Everyday Angst

I blew it today. Not as badly as I would have ten years ago. But badly enough to hurt my daughter’s feelings.

All I wanted to do today was go for a walk at the same pond we visited last year on the first day of spring. We hurried through our schoolwork so that we wouldn’t miss the sun. We gulped down our lunch, grabbed cameras, coats, gloves, hats, and drove to the pond. As we pulled into the mud slick parking lot, my 9-year-old said, “I’m wearing my sneakers.”

It’s not exactly her first nature walk. We’ve taken over a hundred of them, in every kind of weather. How could she have worn white sneakers a day after we got three inches of snow and then watched the sun melt most of it? “You have got to be kidding me,” I said icily. And without a word, I pulled out of the parking lot and drove back home. My jaw was tight. My fingers gripped the wheel, and I drove faster than usual.

Ten years ago, I would probably have unleashed my tongue, but I held it today. Yet the force of my displeasure was still all-too-apparent. “I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice. Back home, after I’d cooled off, I gave her a hug and told her I loved her.

So was it a failure, or a success? Knowing how I used to explode when I would get angry, it could be deemed a success. Yet I feel like a failure. It’s not how I handled the wave of disappointment and anger, but simply the existence of those feelings in such potency, that makes me feel like a bottom-dweller. All it took was their existence to make my daughter feel rotten. I hate that. Yet… how can I eradicate emotion altogether? Maybe the thing to do is just to own it, and make sure love precedes, undergirds, and follows it when it comes.

I’m sure this is all quite obvious to others. It just really kills me when I hurt their feelings, and sometimes it seems completely unavoidable.

A friend posted a link to this article, which I came upon just when I needed it. Among other good and life-giving things, it says this:

Somewhere along the way we began to believe a lie. And it is a LIE FROM THE PIT OF HELL. The lie that there is one right way to be a mother. The lie that we must make every RIGHT decision or the consequences will be catastrophic. The lie that we can control our children’s lives. The lie that being a failure as a mother is a fate worse than death.

Run, I say, RUN to pick up your Bible. Turn to Micah 6:8 and read aloud what it says. “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does The Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

I thought, too, of this article, which I read over a month ago ago. I speaks of “parenting by angst,” that feeling that hovers

above and around us [and] those we hold most dear – a feeling – vague, unpleasant, and ill-defined.

It is the direct and dire cost of loving another, of leaving ourselves open to all that comes with that connection: the joy, fear, exasperation, rage, and, yes, delight. But mostly it is about thinking we can cause such harm in our loving – that we must employ such caution that it robs us of the spontaneity and pure slow relaxation of being together without a sense of time, task or goal.

…I try to remember that sometimes, the very basic ways we care for each other are more than enough.

What does it all mean for me and my daughter? I guess it means simply, lighten up. I’m not sure whether I’m succeeding or failing today. But either way, the immediate choice now is, do I brood? or choose to love in some unmistakable way?

I’m going to go read a story or play a game with a certain dear 9-year-old.