The Words We Say...

My oldest daughter walked off the school bus today and there was no smile on her face, no spring in her step, no silly antics to be had. Her day at school hadn't gone as she had hoped because a "friend" of hers had said some things to her and goaded her into doing something that she got reprimanded for. This isn't the first time this "friend" had made her feel a little lousy, and having been a young, school-aged girl, once upon a time ago, myself - I can remember all of this well:
The ultimatums for friendship - "If you don't (fill in the blank), I'm not going to be your friend."
The fibs and absurd pronouncements - "I know you're actually adopted because you don't look like your Mom."
The general bullying - "Do (this), or you can't come to my party."
All of it just SUCKS, and as a parent it SUCKS just as much.

Your parents always told you the same lines growing up that mine did, I assume:
"It hurts me, just as much as you, to punish you."
"I know it's hard to understand, but in the long run this isn't a big deal."
"Friends will come, and friends will go, but family is forever."

All true. All things I find myself saying. And all a load of BS to the kid dealing with being a kid in the moment.

As a parent you just want to fix everything and make the world and the people in it better for them. You want them to understand things as if they are in graduate school, when they're only five. And even though you know you can't fix it all and they don't grasp the multi-faceted, psychological layers of what is going on, you still try. First you try to commiserate by offering a story from your youth, and then you try to explain why this happens, and then you try to have them internalize it....and by the end of the 15 minute diatribe you just went on, you realize you lost them and they just want to play Pokémon Go! So you go play Pokémon Go, and take the kids out for ice cream, and 30 minutes later you're all laughing about how silly Bewear's are, and discussing the benefits of water and fire type Pokémon.

The whole thing reminded me of so many similar car-rides with my Mom when I was in elementary, and middle, and high school. All of the advice she would try to give me, all of the love she hoped I realized I had, and all of the happiness she just wanted for me. I drove back home and started getting a little choked up realizing how much we don't appreciate our parents sometimes. Because it wasn't just my Mom, my Dad did the same for me in his own way too. It's what parents do, and it's what we don't appreciate in our youth, and even as we get older and become adults. We get so used to rolling our eyes and disregarding their advice when we are younger, that even when we get older and can start appreciating some of their wisdom, we still think we know what's best. And believe me, parents don't always know what's best either! I can attest to the fact that even though I am in the infancy of trying to guide my young little padawans, I still find myself struggling with the right words and sentiments in explaining things, and often crossing my fingers and saying a prayer that I didn't "F" stuff up too much! But I also see how hard this is and have a truly different appreciation for how thankless being a parent really is.

If my Mom hadn't been on the clock, I would have called her immediately right then and told her how much I loved her and how hard I know it must have been being a divorced Mom with a teenage daughter who thought she knew everything back then (and still might act like that at times, even now). And that's when I really let loose with the water works. I started thinking about all of our conversations and all of the advice she'd ever given me, all of the assurances, all of the unending support (no matter what), all of it coming from a place of hope and love and wanting the best for me, and how many times I would give it lip-service but never actually heed it or just appreciate it. And I thought about how brusque I could be at times with her; how harsh and bitter and cold I could play something off, all because I didn't want to acknowledge something that I didn't want to feel.

In life we all can behave like this, and unfortunately we always do it to the people we love the most and who love us the most because we know, usually, they're not going anywhere. The words we say to the people we are the most honest with, the most ourselves with, can often be the most stinging and barbarous.

Last month I wrote about Stoicism and quoted Seneca from his work On the Brevity of Life. In the stanza I cited is the line: "How many have laid waste to your life when you weren't aware of what you were losing?" The line is harsh and real. But it's not just about being aware of how we are affected by such transgressions, it also makes you pause to think about what you have made others lose. Sometimes our actions take away what may seemingly be just a modicum of "grief...joy...desire...amusement," but which adds up to a fair sum in total when we keep doing it without being aware. And sometimes we take away much more from others than we ever meant to because we were foolhardy or insensitive to situations. Whatever the case, we're all guilty and we all have different ways of acknowledging and dealing with those realities, and at the end of the day I'm sure we all wish we could give those things back to the people we cared about; to let our parents, and the ones we love most, know we are sorry for all of the pain and grief we have put them through.

It's food for thought as I push forward on this journey that is parenthood; mindful of my own shortcomings, and aware that my children will have their own, too. But no matter what their faults, and no matter mine, I will be mindful to always remember, to always love, to always pause, and to always reflect carefully on the words I say and the actions I chose.