Kind, Smart, and Important

"You is kind, you is smart, you is important."   Adelaide, the maid in the novel, The Help, said these words over and over to her "last" white child in Jackson, Mississippi.

I read the novel and saw the movie when they first came out, but when I watched it with Mike, I saw it with different lenses.  I cried.  This time, the movie touched me even more than the first time around.  Besides, I have a granddaughter myself now, so hearing those words spoken to a little girl made me wonder: what kinds of mantras make girl-child stronger for life?

Mike was a little white boy raised by a feminist mother and a "colored" woman named Laura.  His mother fought for civil rights in Memphis.  Laura was a "cotton picking machine built for picking cotton," he said.  Strong and built low to the ground, she could pick twice as much cotton as anyone else.

When he got out of line or fought with his brother, Laura would hold him so tightly that he couldn't get loose, then spank him when he did.  She never yelled, didn't have to--her physical strength kept him in line. Yet even now, the mention of Laura Taylor, whom he loved and who loved him, brings tears to his eyes.

Not all little girls are pretty, and not all little boys stay in the lines, but we all need to hear that we are kind, smart, and important--or whatever qualities the adults in their lives hope for them to carry for the rest of their lives.

Another aspect of the movie that touched me deeply was Adelaide's saying, "Nobody ever asked me before what it was like to be me.  "But once I started telling the truth, I was free."

This line inspires me to see one of my roles in the lives of children as asking what it's like to be them.  What do you love?  What matters to you?  What hurts you? And then, just listening to what they have to say.

But I'm also--thanks to the movie--going to think of a mantra of my own for the children in my world.  "You are kind, you are smart, you are strong."  Or: "You are creative, curious, and caring."

Children believe what we tell them, so what we tell them should be words they can hold on to when everything falls apart--which it will, in every life, from time to time.