Saturday, 20 March 2010

• Now and again

  Some days are more difficult than others, I understand this, and mostly am ok with this. Its what comes with having kids, having three kids, attempting to raise them alone, and having one kid with issues that I don’t claim to understand. I get it. Its not going to be easy, and I'm not going to complain, because I am happy that they are here, together, and all that. But seriously, some days? Get the best of me, and my whole “I can do this” steam runs out, and instead I stand outside listening to the screams while telling myself over and over NOT to do something stupid, just. Don’t.  

  Because I know, in the long run it will cause more damage than good. I know that yelling does NO good, and over time the only thing it will do, if nothing else, is make them yell back. Or scare them. Or make them scared of me. Or something. But it wont accomplish what I want, at least not in the long run.

  A few years ago, someone I know invited the kids to a program at a church, I agreed to take them, and let them try it out, and they had a good time, and so they went back. The next week. The next year. And so forth.

  This year things have been different, and were just now starting to get into the whole swing on things, someone reminded me last week that it was going on, and after dragging my feet on the issue, I took them. There were a few things that happened, but the just of it was that Josh wasn’t going to stay, and I wasn’t going to make him. And a few other things mixed in, with me wrong.

  I dropped the kids off last week, and took Josh with me.

  This week I didn’t expect him to go, and didn’t really think much of it when I dropped the older two off, and took off with just Josh, except that…he freaked out.

  And I'm still not exactly sure why. I do know that I spent a good 20 minutes parked, standing outside the car, listening to him scream from the inside about, something I'm still not sure what.

  He flipped.

  He freaked.

  And nothing I said, or did was helping. In fact, it only made things worse because I was just getting frustrated and instead of assuring him, calmly that it was OK, I was envisioning peace and quiet and all that was not there.

  We sat in a parking lot, well, he sat in the car, screaming. I stood outside. Listening. Watching. And waiting. For the cops to be called, for someone to ask what I was doing. For him to start gagging. Something. Anything. Because I don’t know what else to do.

  He's not a bad kid, he doesn’t do things wrong, and most likely there was a reason behind this outburst, I just don’t know what it was. Or what went wrong, or how things got off to the wrong start.

  I know he's been off to a bad day, I know that his day really didn’t start great, and I know that most likely the addition of something out of the ordinary wasn’t what he needed…but its what happened, and its what went on, and its how things panned out.

  And eventually he calmed down, eventually he settled down, he stopped screaming, stopped crying, and passed out for the night. In reality it wasn’t that long, what seemed like hours was most likely only minutes. What seemed like thousands of stares was probably a casual glance my direction because you couldn’t REALLY hear him outside the car.

  But…

  Like anything else, its not easy. Not easy trying to figure out what or why, or how or who. I have a hard enough time with the basics, let alone the complicated. Things like dinner are hard enough for me to understand, and now…I'm being tossed into a world where I am not only responsible, I am expected to know things that I just don’t know.

  And that’s ok.

  Because he? Is really worth it. He deserves a shot at this life, a better chance. He needs more than he's been given…and if he needs to scream every once and a while, I think I understand where he's coming from on that one.

  Maybe next time I will join in.

  Or not, because that might just scare him.

  Or someone else.

  Or, you know, REALLY get the cops called on us?

   
  • 10:00 PM
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