I Lived Through Mother’s Day

I’m not really a great “Mother’s Day” candidate to begin with.

Don’t get me wrong I am a BIG fan of the right people paying attention to me.

BUT, the relaxed, easy-going nature of the holiday points out my not very easy going or relaxed nature.

Like breakfast in bed… I don’t really eat breakfast before I work out and I am kind of particular about my coffee and I’m not a really big pancake person, unless it is at The Cupping Room in NYC or Up for Breakfast in VT or Black-Eyed Susan’s in Nantucket.

And I’m up at least an hour before everyone anyway, so I’d have to fake it.

I know, I know, but it’s true.

And the day is supposed to be about me, right?

Plus my mom died three years ago. Plus, plus, our boys always have a big Yale lacrosse jamboree Mother’s day anyway, so pancakes are kind of moot.

However, the day took on a rather incredible downward spiral that left me craving pancakes and questionable coffee.

Bad things usually happen in three’s, right?

Make that sets of three’s.

Okay, I may be exaggerating slightly, BUT there were a few items on the ‘I would rather stab myself in the eyes’ list that I think could easily have counted for two or three items.

The day began at 6. Wake up. Make breakfast for everyone. Wake everyone else up to get to lacrosse jamboree an hour away by 8. Leave at 7:20 with my fun-loving ‘we are going to be late’ angst.

Ahhh, a nice relaxing start for everyone.

We get there on time. First game goes smoothly. Sun is peaking through the clouds. The day is looking good. Finn is playing great.

The second game begins. Our team scores a goal. Everyone is moving back to their positions and seemingly out of nowhere Finn fills his lacrosse stick with dirt and flings it into the face of the boy he is blocking.

The dad next to us (who is a tough guy with a heavy Boston accent) yells GET THAT KID OFF THE FIELD! What the f&*#? He yells to his son asking if he is okay. He yells some other things too.

Who could blame him?

Except that kid is our son.

He should be pulled. Absolutely. The coach doesn’t though because there are no subs. I apologize to hid dad. Joe apologizes. Finn apologizes to the boy. It is totally not okay.

My face is burning. My heart is racing. I walk away– pretend shop for tacky lacrosse shirts. Feel angry I didn’t opt out of this friggin’ jamboree like most self-respecting normal moms.

The game ends. We apologize to the coach.

We ask Finn, as open-mindedly as possible, why he did that.

Finn said the kid called him a dirt face. He is ashamed. He won’t look at us. We explain that IF that is true, he needs to ignore it or tell the coach if he is really upset but not physically react.

There is no time to process. The next game is starting in five minutes. The team is moving to the next field. They are short players.

There is NEVER any time to respond to ANYTHING. We are ALWAYS moving from one field to the next. Something is always starting in five minutes. I feel rushed and panicked and not at all okay with waiting to have the discussion about what just happened.

I want to go home. Finn looks at me. He says, I WANT TO GO HOME.

He says it five times. I tell him we can’t. We made a commitment. His team needs him. I think in my head, Finn needs HIS team (us). Finn didn’t even really want to play lacrosse. Some days he likes it. Others he doesn’t.

How the hell do you know as a parent when to push because some seeds take longer to grow and when to walk away because that particular seed won’t grow in that particular soil?

Next game Finn wants to play goalie. He does. He gets hit in the leg with a ball. He repeatedly gives us the thumbs down from the field. Yikes. This day is ultra-sucking. The game ends. Again, he begs to go home.

Joe and I look at each other. They don’t have a single sub. They’d have to play short. They’d lose every game. Sometimes, you have to push through right?

Wrong.

The next game there is another incident. Worse. A seemingly unprovoked one.

The coach pulls him. Says he can play the next game but not this one. Finally, Joe and I hear his cries for help. Joe talks to the coach to see if there is another player from a different U9 team he can pull from another game.

There is. We pull Finn from the jamboree. We walk silent to the car. We drive silent in the car. It takes three towns for me to burn through my humiliation and embarrassment that he did something so incredibly unkind and unsportsmanlike.

And another town to get through my regret for pushing that we go, thinking I was doing a good thing.

Then, I remember.

He is a sweet, loving, kind and open-hearted boy.

I act mean when I am angry. Below my anger is always hurt, frustration, confusion or fear. We need to help him not lecture him. Ask questions not issue ultimatums.

He needs us to be on HIS team.

Of course there will be consequences but we have to get to the real WHY first.

His emotions are big. He feels things deeply and intensely; sometimes gets overwhelmed with what to do with the enormity of it all.

There is a reason. There always is.

He had acid reflux as a baby. He had enlarged tonsils and adenoids that gave him severe sleep apnea. Plus, he had tons of ear infections as a baby. So, he couldn’t hear language for the first several years of his life.

Consequently, he didn’t speak till he was three.

Imagine trying to navigate experiences for that long without being able to verbally articulate your feelings or express your needs?

I asked him when we got home and were sitting on my chaise with a blanket around us, what he was feeling in his body, what happened inside him that got him so frustrated.

He explained feeling upset and offended and embarrassed that the boy called him a dirt face and the second incident was in response to getting hit in the leg the game before and not knowing where to direct his anger.

We talked about using his breath to expand that small moment of choosing whether he wants to BE FINN or BECOME ANGER.

It is a choice.

I tried to explain that anger is only a feeling he is having. It is not who he is. He can breathe it out or walk it out or tell someone. But it’s critical to put some space between the thing that triggers him and his choice about how to respond.

And there is no decision too small to practice on! The choice of whether to grab something out of his Leo’s hands because he is frustrated or glare at me because he has to do his homework. It is all practice.

What if we all had a little breathing room between what sets us of and how we choose to respond?

Life-draining, emotional intensity out f the way, I thought I’d go for a run.

And since our dog Floyd hadn’t gotten a lot of exercise I thought I’d take him with me. The first mile I tried to instill the finer nuances of heeling.

By mile three we were making some serious progress right in time to see a big gathering of people exiting a mothers day party at a friend’s house.

The guests were all saying good-bye but not quite leaving quite yet, just kind of taking in the moment, looking around, pausing to see… wait a minute… is that dog??? Is she not going to??? Oh my LORD!

Why do dogs poop at the WORST possible times?

Floyd has never had to “go” on our runs before, but today, in celebration of Mothers Day he thought, you know what’d be fun … What if, I take a nice long poopie right here in eyeshot of mama’s friends house?

I bent down, pretended to talk to him about… whaaaat? I don’t even know. Essentially I bent down to accept the fact I had no bags, couldn’t ask for one because it would ruin the post-party glow, couldn’t explain I’d pick it up later– same buzzkill.

Smile and wave? Yup, that was my strategy. They said a big friendly hello. I said it back. And I kept running through a new heaping pile of humiliation.

I asked Joe if he wouldn’t mind going to pick up Floyd’s little presents for me while I took Finn to yoga.

And then, off to yoga…

Here was my thought early last week when I received the yoga mommy and me invite… Hmm, that could be fun. They will probably make it super kid friendly and the boys would love it. And it would be something new for us.

Leo broke his collarbone the week before, but I thought, well Finny and I will do it. Finn goes in his lacrosse shorts and t-shirt, me in my running outfit.

About five minutes in, Finn looks at me and mouths I WANT TO GO! CAN WE PLEASE GO HOME NOW! Both of us are not enjoying the poses or the slow motion of it all.

I HATE yoga.

Ah, feels so much better to just say it. I know it is incredibly unbalanced and anti-Zen of me but it genuinely irks me. I’d rather run five miles or lay down on the couch.

It feels uncommitted to burning calories and elevating endorphins or resting.

In keeping with our live and don’t learn family philosophy we stayed through the whole hour and fifteen minute session so as not to be rude to the instructor or disappoint my sweet sister who had accompanied us on this fun little outing.

When we got home, I asked Joe if he’d picked up Floyd’s little presents.

He said he went and looked but couldn’t find it. Terrified they had actually gone to pick it up themselves, I immediately got in the car, drove over, found it, and picked it up.

The relief of having found it opened a bit of a floodgate.

I wailed all the way home. I mean like full blast scream-cries. The sort of train wrecky breakdown, tinted windows rolled all the way up (despite 80 degree heat and broken air conditioning), sit in the driveway (with the stinky poo) until you can pull it back together to be Stepford happy.

Bottom line, I was so upset, I forgot to take my goody bag out of the car.

A couple hours later, I remembered I forgot and asked Joe if he wouldn’t mind taking it out of the car and putting it in the trash. He left to go do it. Other stuff happened.

Monday morning I got into the car to go to the gym and whooooooosh.

Joe asked if we could have a REDO next Sunday.

Me:      Why not? I said.

Leo:     Well it’s not actually Mother’s Day. It wouldn’t make sense.

Joe:      Mother’s Day is a Hallmark holiday invented to generate profit. They made up a date. Why can’t we?

Leo:     O-kAAAAy then.

Can’t wait for next Sunday when bliss and inner peace are all mine!

Anyone else up for a redo?