Family and the self
How Was Your Day, Dear Serap?
When a child says ‘Mum’, you gradually settle inside that word. Your name, your voice, even your own self step back a little… You become ‘Mum’. But sometimes… life has small surprises for you.
When a child says ‘Mum’,
you gradually settle inside that word.
Your name, your voice, even your own self step back a little…
You become ‘Mum’.
But sometimes…
life has small surprises for you.
One day, I had come home from work.
The door opens.
There is that mischievous smile in front of me…
And then that sentence:
‘Dear Serap… how was your day?’
For a moment…
everything stopped.
A six-year-old’s voice,
yet like a friend I had known for years.
As though she wanted to remind me of myself.
‘Dear Serap…’
It was more than a way of addressing me.
What a lovely way to call to someone.
It felt like a gentle nudge to a part of myself I had forgotten.
When you have a child…
being ‘Mum’ takes precedence over being yourself.
Lovingly, willingly, with all your heart…
But still, somewhere, ‘you’ remain.
That way of calling to me…
that ‘Dear Serap’…
reminded me of myself.
It felt so good…
it is hard to describe.
And with that mischievous smile alongside it,
the moment became lovelier still.
A tiny moment…
but one of those that takes up a great space in the heart.
Moments that collect in a memory jar, growing more precious with time…
Every smile,
every glance,
every call…
finds its place in that jar.
And a day comes…
when you look back.
Those moments are no longer merely things you lived through;
they become the traces of a journey.
And some…
shine a little brighter than the others.
Just like that mischievous smile
that greeted me at the door that day…
‘How was your day, dear Serap?’
Moments like these…
gather without our noticing.
And one day, when you look back,
each has become a memory.
They are not simply remembered…
they make you smile again every time they return.