Corner View: Love in my corner

My two and a half year old is painting. She is using my old watercolors from a palette and paining on real watercolor paper while Mozart plays softly on the radio. There is a beautiful morning sunshine coming through the slide door, such perfection. Her tiny hand, grasping a camel hair paint brush, travels from left to right as she says, "Water, paint, paper", it's the steps I taught her to paint. She taps off the excess water on the old yogurt container before creating a wonderfully voluptuous shape on the paper. It's a bright green, followed by streaks of black, royal blue... I sip my tea. Watching her paint brings such joy. I feel like such a wonderful mother. She had two eggs for breakfast, she even said,"Mozart, Mommy!" when the strings from A Little Night Music began. How easy it is to be in love with my corner during moments like this.

What a contrast to the several moments last week when I didn't feel like such a wonderful mother. The day she ate only snack foods because I was one step out of time with her meals and she was always too full to eat the substantial whole foods. Instead she had fig newtons, apple slices, rice cakes, animal crackers, regular crackers... I wasn't so in love with my corner of the world then. Nor was I on that day August just wanted to keep watching movies and videos and the hours passed without our reading time, numbers, alphabet, games, songs, playing house or doing anything I'd call constructive. When I'd turn off a video she would just roam the house, not interested in anything except bringing me more DVDs. I felt like such a failure having ignored the warnings and maybe introduced her to screen time too early in her life. 

This theme of love in my corner conjures an image of a boxing ring where I sit in the corner with Love mostly, then the bell sounds... I leave Love to dance about, throwing punches wearing myself out only to fall and stay down a bit before making my way back to Love. I can always see that corner.  I love being in it, I feel I spend most of my days there. Even when I am in the throws of some battle, discouragement or obstacle, I don't lose sight. The goal is to put Love in all the corners, not just one.

I don't buy bad snacks. We don't own a television and she goes days without a video, clip or movie on the computer. The steps back to the Love in my corner.