...when words become enough...

There's a sweet little refrain you'll hear in our home, if you happen to swing by right before bed-time or right after the alarm clock goes off.  If you listen close, you'll hear it, soft as a whisper...

"You are my warm embrace.
My favourite face.
My happy place."

If you're lucky, you'll catch it's echo.  And no matter the hour, be it later than late or far too early, you'll see two sets of twinkling eyes and a pair of smiles and you'll know you walked in on a secret.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Years ago my words were different.  Bedtime came, night after night, and I would say " I  love you to the moon...I love you to the stars...I love you back again."  And when his words came...ever so slowly and later than we'd hoped...he would follow me with " I wuv you baskets can", and my heart would burst.

Back then, all those years ago, the love was enough.  It held him safe and sound while he slept and carried him through his day, content and secure in the love of his Mami.  It was enough.  Just to love and be loved.  And to know it, from top to toes.

But then came the move, followed by the advent of school...first kindergarten, then first...second...fast forward...middle school madness.  And with school came the insults, the put-downs, the bullies.  With school came the lies.  The lies so big and bold and loud they drowned out the truth...his truth.  The lies so big he started to believe them, and stopped believing in himself.

And worse yet, he stopped believing me.

All of a sudden, the chipper cheery chap I'd grown accustomed to was replaced by a silent, somber, sober boy...quiet and still...so still you'd look right past him.  He'd been defeated.  As had I.
We'd been defeated by what the world had placed on him...labels and doubt and lies.

For a while there, we both spun out of control...he into a depressive malaise, and I into desperation and despondency...both of us unsure of how to get back up.

I read.  Devouring self-help books.  I called counselors.  I set up appointments and shuffled him in and out of doors.  And still the sadness permeated every day.
He'd head off to school each morning, me waving frantically till the bus disappeared round the corner, and I'd break into tears knowing he would come home hurting and bleeding and broken and that I had to send him off despite all that.

We tried therapy.  (Which, by the way, is a hoot when you're child has a speech/communication disorder).  We tried positive affirmations.  I plastered his "positives" all over the house!  We talked it out and cried it out and yelled it out.  We punched pillows.  We hugged stuffed animals until they were limp.

And then we were tired.  So tired.  Because talking and crying and yelling and punching will wring it out of you faster than you can wring the fluff out of a stuffed raccoon.
(This I know...been there, done that!)  
We tired ourselves out with the trying, and curled up in sodden lump on the bed, a limp hug barely holding us together.
I looked at my son, his head in my arm, his face splotchy and crushed and I said to him in desperation "You are my warm embrace. My favourite face.  My happy place."  His chin raised.  His eyes opened, blinking back the last of his tears.  He looked at me, and the smallest curve lifted the corner of his mouth as he said "You're mine, Mami."

It was enough.

~Leanna