Like me, my 10-year-old son Mateo is a fan of musicals, and Annie is one of his favorites. Yesterday Mateo said, “The ending of the movie Annie isn’t complete.”
“How so?” I asked, surprised. We hadn’t seen Annie lately, and were in Mateo’s room, making his bed.
“Because Annie didn’t meet her birth mother,” Mateo said. “The story isn’t complete unless she meets her birth mother.” He thought for a minute. “Or if the guy she ends up with, Daddy Warbucks, had been her real dad. If she found out Daddy Warbucks was her real dad.” He looked out the window, pondering. “That could work.”
I smoothed the sheets on his bed and puffed up his pillow. “So meeting the birth parent completes the story?”
“For me it did,” Mateo said.
“Why is that?”
He stared at me with a “duh” expression. “Because now I know who she is.”
And he tumbled across the bed, conversation over.
Both Mateo and Olivia have met their birth mothers, which seems to be key to their feeling “complete.” I describe the experience as a circle being closed. My children know whose features they inherited, and from whom they get their special talents. They’ve felt their mothers’ arms around them. They understand that they are loved.
As Mateo sensed at 10 years old, their stories feel complete. ~
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