Over the past 29 months of her sweet life, the Little Lady has had her fair share of bumps and bruises, scrapes and scratches. She’s tumbled off the steps, tripped running down the driveway, and — most recently — taken a nose dive into the headboard when she was jumping on the bed.
Each time, her Daddy and I distract her from the pain by offering hugs, pats, band-aids, and, of course, our kisses. “Let me kiss it,” is usually one of the first things we say to her when she comes to us, her eyes welling with tears and mouth wide open in a wail.
I don’t know why it works, but it always does. Each time, one little kiss on a knee, an elbow, a forehead, or a nose is all it seems to take to stifle her sniffles. She knows that a kiss will “make me ‘peel’ better,” as she says to us.
The Little Lady has taken this knowledge one step further and now offers to “kiss away” her mistakes. Oops! Did she spill milk on the couch? No problem. “Lemme kiss it,” she offers as she bends down to kiss the white puddle that is soaking into our new furniture.
Her infamous artistic endeavor that entailed her drawing, with blue and yellow crayons, on the walls of two rooms? “It’s ok, Mommy. Lemme kiss it.”
Right now, in her little world, a kiss solves everything from physical ailments to naughty little mishaps. I have a sneaking suspicion that there’s more going on than just the physical act of placing lips on something; she knows that our action comes from the love we have for her. And, because of that love, she trusts us that we really are making it better and that we always will. We’re her Mommy and Daddy . . . and that’s our job. To make her, and everything around her, better.
I wish all parents of little girls and boys took this job as seriously.
This week, as I drove home from an excursion to the grocery store (sans kiddos — thank you, Daddy) my stomach turned with a story that was being reported on the radio. The body of a missing little girl, only five years old, had been found — and her mother had been arrested for, allegedly, selling her daughter for sex. The mother is the big, bad guy in this horrible crime. Her mother.
I saw the little girl’s face in an online report. She was beautiful and sweet — as every little girl is — but this little innocent lost her life in a way that I can’t, and don’t want, to imagine. And her mother was the catalyst for her death.
I do NOT understand anyone, especially a mother, could do this to a child. Her mother?
This is the type of story, especially during our years of infertility, that raises every ounce of ire within me. How in the world can someone throw away the precious, sweet gifts of motherhood and children? Don’t these people understand the rare chance they have when given children? They have the opportunity to experience an unfathomable and indescribable love and joy that comes from the moment of their child’s birth — an opportunity that not all of us are given when we want it.
I guess this woman just didn’t care. Instead of offering trust, love, and healing kisses, she threw her daughter to the wolves. There was no thought of making her little girl “peel better.”
Maybe the evidence is wrong. Maybe her mother really didn’t do that of which she is accused. I hope so — for that little girl’s sake, because I can’t imagine what her last few minutes were like as she realized what her mother had done: she hadn’t cared enough to protect her own daughter.
