Last week at CC, during lunch, Eva said she had to got potty. This is a big deal. I have to unstrap Quinn from his booster, haul them all away from the table and march down the hall to the potty. It takes no less than 10 minutes and lunch is only a half an hour. Sometimes, if I'm feeling super tired, I'll ask a mom at the same table to keep an eye on the children who don't have to go. But that day, because I was feeling super ballsy, and because Eva is the oldest and she knows where the potty is, I told her she could go by herself. She looked dubious, but went.
She wasn't even out the door of the cafeteria when Sully said his hands were sticky and he needed to wash them. (He says this no less than five times per meal, even though I encourage him every time to just wait until he's done eating so I don't have to wipe them every two to three minutes.) I told him to hurry after his sister and wash them in the bathroom with her.
Within five minutes, two less than flattering things happened, another mom approached our table with a stern expression on her face and Sully in tow and said, "Does he belong to you? I found him wandering in the hall saying he couldn't reach the sink in the bathroom. He should be supervised. I say this only because we were reminded to stay with our small children at all times."
A myriad of emotions coursed through me, the biggest two rearing their heads being shame, closely followed by anger. I'm not sure what showed up on my face, being the open book that I am, but I just said, "Right. Of course." She walked away and I ventured a glance at the two moms at my table, both parents to boys in Eva's class, both parents of multiple small children, both infinitely more understanding than this woman had just been. They were also both fighting back giggles. My mood immediately lightened.
"Let's go, Sully." I grabbed his hand, barely aware that the uber-mom had taken to patrolling the hall again. As we rounded the bend to the bathroom, uber-mom, who was now coming back in the direction of the cafeteria, made an about-face, headed for the bathroom, and muttered, "Someone's crying in here, I better find out what's going on." It seemed to me that she was actually taking delight in taking me and my kind down. The sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach only deepened when the door to the bathroom was opened and Eva's familiar cry reached my ears. I could see her sneakers dangling near the toilet in the first stall. I sighed, resigned, and said with great defeat, "This one is mine, too." I didn't even bother to look at uber-mom's face. I didn't want to see the judgement in her eyes.
When I got back to the table, I shared my tale of woe with my friends. They both laughed and laughed. My one friend kindly said she would pray grace over me. I was fighting my pride and my pride won. I said, somewhat indignantly, "I'm pretty sure she has ONE kid! I saw them walk in this morning and he's like 10!" She's older than we are, easily in her late forties, so I doubt she has any smaller children and I've never seen her in the nursery. Knowing both of these things helped assuage my guilt a tiny bit, but I knew I was in the wrong. Laziness had kept my butt securely anchored to my chair when Eva had started this ball in motion. I should have sucked it up then, gave Quinn copious amounts of cheese, and asked my friends to keep an eye on him the first time around, instead of having to be admonished by a woman who seemed to have never been in my shoes before.
I seem to be eternally caught in that web of wanting my children to be self-sufficient and never grow up. The contradiction drives me crazy as much as them being little and needy drives me crazy and nearly as much as I love being needed. It all makes me want to run, full-tilt, into a corner, pull my hair and scream.
I learned some valuable lessons that day, one being that I should never assume my children are ready for something, when it's very possible they are not. Another being that I can't stop being a mom just because I'm tired --something I know and hold in the back of my mind always, but something inherently more obvious at two in the morning. I also learned that I do not enjoy being admonished now any more than I did in elementary school.
I'm committed to improving on these "issues." But I also need to improve my attitude toward the mother who reigned me in. I'm still raging at her on the inside. It's not so much that she did it. It was how she did it and how I perceived her while she was doing it (which is clearly for ME to wrestle through). If any of the other women in that room with three plus kids had said to me what she did, even if they'd had the tone she had had, I would have been okay with that because they have walked where I have walked. I want to pull her aside the next time I see her and say (if I may uncensor myself here completely), "Listen, I know you meant well last Thursday in pointing out that my toddlers were unattended, but your tone and delivery were lacking much in the way of empathy. I'm trying not to be judgmental in the same way I perceived you were judging me, but I can't help but notice that you seem to only have one child and he appears to be much older than my children. Would it kill you to try to put yourself in my shoes for five minutes? To dig down deep and find that bone of understanding? And, if I'm wrong, and he's the youngest of a whole brood of children, where is your empathy as my sister in Christ?! Are you that perfect of a mother?" Ironically, just as greatly as I desire empathy from her, I should be trying to muster some of that FOR her. I have no idea what her life circumstances are. I learn new things about these moms I'm mucking through the trenches with every Thursday.
I'm struggling with knowing that I was in the wrong and wanting to throttle her. It's not a pleasant tug of war. I'm confident that approaching this with humility is the only way to go. A confrontation, of any kind, is not. So until we meet again, and I know we will, I will pray for the swift death of my pride and for God to grow in her a modicum of understanding for us moms in the dregs of toddlerhood.
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