Bees and Children

Claire and I watch as a bumblebee darts and hovers over feathery stalks of lavender. Legs plump with pockets of pollen, the bee's rotund orbed body seems impossibly, precariously airborne. "How are those delicate wings keeping it aloft?" I wonder.

The bee doesn't ask this question. She just flies.

My daughter doesn't ask this question either. In a sense, she flies too.

She and the bee fly, because that's what bees and children do. They act purely from their bee and child nature.

We adults, we know better. Self-awareness brings the ability to fathom the cavernous depths of the impossible, to buckle under the weight of self-doubt, to allow the fear of failure to keep us earthbound, to stop us from taking a leap into the unknown.

Bees and children remind us that our spirit can be otherwise. They remind us to remember taking flight, to remember that we were once children too...



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Photo Source: Eduardo Merille, Flickr. This photo has been adapted and does not suggest that the licenser endorses me, it's use or this blog. License

Learning to Walk and Other Life Lessons

I barely remember a time when Claire didn’t walk. It’s been a mere two months, but the transformation could not be more enduring.  Sure, children start out with the struggle of the learning curve, but once they reach a milestone, they never look back. 

While Claire was learning to walk, I was learning about life. It was my first lesson in letting go. I wanted to help. I could hold her hand and cheer her on, but I couldn’t stop her from falling. I couldn’t show her how to find her equilibrium. I couldn’t take a step for her.

She had to discover how to stand on her own two feet and move through the world. Literally and metaphorically, isn’t this experience what we want most for our children? Why is it so hard to do?

Claire took it all in stride. She would find a tentative center and lurch forward. Her feet didn’t yet know how to keep up with her head and upper half of her body. She would stumble back down to the floor. Over and over again.

I was impatient.

Yet, falling was time well spent for Claire. She developed elegant ways to catch herself on the way down, crashing on her belly and looking up at me with a giggle. “How smart!” I thought. “She needs to know how to fall right, before she can walk.”

I started to feel in awe of her grace. I started to feel joy being in her presence and watching. I began to wonder about my own need to be right and to have things just so.

When do we begin to see our efforts as failure when what we really need is more practice? When do we replace the ability to make fools of ourselves with feelings of shame and embarrassment? When do we stop having fun in the moment and worry only about the end result?

Claire has no self-doubt. She shows complete faith in the process. She isn’t concerned about when the goal will be achieved.

The best self-help gurus preach about this stuff all the time.  They’ve got nothing on my daughter Claire.