Sweat Pants and Fuzzy Socks

It's exam week and the week before Christmas in the home of a priest and it was Sunday night after a long wonderful weekend, but a weekend with very little sleep; I should have known there would be a constant undercurrent of tension.  After last night, well let's just say it's no longer under...

We were all tired.  The boys had been studying hard all day taking breaks when needed. (We suspect Christopher was also taking breaks from breaks, but we can't be certain.)  Sarah Katherine had been at Starbucks studying and Caroline had  the final performance of The Little Mermaid.  I arrived home from the evening service to all four children and  a chorus of, "We're hungry; what's for dinner?"  See an additional nagging stress (well maybe not stress but something definitely on my mind) was that I thought Chris and I were going to be at a Christmas party Sunday night, that is until I found out Sunday morning that it had actually been Saturday night. I felt so incredibly guilty and rude for missing the party.  Because we were going to be out, I thought the children would eat leftovers.  What I forgot was that exam studying and stress exponentially increase appetites, so there were very few left overs left.  Chris stepped in and said he was going to order pizza--cheers from Caroline and the boys.  SK said she didn't want pizza, gathered her stuff up and went to her room.  "Well," I thought, "Surely there are enough left overs for her."

Chris arrived home with the pizza and because the dining room table was covered in study materials, we ate in the living room.  He did call up to Sarah Katherine but we didn't think we got a response. ("Think" is the operative word and the word which changed the undercurrent to a volcanic explosion.) The five of us ate the pizza, cleaned up the kitchen, and then Sarah Katherine emerged from her room. I was still in the living room but I could hear her fussing at everyone because all the pizza was gone.  Chris tried to explain that she had indeed told us she didn't want pizza and we had called her down and she didn't come.  "I said," she enunciated very loudly, "that I'd be down in a few minutes.  Forget it, I'll just fix myself something else."  At this point staying out of the kitchen would have been the smart thing to do; I'm not always the best at doing the smart thing, especially when I'm tired.  I entered the kitchen and did my own little fussing (perhaps it wasn't so little).  She reiterated although much less loudly and with less intentional enunciation that she did say she was coming down in a few minutes.  Honest to God I have no idea what got into me, but that just set me off.  "Sarah Katherine, you don't get to just come down when you want.  We eat as a family." I loudly said with my own harsh enunciation.  To her credit, she didn't respond.

I say today it was to her credit, but perhaps last night I wanted a reaction.  I certainly acted like I did. Having left the kitchen I returned to see SK standing at the counter, watching SVU and texting.  "You're not going to just eat when you want watching TV and texting.  You are part of this family and you will eat when we eat and not just when it's convenient for you."  I started to continue but was cut off by Chris.  "You've made your point.  I think you should let it go.  Let her eat and get back to studying."  SK turned off the TV, carried her plate into the dining room, wisely put it on a placemat, thus preventing another tirade, and begin to eat her dinner alone.  I followed Chris into the den fussing at him for not supporting me.  "What did you want me to do?" he asked, "Let you keep going on and on until it all exploded?"  I think he wanted to add, "because you are acting like a lunatic." but he didn't.  I was furious and stomped out of the room.  (While I acknowledge I was indeed acting like an irrational lunatic, I still think it would have been better for him to pull me aside and talk to me--not in front of the children.  That of course is assuming I could have been pulled.)

I went back into the living room and plopped down in a chair.  I could see SK around the corner finishing up her dinner.  I thought to myself, "There will only be five of us eating dinner together soon."  I wasn't ready to let go of my anger and acknowledge what was really going on--I don't want to be a family of five eating dinner, and I don't want SK to not want to be with us.  So I added to my thinking, "So until she's gone, she has to eat with us every night whether she wants to or not.  It's not all about her!"  Success!!!  I was back to being angry. Sarah Katherine went back to her room.

Caroline came into the living room singing and dancing to The Little Mermaid over and over and over.  Chris wandered in and asked if I wanted to watch Parenthood.  He is so good at letting stuff go.  Me, well I like to fester for awhile, so I responded, "No, I can't even sit in that den it's so cold now since the space heater doesn't work. I'm staying in here and reading"  I really wanted my body language and tone to in some way indicate that if I could blame him for the space heater no longer working, I would.  Instead he left the room, got his book and joined me.  After 20 years he most of the time remembers that I need a little more time than he does to let something go, but last night he forgot and started trying to coax me out of my ill humor by asking me questions about what I was reading.  I snapped at him--that reminded him of that 20 year lesson-- and back to the cold den he went (couldn't have been much colder than the icy reception he was getting from me.)

A few minutes later SK came in and began playing the piano and singing.  Like her daddy, she can get mad but then she's over it.  She "makes up" by just moving onto something else.  I also started to let down my guard and just enjoy having the two girls in the room with me although it would have been better if they were singing the same song instead of trying to drown one another out, but hey, you can't have everything.  All of a sudden SK threw a pillow at me and said, "Stop that's so grouse."  She hates when I rub my feet together, says the sound is grouse.  I hear nothing. I guess I didn't stop because a few minutes later she stormed back out of the room and up to her own.  Now the beginnings of my peaceful attitude were gone,  and I stormed down the stairs to put the laundry in the dryer muttering to myself.  "Who does she think she is?  I'm down here doing all her laundry.  Look at this the whole thing is all her sweat pants and fuzzy socks.  They take up so much room. Next year my laundry will probably be halved just because she's gone and I don't have to wash all these sweat pants and fuzzy socks!"   I froze.   Tears stung my eyes as I quietly said to myself, "She will be gone and I won't get to wash her sweat pants and fuzzy socks."   I am trying to be graceful as we separate, but last night I was tripping over every opportunity to show grace and instead was doing everything  I could to maintain a feeling of control and to keep a firm grip on her.  It's a dance we have.  I acknowledge she's leaving on one level and on another I deny that reality.  I clutch more and more tightly at our time together, and she does everything she can to gently (and sometimes not so gently) pry my fingers off her life.

I walked up the two flights of stairs, quietly knocked on her door and without saying a word, kissed the top of her head.

Last night was not a night to be proud of on any of our parts.  We all allowed our own exhaustion, stressors and emotions to rule our behaviors. We entered into the arena with our own baggage and our own weapons known and unknown.  But this morning we get to start over; we get to acknowledge our mistakes and continue to love one another; we get to continue to be in relationship with one another.   As I was running this morning and replaying last night in my mind, it struck me that often, far too often, we don't get to start over.  People cross our paths; we have an unpleasant encounter, and either we write them off or they write us off.  We don't have another day; we don't acknowledge that perhaps their behavior or our own behavior was being ruled by something else, by our own emotional baggage and is in fact not who we or they truly are.  It made me sad to think that there are potentially life giving relationships which are never discovered because of a single negative encounter.  Life doesn't give us a rewind button; we don't always have the benefit of starting over with the dawn of a new day.  May we all strive to use every encounter with another, pleasant or unpleasant, to extend loving grace.