Guardian comes to pick her up, we have some many-legged creation that has unfurled the length of the long galley kitchen floor, the German Shepherd pup restrained with great complaint in the front hall, while we sing songs and she talks incessantly about what part she is now working on and why its nails are like this or why it has so many many pokey-out eyes, and that sort of important thing.

It is often imperative while drawing together to burst into song, and the songs usually come bursting  out of her, pertain to the creature  or the Tessah we are drawing , what they did or saw or ate. The other (me)  then picks up the song when she is quiet for awhile, and carries it , til  possibly the younger of us becomes bored NOT being the one singing, and cuts in, ramping up the volume as she takes hold of our song, and rambling off with it while I sit back in amazement, trying hard not to smile as-if-she-is-so-cute, (which she HATES, and notices very easily. So watch out. )

Today in the car she tells me she gets to wear her special fuzzy pink sweater with the bug buttons , because, wonder of all wonders, it is cool out today. She shows me her hair clips restraining her irrepressibly curly brown hair, her stretchy bracelets adorning her small wrists, and her oh so pink rubber boots specially designed for a splashy walk the likes of which we  now go enjoy. With unrestrained gusto. Ending up terribly wet, of course.

Later, back at her house, she stands in the doorway of her bedroom waiting patiently for me, so we can climb upon into her tree house bed and admire the long green papers  hanging from the ceiling to simulate a forest. We sit up there, cross legged, after our splashy stroll, while she describes her friends, not liking boys, her best friend (a boy), what she dreamed last night , and we imagine hearing sounds of all kinds of animals that live in her forest, and maybe people who are from other lands who will become her friends,  which she will then be busy drawing for days after.

I tell her stories of meeting her when she was an infant, and the years since, all her perfect ages, as she grows so fast and furiously, wandering about the world so confident and loved and Tessah-ish, unlike anyone else ever.

We end our visit sitting in  their kitchen while she cuddles with her Guardian, us swapping favorite Tessah stories and past adventures we all have shared, while she basks and shines, then, predictably gets bored and itchy, scrambling off  to draw on the part of her bedroom wall she gets to draw on, creating huge make believe animals. Later she will get someone to write down the make believe names, listing them patiently, because she is four and a HALF , after all, and despite all her remarkable abilities, still needs some help with some things.

Her Guardian and I bask also, recalling the unspeakable circumstances she was whisked away from soon after birth, luckier than many, sadder than some, to be raised with such love and stability and amazement of who this small person is.

And at times, I see the vestiges of the wounds from long ago, the small separation from her self that still lingers.  But these things do happen in our lives, do they not? And here she is, seeing, hearing, tasting, knowing her true loveliness at each and every turn.

Hugging her busy, wiggly self goodbye, I leave her to her creations as she describes to herself what each creature is doing, making my way to my car and my home and my life, filled to the brim in my heart.

(1) some facts changed to retain privacy