For Christmas, I offer a love letter to my children

” It is my present ? It’s not my gift anyway! »I can already imagine the face of my Hairy 14 year old when I hand him a simple letter on Christmas Eve.

The Hairy is eagerly awaiting the latest fashionable video game. He will have it, but this letter is my real gift. I needed five minutes to order “Cyber ​​Punk 2077”, but I spent several hours writing the words I am going to convey to him and as much time concocting the version intended for the brutal Princess that he uses as his. little sister.

At their age, at Christmas, I collected the 100-franc notes to give myself the Vanessa Paradis CD, cinema tickets and fancy writing paper. Today, they listen to all the music they want – and even music they don’t know – from their Spotify Family account. The cinema is closed but Netflix, Youtube and Twitch have their preference anyway. As for the letters, I don’t think they wrote any other than the ones sent to Santa Claus when they were younger.

Christmases go by, one thing doesn’t change

What do we offer the children of the 2020s, drowned in objects, captivated by screens, endowed with all the treasures that were important to me at their age? Are my children able to remember gifts from previous Christmases? I don’t remember myself.

But there is one thing that does not change. They will always need to be confident in themselves. Self-confidence can be transmitted through optimism or valuing successes. I wanted to talk to them about their qualities.

There is a moment that I find moving in early childhood: when we put our finger for the first time on a trait of our little one. Before he was just “a baby”, then one day we start to notice that he fidgets a lot compared to Elise’s daughter, that he is very afraid of something that his little cousin does not care about or that he eats. like an ogre compared to Jacques’ kid. The baby is no longer “a baby”, he becomes our child, we recognize him, we are able to talk about it in detail, to find particularities.

Ten or twelve years later, when adolescence begins, children have become a heap of peculiarities. With traits that we appreciate and others that we like less – sometimes much less. However, they are entering a phase where they will not stop questioning their identity. Who are they ? What sets them apart from the rest? They are null. And then no one will be interested in them. Moreover, they will not succeed: to make friends, to succeed in school, to break into their sport … A little music that each individual has heard in the evening at one time or another.

More than anyone, I know what moves me about them

The time has come to offer them a love letter. More than anyone, I know how to talk to them about what moves me about them. I have seen the tastes that characterize them grow and make them wonderful in my eyes over the years. For once, it’s good to turn a blind eye to the unbearable insolence of the brutal Princess, or the chocolate-thief habits of the Hairy. They will hear about it as long as they live with me and certainly afterwards, but today I want to remind them that they are wonderful, beautiful, intelligent. May this little remark that the Hairy One made the other day show all its finesse, and that such a way of acting testifies, in my brutal Princess of an extraordinary will. I would like for once to take the time to cherish each of their skills and tell them that they are beautiful people, far from the cries of everyday life, the battles of containment, the – rare – punishments.

I would like them to start 2021 feeling serene, equipped with everything they need to face life and enjoy it. Let them feel armed. “Confront”, “arm” … The lexical field becomes warrior? Is there a danger?

2020 is not for nothing, indeed. It wasn’t just their entry into adolescence that made me want to write these letters. This year, more than any other, we asked ourselves what was “essential”. This year, more than any other, we have cut back on our freedoms, considered the smallest cell to fall back on. Locked up, we dreamed of large spaces, parties, hugs, contacts. This year, more than any other, we have also considered death.

My love like no other

I thought about everything I didn’t have time to tell my kids, everything I wanted to make sure they knew if I was missing. I thought about what I wanted them to keep from me, forever. My love like no other. My certainty that they will find their place in existence. Whether alive or not, I will be by their side.

And as the annus horribilis ends, I take the time to observe their gestures, their laughter, their concerns (When is the next season of “Attack on Titan” and “Stranger Things” coming out? Granny at Christmas?). I see children who are doing well, are happy to live, have enjoyed coming back to school. I want to tell them that I love them, that they are full of qualities and, finally, to record this ordinary happiness of having them near me. We must archive this happiness, that we remember together what was important for us at the time, and the pleasure we had to live together after all these events. This letter, I hope they will reopen it in ten years and say to themselves: “That was 2020 too, finally. We were happy. ”

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