the art of

The last month of school always has an air of impossibility about it. It's hard to imagine that everything can get done in a mere four weeks, and yet the prospect of a long, lazy summer seems both certain and luxurious.

I've been tired and short-tempered with the kids several times this week. Last night, I lost my cool when I asked Raya to please help me clean her room, and while I picked up and put stuff away, she kept spinning in circles, unable to focus on any single thing. In my frustration at her inefficiency, I threatened to take away toys, donate clothes to "children who need them," not read her a chapter from On the Banks of Plum Creek, and every other terrible thing that a tired child does not want to hear.

This morning when she came down for breakfast and I gave her a long morning hug, she said something that, while I could not write fast enough to immortalize it verbatim, sounded very much like this:
Mommy, when you get upset at me for not cleaning my room and yell at me, I feel that you don't care much about me as your child. 

Minutes later, Sava came down to ask me whether he could wear "short-short" to school, meaning short pants and a short-sleeved shirt. While we live in paradise, and the day temperatures get to a predictable balmy 70-or-so degrees almost every day, the mornings can feel quite chilly. With the heat blasting full force in the house, and the memory of Sava's recent three-day fever, I felt wary of allowing "short-short" and decreed "long-short" instead. He got instantaneously upset about it and proceeded to take fifteen minutes to get ready for breakfast, which put everyone squarely at the prospect of being late for work and school. When I told him that throwing a fit about a shirt seemed both selfish and unwarranted, he told me, in no uncertain terms, that only a bad mother limits her child's choices in clothing.

I have never stormed out of the house still upset at the kids on the way to work, but I did today. I didn't feel proud of it, and in fact the whole day stank because of it.

Driving to work, I listened to the lilting voice of Pico Iyer read an audio version of his recent book, The Art of Stillness, which I recently picked up from the library. Iyer is not exactly a sage, but his TED talk about the virtues of "going nowhere," expounded in this book, is well-worth some thought and time.

It is humbling to recognize, on a daily basis, how far our expectations of ourselves fall short of our reality; or, as Annie Dillard memorably put it, "Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand--that of finding workable compromises between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of us."

I want to be the parent who keeps her cool no matter how thoroughly exasperating the provocation. I want to be the parent who never makes a thoughtless, stupid, impulsive threat. I want to be the parent who hugs instead of barking orders or issuing decrees. I want to be the parent who approaches with empathy rather than with defensive anger.

Some days are better than others, and it helps to remember that the first step towards improvement is recognizing the nature of the problem. It's not that we lack time, we are busy, or we have the right to expect life, and everyone around us, to move on our timetable. It's also not that our kids are flawed. It's simply that, much of the time, annoyance, exasperation, or anger are merely a matter of perspective.

It also helps to remember that children often (but not always) forget. When I came home tonight, Raya wrapped her body around me, sucking me in like a giant anemone, and declared with full confidence that she loves me and is so so happy to see me. When I asked Sava how long after he left for school he was still feeling angry at me, he looked at me puzzled and said, "Angry about what"? When I reminded him about the little altercation regarding clothing, he replied casually, "Oh, I forgot about it as soon as I left for school! I wasn't angry anymore at all."

Well, then. I am not proud of myself for how I reacted in either situation, but I am somewhat relieved to know that the damage was less devastating than imagined.

Tomorrow we're packing a short-sleeved shirt in the front pocket of the backpack.