I touched on this a little when I wrote about Mother’s Day last month, but I just wanted to say something after seeing a few different posts yesterday over on the gram.
A childhood (just like motherhood) cannot be summed up in just a few ‘important’ days. A ‘good’ childhood is not made up solely of elaborate Easter egg hunts and picture perfect bank holidays spent at National Trust properties. Just like a ‘bad’ childhood is not remembered that way just because the Easter Bunny didn’t always visit the house. Sometimes ‘big’ or ‘important’ days are nothing but a disappointment, and often the pressure to make occasions ‘special’ and insta-perfect makes the disappointments even harder to bear.
If you were too tired, too unwell or too sad to make yesterday amazing then don’t feel too badly. If you were too busy, or too skint, or too lonely to pull anything extravagant together – it’s not as big of a deal as it can sometimes feel. Our children aren’t going to remember one crap Easter, or a few rubbish Christmases, or even a couple of birthdays that didn’t quite live up to the plans we made on Pinterest.
What they will remember are the random Thursday evenings when you sacked off your dinner plans and ate chips in the park at sunset. The occasional Friday night when you all snuggled in the big bed eating popcorn and watching a film. The Sunday afternoons spent doing nothing at all, kids dancing around the kitchen while you finished the washing up. The odd Monday mornings in the school holidays where you had no where to be except in front of the TV watching cartoons with a cup of tea, together.
Small, tiny moments on the most unimportant days of the year are the ones that make the very best memories. The early mornings and the late bedtimes throughout the working week. The rushed schools runs and the daily tooth brushing battle. Dinner together, even on the nights they refuse to actually eat. Blurry selfies and funny dancing videos. The sound of laughter and music coming from an old radio. The day to day ordinary stuff, and all of the messy moments in between. The feelings of happiness and love, of being blissfully content – those are the things our kids will remember. The strength their parents showed, surviving even on the dark days and laughing even through the tougher times.
Those are the ingredients for a perfect childhood – nothing more and nothing less. So trust me, when they look back on their childhood and think about the amazing family they had, no one is going to give a single fuck about the Easter Bunny.
