Star

Sometimes Birdie comes home with a smiley face drawn on her hand.  Usually it's when a certain Ms. Brittany has been in Birdie's room at pick-up.  Ms. Brittany is what the KinderCare management call a "floater," or "float."  It's a confidence-inspiring term, clearly.  Don't you only wish, Brigade, that you and yours could be minded by a float?  So Ms. Brittany is free with the toddler tats, if you will, inking her way into their hearts (and out of their parents' hearts or, at any rate, these parents' hearts).

This past week, Biride came home with a rather small, and, frankly, delicate, star inked on her hand, and Julie will admit her breath and her heart were caught for a moment.  They caught because the star put her in mind of the Philip Levine poem, The Blue Star, in which a man seeks to have a doctor remove a tiny blue star.  Julie first encountered it in a book called Covering, The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights which is about the civil rights law that may perhaps unfold in the rest of her lifetime, or Joe's and Clara's lifetimes, and also the extent to which we all hold multitudes, some of which we feel we must cover, even if those aspects of ourselves are those which might most brightly shine.*  The poem's concluding lines read:

I could feel nothing, and then he said
proudly, "I have it!" and held up
the perfect little blue star, no
longer me and now bloodless.  "And do
you know what we have under it?"
"No," I said.  "Another perfect star."
I closed my eyes, but the lights
still swam before me in a sea
of golden fire.  "What does it mean?"
"Mean?" he said, dabbing the place
with something cool and liquid,
and the lights were blinking on
and off, or perhaps my eyes were
opening and closing.  "Mean?" he said,
"It could mean this is who you are."

So often Julie thinks that what is so appealing about Birdie is her what-you-see-is-what-you-get-ness.  The unabashed way she embraces her little life and the things in it, including herself.  She doesn't hide her light under a bushel.  She just shines.

At the end of her Super Beasts class this past weekend, Clara charged over to Teacher Stephanie to put away her three shakers (two for her, one for Julie), pitched them in the bucket, and then tore back to Julie who had both of her hands up for high fives.  Birdie gave Julie a solid ten, and just before she broke the connection, put her face right up in Julie's and said, "Let's go get stamps!" before tearing off to the gym's door.

And in that moment, Brigade, she was just. . .incandescent.  It was so improbable.  On the big red mat at The Little Gym, kids every which way, but that's how she seemed to Julie.  So Birdie, so herself, so bright, so shimmering.

Probably all parents think their children are stars and everyone else is thinking, "Yeah, what of it?"  That's o-kay.  One day Birdie, you and your brother will read these posts, and you'll know that Daddy and I thought the two of you were endlessly enchanting.