Real Parenting

This time last year, I was with child. Inflated and bulging with child. I was a balloon with feet, a waddling, aching reminder to all women suffering from baby fever that baby fever culminates in a month long bloat fest spattered with much complaining and cursing and topped with the people you live with wishing you'd just go somewhere and finish gestating already.

One afternoon, at the height of the bloat fest, I arrived at preschool to pick up the boys and waddled over to the 4 year old class, out of which Owen dashed, hollering about being star student for the day and proudly puffing his chest, where he'd been decorated with a sticker that declared, "I'm Special!!"

And so began the afternoon from hell. The boys were excruciatingly LOUD the entire ride home, shrieking and whining and managing to hit each other even though they weren't sitting in the same row for f's sake. I growled and grumbled and threatened, and they pretended not to hear me, but we made it home before I reached the "neck turning 360 degrees, eyes rolling back in my head" phase.

Inside, the shenanigans continued. There was much rolling on the floor and screaming, laughter and tickling that disintegrated into tears and smacking because the play had gotten too rough (it ALWAYS gets too rough). The smacking and tears inspired wailing and whining, and whining plus the bloat, plus the tearing bread of the peanut butter sandwich I was making, plus the post-loud-ride-home stress, plus the longing from deep in my bones to have a nap and the knowing that that would not happen, plus the Braxton Hicks contractions that had been torturing me since week 32 = me losing my shit.

I yelled at them. I mean yelled. Very loudly. I had them backed up against the couch, and I was full on flailing my arms and screaming incoherently that I'd told them to calm down eighty times and they never listen and I'm trying to make YOUR lunch and you're both going to bed RIGHT NOW with nothing to eat and then...Owen laughed.

At first he snickered, then he giggled, and then we was wracked with giggles, and I realized that he found me ridiculous. And that, my friends, sent me over the edge I thought I'd already gone over. But no, there was another, much steeper edge.

I put my hands on my oldest child's face, held his cheeks, and forced him to look at me. I asked him what was funny. Was it was funny to make me so upset, to have me screaming at them because they couldn't listen worth a damn? Was it funny to be screamed at? To be so disrespectful? My face was an inch from his, my hands still squeezing his cheeks, the impulse to turn him over and smack his bottom HARD dancing in my nerve endings, my voice bellowing and unfamiliar. I gave Owen a little shove away from me and stood back to look at him. I was shaking with anger and fear. I felt very close to out of control. No. I was out of control.

Owen's eyes were bright with genuine fear, tears now streaming down his face, no trace of a smile left. Mitch had pulled himself next to Owen, practically under Owen, and sat clinging to his arm. I watched them huddled there, truly afraid of me. I saw them watching me with the panic of not knowing what would happen next. Then I noticed the "I'm Special!!" sticker still decorating Owen's shirt, and the image of him dancing in front of me happily after school, so little, so taken with such a small honor, so full of naivety and happiness, deflated me utterly. I turned and left the room, found my bed, and crumpled. I cried and cried with shame, frustration, sadness, fear. I had never felt so outside of myself, so detached from the woman I'd been 5 minutes before, a screaming, abusive maniac. I feel shame even now remembering, picturing their faces on that couch, blanched with fear. Those boys, 2 and 4 years old, were afraid of me, their mother.

Before long I got myself up and washed my face, blew my nose. I went into the dining room where the boys were silently eating their sandwiches, looking sideways at me as I came in. I sat down across from them, and I apologized. I told them I was very wrong to scream at them, that I was very wrong to grab and shove Owen, that I was very wrong for losing my temper so horribly. I admitted to the boys that I was bone weary, and I said sorry. Many many times. Then my boys left their seats and came to me, washed of their fear and anger at me, eager to make me happy again. They hugged and kissed me and absolved me, and I never felt more unworthy of absolution or more full of pure, pulsing love.

A moment like this has never happened again. I hope it was my lowest moment as a mother. I hope I won't be that wild woman again, hot with anger and too overwhelmed to stop the wave of rage from crashing over my children. But that moment, ugly as it was, is real parenting. Real parents screw up. They lose their footing. They have horrible, nasty temper tantrums. They show their children the very worst side of themselves.

Real parents also teach their children that when a person messes up badly, she must say so. She must ask for forgiveness. The children of real parents learn that people who love each other can sometimes say and do horrible things to one another but go on loving each other.

That moment was terrible and sad and gritty. But it was real. As hard as it is to let go of the myth that parents are slawart beacons of wisdom and grace for their children, real parenting will, some time, somewhere, include unleashing the demons. It will happen. It will happen to you, too.

The cool kids over at Babble's drool.icio.us recently sent out the call for blog entries on this topic, and I felt called to answer since the topic is near and dear to my heart. Plus if I link back to them I could win this rad stroller, and poor Paige in her ghetto stroller would love a pimped out ride like that.