Inside The Mind of a Little Girl Who Wants To Stop The World

Right now she’s cackling in the other room. Slow and calculated, as she makes up the story to words she can’t read yet, from one of the books she has opened from the pile that lay scattered about her feet. There’s a trail of books in fact from the bathroom door leading to underneath the dining room table where Schleich animals are splayed out amongst those books ready and waiting to play a part in the the scene she’s crafting from the caverns of her mind. Moments before she had thrown a fit about not wanting put her play-dough away, shoving all of her fingers in her mouth and biting down hard in frustration.  And so it goes. A constant in our home in living with this delicate, fiery, tenacious, dazzling, sweet and radical little 3.5 year old. She’s consistently inconsistent in that as much as she wants to cooperate, she just can’t get her brain to do what her heart always wants it to do. How do I know this? I know it like I know each curve of her face and dimple on her body. Growing longer now, still chubby in parts…better than ever (even though it means I most definitely don’t have anymore babies, toddlers even). I know it like I know that she’ll make up about 10 different songs a day and argue with me every-time it’s time to go for a nap yet down she goes after I give her every ounce of my attention in the ways of feathery back scratches and story-reading. How do I know her brain just hasn’t caught up to her soul yet? (Or is it the other way ’round? Or is she absolutely perfect; deve loping at the exact rate that she should be? Yes, that. I think it’s that.) I hear it in the way she vocalizes wanting to be nice now, after she’s had a hairy. I taste it in the way my heart makes it’s way to my throat when she utters her dreams to me as after a particularly no-good, bad and rotten day.

“Mama, I just want to stop the wowld (world) today”

“Why?” I ask her gently, already knowing by her body language the remorse she feels from her behaviour.

“Because I don’t know why I’m actin’ dat way an’ I just want the world to stop then.” she answers matter-of-factly with a downcast look in her eyes, full of sorrow. I feel it when she cups my face in her little hands and nods knowingly after she says such a wise old thing to say, as I flush all the love I have forth to shoot out lasers from my eyes. To let her know it’s okay. Sometimes ‘love-eyes’ and calm, slow smiles do a little child’s soul so much better than words.

I hear it in the way she breaths a deep sigh of relief and content in being assured that of course her mama still loves and perhaps even understands her as she finally rolls over onto her side, closes her eyes and makes ready for sleep. Finally. After all of that. I watch it in the way she wakes up the next day to join me for a cafe date to our local, as she runs up the stairs to our magical little corner all lit up with twinkle lights and a big half moon window over-looking Kempenfelt Bay squealing and twirling, “I’m up here! I’m all the way up here, WOW! It’s really just me up, UP, HERE; wheeeeeee!” I see it as she plunks down in a chair and is immediately impressed, smitten and in awe of a single wee baby tulip, not yet bloomed, in a glass milk jar on that table.   That’s how I know I have a girl who could stop the world. Because she does mine, everyday, no matter her mood.