The Magic-Maker
Posted at 5:42 am on February 2, 2010 by Farrah
On the night before Christmas Eve, I sat in the living room wrapping presents for my boys while my husband and my parents and my sister sat all around me watching TV. I actually kinda like wrapping presents so I was having fun too. But more than just wrapping gifts, I was planning out how Christmas morning should go down for my sons. This was the first Christmas that my older guy, almost 4, truly got into Christmas and was more aware of all the tradition that I was working hard to create for my family. As we all sat in the living room, we got into a somewhat heated discussion about how to do the gifts from Santa. I grew up having unwrapped gifts from Santa under the tree when I woke up Christmas morning but my husband’s Santa gifts were always wrapped. We probably should have had this discussion before we got married. You know… What religion are you? Do you want to have children? Are Santa’s gifts wrapped or unwrapped under the tree? The important stuff.
He really didn’t care what we did. He was certainly making a case for doing it his way but that was not where the discussion got heated. He was laughing at me for even bringing it up. I admit it is a somewhat trivial topic. But the issue hit somewhere a little deeper for me. Laughing at me for trying to plan out Christmas morning for my boys felt a bit like a stab at my role as the magic-maker, the one responsible for giving my boys a whimsical and memorable and wonderful childhood.
It is a role I take very seriously. Most things I do are for the greater-childhood good of my boys. I may not feel like climbing trees today or playing cheetah/monkey/lion/etc… for the millionth time. But most of the time I do, because that is the kind of childhood I want my boys to have. One full of whimsy and imagination, where they get to fully enjoy being a kid and all the splendor that comes with it. I drive them downtown to the museums and the Shedd and Navy Pier when it would be WAY easier not to. We go to the bedtime storytime at the library even though it is late and cold. But it sounds like something the boys would love so I pack them up and we go. And they did love it and my older guy is still talking about how special it was to go to the library after dinner. See, magic-maker, even if it is just in the small things.
I am not putting myself on a pedestal. Not at all. We all do it. As mothers, we are given this task of shaping our children and providing them with love and basic needs. But also, we are the ones with the biggest role in shaping their childhood and filling it with experiences and memories that nurture their brains and souls and hearts. This is not at all to the exclusion of discipline and boundaries. And I certainly have moments of motherhood that I am not proud of, moments that I wish I could take back and that certainly do NOT fit in with this part of my role. But overall, I see this as a pretty significant part of my job as mother to these two little dreamers, these boys with endless imaginations and potential for greatness.
I read a book once called Romancing Your Child’s Heart and that phrase, that concept has really stuck with me. That is my job. I am the one (well, hubby too!) that has been given this task of arranging the magic and stimulating his imagination and building his childhood memories. And I take that role very seriously. It influences how I spend most of my days.
Hubby and I finished our Santa conversion with a good compromise: one or two big gifts left out from Santa and some wrapped too. But I am not sure if he ever got why it was so important to me to plan how we were going to do Christmas. I am the magic-maker, the arranger of whimsy, the shaper of their childhood. And I want both my boys to grow up and look back on their childhood with nothing but the fondest of memories of the magic it contained.
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