Softness

I saw a title and that was enough. A word that sounded similar to another. That got my brain in motion and took me back to my childhood. Then flew me to motherhood. To remember when my girl said a few years ago: Mommy, you are so soft! She meant it as a compliment and I knew it then. What is it? Softness? Is it good?

I used to associate softness with fat or the lack of it or in a fancy way you could say it: BMI index. The fat-muscle ratio of the body, indications that are relatable to health and social norms. I never dived into this too much so I am no expert but I always knew that I am heavy-boned. I could never lose weight and be like one of my best friends. Feather light. My skeleton is heavy, but it is sturdy. So far so good. And on a sturdy foundation anything could be built.
Now I am there. I have always been that something, that someone, that ratio, which the indicator showed was fluctuating between soft and hard as a being, as a person. Tough, they’d say. And I liked it, I was proud of it. Yes, I can weather the storm.

What is softness? Soft is the surface. Soft is a pillow and you love pressing your head into it. Soft is a sheet or duvet that you wrap around yourself and which keeps you warm, soft is peace and calmness when you embrace your mother and she pulls you to her chest. Soft is love and care. Soft is a woman, a mother, a grandmother. Soft is the heart of a little boy who falls in love with his kindergarten teacher and wants to marry her when he grows up. Soft is tender and fierce. You fly across oceans just to give or get a hug. To get that peace that it gives. You are tough to get there. To that love, that lives within.

I used to say I didn’t want to look like my mother. Because she is soft. Too kindhearted, too easy for others to bend, too accommodating, too easy to walk over and leave her in the dust, to use her and never look back. I wanted to be like my dad. Who had stamina. Who was strong and wasn’t ever fat. And all he needed for that was self-discipline and maybe the genes of his own grandfather.

Life is tough. You say you don’t want something and you’ll become exactly that. You want it or not. You carry it all in yourself. I can’t change my genes and I don’t want to. I am happy with what I have. But now I know, I can change what version of myself I want to be on that given scale of possibilities and feel happier when the image I see in the mirror resembles more of who I used to be than what I became recently. Little successes can show me that I am on the right path to get to my optimal being and not only on the inside but inside and out. To see again what I used to like about myself, with some improvements. Someone, who knows that softness doesn’t mean exclusively a BMI index (I don’t know mine and I honestly don’t care about that, but how I feel in my own skin), but it means the love of my child and my love for her.

So whether she says to me that she can’t sit in my lap anymore because I am ‘too bony’ or says that I am so soft, like her squishy toys, I don’t get offended. I just think to take it as a compliment, because one way is my dad, the other is my mother and I am right in between them. And without one or the other I wouldn’t be here. Besides, that tough guy? He appreciated the softness of my mother. Her softness covers up so much endurance. So if I think about it, isn’t it just a mask? Isn’t she strong in a different sense? Isn’t she letting me or others believe whatever we want and just be who she is, her true self? The balancing act, the rationale when my dad’s imagination went too wild, the grounding force, sometimes even too strong. So strong that you forgot about all the softness she has.

I want soft. I like it now. As I always loved seeing little kids being gravitated to my mother. The warmth in her touch. The love with what she cares for all around her. Soft is to make one feel good. Soft is positive. Soft is gravitational. Soft is like a cosy blanket. Soft is complimenting. So I embrace it as it melts hardness into puddles, disarms forces one never thought was possible.

Photo by Thomas Oxford on Unsplash