Me, Precious?
...when the night is cold
Darkness had fallen upon the land. From the safety of our home, we could hear the chilled night air as it whisked through the trees outside. I was giddy with anticipation as my mother prepared us to brave the elements at an hour in which I was rarely awake or away from home.
I was a young child, two, maybe three years old, and inexperienced with the conditions I was about the face. My mother dressed me snugly in so many layers that I was sure that I could fall from our third story apartment and walk away uninjured on account of all the cushioning.
My final layer was a set of matching turquoise sweats. It was quilted with four patches down the leg and one on the chest of cartoon characters from Taj Clubhouse, one of my favorite Hawaiian brands. I loved my Taj sweats, but had never worn it before because I lived in Hawaii, where the weather rarely dipped below 70 degrees.
On this particular evening, we weren't traveling. We were still in Hawaii. And no, it wasn't unseasonably cold. It was a typical tropical evening, but it was later in the night than I was accustomed to and therefore colder than I was accustomed to. It would be colder, but it wouldn't be that cold.
Even though I was a young child, I questioned whether or not I actually needed all those layers. My brother and I were the most bundled up kids we saw that night. I can't say if I would have been warm enough with less layers, but I can say that I wasn't cold.
I've heard it said that our earliest memories often define our identity, how we see ourselves and how we see the world. This one evening might have been the reason why I'm always have an extra jacket with me and why I'm typically very prepared for cold weather, but I think it's one of my earliest memories for a different reason.
As I remember this moment with my mother, I question the accuracy of certain details -- was it evening or early morning, were we going to a college football game or something else, was it a colder than normal evening or was it a typical Hawaiian evening-- but whatever the particulars, I am convinced that I remember how I felt.
There was a part of me that felt unnecessarily fussed over, but more than anything else, I felt completely safe and taken care of. My mother didn't skip any steps. There was no sense of "meh, this is good enough".
Instead, it felt like my well-being was the most important thing in the world to my mother. I was the most safe. I was the most protected. I was the most taken care of. And in that moment, I was the most precious creature in the world.
I spent so much of my life questioning my worthiness -- am I good enough, do I have anything to offer the world, does anyone truly like me (or are they just being polite) -- so I wasn't expecting that a moment where I felt absolutely precious was one of earliest memories.
I wonder if it's easy for us to question whether or not we're precious because part of us knows that it's a fundamental truth. So much in the world tells us that we're wrong; ourselves included. We could write endless lists that evidence why we don't hit the mark and when people are involved, we're not always treated like we're precious and our instincts cause us to raise our defenses. I know I certainly don't always treat others as well as I could.
And so, why would we feel some type of way about our worthiness unless we believed in our core that we aren't just meant to be precious, but are precious right now. Maybe the proof that we matter is in the pain we feel when that's questioned.
In facing harsher than normal conditions on that one night with my mother, I was able to experience being cared for so beautifully. I wonder if it's in the moments when we're most vulnerable that we can find the most evidence of how cared for and how precious we are. Even when everything sucks and things are not okay and our souls cry out in distress, it's in the distress that the deep truth is revealed -- we are precious and we are worth protecting.
My mother's care told me that the night may be cold, but I would be warm.