On getting over oneself

I. wails, “I’m sooooo tired, I need mama.” And I try to calm her down, because she, like me, has had a rough day, and we are both a little weepy, and tired. She is dirty, in the way that only children who spend the greater part of the day out of doors can get, and I smile because at least she won’t have nature deficit disorder, but I don’t feel very happy, and in fact, the more I don’t write the paper I have to write, the more I feel like hands are coming up from below and choking me, and I feel so so tired, and I just want to be comforted, but instead I do the comforting. It is the next best thing. And she cries, and cries, and comes up to me with her wet, grubby cheeks, and it is late, and she says, “I think I am a bad person!” and I say "no!", and she insists, she begs with her hot little wet little cheeks pressed up against mine and her hand searching for cleavage, “mama, I need you to teach me that I am not a bad person.” (if I could only teach myself this, and if I could only make my emotional needs so transparently known)

And I insist that she is a good person, and I hold her and rock her in my lap, and I ask if someone hurt her feelings today and she nods, and crawls under the sheets, and I say, “I know baby, my feelings were hurt today too,” and she stops for a minute, and asks me to tell her about it, and I do, omitting names to protect the innocent, or mostly so she won’t repeat things or hold grudges that for me will have long been forgotten while for her in memoriam perpetuam. And she asks me to tell her a story, so I begin, but she doesn’t like my story, because it is about her, or so she claims, and I give up and lay back against my pillow in the dark, and she asks if she can tell me a story, and if we can write it down. I say yes.

This is the story that I. told: (she hasn't been formally introduced to the concept of allegory, but just the other day we were discussing metaphor and its narrative function)

Once upon a time there was a lamb, it is a talking lamb of course, and there was a little lizard. They loved to play together, they did jump rope, they did everything together. Until one day, one of them wanted to go do jump roping and one of them wanted to do hopscotch. So they got into a big fight about who’s gonna do which game they were gonna do. So, they said, "if we’re not gonna be friends, then we’d rather have some alone time!" But then the next day, they were feeling much better. But you should know, if you wanna play one game and your friend wants to play another, you shouldn’t judge them on what they wanna play, you should say, "I don’t want to play that today, I’ll find another person that would like to play with me, but I’ll go looking with you to find your friend that can help you play jump rope."

But does that mean that you are not friends? NO!

That’s it. The end. Good night mama.


Words of wisdom from the child. I should learn to listen to what is spoken, not the deformed sounds that I interpret. And tomorrow, it will all feel better.