Whenever it happens to me, I’m surprised! Your beauty comes to me during the day at quite ordinary moments and spices the day.
When you wake up in the morning, all tangled in the blanket because you sleep like a drunken octopus, and your naked frozen feet are thrown freely on the sheets… The way you look at me then, sleepy and fuzzy, looking for me and calling me to come to bed with you and lie down for a while… You do not even dream it’s my favourite part of the day. A bed warmed up by you who is calling me to cuddle and scratch you… while you’re all over me with your hands looking and hugging me tight and you won’t allow me to get up first and start a new day.
The moment when I am watching you running carefree in the courtyard with your younger sister is a moment of bliss; you are screaming with happiness and exhilaration, and your movements are so carefree and joyful, completely free of that consciousness that comes and points to everything that your growing up will bring to you.
I rejoice looking at you, a young girl who replaced the baby that was not so long ago to come to this world, a baby that fits perfectly in a place right next to my heart, still taking my breath away every single day…
In these moments, my dear daughter, moments that you will probably never notice, the knowledge that you probably will never have, all mainly boil down to one and the same – I see the effortless and unburdening beauty that you share all around.
I wonder when you will start looking in the mirror for all faults on the body and face when you start thinking about how you look in the eyes of other people… When the dressing up part starts and changing in front of a mirror and a revolt that nothing suits you just the way you think it should suit you to go out in the world.
I wonder when you will first make that frowning look at yourself in the mirror, becoming the sharpest critic of yourself… When the unstoppable eye-rolling will start when I’m in front of you, and I shout that you are beautiful!
Because you really are.
For me, you will always cause wonder and awe as the moment they put you in the maternity ward directly to my breasts, and I deeply sighed because it was you. You know, like when you’re waiting for an old friend to come back from some long trip which went on and on and then they suddenly arrive. Well, kind of. You.
Sometimes I’m surprised by the intensity of love I feel for you, my children, as if no one else in this world has children, just me. Sometimes I have to stop and come to sense, when I cry at a kindergarten gala or when I see the way you’ve been struggling with the letters in school, and yet you’ve written down everything to the very end. An avalanche of empathy comes immediately with an overemotional mother who must be urgently restrained so that the child will not see that mom cries over her Serbian language notebook and sheds tears over those first quirky letters.
I want to take a part of your beauty, preserve it and give it back to you when the time comes when you begin to live not only for yourself and the pure joy of being you, but you start comparing yourself to other girls by a sharp knife of your high standards. I want to build the largest mirror in the world then, which will have the power to show you what I see in you – to show you that strength, sensitivity, intelligence, kindness, every quarrel and flaw, which is plunged into the tapestry of your easy and unburdening beauty.
Because my darling, you really are beautiful. And I wonder if years, ice and stone ages will have to pass until you have realized how beautiful you really are. Your mom.
