A Door for Anger

motherhood

Sometimes the door is open a crack, and I can actually win an argument with my four-year-old. It is true. The fact that I’ve engaged him in this way at all means I may have already lost. But I believe in relationships, not dictatorships, when it comes to parenting. With this bull-headed, self-assured, emotionally-cognizant child, relating means discussing…at length. The problem is that, too often, parent-child discussions become a wasteland of illogical negotiations, which lead to aggravated tones and Shazaam! negotiations devolve into arguments. Sometimes he slams the door in my face with an accurate accusation against me – sometimes I take it too far.

Once, while I was working at the computer, Jude found the house key that I tie onto my shoelaces when I run. I keep it pinned to the kitchen-wall bulletin board for easy access. Though I didn’t see him pull the pushpin from its cork, I was somewhat conscious of his actions. I keep a third eye trained on his milling about the house. Jude tried the key on several locks – the front doorknob, the patio closet, the deadbolt. Having some success, he tried a new trick: turning the lock on his bedroom door and shutting himself out. Of course, he thought he could simply use the key to open the door. What power. What a sense of control in his surroundings. The key would change everything.

I heard Jude jiggle the handle without the comforting sound of the latch’s release. His door handle has no keyhole. His key held no sway. His power evaporated. Jude’s face paled as he turned toward me, his blonde hair spiked straight up from his forehead, and his eyes testing my gaze for signs of trouble. His mouth twisted to the right and his eyebrows backed away in a tentative, non-verbal, “Uh-oh?”

I stood from my work and grasped Jude’s hand firmly, the pressure being his first scolding. Together we walked from his locked bedroom door, through the hallway to the sliding glass door that leads to the patio. In his small square bedroom, Jude’s bed is pressed against the southeast corner where two windows stretch six feet from the ceiling down to the surface of his child-sized bed. The windows face the patio which hosts a gas grill, plastic green chairs, pots of herbs, a rosebush and irises that have yet to show their bloom. As our feet made contact with the artless mosaic of cinder block bricks, I let go of his hand and touched the outside of the window’s screen. With one touch, I could feel that the window was open. We had a way in.

Working carefully to preserve the fragile frame, I pushed the screen into the shadowed bedroom and onto Jude’s bed. Pressing the once prized key into my palm, Jude moved onto a new thrill: crawling through the window’s open space. That window that dwarfs his three feet, six-inch frame suddenly became a golden gate to a world of imaginary rescues. It became a spy’s escape, a diving board to dreamland. Eyebrows back in place for innocent mischief, Jude was sucked away from his own conviction. I managed to grab his attention long enough to ask him to unlock the door. Order fulfilled, he giggled his way back to the window, darting in and out through the open space, and I walked back around the hallway into the boy-smelly bedroom.

For a few moments, he uncorked the tension of mommy’s work being interrupted with his back-and-forth, in-and-out game; but soon it was time to return the screen to its proper position so that I could return to work. I blew the whistle. Jude darted through the open space onto the patio one last time. From inside the room, standing by knees on his bed, I slid the top of the delicate frame into place, corners flush with corners. Jude asked if he could crawl in one more time. Since the screen was three-fourth’s the way reinserted into its frame, I said no. He charged anyway. Had he been faster, had he forced his way through, he would have cracked the plastic ends off of the corners. Just in time, I reached around the screen, my arm pinched between it and the window’s edge, and pressed firmly on his chest to keep him out.

“You’re not supposed to push me!”

From his heart more than his voice, Jude creates sound waves that push beyond any physical force. Instantly, my temper flared. Nothing gets my nanny goat braying more quickly than when Jude questions my intentions for him. Putting an end to a fun game that I graciously allowed after discovering his foolish mistake should not have bought me hassle from a being who cannot yet be counted on to brush his teeth without assistance. A simple, “Thanks, Mom,” would have been awesome.

I cannot deny that this kid’s nose is finely attuned to the stench of unreasonable anger. I did not push him hard. I did not yell. I did not hurt him in anyway. But my jaw was set. My lungs were expanded with hot irritation. My eyes were narrowed against his. And he knew it.

And there the battle was lost. I could insist, engage the argument, and therefore, play the fool, or I could recognize that he was right. A mommy is not supposed to hurt her child. How I will avoid the wounds that radiate from exasperation, I do not know. Whose toe will be pinched in the crack of that door today?

Close to Good

motherhood

They gather close – all of them in their own way. Garrett is on my mind tonight.

At 2:05 P.M., the school bell rings. Harried, haggard, high-hipped teachers lead their strands of child-sized pearls to the Shellman gate. We parents, mothers mostly, stand around chatting while we wait. Some are anxious to have a word with the teacher. Some are anxious to get home, or to soccer practice, or just away. Others simply live in anxiety; chaos follows them like Pig Pen’s dust cloud.

I stand near the sidewalk and watch as others wait stationed in cliques or in isolation. A nerve-grinding bell rings, and the noise fades up to a canned track of shouts and whistles, whines and rebukes. I watch as if it is a Discovery channel documentary speeding past the normal ticking of time. A map of the movement left by footprints on the asphalt would surely reveal the flurry.

Through this hive of backpacks and saddlebags, I see a face smiling back at me. Garrett always finds me before I have noticed that his class has come through the gate. I might look up just in time to see him tentatively tap Mrs. Ford at the waist. I read his lips as he says, “I see my mom.” She follows the track of his arm, the line of his pointing finger, sees me and releases him with a simple “OK.” Garrett comes running, blue eyes shining bright, smile radiating wide. He embraces me at the hips, turning his face against my abdomen. I hold him by his back and hair.

I always ask, “How was your day?” With grins he answers, “good.” Even if the stories that follow recount misgivings or recess rumbles, he slingshots to me with that same expansive smile, and answers my everyday question with the same pleasant description. Good.

I can’t help but wonder, on the days when there has actually been trouble, if “good” describes how he feels when reunited with me. Pure warmth connects us in that moment. There are other moments when I can’t understand his mumbled diction, days when I can’t read the heartfelt worry that makes him whine. But at 2:05 P.M. from eyeball to cheekbone to hug, I hear his heart. And it is good.