Figuring out what I wanna be when I grow up.
Oop..I AM grown up...


Saturday, October 9, 2010

A Small Little Story of Motherhood


Recently, with my sister, and again, with my blog friend from Cranberry Cottage, we were talking about all the yummy guilt that accompanies MOTHERHOOD.  Oh wait, I'm being a little too exclusive here...I should really amend that to PARENTHOOD, because I'm sure my male friends can weigh in with their own tales of guilt. 

Specifically, we were referring to our little people and their many illnesses.  Here's a scenario you may relate to:  your little person has been a monstrous JERK for the whole day.  They've been having many tantrums, refusing to eat what you made them for lunch, even though they asked for it.  They've smacked you, refused to get dressed, flipped out over brushing their teeth, and had an all out freakout-fest when you so much as picked up the hairbrush.  They've decided that today's the day they're not wearing socks with their shoes, or a coat, or maybe even shoes.  They've told you to "shut up," and called you a name, and then they dumped all their toys on the floor and refused to pick them up with a defiant jutting out of the chin and a loud 'NO!"  By mid afternoon, or worse--that horrible 5:00 hour, during which you want to DIE, but you have to whip some crap together and call it dinner--you've had it.  So, you could only take so much and you start to freak out yourself, shouting, losing your patience, maybe putting them in that useless state of being known as THE TIME OUT, and you've pointed out to them how HORRIBLE they've been all day. 
And then they wake up in the middle of the night with a monstrous fever, and the next day when you're at the walk-in clinic (because you can NEVER EVER GET AN APPOINTMENT WITH YOUR DOCTOR THAT DAY), you are told that they have a throat infection, or an ear infection.  And you just spent the day yelling at them. 

Oops.  Welcome to guilt-o-rama


If only the little people would just say this:  "Mom, I'm not feeling well today.  My throat feels terrible, and I'm just feeling all around lousy."  Well, you'd scoop them up and say; "oh, you poor thing!'  However, this just never seems to happen. 

Let me share with you my greatest story of motherly shame.  A couple of years ago my son was still in Nursery School.  I had to pick him up at 11:15 or so, 3 days a week.  As you may have come to realise, my children (bless their cute, bratty little souls) are not the, er, easiest children to deal with.  We were having one of those typical fight parties, with Jack and Ella fighting, and then Jack getting angry at me for something, and them just generally being horrendous.  We got in the car and headed off, and Jack flipped out on me for not liking that his car window was down just so.  So I put it down.  They he freaked some more.  So then I put it up a bit.  He lost it.  I lost it.  So, I put the window all the way up (power windows--I just pushed a button), and he began SCREAMING. 

I said, in a very calm tone; "I'm not listening to you until you're calm.  If you want me to put your window down, you have to ask in a nice calm voice."

Can you guess where this is going?  The kid had three of his fingers pinched in the window.  I can barely even think of this.  Luckily it was for less than a minute, but the poor, poor little kid.  As soon as I realised I was MORTIFIED.  He was okay, but I think I cried for the next hour. 

Oh the motherly shame. 




image referencehttp://www.lunaea.com/gallery/guilt.jpg

6 comments:

  1. This reminds me of the many childhood embarrassing moments I consciously file under "empty trash bin". Not that it's bad, just saying I often become horrid red-faced with embarrassment thinking of foolish mistakes that I repeated many times, and never really learned from.

    You know how in a movie a person makes a mistake, and learns from it, and never makes that same mistake again within the remainder of the movie?
    Well, real life as it turns out to my discovery isn't so finite. Life turns out to be really really long, much longer than 2 hours.
    Life is filled with making the same exact mistakes repeatedly in as many combination possible until after maybe 25 times I realize how to change course for the precursors to.

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  2. hmm...good point..and how does that annoying saying go--those who never learn from the past are doomed to repeat it? How about, those who forget what they did in the first place, are likely to do the same dumbass thing again? Still, I'm curious what embarrassing things you did over and over again!

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  3. I just lol'd over and over again at the pic to go along with this entry! Karen, I don't think you would be able to keep a straight face that long. I find that the guilt stages don't have so much power over me if I am willing to humble myself where necessary to call my boy over and ask for his forgiveness when I've done something wrong. On some level they all know us parents are mess-ups anyways! :) I figure if I try to live it that way, the pressure to be super-perfect-wise-sensitive-intuitive goes way down and I actually parent better.

    Then other days I simply want to yell my demands and/or drive far, far away, and say, 'to heck with guilt, I've had too crappy a day.'

    I guess I need you to do a blog on consistency. lol

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  4. consistency? I can barely even focus on one task at a time. I don't do the laundry on the same day, and the plants are always asking me; "hey, is TODAY water day???"

    When you drive far far away, drop me a line and I'll join you for coffee :)

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  5. Ah lovely guilt. I am even more convinced that having animals prepares one for parenthood. After I came home to find my purse contents dumped on the ground, gum eaten, and papers shredded by my loveable yellow lab, I was pissed. Then I realized he hadn't been out in several hours and had to do his, um, business......shoot, a human adult couldn't even hold it that long.

    We're all learning all the time, aren't we? ;-)

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  6. First of all, Maria, welcome to my rant/whine page! Yay! Always exciting when new people join in the fun! Okay, I'll calm down now.
    Learning all the time? I don't know, sometimes I think I've reached a finite level of moron-ness. Still, you're right--that story could easily be interchanged with a 'child' shredding your things instead of a pet.

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