As I rounded the staircase, the screams could be heard bouncing off of walls and echoing through the hall.
There was no mistaking it: it was our four-year-old Little Miss Sunshine in a very less-than-sunshiney mood.
Again.
My foot releasing from the last step at the top of the staircase, I breathed a hard sigh and turned into the girls' bedroom to investigate.
"What is going on in here?" I asked, in that Mom-Tone that says it had better be something of importance....or else.
Between wails, I barely made out the answer.
"Daddy only made these for PRISSY!!!! He didn't make ANY for ME!!!!!!!"
Sunny was clutching a couple of wooden coat hooks, one in the shape of a heart, the other, a butterfly. The pair were two of four that Hubby had lovingly purchased from a craft store years before and hand-painted with acrylic paints. Back then, we were in the midst of yet-another move, and he was preparing a bedroom for a tiny, brand-spanking new, two-month-old Miss Priss before she and I were due to arrive at our new home. Instantly, I realized the source of my youngest child's despair.
"Oh, Sweetheart," I soothed, crouching down to rub her back, "Prissy had been born first, that's all. Daddy painted these when she was a little bitty baby. We already knew we wanted to have you, but we didn't know when, or even if you'd be a boy or a girl."
By then, Hubby had appeared from whatever dark shadow he had been hiding inside of. In the small space of calm, a pause as Sunny took in a deep breath of air while contemplating what I had told her, Hubs added cheerfully, "See, I told you. You just didn't exist yet!"
Her face twisted.
Then her head rotated a slow 360 degrees around her neck. As she levitated off the floor, lightning flashing in the suddenly darkened sky, toys began hurling themselves across the room.
"DADDY SAYS THAT I DON'T EXIST!!!!!!" alighted the top of the shrill scream emanating from my freshly oxygenated preschooler, at a decibel that I was sure caused the neighbors to stop mid-stride in their hallways and kitchens and ponder as to the source of this strange new sound in the city.
My poor little baby. The younger of a set of two little girls that we have been blessed with. Who spends much of her waking life attempting to do, be and have everything her sister, three years her senior, does, is and has.
I wish I could say to her that "this, too, shall pass." But the truth is, no matter how old we get, no matter how much we've achieved, there is always that part of ourselves that wishes to do, be or have something that someone else does, is or has first.
"Comparison is all about conformity and competition." Brené Brown says in her book, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are. "At first it seems like conforming and competing are mutually exclusive, but they're not. When we compare, we want to see who or what is best out of a specific collection of "alike things."
For most of my adult life, I have struggled with comparisons. Comparing myself with people who had higher-paying jobs right out of college. Young people who successfully run their own companies. Crafters who create unique and beautiful and useful things. Bloggers who have lucrative sponsorships or book deals. Shoot, bloggers who manage to write every. single. DAY!
"The comparison mandate becomes this crushing paradox of "fit in and stand out!" It's not cultivate self-acceptance, belonging, and authenticity; it's be just like everyone else, but better."
And while I resisted the urge to throw a temper tantrum after every new story of success by people who are increasingly becoming younger and younger than myself, I have certainly felt frustrated. Frustrated and defeated and discouraged that I might NEVER do, be or have ANY of these achievements that, I was sure, would magically fill me with a sense of accomplishment and pride and purpose.
That four-year-old inside of us still speaks in such absolutes, doesn't it? "NEVER going to happen." "NEVER going to be good enough." "NEVER going to succeed at ANYTHING!"
That evening, I watched my sweet baby, her face contorted and red, standing, screaming, crying in the middle of a playroom filled with her own dolls and games and princess dresses, enough to open a toy store, ignoring them all, instead her fingers clenched around two wooden coat hooks that she had never paid any mind to in these four short years of her life, but which now stood as the ultimate symbols of every moment of every thing her sister had received that she, herself, had not.
It was a reminder to me. A reminder of something that I eventually learned to understand in these thirty-odd short years of life on this earth.
There are times when it is me, standing in the middle of my home filled with my own amazing children and husband and dog, more than I could have ever dreamed or hoped for in my youth, with my mind's eye clenched around another story about another blogger, or youngster, or stay-at-home mom who has a company or readership or monetary gain that, in that moment, stands for all the wants and things that seem so easy for everyone else, but still elude me.
"....many of us have bought into the idea that something has to be extraordinary if it's going to bring us joy. ...We seem to measure the value of people's contributions (and sometimes their entire lives) by their level of public recognition. In other words, worth is measured by fame and fortune. Our culture is quick to dismiss the quiet, ordinary, hardworking men and women. In many instances, we equate ordinary with boring or, even more dangerous, ordinary has become synonymous with meaningless."
But now, when I find myself brooding on comparisons and unfulfilled wishlists, I am reminded of this little pearl of wisdom that I had picked up somewhere along the way that says to me, "That is a fine thing for that other person. But you don't exist to do that. That is not the path you were meant to follow. Here, now, is everything that you exist for. It is already with you, in you and around you. Right. Now."
It is not always the easiest thing to remember. And it's an even harder thing to explain to a four-year-old with no sense of time and no siblings younger than herself.
Sunny was inconsolable for a good long while. Hubster, being the source of her agony, removed himself from her sight (a wise move, in this case) and I managed to wrestle the little tirade into some pajamas. All the while, I attempted to explain how it had been possible for her Father and I to have wanted to have her older sister, alone, first, and why we did not, for the three years before she was born, make sure that a future little sister would have the exact same things the older one did.
"You know, it's true," I said, stroking her hair, "for three years it was just me, daddy and your sister, because you just weren't here yet." We were laying on her bed, the sunlight sinking away rapidly behind closed curtains. "But you know what?" I went on, "Someday, Miss Priss will be all grown up, and she'll go to college or move into her own apartment, and then it will be just you, me and daddy for a few years until you graduate high school!"
Suddenly, from a separate bed a few feet away, a slow sad sob could be heard rising up from under a mound of tangled blankets.
"Prissy, are you OK?" I tentatively asked.
"YOU JUST WANT ME TO MOVE AWAY!!!!"
Oh, for heaven's sake!
