The Blue Spoon

Despite all the beautiful wooden and plush toys I have surrounded Sage with, she is madly in love with a blue, plastic tablespoon. It goes everywhere with her throughout the house including in the bath and at the table. Of course, it also comes along in the car.Lately, she has even taken to sleeping with it, giving a whole new meaning to "spooning."

Her right fist curls tight around the handle, and beware to the poor sucker who tries to pry it loose! Every once and a while she trades it out for a set of pink, plastic measuring cups or the wooden utensils from Selby's play kitchen. But always, she comes back to her true love, the blue spoon!

As a Virgo who can often over think things, I am trying not to over analyze Sage's attachment to a plastic spoon. I am sure it will be the first in a string of choices throughout her life that I will not entirely understand. Whether it's a lovey at 11 months, a boyfriend at 16, or a career path at 25, the choices my girls make, ultimately, will be theirs and theirs alone.

And this is where mothering gets tricky. I can be their guide, their teacher and their example, but in the end, I know, they will be their own selves. My job is simply to support their journey of the soul with unconditional love, no matter what choices they make.

As Kahil Gibran wrote in the The Prophet:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.