Hot day, playdate just now over
Noah’s recovering in the basement (playroom). He was surly, rude, and generally unlikable while his good friend Madeleine was here. He’s pretty much been like this for the past two months when he’s around other kids. He warms up eventually and fortunately, Madeleine forgave him and they had fun but it’s very frustrating for me. I have to keep reciting my new mommy-mantra, “Noah is not my project, he’s my kid.”
It’s so hard to watch him be awful and not *make* him be lovely and shining and sweet, like I know he’s capable of being. But our rule is that if people come over and he’s feeling grouchy, that he should tell us he needs time alone and go to his room and we won’t bother him. So he scowls at Madeleine (and her mother), pulls a Greta Garbo (”I want to be alone!”), spins on his heels to march into his room and slams the door behind him. I attempt to smile at the stunned audience and lead them into the kitchen for muffins.
(sigh)
Thank god my friends get it. As far as I know, they don’t hustle together to discuss my kid’s anti-social tendencies or to analyze the way I handle things. I mean, they have kids who embarrass them, too. They get it. Still it’s hard.
I’ve been having nightmares about Andrea Yates. In one, I was watching her parenting her kids and she was just lovely, a great mom and I turned to the two oldest sons sitting on the couch and said, “See, she was a good mom, right? You guys were happy, right?” And they just looked at me with these solemn, beautiful faces. I realized that since the children allowed to watch this good moment, this happy moment in their lives, that I had to face the way it ended, too. So I left the room and when I came back, the children were gone and there was a figure curled up on the floor. It was her, with her black hair tangled around her. She was on her knees, her face pressed to the carpet and I felt this horror emanating from her body. This awful despair and anger and hatred and, well, evil coming up and poisoning the room.
Then I woke up.
So many of us mothers are talking and talking about this story because we have all looked into that same pit of despair but were blessed enough not to fall in.
