How Toddlers and Sunblock Made Me Believe in Myself
It was a beautiful sunny day. Anita was off getting a massage, and the rest of her family were now in their own mini units tending to their kids. It was Anita’s birthday weekend and she had invited her closest family and friends to celebrate in a gorgeous hotel along the ocean cliffs of south Bali. I decided to slip away for a bit and get some sun.
I picked up my chick-lit /fairy tale/ sci-fi book and eased into the swimming pool. I was just a few seconds in when Damara plopped down in front of me and started reading the title of my book out loud.
“Ruh-bel Fairy?” she said inquisitively.
“Yess good job! Rebel Fairy.”
“What is that mean?” I don’t want kids, but the way they talk is pretty freakin cute. Especially when they seem interested in little ol’ me.
“Rebel is like…when you don’t want to follow the rules. Someone who likes to break the rules and live their own way, you know?”
Damara nodded thoughtfully. “So, that’s bad?”
Ahhh finally, a teachable moment and a chance for me to shine as the only childless adult in a soiree filled with wet wipes and kiddy snacks.
“No, being a rebel is not bad! Just because you don’t follow someone else’s rules doesn’t mean you’re bad right? I mean, why should you conform to society’s norms and be ostracized for embracing your own individuality?”
Damara seemed satisfied with my answer.
A little blonde figure appeared to my left. Jay, Anita’s 3 year old nephew, had decided our conversation was more interesting than swimming with the other kids, and was eagerly paying attention.
Damara started reading the author’s name at the bottom. “Deborah Write… Writing!”
“Deborah Wright, good job Damara your reading is excellent! One day my name will be there where hers is: Christina Scarborough. I’m going to become a writer.”
I looked down shyly and smiled. That might have been the first time I ever said that combination of words out loud.
Jay was beaming at me with encouragement. Did he…understand me? I was having a moment and reveling in it, so I asked them,
“Do you think I can do it? Become a writer? Do you believe in me?”
Damara thought about it and decided cheerfully, “A little bit!”
I laughed and turned to Jay, “Do you believe in me Jay??”
Jay looked at me and grinned then nodded with excitement.
“Aww thanks, you guys are the best! Thank you for believing in me,” said the 33 year old soon to be unemployed lady in a pool with a bunch of kids of no biological relation to her.
Damara’s mom was looking at us with amusement from the pool chairs.
I continued. “Enough about me though, what do YOU want to be when you grow up??”
Damara perked up and shouted, “A swimmer!”
“Oooh,” I gushed, “I can totally see that. You’re an amazing swimmer already. I bet you’ll be competing in the Olympics! What about you Jay? What do you want to be?”
“Batman!” Jay said without missing a beat, eyes shining, as if he had been waiting to be asked from the second he appeared as the third guest in our conversation.
So he DID understand everything I was saying! In this moment I felt such sheer excitement and renewed hope for the future. Being around these young balls of energy made me feel as if I could still dream big. This was the kind of encouragement I needed in my life. I needed Jay’s beautiful big eyes and Damara’s lackadaisical cheer to renew my own self confidence. I needed to surround myself with people that still believed in magic. I needed-
“Jayyy come here you’re getting red! Come on, come in the shade you need more sunblock.” Jay’s mom interrupted our career mastermind meeting with a rude splash of reality.
I guess I also needed people who would remind me to reapply sunblock when my back wasn’t so much tanning as it was frying to a crisp. Sigh. But I’m an adult, I don’t have people like that…for free.
As an adult, you have to pay for those people. Those people come in the form of life coaches, therapists, or parents…so yeah, all of which I’d have to dish out money for. #southeastasianparents
My little bubble of enthusiasm gone, I begrudgingly followed Jay and Damara out the pool and reapplied my own sunblock, with no one to help me with my back. That’s why I got the spraying one, the really expensive and bad for the ozone layer one. Is the ozone layer even a thing anymore?
Safely sun-blocked and having made a mental note to look up the ozone layer situation later on, I took another dip in the pool and thought about the day’s life lessons.
Lesson One: Become something that makes your eyes light up with glowing excitement when you tell people what you do. Think of Jay’s sparkling eyes when he declared his mission to become Batman and Damara’s gleeful shriek when she announced her calling to become a swimmer.
I thought about all the times I quietly mumbled that I ‘just design Facebook ads’ all day long. Now when someone asks me what I do, I’ll say proudly I’m a writer, and remember how good it felt to talk to Jay and Damara that one sunny day in Bali. Little kids really are so pure and uplifting. They allow you to be honest about what you want in this short life, what you really want, because they don’t judge you or tell you you’re being silly. They are the best hype men!
Lesson Two: Remember to pack the sunblock of adulthood. Noone else is going to bring sunblock for you, you’ve got to plan ahead and be your own responsible adult!
Slather on that medical insurance plan, put some savings on your nose, and reapply a stable part-time job on those vulnerable shoulders. Elizabeth Gilbert didn’t quit her day job until after her fourth book was published! Embrace your inner child, and squeeze tightly your inner parent.
Who would have thought that toddlers and sunblock would teach me such life-affirming lessons? I guess the signs are everywhere, if you ask enough questions.
