Six

Sometimes I forget what we're parenting for, or what direction we're headed, or something like that. I just can't keep track of the point and I get all lost in the irks and irritations of sharing life with three other people who are relentless in their commitment to getting their own needs met, mine be damned.

Today my boy got super-disappointed. And in his disappointment about a need ("need" my ass! want! that was fucking want! seven-year-olds are morons) not being met, he was super-rude and super-belligerent and since we were in public, super-embarrassing. In those moments, I feel so much pressure to be really big and loud with my corrections and to be sure everyone around us knows I don't take that shit. I want to be one of those mothers that has a look that shuts a kid up, and failing that, offers a tongue lashing that does and that no one forgets.

Frustratingly, being that parent always leaves me with a hang-over. The indulgence is never worth it, and the belly ache of knowing I have not one time ever been inspired to goodness, kindness or self-control by being berated wrecks the rest of my day.

Today was a day when I had the reserves to do what feels least terrible in the long term, which is to offer seemingly bottomless opportunities to turn the SS Asshole around and start over so that we can get to a solution. Seven minutes later, we finally arrive at a workable solve, and off he goes to get his "need" met, while I recover over my spinach salad.

Fifteen minutes later, he returns and he is mostly fine except for a hint of not so much. He puts on a brave face for his dad and grandma  -  everything was great, it totally worked out, I was so right about all that - but the weight of the not so much is way too much and in minutes he is weeping quietly behind a chair.

What do you need my sweet boy? What happened?

He pulls me away to a corner and confesses through his tears that it wasn't at all great, that it didn't work out even a little and that he got it all wrong, and I get to explain about cheap therapy math, and about how $4 is a small price to pay for learning that sometimes we do need a grown-up to help us figure stuff out, and that sometimes waiting for a grown-up is better than losing all we have trying to do something on our own just because we're impatient.

And then he waited in the corner for his dad, as long as it took, and then his dad gave him two dollars to try again, and this time it worked, and this time it was great.

As they walked away, I said to my mom, "I guess that's why I don't want to yell and shout and put the fear of all that's holy into him: I want to be the one he'll come back to afterward when it all goes to shit, the one he can confess to when it doesn't all work out."

Tomorrow (or the day after - nothing is certain after all) I will lose my shit with that child. I will shout and tell him I am done with the rudeness or the mess or whatever the hell the straw is that breaks this camel's back. But I won't be proud of it, and I won't pretend it works or that it's the right thing to do.  Not for this mother, it just isn't.

And if he grows up to be a murdering psychopath, well then I will apologize for getting it all wrong I guess.

But today? Happy Mother's Day to me.