Growing

For the first night in what feels like forever I feel like I’ve managed the day well. It did not start out well at all. It started with three kids running late and a big argument between Kiki and Gleek. Howard and I waded into the middle of it and there was much sadness all around. By the time I got the kids dropped at school (late) my head was so full of stuff that I couldn’t sit down and work. Instead Patches and I tromped through the yard to visit my backyard neighbor. She kindly let me sit in her kitchen for 90 minutes and rant about the minute details of things that have been bugging me. Some of them were big things some of them were little things, but the accumulation was overwhelming me. It is possible that the problem with January was that I never stopped to allow myself time to rant before moving on to solve problems. Sometimes we just need to whine a little, stomp our feet and shout about unfairness even if we know that no one ever promised fairness.

My friend had many valuable insights and thoughts for me, but the one that jumped out at me was a sentence in the middle of a story about something that she has been dealing with lately. It was “You just don’t recover from that in a couple of months.” I’ve made major shifts in our rhythm of living. These shifts are correcting long-term problems and I’ve already seen improvements, but I was feeling like a failure because it wasn’t all fixed yet. This morning I realized that I haven’t given things enough time to heal. I haven’t given time for everyone to grow and develop into the new structure. Three weeks may make a habit, but it is still a shiny new habit still worn uncomfortably. The path is right, I just need to stay on it and the rewards I want will come. The healing and new confidence I hope for in my kids will come. Patches will feel more comfortable and stop fighting sleeping by himself. Kiki and Gleek will begin to love and understand and respect each other. Link will learn to ease his own transitions and keep himself on task. I’ve made the structure, but I have to give the kids time to grow into it. I have to give myself time to grow into it.

I came home with my head clear and proceeded to amaze myself with how much stuff I got done. All the shipping, all the accounting, made dinner, snuggled and tended Gleek who proved herself to be sick by crawling into bed and staying there, hugged and listened to Kiki who had a truly horrible day at school, helped Kiki to practice her hated clarinet despite the bad day, helped Link with homework, had a snuggly reading time with Patches. It was all good. I finally feel like I did all the things with my day that I’m supposed to do. But of all the pieces, the one that makes me most happy was mediating an agreement between Kiki and Gleek that hopefully will raise the civility level between them. Gleek is going to try to answer words with words instead of objecting squeals or hand motions (both of which drive Kiki to fury.) Kiki is going to try to make sure that she starts every interaction nicely thus giving Gleek the chance to answer Kiki’s nice requests with words and open a negotiation rather than both sides instantly opening fire. I’m going to have to be on hand to mediate this for quite some time, but at least I’ve got both of them admitting that they don’t like the way things have been and being willing to change a little to make things better. It is progress.

And as I wrote this entry I remembered that sometimes the process of fixing something first makes a bigger mess. But the mess is necessary so that things can be better. Growing is often messy and painful.