Things happen sometimes--little, daily things--that make me feel like I am a bathtub full of water and someone has opened the drain and every, last, single drop is sucked away. Except the plumbing metaphor should really have more toilet in it, because I am left feeling like shit.
Take one morning last week. Henry was furious at me the first time because I didn't put enough jelly on his "cold toast" (frozen bread) and butter sandwich. He turned red and cried and called me "Bad Mama" a few times, punched his fist into the air in my general direction, then took his plate under the table and ate there. OK, so far, so good. He's 4, I'm 41, I can do this. The morning proceeded as usual. Henry snatched things out of James's hand twice or thrice, made him cry by roaring loudly in his face, but whatever. I sportscasted away, folded some laundry, took a quick shower. The boys built a train together out of milk crates, looked at some books. Then James asked for milk.
"Just give him a little, and save the rest for me," Henry suggested, as we were running low. I checked Henry's cup, which was still two-thirds full, and poured the last inch of milk into James's empty cup.
"Did you save the rest for me?" he asked.
"No..." I began, in the light and reasonable tone of certain defeat.
His face broke apart like a kaleidoscope and he crouched down, yelling out sobs and imprecations. "I hate you, Mommy. You die, Mommy. Die, die, die, die, die, die, die!"
And I fell apart. "I don't have to listen to this! I don't want to hear you say that!" A big hot gust of anger blew out of me and I knocked over a kitchen chair, which scared James and made him cry. "Don't you say that! Do you know that if I died, you would NEVER EVER see me again? Never talk to me? Never touch me? I would never hug you or kiss you again? You can tell me you hate me, you can tell me to go away, but DON'T TELL ME TO DIE!"
I was crying, and both boys were obviously scared. Henry came over to me to pat me and kiss me, and I said, "Look, I know that you love me. I know you don't want me to die. I'm OK. I'm sorry I got so upset. But it's really hard for me to hear you say that." By now I was crying because I was so ashamed of my tantrum, ashamed of frightening them into comforting me. I went into the bathroom to try to collect myself. When I came out, Henry was drawing a picture that looked like Snuffleupagus and which he said was a heart, "to make you better."
I know. We sound like the yokels in Cold Comfort Farm, all rumpuses and unbridled passions. This is NOT the kind of family I intended for us to be.
I don't understand why this is so hard, and the God's honest truth is that it feels unfair to me. I know it isn't. I know fairness doesn't enter into it all, and if it did, I would in fact be riding the howdah of privilege on top of the broad elephant's back of great good fortune. And what's more, I believe that when it is hardest is when I can learn and grow the most. I mean, as nauseating as that sounds, I really do believe it: My children have more to teach me than I do them.
And I want them to be mad, to be sad, to be scared, to be aggressive, to be selfish, to be dumb, all of it, right under my eyes, so they know that none of those feelings or ways of being can't be borne, that I love them through it all, and that all of it passes and changes, too. But oh my God, I didn't expect that there would be so many of them! And that they would be so very heartfelt! And that they would pass and change so many times a day--an hour! And above all, I didn't anticipate how incredibly difficult it would be for me to listen to. Henry is 4; when I was 4, my family was falling apart, my safety was gone, my dad had moved out, my mom was frantic with grief and rage and fear. I think--I think--some vestige of my 4-year-old self just can't take it, that this kid with his world intact, with his beloved Daddy coming home every night, with his mother (mostly) OK, present, trying to make room for his big, fierce feelings, is so bottomless. They just go on and ON. Don't I get a reward for trying so hard? For thinking so much about what he needs? Shouldn't he just be made whole all at once by my good intentions and be fine? Ridiculous, when I put it into words. But I think it's what I've secretly been thinking.
I am lucky. I know that. And I know that my knowledge of it is incomplete. I don't really, really get it, except in brief flashes. It's like every other thing I thought I knew, knowing it intellectually, but when I finally really get it, I realize I hadn't known at all before. Things like: having a new baby is hard; my parents are just people; the thing about death is ... it's final; I really am going to grow old, with wrinkles and gray hair and everything! I might even die myself! and meanwhile, this is it, my actual life.
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