The Heart-Led Child

I’m writing a dual-perspective fantasy based on my daughters.

My 4-year-old, Tea, is heart-led, silly and rarely thinks about consequences to her actions.

In fact, she’s usually startled by them.

Once, not so long ago, she smeared melted chocolate onto our kitchen seat, the kitchen table, and her shirt.

“Tea!” I yelled. She practically jumped out of her chair with shock - her mouth formed into a perfect “O.”

“What Mama?” she looked at me with giant doe-eyes, genuinely surprised. When I crouched down to point out the chocolate all over EVERYTHING, she pat me on the shoulder. “It’s ok Mommy, it’ll be ok.”

Both girls experience heartbreak in their own ways though.

Because none of us escape that.

This Friday was Tea’s turn to wrestle with the concept of friendship lost.

It was one of those in-between days, not quite warm enough to be jacketless and not cold enough to force one on a four-year-old capable of squirming out of it on her own. Tea ran bare-armed and happy through the expansive local Barnes & Noble, heading first to the escalator where she insisted on getting on and off by herself, “Mommy I can do it myself, don’t help me!”

At the top, she ran to the elevator and pushed the call button looking back at me once for approval, before tapping it with her index finger which trembled at the autonomy.

And once inside we were greeted by an employee with a cat stuffed animal backpack that she invited Tea to touch.

“It’s so soft, want to feel it?” she asked, offering it to Tea.

Tea ran her hand along its black synthetic fur. “Mommy is that for me?” she asked.

“No baby.”

“Then why did she ask me to touch it?”

The employee quietly hunched away when the elevator door opened.

I shrugged. “She was just being nice, sometimes people just like to share but not always.”

“Not always? Why not?” she asked.

I shrugged again. “No one is anything all the time,” I said.

As we walked through the children’s books, stopping to look at the toys more often than the thing we had come here for, I could see Tea getting tired, belligerent, and hopeless in the way that 4-year-olds subjected to long days, become.

She settled on a Minecraft book because Alex and some other boys in her class like robots. We paid and left.

It was quiet as we pulled out of the parking lot and to the first signal light.

I was about to turn on the radio when a voice, so small and certain came from behind me.

“Alex said he wasn’t my best friend and then I said he used to be my best friend and he said no, he never was, and he pinched me!” Tea, my 4-year-old said.

She said it so quietly, it was almost like a whisper.

“He went to sit far away from me at the other table.”

I tried to meet her eyes in the rearview mirror to convey sympathy, empathy whatever 4-year-olds expect when they want an adult to bear witness to pain.

But her head was turned to the window.

“It’s ok baby, maybe he was having a bad day,” I cleared my throat. “I’m sure he didn’t mean it,” my brows furrowed as my eyes moved between the cars in front of us, and her fat, solemn-cheeked face in the rearview.

“Ok I’m going to nap now, don’t talk to me about it,” she said, thumbing through the pages of her new Minecraft book.

It was the day before her birthday party and spirits were high. She’d gotten a balloon from her physical therapist, and her preschool’s director said she had been “bouncy all day.” But as we sat in surface-street traffic, after The Habit for dinner and Barnes & Noble for a book, Tea had relaxed into the comfort of being, and the comfort of feeling the things a neurodivergent 4-year-old might.

After an evening at home of terrorizing her older sister and running around scattering toys in front of the TV, on the floor of the kitchen, and in our bedroom, she finally settled down promising to go to sleep since she would need her energy for the party the next day.

“Mommy, all my friends are coming and do they know they all have to give me a present? Yea, I’m going to tell them you have to get me a present if you’re coming to my birthday.”

“Alright Tea,” I said, kissing her goodnight. “Goodnight Little Love.”

Her eyes were already half closed.

The next day was cold. I cursed as I tried to tape plastic tablecloths down to the aluminum picnic tables we’d paid to rent that day.

They caught the wind and didn’t seem to understand they’d been bought and paid for to serve a purpose and they were failing – miserably. My husband dropped off both the kids just as I was finishing setting up, and went to pick up the food with a “ok, see ‘ya later!”

I cursed him under my breath.

The girls ran around the park, slid down the astroturf hill on their bellies and generally enjoyed each other’s company. “Remember Mommy, I get to open one of Tea’s presents today because she hit me last night! Remember?”

I nodded. “Yes, I remember, and yes but don’t remind your sister right now. Meltdowns not needed.”

Tea ran and screamed as she grabbed my leg like a tree trunk she’d decided to hide behind. “When are my friends gonna be here?” she asked.

“Soon Baby, soon.”

Alex was one of the first kids to show up. She looked at him, looked at me, and then back at him without leaving my side.

He ran up to her eagerly, pulling on his dad’s shirt. “I want to give Tea her present and the pictures!” he handed them over to her, and a smile passed between them.

“Yea! You wanna see my bounce house?” Tea said, pointing. “It’s over there! Let’s go.” And off they went.

Maybe that’s the thing about being heart-led, you’re quick to forgive because in forgiving you bridge the truth between reality and the world you want to live in. It’s one of her superpowers.