Shopping in Stuff

I had an experience that made me sad yesterday. Made me feel like a shitty mom. I was getting ready to head out to a local shopping center to pick up a few random things and I asked Mercy and Harrison if either of them wanted anything while I was out. Mercy said no. Harrison thought about it and asked if she could tag along because the stuff she wanted were things she didn’t want to send her mom out to get for her. I happily agreed.

Admittedly I was curious what she was shopping for. I of course eventually found out her list was tampons, underwear, and condoms. I wouldn’t have been embarrassed to buy any of those for her, I think it takes more than that to embarrass a mom about her kids, but I was still happy to have her join me.

While we were driving, she asked me if she could say something that might hurt me. I know I’ve described Harrison here before, but she’s definitely the child with the biggest personality. She’s outgoing, friendly, social, and has never seemed to go through that awkward-teenager phase that all kids should have to experience. I know she’ll always tell me what’s on her mind and I appreciate that about her. I’ve never known her to have a filter, so even her feeling the need to ask that question was alarming.

She said, “I feel like you’ve been neglecting me lately.” A pause. Then, “I feel like you’ve been a bad mother lately.”

Holy shit. I was completely taken by surprise by that. I took a moment before responding, not wanting to come off as defensive. I said, “Tell me why you feel like that.”

I immediately thought back to the fact that I had spent the previous night sleeping on Megan’s couch. There was no real reason for me to have done that. She had given me a massage and I was feeling extremely sleepy and decided to just stay there on the couch. But in the process, I left two kids home alone all night without even telling them where I was. It was a dumb thing to do. I wasn’t impaired. And Megan’s house is at most 100 paces from my home, it wouldn’t have taken much effort to walk home. But I allowed myself to succumb to my sleepiness.

As this was going through my mind, Harrison responded, “I feel like you spend all your time with Megan and Olsen. And Mercy and I don’t exist to you.” Then the tears started as she said, “You know how excited I was tonight that you invited me out with you instead of just ignoring me like usual?”

I was feeling pretty awful about myself but was doing my best not to show it to her. I offered her some meager statement about how Megan and Olsen can be so demanding of my attention while she instead is so independent. It was a true statement but I knew it sounded like I was making excuses for myself.

I’m trained in my profession to be a master at arguing. I try so hard not to take the skill into the way I interact with my family.

I had a long moment of silence that probably felt awkward, during which time I was thinking about how I need to own my behavior rather than make excuses for it. I said, “I’m really sorry that I’ve made you feel that way. I certainly don’t mean to neglect you, but if you feel neglected then that’s on me. That’s not something you should ever feel from me, so we’ll make so me changes so it doesn’t happen again.”

We sat in the parking lot and talked for nearly 2 hours while all the stores closed, and we didn’t end up doing any shopping. On the drive home I told her we could stop at Walgreens for condoms and tampons, but she might have to wait until another day before she could do any underwear shopping. She seemed OK with that.

Part of me feels like I need to have this same conversation now with Mercy.