Messing up

It has been a time of reconnecting with my kids. The dark of winter and the relative openness of my schedule after a couple of crazy months has brought us all inside to play cards and bake cookies and hang out together. And I am finding something wonderful: I really like them. I always knew that I loved them, but it’s lovely to see the ways I really like them, too. And parenting, which can be such a slog and so much work all the time, can also be so interesting too. I sit and play Connect Four with them and we laugh and laugh and I watch the way their minds work and the way those minds are growing. It’s a joy.

This weekend I learnt that even the pieces that aren’t a joy have joy inside them. I found out Saturday afternoon that on Saturday morning Aidan had cut off a piece of Ayla’s hair. Melissa and Ayla took it really well; I took it less well. Michael told me about it in the middle of schlepping all of our things out of the Ocean Rd house for our new tenant to move into—a task which was a hassle and which holds our mixed feelings (really nice tenant and great to have it rented, but would be better to have it sold!). So I was grumpy (stuck inside grouting and nit picking and moving on a spectacular sunny warm day) and Aidan was being, well, Aidan. He assisted in the move by begrudgingly carrying things into the house. One trip for a hat, one trip for a book, one trip for a water bottle. When I suggested that perhaps he could carry things in two hands, he stomped into his room, saying that everyone was criticising him. I gave him a couple of chances to come back and help, but in each case he decided he’d do a better job lying on his bedroom rug and reading his new library book. By the time the old house was emptied and the new house was piled with all the detritus of our lives, I was fuming.

Aidan came out at the wrong time, asking what I was making for dinner. I suggested that perhaps he reconsider asking me what I was doing for him when he had done so little to help. He offered to help now and I waved my arm at all the things in the house now. Too little too late, baby. He asked what he could do to get out of trouble, and I was seriously stumped. “I don’t know,” I told him. “I’m grumpy and tired and mad at you, and I don’t have any ideas right now.” He walked away in a hurry, went into the living room for a while, and came back to hand me a piece of paper with his neatest script writing:

I love you mom can I pleas get out of truble I am really sorry I hope you forgive me

I felt my whole body melt and I sank down to my knees in front of the fridge and hugged him and hugged him. “Does this mean I’m out of trouble?” he asked, nuzzling into my neck.

“You’re out of trouble for the move, but you’re still in trouble for Ayla’s hair,” I told him. His smiling face crumpled and he began to cry. We sat in front of the fridge and I held him as he told me about it, about how he had gotten angry and mean and then she had said something mean and he had suddenly he had cut a lock of her hair off and known that it was terribly wrong. He was horrified for the two related issues of 1. knowing how bad it was he had done that in the first place and 2. also knowing he would be in big trouble and get “a consequence.” We took the first one first.

“I’m the meanest boy in the whole world,” he told me. I told him that sounded like a hard way to feel and wondered if he really believed it was true. He nodded.

“You reckon you’re the meanest boy in your school?” I asked.

He thought for a minute and shook his head. “But I am the meanest one in the family,” he asserted. Naomi, who had been hovering close by, came and sat on the floor with us, hugging Aidan from behind as I hugged him from the front.

“Sometimes I’m really mean,” she told him.

“Not as mean as me,” he said, crying.

Naomi told a story where she had been mean as a little kid, and Aidan argued that she had grown out of that stage. Obligingly, she told him a story about when she had been mean this month.

“Wow, that IS mean.” Aidan stopped crying and looked at her and then began to cry again. “But Mom doesn’t do anything mean.”

I said of course I did, everyone did, and he wanted an example. “I’m not mean with scissors or pushing,” I said, “but I’m mean with my words sometimes. Sometimes I’m grouchy and mean with you two, and that’s not OK.” Aidan hugged me hard and Naomi kissed me on the head, comfortingly.

“We know you love us anyway,” she said.

Aidan started to cry again. “I can’t stand being mean!” he said.

“It’s ok,” Naomi told him. “Don’t feel bad.”

I told Naomi that it wasn’t OK what Aidan had done, and that he should feel bad about it. It wasn’t a forever problem, but it was a bad thing to do. The hair would grow back, but Aidan had the right to feel bad about it—and we would be upset if he didn’t, even. He stopped crying and we went back and forth about the "consequences" he'd face. Finally, frustrated with the idea of consequences and with himself for deserving them, he began to cry again.

“It’s ok, er, to feel bad, Aidan,” Naomi tried this time. “You did a bad thing. But you can learn from it and never do anything like that again. And you can know that no matter what, we’ll love you anyway.”

I sat on the kitchen floor, holding these two marvellous children, and I figured that’s actually the wisest thing I’ve ever heard anyone say. Sometimes we mess up and hurt other people. We should feel bad about that—and we should allow those we love to feel bad if they hurt others. That bad feeling helps us learn from our mistakes. But it takes the sting out of it all if we can only hold on to the truth that those who love us will love us through our mistakes. If my kids can hold on to that—if I can hold on to it too—we’ll all make it through ok.

We spent that night cuddled up and watching the first video I've watched in months--a stupid movie the kids picked out. None of the stupidness mattered, though, with Naomi sitting next to me and Aidan curled in my lap. No matter what--how bad the transgression, how un-funny the movie--we'll all love each other anyway.