We went to the playground today, my daughters and I. The fearless one year old spent her time climbing things more than three times as high as she was. The 4 year old made a cake out of wood chips and drove an imaginary snow mobile to the store (we live in GA. Where she has heard of a snow mobile, I have no idea). After an hour, the baby was whiny and I was starving so I told the older one it was time to go home. She didn't like that, of course. She walked beside me to the car without much prompting (and that kind of obedience is hit or miss these days. Or every day) but she cried and whined and stomped her tiny pink Chuck Taylors all the way to the car.
"I'm mad at you, mommy," she proclaimed in her chipmunk-like voice. "I'm so mad at you!" "That's fine," I said. "You can be mad at me. I'd be mad at me too, if I were you."
I wasn't being facetious; I really meant those words and I said them in a thoughtful, calm tone, devoid of sarcasm or a lack of patience. It is not often enough as a parent that I find myself saying or doing something and thinking "that was the right thing". Usually I second and third guess myself, usually when I can't sleep and imagine the amount of therapist's bills we will surely be paying years from now (at least until they're all 26!). But this time, I knew it was right. Of course she was mad. Why wouldn't she be? I was taking her away from a paradise of swings and blue skies and fresh air. To be sure, we were headed for a land of PB&J and storybooks but that doesn't matter when you're little. I was ending her fun. And it was perfectly all right for her to be upset.
When I was a child, I learned early on that my feelings were an inconvenience. My tears or my dissapointment were to be hissed at with barely concealed rage in public, or screamed at in private, but either way, they were to be squelched. For that matter, I laughed and talkef too loud when I was happy, it seemed. It would have been much easier for my parents if I hadn't had any feelings at all that weren't tepid. People called me an ice princess when I was in college; how little they knew about how I really felt. They wouldn't ever have known, because I never said. How many times now, a day even, do I keep my true feelings to myself? How many times has my poor husband had to ensure misplaced anger all because I couldn't tell him what I wanted? How different would I be, how much less would I have struggled in my youth, if just once someone had told me it was OK to feel?
Once those words left my mouth, she stomped a little less. Sniffled a bit as I buckled her into her booster seat. As I backed out of my parking space, her voice, calm now and fatigued, piped up from the backseat:
"Can we come back tommorow?" "Sure we can," I said. "OK, mommy. I'm not mad anymore. Love you!"
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