{Thank you for checking in on our “Letters to my Children” blog circle! This is a personal project and a way to share my thoughts with my own children. I will be updating this blog with a letter to one or both of my children monthly. Along with me are several other lovely ladies who are taking on the same project, check out Clare’s letter here!}
Dear Quincy,
Last week, just two days after your 8th birthday, you stood in the living room stomping your feet and yelling, “YOU HATE ME! EVERYONE HATES ME!”. You were minutes away from missing the school bus and I had no other way of getting you to school that day. You asked that I walk you to the bus stop and although I very much wanted to walk with you, I said “No”. I had three kids under the age of three who were all sick with an awful cold…the same awful cold I was suffering from myself. Being January in the Pacific Northwest, the weather was chilly and damp and we were not at all prepared to go outdoors. At last, after a dramatic and emotionally exhausting scene, you stormed off to the bus stop promising to never speak to me again.
Now, being a mother of the 21st century, I turned to social media as much for the re-assurance that I am not the awful mother I felt I was, as to hopefully find the humor in the situation through someone else’s eyes. Of course, other mothers confirmed that this was normal, and yes you will eventually outgrow it. But it still nagged at me all day long. “YOU HATE ME!” ringing in my ears hours after your departure, you were probably playing at recess and hadn’t even though twice about it once you arrived at school.
The truth is that at that moment you might not have been too far off, but only for the handful of minutes you were screaming and stomping in the living room. Motherhood has highlighted my human nature in ways I am not always proud. Patience is something I was destined to learn in this life, and I am convinced that my children were sent here to teach it to me. I am learning every day. Some days I do better than others, just like you. Together we are learning how to love and respect one another, and I am sure there are more days like this in our future. I just hope that I can practice patience (as can you!) and that despite yelling “YOU HATE ME!” your heart always knows that I love, love, love you, even when we don’t particularly like one another.
Love you ALWAYS, Mom
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