I wish I knew then what I know now – knew the things I would encounter, the emotions I wouldn’t understand, the advice I would CRAVE. I wish I had queued up a million questions for my mother and forbade her to die until she answered every single last one of them. I wish I had listened to the stories of what I said when I was three, five, eight. I don’t remember those things…the ones that seemed insignificant to me – I was trying so desperately to grow up, not to relish each painful, demoralizing moment.
I see the other side of the coin now. My kids will ask a question, display a behavior, act out in some way, and it makes me pause. I wonder what that means in the grand scheme of their character. I wonder if it is learned, experimental, natural… Did I do that? Was I like that? Were my brother and I like that? How did our mom LET US LIVE PAST 5?
In the car today, after picking up the boys, we were inundated with non-stop noise from both Roark and Cole. They were not saying anything – just trying to get a moment’s notice – some validation that we missed them, cared about them, cared about one of them more than the other one…something. And they clearly were not getting what they wanted. It escalated quickly, causing me to go crazy for 5 minutes of silence which was never to be experienced. It was almost as if they were feeding off of the frenzy of mind-madness I had brought home from work with me. They saw a weakness and went for it. The torture implement was their non-stop noise and poking at each other. All through dinner, all through errands, all the way to an hour early bedtime because I may have killed them if they were awake for one more minute.
I sit here now thinking about what happened… about the testing and trying that the boys put us through and I wonder where I will ever get a leg up. At what point do they decide it isn’t fun to mess with parents anymore? At this point, it is 9:30pm and I am just diving back into hours of work, and by now, I have no patience to think clearly through anything. I just want to veg, go to sleep and not dread tomorrow.