Ordinary love: The look they remember

Time is ticking down to May in our house. May 11th, in fact. It's like that annoying clock on the wall that seems to tick slightly louder every day even though you're desperately trying to forget it's there. Ella’s GCSEs are about to begin. As she said to me last night, "It's getting real."

It feels like she has been working towards this for years. Yet, the house has taken on a different rhythm in these last few weeks. When I walk in the door after work, I’m never quite sure what I’m going to find. Notes spread across the table, revision guides stacked in uneven piles. But mostly a quiet tension that sits just beneath the surface of everything.

There is a lot to notice. What hasn’t been revised. What still needs to be done. How much time is left. How it all goes so darn fast!

It’s very easy, in moments like these, to become a manager of the process. It's my natural place. One where I ask, check, remind. Have you done this? What about that? How are you feeling? Can I make you something to eat? It comes from care. And still, I'm practising something different. Something smaller.

When she walks into the room, I pause. I look up. And I try, really try, to let my eyes soften. To let them say something before I say anything else.

I’m glad you’re here. Not have you finished revising? Not are you prepared? Not what’s next? Just, I'm glad you're here. You are enough.

I used to think love was expressed through what I did or maybe through what I cooked, cleaned or prepared. Through making sure everyone was fed, looked after, prepared. And all of that may be true. But I'm also beginning to understand that it can be something else. Love is expressed even before we act, speak or have time to organise or respond.

It is expressed in what our eyes say.

I am starting to understand that what she may remember from this time is not what I said. But how it felt to walk into the rooms I was in and whether she was met with pressure or presence.

We talk a lot about supporting our children through important moments. I used to interpret that to mean structure, routine, encouragement. But there's a new layer of support that's emerging for me. That look on my face when she arrives. The signal I give before any words are spoken.

Are they entering a space where they are being evaluated? Or a space where they are already enough? This question feels fundamental to me. Because it is also a question I have had to learn to answer for myself. To quietly retract from the constant measuring. To step back from the need to prove, improve, achieve. And to understand, slowly, that I am already enough.

Perhaps this is what we are offering our children in these moments. Not reassurance through words but recognition. A look that says, "You don't have to earn your place here."

I don’t get this right all the time. Some days the questions come out before I have a chance to stop them. Some days my mind gets there before my attention does. But I’m noticing it more and practising it when I can.

This is what ordinary love looks like to me this month. Not grand gestures or perfectly chosen words. Just the decision, over and over again, to meet every person with warmth before anything else. To let Ella see it in my eyes. She matters. She is seen. I am glad she is here.

This is the quiet work of living from the inside out. Of being Well Placed.

The question this week

When the people you care about walk into the room, what do they meet first? And what would change if, just for a moment, you chose to let your eyes speak before your words do?