Compassion
Do you ever do something to embarrass yourself? I do, often. Most of the time it is something I have said that makes me wince with pain and want to crawl into a hole and hide until no one (especially me) remembers what I said.
It's one thing to say or do something around one or two people or even around a small group, but to embarrass oneself in public takes a special kind of talent.
I have that talent.
The last 3 weeks have been hard on our family and this doesn't exclude our children. By evening of the Saturday after Thanksgiving we were all ready to be home. Our littles weren't sleeping anywhere near enough and the fatigue was obvious on all of our faces.
By Sunday after church, Caleb had turned into a child I had never seen before, Curt and I were bickering over the dumbest things and I am pretty sure our oldest two were doing everything they could to blend into the back seats and not be seen.
Did I mention Caleb's head was spinning (shout out to the Exorcist)?
I looked everywhere for pods (shout out to Invasion of the Body Snatchers) but there were none in my immediate viewing area.
We made the enormously, most foolish decision of our lives at this precise moment. We went out to lunch with my parents.
We should have gotten something on the road and drove home. We should have buckled the kids in their seats, hit the road going south and not look back. We SHOULD have used common sense and employed the 15 years of parenting knowledge we have gained and GONE HOME.
Instead we went to Steak N Shake in East Peoria, where, had there been a staircase, Caleb would have been going down it in a backbend (shout out to the extended version of the original Exorcist).
The scene was straight out of "A Parent's Worst Nightmare" (I made that movie up), and Caleb and I were in the starring roles. Caleb did an excellent job of acting as the completely out-of-control, willful child. The tantrums he threw were award winning and the audience was thoroughly impressed.
My role as the sleep deprived mother was complete with 3 separate trips to the restroom to calm my child in a manner fitting of a woman who has had 4 children, complete with all the experience that brings with the job.
Upon our second trip to the restroom, Caleb was arching his back, trying to throw himself out of my arms repeatedly and yelling "no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no" at me, as if I were doing something terrible to him. As I stood in the corner trying to console him, I happened to glance between the cracks of the bathroom stalls and I came eyeball to eyeball with a little old lady, staring at me as if she had never seen this horror picture before.
My face turned beat red as I once again picked up my little bundle of joy and used every weapon in my arsenal to calm him.
After about 3 or 4 minutes (felt like 30) we were able to return to the table for 30 seconds where he AGAIN started screaming at his milk cup, kicked, screamed and was yelling at the TOP OF HIS LUNGS.
Back to the restroom we go.
Where said older woman is now washing her hands.
This time, I came armed with a diaper bag and went about changing his diaper as if THAT was the real reason I was in the restroom. She wasn't fooled. Caleb was finally calming down and I began to cry. Right there in the Steak N Shake restroom. Not just cry, I sobbed. I sobbed tears of failure as a mother that could not calm her child down. I sobbed tears of failure as a mother that could not console her child and be the arms of safety and comfort that he obviously needed. I sobbed in failure as a mother that had done the last thing she knew to do and had nothing left but to admit defeat and go eat her cold lunch.
That's when I saw the face of this sweet older woman come to me in love, wrap her arms around me and say, "Honey, we have all been there. I am a mom too and I know how you feel. You are doing just fine."
Know what I did?
I hugged her tighter and sobbed harder.
In the bathroom of Steak N Shake.
I cried until I had no tears left and she let me. When I was done, she patted my shoulder, grabbed her coat off the coat hook and walked out of my life.
But she will forever have a place in my heart for her kind words and loving arms that helped this tired mother feel like she had accomplished a great feat.
I picked Caleb up and he laid his head on my shoulder, we walked back to the table in a quiet truce, ate our lunch and finally headed south.
Never, ever underestimate what a little kindness can do. Never, ever underestimate what your words can mean to a person. This beautiful woman didn't pretend as if she couldn't see or hear Caleb's fits. She didn't mutter under her breath disgust at "children these days", she saw the situation, had compassion for me, and made a difference in my life.
Thank you kind, loving woman. You made this very tired and defeated woman feel like a good mother again. I will never forget your actions and I hope to pass that on to another battle worn mother one day.
It's one thing to say or do something around one or two people or even around a small group, but to embarrass oneself in public takes a special kind of talent.
I have that talent.
The last 3 weeks have been hard on our family and this doesn't exclude our children. By evening of the Saturday after Thanksgiving we were all ready to be home. Our littles weren't sleeping anywhere near enough and the fatigue was obvious on all of our faces.
By Sunday after church, Caleb had turned into a child I had never seen before, Curt and I were bickering over the dumbest things and I am pretty sure our oldest two were doing everything they could to blend into the back seats and not be seen.
Did I mention Caleb's head was spinning (shout out to the Exorcist)?
I looked everywhere for pods (shout out to Invasion of the Body Snatchers) but there were none in my immediate viewing area.
We made the enormously, most foolish decision of our lives at this precise moment. We went out to lunch with my parents.
We should have gotten something on the road and drove home. We should have buckled the kids in their seats, hit the road going south and not look back. We SHOULD have used common sense and employed the 15 years of parenting knowledge we have gained and GONE HOME.
Instead we went to Steak N Shake in East Peoria, where, had there been a staircase, Caleb would have been going down it in a backbend (shout out to the extended version of the original Exorcist).
The scene was straight out of "A Parent's Worst Nightmare" (I made that movie up), and Caleb and I were in the starring roles. Caleb did an excellent job of acting as the completely out-of-control, willful child. The tantrums he threw were award winning and the audience was thoroughly impressed.
My role as the sleep deprived mother was complete with 3 separate trips to the restroom to calm my child in a manner fitting of a woman who has had 4 children, complete with all the experience that brings with the job.
Upon our second trip to the restroom, Caleb was arching his back, trying to throw himself out of my arms repeatedly and yelling "no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no" at me, as if I were doing something terrible to him. As I stood in the corner trying to console him, I happened to glance between the cracks of the bathroom stalls and I came eyeball to eyeball with a little old lady, staring at me as if she had never seen this horror picture before.
My face turned beat red as I once again picked up my little bundle of joy and used every weapon in my arsenal to calm him.
After about 3 or 4 minutes (felt like 30) we were able to return to the table for 30 seconds where he AGAIN started screaming at his milk cup, kicked, screamed and was yelling at the TOP OF HIS LUNGS.
Back to the restroom we go.
Where said older woman is now washing her hands.
This time, I came armed with a diaper bag and went about changing his diaper as if THAT was the real reason I was in the restroom. She wasn't fooled. Caleb was finally calming down and I began to cry. Right there in the Steak N Shake restroom. Not just cry, I sobbed. I sobbed tears of failure as a mother that could not calm her child down. I sobbed tears of failure as a mother that could not console her child and be the arms of safety and comfort that he obviously needed. I sobbed in failure as a mother that had done the last thing she knew to do and had nothing left but to admit defeat and go eat her cold lunch.
That's when I saw the face of this sweet older woman come to me in love, wrap her arms around me and say, "Honey, we have all been there. I am a mom too and I know how you feel. You are doing just fine."
Know what I did?
I hugged her tighter and sobbed harder.
In the bathroom of Steak N Shake.
I cried until I had no tears left and she let me. When I was done, she patted my shoulder, grabbed her coat off the coat hook and walked out of my life.
But she will forever have a place in my heart for her kind words and loving arms that helped this tired mother feel like she had accomplished a great feat.
I picked Caleb up and he laid his head on my shoulder, we walked back to the table in a quiet truce, ate our lunch and finally headed south.
Never, ever underestimate what a little kindness can do. Never, ever underestimate what your words can mean to a person. This beautiful woman didn't pretend as if she couldn't see or hear Caleb's fits. She didn't mutter under her breath disgust at "children these days", she saw the situation, had compassion for me, and made a difference in my life.
Thank you kind, loving woman. You made this very tired and defeated woman feel like a good mother again. I will never forget your actions and I hope to pass that on to another battle worn mother one day.
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