Me and You
I taught Tate, from early on, many things to say at the dinner table - things like,
“Thank you, Mama.”
“May I please have more?”
“I don’t care for this.”
“May I please be excused?”
The normal Miss Manners education I was raised with. Unlike my childhood though, I make a real effort to sit with her for at least awhile during dinner, to slow down and take a moment together. To carve out a ritual I saw on television and at some friend’s houses that I’d always wished for as a kid. Chatting around the dinner table and all the goodness that comes from that.
At age two, Tate adds her own dinner table language. What fees like, out of the blue…
Between blueberry bites, I hear, “I am me and you are you.”
I take a double-take.
“What did you say, sweetheart?”
Happily, nodding slightly, Tate repeats, “I am m-e and you are y-o-u,” and pops a handful of peas into her mouth.
“Yes,” I celebrate, suspiciously. “You are you and I am me.”
Delight spills out of her wet little mouth to hear me repeat this. I’m proud of her - so young yet owning her own identity in the simplest way. I sit back down and think for a second about what I’d just done, before she said this. I’d just been nibbling off her plate and trying to convince her how yummy her squash was. Aha. It’s as though she’s declaring, I have my tastes and you have yours. We are not the same person, Mama.
I’d been so immersed in my beautiful daughter, that the reminder that we were two separate beings is a slap in the face. This wise little teacher of mine is telling me I’d better start letting go. Dinnertime after dinnertime, this is her mantra. The salt on my food, in my wound of loving her so.
