Let it Go

Too much work, too many tasks, too many things to keep in check.  Obligations, deadlines, stressors, and drama, albeit some imagined and others real.  Sound familiar? 

“Let it go, let it go
Can't hold back anymore
Let it go, let it go
Turn away and slam the door”

Yep, a day at the beach is a good way to let it all go.  I feel better already.

Now the reality of getting out the freakin’ door, much less slamming it, is upon me.  Medication or Bandaids to cover the angry, raw exzema outbreak on my daughter leg before it hits the bacteria-laden waters of Lake Michigan?  Will the peanut butter sandwiches get smashed in the flimsy lunch bag once it gets jammed into the wire bike basket for the couple-mile bike ride to the beach in the heat?  And of course, the age-old good cop/bad mom debate of whether I can justify REALLY letting it go and finding room for the sole cider beer that’s been chillin’ in the fridge for the past few days as a companion for the PB&J and butterscotch cookies.  Realizing I’m just making things harder than they need to be by even giving the Woodchuck tagalong a second thought in regards to propriety,  my 5-year-old and I hit it into the sunshine. 

The fact that an hour and a half has escaped between idea conception and clicking on the bike helmets is neither here nor there.  But when the toe jam from the flip flop I’m wearing separates from the shoe’s base, causing me to lose my balance when I hopped down from my bike at a Lake Shore Drive Intersection, and roll my bike, as well as the attached ½ bike where my daughter was perched, proud as a peacock, was another story.

“The wind is howling
Like this swirling storm inside
Couldn't keep it in
Heaven knows I've tried.”

Dammit!  Is my daughter OK?  Check.  Did we fall into the street?  Nope.  The bike’s still in tact, but the day school field-trippers on the lakefront sure got their laugh for the day.

Back on the bike, pedaling the last few blocks to the sandy getaway, my almost-kindergartener tells me she was embarrassed when we fell. 

“Let it go,” I tell her.  “Do you even know what that word means?”

Finally, we see the beckoning baby blue sky meeting the deep azul of the very active lakefront,  and troubles are forgotten.  Get.  There.  Now.

Happy as a clam, plopped in the middle of a striped beach towel, shielding the sandwiches in our hands from the grit of the sand being blown by the wind, I’m confronted with the obvious.

“Mom, will you swim with me?”

I hadn’t thought of that today, on the first beach trip of the season, with the thermometer barely hitting 80 degrees and the extreme warnings from friends (and meteorologists) ringing in my ears about the cold water temps this year due to the extreme winter be just crawled out of, and how we won’t be able to enjoy the summer.  I looked at the goose bumps on my arms and then back at my daughter’s beaming face.

“Mom, please, it will be so fun…I can’t wait!”  

Begrudgingly, I walk to the edge of shore and dip one toe into the surf.  Death-defyingly frigid.  Then my child ran at full force into the lake, jumping over every wave and splashing me high and low along the way.  Oh for the love of Pete.

“And here I stand
And here I'll stay
Let it go, let it go
The cold never bothered me anyway”

After an hour in the sun and surf, the water actually felt warm.  We played, we paddle-balled, we wave-jumped, and we swam with full-body submersion for almost 2 hours.  It was by far, the best day ever.

“It's funny how some distance makes everything seem small
And the fears that once controlled me can't get to me at all.”


---Lyric quotes from “Let It Go” from Disney’s Frozen

Blame It On Texas

It's so hard to be a good parent. Sometimes I just want to be a not so good parent. It's a daily struggle to make sacrifices to do the right thing by your kids. And sometimes I wonder if I'm overdoing it and trying too hard to be a good parent.

Today I’m not overdoing it.  My nine-year-old doesn't need to be sitting on the couch at home from school today. She could have gone to school, but she would need to have breathing treatments every so often.  She's home because I don't want to walk over to the school every four hours and give her a breathing treatment and I don’t trust the school nurse to dose it out to her.  I’m being lazy.  I want some time to myself.  It’s been weeks and weeks of sickness and out-of-town visitors and obligations and requirements.  I just want a minute to myself.  So when I called the asthma doctor to get an appointment for her today and was told to be prepared to wait for a while when there, I lost it.

Sometimes it all just piles up and I feel like I'm going to suffocate. I feel trapped in my own life.  I don’t want to spend my day dropping kids off, picking them up, and waiting for an opening at the doctor’s office.  I want to be in the yard with my fun flighty friend pulling weeds and having no worry larger than ‘Should I move the Hostas to the other side of the yard or leave them where they are?’  I want to be completely selfish.  I don’t want any responsibility today. 

I usually end up doing the right thing as a parent but I always wonder if I will. Today I told my partner that I’m at the end of my rope.  I don’t feel capable of doing it anymore. She already knew and she was there to back me up with a solution.  She’ll take the sick kid to the doctor and I can be selfish and stay home for a few hours of sunshine and dirt in the back yard.  I’m lucky.  I know I’m lucky. 

For now, though, as I watch my four-year-old struggle with her interactions with her nine-year-old sister, I subconsciously wonder why she’s being so snippy and rude.  A sweet, considerate girl otherwise, she is prone to sassiness from time to time.  But today, sassiness doesn’t even begin to describe what I’m hearing. 

“Quit talking,” she says as she cuts off her older sister.  “I don’t want to hear you anymore.”

“You’re not being nice.  I’m never going to play with you again,” she threatens when she doesn’t get her way.

Seriously?  They’re already both sitting in the Work It Out Chair, which means they’re trying to work through a disagreement that has been tagged by me, but I am unable to intervene. They’re supposed to stay in the chair, sitting side by side, until they can each admit their wrongdoing to one another, apologize to each other, and give each other a hug.  It starts out great every time with the apology.  But instead of acceptance moving on to the hug, the acceptance keeps getting followed with a BUT.  The BUT negates the apology and acceptance.  Then it’s back to fighting again about the BUT.  It’s exhausting even to hear.

“Blah, blah, blah…..,” singsongs the 4-year-old to the 9-year-old.  “I don’t want to listen to you anymore,” she says with her hand in the air as a blockade in front of her sister’s face.

Intervene I must.  No longer a productive ‘work it out’ session, I’m now witnessing a diminishing level of respect coming from a toddler.

“To your room,” I order.  “Time out.”

She cries, she sobs, and she wants attention.  After a few minutes, I enter the room to find her crumpled in the corner of her room, crocodile tears running down her face.

You’d think I’d ask her why she’s crying or what she’s thinking about.  Not me, though.  I force her to climb on my lap and listen to my words and ask her if she understands.  I honestly don’t give a shilling what she’s crying about or what she’s thinking.  I just want her to lose the attitude.

“Who did you learn this disrespectful language from?” I ask incredulously.

“I don’t know,” is her reply.

“Was it so-and-so or whatchamacallit?”

“No.”

“Did you see it on TV?” I inquire.

“I don’t think so,” she says uncertainly.

We talk about respect and treating people the way you want to be treated and asking forgiveness and truly meaning it…the whole ball of wax.  She takes her ridlin of punishment and I release her from the time out to again join her sister in the Work It Out Chair to tie up loose.  From the sounds of it, it’s going to be a long day.

Incredibly, they work out their differences and return to the board game they had started earlier.  A few minutes into it I see the 4-year-old take her hand and sweep it across the board in anger, knocking all of the game pieces off the board.  She’s had it with her sister and the game.  I’ve had it with both of them. 

“To your room,” I ordered again, giving the tot Miss Allen Eye.  Miss Allen was my elementary school principal.  Super kind and supportive woman and great principal, but when you pushed her buttons, she tilted that head to the side, squinted up the right eye, and glared at you so hard with the left, that the intensity damn well may have burned a hole in you.  The rumor among school kids was that it was a glass eye that allowed for the laser-like glare.  Real or artificial, my sister and I spent many an hour trying to perfect Miss Allen Eye over the years.  But to be honest, I’ve never actually used it on anyone before.  There’s a first for everything.

Little Miss Tantrum marches off to her room again, scared to death of me.  I’m scared to death of me.  I’m screaming and stomping and slamming doors because I am just sick with grief over the girls’ behavior.  I’m sick of myself too!

Truth be told, the asthma medication is the real culprit of today’s bickering.  The more my eldest takes of the steroid, the worse her mood becomes.  The sicker she gets, the more medicine she takes, the snottier she acts.  She can’t help it….it’s a side effect of the meds to be cranky.  She's moody, broody, and short with others. As a result, she pisses people off, and to add insult to injury, everybody else starts acting insufferable in response, including her parent….a huge Catch 22. 

But I don’t think of that when I go in to talk to my toddler.  I ask her again where she learned such inappropriate behavior. 

“Is it your girl friends at school?” I want to know.

“They sometimes act like that,” she replies honestly, “but that’s not where I learned it.”

“Well what about what’s-his-name,” I ask, “does he act like this?”

“No,” she carefully responds, “he doesn’t.”

Before I can ask another question I realize that she’s picked up her behavior from me and doesn’t want to make me angrier by telling me!

It was me stomping through the kitchen and slamming the freezer door because I was so pissed!  It was me who cut off my 4-year-old and wouldn’t let her explain, so I could get MY point across.  It’s me she’s freakin’ mimicking!  Holy tamole.  What a bomb.

After I’ve dropped the toddler off at school and I am driving home, I consider that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.  I remember getting in trouble myself in high school for using profanity toward a teacher.  

When my father got word, he screamed, “Goddammit, Jesus Christ, Stacy…where in the hell did you learn to use such language?”

Ha.

It’s the world spinning around, over and over, year after year, and people doing the same stupid shit their parents did before them and their parents’ parents did before them.  What a trip.

I’m laughing to myself about parenting and what a crap-shoot it can be, as I’m cruising home in my beater car that probably has no business sharing the road with others, when a fancy shiny black car pulls out in front of me from God-knows-where without warning.  I come close to ramming the car from the rear.  I go to honk and realize our horn has been eternally broken for over 2 years.  We replace the fuse over and over again, and it goes bad usually after the first good use of the horn.  If I’m not too fired up and just casually using the horn as a warning or reminder to drive, the fuse may last through 3-4 short bursts, but if it’s a good long, “What in the Sam Hill are you doing?” honk, the fuse is usually blown after that. 

I had just asked my girlfriend to replace the fuse last week and apparently she hadn’t gotten around to it, though, as no sound comes out now. In this case I have to make my own sound of warning, so I scream through the closed window toward the man driving the black car with closed windows.

“Expletive Expletive, you’re an Expletive Idiot!” I yell at the top of my lungs.  As I look down at the license plate, I realize it’s a Texas plate.

Offreakingcourse it is!

I can’t stand Texas, but even worse, I can’t stand when my kids pick up my bad habits.  I’m going to blame all of today’s bad behavior on having lived in Texas.  Today I wipe the slate clean of my southern parenting slips and I decide I’m going to give my kids and myself a do-over.    

Recognize Your Impact

As parents, we are usually aware, in the moment, of those occasions that define us as good parents and those that render us bad parents.  Giving your child a shoulder to cry on when he faces his first disappointment, without weighing in your two cents on the matter = good parent.  Leaving your child sitting on a bench at the bus stop in town while you score some dope a few streets over = bad parent.  The extremes are no-brainers.  It’s the in-between occurrences, which make up the majority of interactions with our kids, we don’t always recognize as having the ability to mold our children’s perceptions.    Chastising your child because she doesn’t know how to decipher between the various tools in the toolbox = ambiguous. 

“Goddammit, Stacy, it’s the Phillips head I need, not the flat head,” my dad yelled at the 8-year–old version of me, from underneath the ’79 Buick, when I handed him the straight-edged tool. 

I was running in and out of the garage bringing tools to my dad, trying to help him with his task of getting the car back up and running.  A natural fixer of all things broken, he was trying to impart some fix-it knowledge onto me by letting me be his assistant for the job.  Unfortunately, what I took from that day was that I was a dumbass for not knowing the difference between the two screwdrivers.  Even as a kid, I knew I was smart, so I wasn’t concerned about not being bright enough to know the difference between the two tools. I was simply upset that I had disappointed my dad. 

Fast forward thirty-some years and I create the same scene with my own child.  I use my 8-year-old daughter’s previous attempt at dusting as an example of how not to dust the house.

“Do you seriously think this clean?” I ask her incredulous.   “If you’re going to do a half-assed job, I’d rather you not help at all.”

Same shit, different year. 

Before I even looked over to see the hurt look in her eyes, I knew the harm I had caused.  I had just hammered her with disapproval.  A super sensitive kid with a sincere want to always be helpful, as well as a need to please, she amazingly held it together for what I thought might be the rest of the evening.  I continued my sweeping, until I opened her bedroom door a few minutes later and found her curled up in my girlfriend’s arms, crying her heart out. 

All the kid was trying to do was help.  In fact, during family cleaning hour, her task was supposed to be mopping, as she loves to mop.  My youngest daughter couldn’t seem to wrap her head around her own dusting assignment and had sauntered off to play dollies, so my older daughter had offered to stand in for her, taking on the additional responsibility.  It was while performing this act of kindness that I spewed such harsh words at her. 

Once she calmed down, I apologized for my harsh words and asked for her forgiveness. 

“It’s OK, Mom,” she said in her sad little voice.  “It’s just not fair that I was just trying to help you and you yelled at me,” she said as her almost-swollen-shut eyes welled up with tears yet again.

No, it’s not OK and it’s not fair.  No amount of stress or craziness is an excuse for taking out your angst on your kids, especially over a dust job!  Enough of those types of interactions with a parent can cause not only problems in parent-child relationships, but also can crack away at the self-esteem of children. 

 

In trying to figure out how I got the breaking point where I would yell at my kid over something as unimportant as her dusting skills, I came to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter how I got there.  I just needed to stay the hell away from that point in the future.  The truth of the matter is that no matter how many bits of useful knowledge and skill that my dad has passed down to me over the years, like bleeding the brakes on my car and taking apart my computer and replacing the parts before putting it back together again, the first thing that comes to mind when I think of his ability to fix things is the inadequacy I felt when he yelled at me over the freakin’ screwdriver thirty-some years ago.  I pray that I have not etched my daughter’s memory bank with the same feelings of deficiency over the dust rag.  

Odds are, the damage has already been done.  The good news is that if I’ve done my job right as a parent so far, like my parents did with me, my kids will grow up unscathed by my occasional lapses in parental judgment, and will be able to decipher between a bad parenting interaction and a bad parent.  Only time will tell.

Paying it Backward

Paying it forward rocks!  You’re in line at the coffee shop or dry cleaner and once you get to the front of the line, you’re told the person in front of you just paid your tab.  It’s so nice that you in turn, give up the cab you’ve been waiting on for twenty minutes to the guy next to you that’s in a huge rush.  He then makes it to his business meeting with ten minutes to spare, so he stops and buys muffins for the receptionist at his company.  She has such a great day that she picks up her kids from after-school-care and walks them immediately to the park for a special treat instead of going right home for homework, dinner, and baths.  The positive thinking of good gives way to more good creates a snowball effect of decency.

Have you ever been the recipient or even the instigator of the opposite, where your bad mood influences others’ or your witnessing another’s temper tantrum prompts a meltdown of your own?  I call it the Pay it Backward effect, where negativity breeds more negativity.  Just as it’s easy to be kinder when someone is unnecessarily kind to you, it’s also easy to perpetuate nastiness when you’ve been offered spite.  

Picture it:  the school talent show, 2012, thirty minutes before curtain call.  Parents had been lining up outside of the auditorium an hour before the doors were even scheduled to open.  Attendance was expected to be at an all-time high.   When the doors were opened to let parents in to get their seats, some folks rushed and others sauntered, but everyone wanted the same thing:  good seats from which to see their child on stage.

A section of seats was set aside in the front of the house for the kids who were performing in the show.  The eight rows were blocked off with tape and marked with signs saying RESERVED.  One front row enthusiast not participating in the show decided to move the tape that was separating the reserved seating so that there was more room for her and her family in the public seating section.  Another excited show goer followed suit by setting up camp in the newly unsaved seats left free for the picking with the caution tape now pushed aside.  

As the auditorium started to fill, one of the upper class stage hands working the show noticed parents sitting in the seats reserved for the performers and went to let them know that they’d have to move.  Some spectators quietly obliged, others dialoged with the 8^th grader about how it could have been better marked, but begrudgingly moved to new seats, while another woman plainly stuck her ground and said she wasn’t moving.  The teenager went to get someone higher up, like an adult, who apologized for the confusion and the trouble, but again asked the audience member to move, as without her moving, there were not going to be enough seats for the kids in the show to sit through the two and a half hour performance.  The woman snapped and screamed that it wasn’t her problem that there weren’t enough seats for the kids, as she had been at the school an hour before the show started to get good seats and it wasn’t her fault that the reservation tape had been moved.  She wasn’t going anywhere.

The school representative opted to allow the parents to stay in their seats, leaving now just a few rows of seats for the 75+ kids expecting to sit there.  Without seats in the auditorium, the kids were told to stay in the cafeteria until their numbers were to be performed.  The 34 third graders that I had helped coach for their dance number were slated for the grand finale, so they had hours to burn in the cafeteria, unsupervised, along with the other 40+ kids in the show.  A few moms stayed in the cafeteria with their children, but I opted to take a breather and watch the bulk of the talent show from the audience, determined to check on the kids mid-show.

When I finally did make my way toward the cafeteria, dragging my girlfriend and younger child with me, to wish the kids good luck, the show was three-quarters over and our little dancers were not in the cafeteria.  Two of the mothers, whom I’m assuming had been in the cafeteria with their kids for the bulk of the show, informed us that the kids were in the library watching a movie, as they needed something to keep them busy because they were starting to act up. 

“Sounds good to me,” I thought aloud, as we about-faced and headed toward the library.  

Before we’d made the 180 degree turn, one of the moms yelled after us, “I’m so glad they’re gone!  They were so loud and they were driving us crazy.  They were wild!”

I can only assume that this mom had been stressed being cramped up with all those kids by default for hours and had spoken out of frustration, or nervous energy, without thinking clearly, and not intending to be rude.  I’ve spoken out of frustration myself a few times before…OK, maybe more than a few times.  No harm no foul, right?

“But not your Isabella,” she added as an afterthought, “she was quiet as always.”  Unfortunately, I’m the queen of that too…..over-talking in an attempt to cover the err of my ways.  But trying to perform a take-back while referring to my child with the wrong name, does not a smooth-over make. 

In any event, we headed off to the library to see the kids, wish them luck, and get them rowed up, since I’d assumed they’d been zoned out in a movie for a few hours, and would need to get their groove back before going out to perform a high-energy dance.  The other mom that I’d partnered with to teach the kids the dance number, had them do some jumping jacks, Simon Says, and some practicing of the actual dance to get their blood flowing again.  We kept them in a padded room and as far away from the stage door as possible, so they could continue to build their energy levels while not interfering with what was currently being performed on stage.  

When they were finally instructed to line up outside the stage door immediately before their number, we quieted them down, with me on one side of the stage behind a closed door with half the kids, and my counterpart mom on the other side of the stage behind a closed door with the other half of the kids.  Our little dancers were excited and ready to perform, but did a good job keeping their chatter and nervousness down to a dull roar.  One of the other mothers from a previous act was also standing at the stage door on my side and she did not agree with my synopsis.  She was visibly annoyed and kept shushing the kids, telling them to be quiet, and looking to me to bring them down a notch.  

I thought the kids were behaving acceptably, but I’d give them an obligatory, “keep it down” every 60 seconds or so for the other mom’s peace of mind.  It was not enough to appease her, though, so she kept at the kids about quieting down, then explained to me that noises the kids made in the hallway could be heard on the inside of the auditorium.  I snapped at her that basically, this wasn’t my first rodeo and that we understood the gig.  I then fully cast my now half-mast Mother of the Year award flag to the side, and purposely started trying to get the kids revved up and bouncing off the walls.

That night, after the show was over and all the congratulations were bestowed, I couldn’t help but feel uneasy for my part in keeping the Parents Behaving Badly episode alive and kicking.   Yes, we’re only human.  We are, however, also responsible for recognizing when said humans could have rolled with the punches.  So you didn’t get the best seat in the house…it’s not the end of the world.  The kids didn’t get to watch the talent show, albeit for the third time in one day…..no big deal.  They were loud and annoying….who cares?   Someone was trying to manage a situation that we had no power over…..big whoop!  Each one of us could have taken some accountability and let the buck stop with us, yet didn’t.  Next time I vow to throw a wrench into the negativity train instead of oiling up the machine.