Mom the Volcano

She always wants to help. But never with the things I actually want her to help me with.

She’s at my elbow, begging to help me do dishes. After saying no a couple of times, I finally give in. “Here, you can load them in the dishwasher after I rinse them. Don’t stack them too close together. Just like this.” I hand her a few dishes. When I turn back they are not quite right so I go back and re-do everything she’s just done. She is unperturbed, but it frustrates me. I yell at her to go away. She pleads that she just wants to help. At this I tell her, “you helping me doesn’t help!” I point her toward the living room, hollering that she needs to go pick up the toys I told her to pick up three hours ago. “THAT is how you can help me! Do the one thing I asked you to do three hours ago!”

Three deep breaths later and the guilt set in. Her walking away with her head hung low. The hurt in her eyes at hearing that her helping is more of a hindrance than anything else. How can I speak that way to someone who is trying to help? How can I speak that way to the most important and wonderful little girl I’ve ever known?

I have become my own mother in so many ways. In many ways that are positive. But in many ways that are negative as well. I remember as a child, older than my daughter is now, but not much, feeling like I had to walk on egg shells. I never knew what reaction I would get from my mother. She was incredibly volatile, a volcano ready to erupt at any moment. Her screaming terrified me, although she rarely ever struck me. I am almost positive that I had fewer spankings in my entire life than my daughter had between the ages of three and four. Yet I was terrified of my mother all the same.

The rules always changed, and that was the worst part. I never knew where the line was. Some days a mess on the floor would make her laugh, some days it would make her furious. The same was the case for jokes, various childish ways of acting goofy, pranks, etc. I remember the fear, the dread, that would fill my chest cavity when I knew I’d done something that may or may not wake the sleeping dragon.

As a teenager, I joked with my friends that something happens to a woman’s brain when she has children and she loses her mind. Loses her ability to contain her anger, her rage, her frustration. At the time it was a joke, but now I find it is true. No one frustrates me like my children. And I have found from week to week, something that would bring fire to my eyes one day may elicit only a shrug of apathy a few days later. I hate knowing that I am raising my children in such an uncertain atmosphere. I want to be consistent. I want to get mad on Tuesday about the same thing that makes me angry on Monday. But some days I just feel like I don’t even have the energy to get upset about things. I want something that makes me chuckle on Friday to make me chuckle on Saturday too. But I have found that some days, the endless list of things I have to pick up, clean up, take care of, outweighs any amount of cuteness that may otherwise make me smile.

She brought a couple of stuffed bears downstairs from her bedroom today. I looked down and poked at the purple Care Bear’s face. “What is this brown stuff on your bear?” I could feel my blood pressure rise as the frustration at her carelessness with her toys resurfaced yet again. “Oh, it’s just chocolate pudding” she responded with a shrug. Her nonchalance made me laugh. As though it was perfectly normal for a stuffed animal to have chocolate pudding all over its face. So in that moment, I decided to let it go. Not ask where the chocolate pudding came from, how long had the bear been in this state, where is the chocolate pudding cup now…all of these questions no longer mattered, because she made me laugh. She made me laugh by exhibiting an attitude that in all honesty, on a different day would have made me even more furious. But today it didn’t. Today I let it go, and the purple Care Bear will go into the washing machine with the next load. I guess today we got lucky.