Sometimes I really don’t think I’m cut out for this.
Oct 06 '07
The Bottom Line Life is hard. I'm learning to accept that it's ok that life is hard.
Sometimes I really don’t think I’m cut out for this. Life can feel so overwhelming and it can be hard to really see what’s important and hold onto that vs. everything else. It’s so easy to get caught up in things that really have no long term meaning only to then be completely worn out when something that really matters comes along.
Take for instance tonight. My 9 year old is working on getting a head cold which is setting off his asthma for the first time in a year. He went into the kitchen to get a glass of water so he could take something for his sinuses. He grabbed his favorite glass. A small, clear glass with gold rim, panda bears and bamboo leaves. He held it for a second and it slipped out of his hand, bounced off the counter as it shattered into millions (ok, probably only thousands) of pieces onto the kitchen floor.
He stood completely still. Then his face turned red as the tears started. I immediately knew why he was crying yet my instinct was to protect my child. He was barefoot, standing on the kitchen floor which was now coated in broken glass. I had a quickly passing thought of picking him up and carrying him safely out of there. That passed as I have a bad back and my 9 year old is nearly five feet tall and just over one hundred pounds. So I sternly told him it was fine but not to move. I kept telling him not to move, to keep his feet in place as I went to his room and grabbed his shoes. He’s still crying. Not loud sobs, just silent tears streaming down his little face. I know why he’s crying.
He learned years ago that breaking something in our home does not mean punishment of any type. When he was younger, if something broke he would cry like a child from fear of what might happen, from shame that he had just done something terrible. I was grateful when he realized that accidents happen to everyone. We all break things, they’re called accidents. It happens and when it does we clean up the mess and move onward. But tonight was different.
That little clear panda glass was part of a set of 4 that his beloved Great Aunt Patty had kept in her home. His Aunt Patty taught him to read and tutored him beyond that. He adored her and during his weekly visits to her house they would always take a little break. During that break they would each have a small glass of soda with ice in these little gold rimmed panda bear glasses.
Aunt Patty passed away at the end of May 2006 after a tumultuous, quick and awful battle with cancer. Aunt Patty was not the first person in my child’s life to die, but she was by far the closest to him and it hit him deeper than even I had thought it would. Some nights, he’ll tear up and simply say, “I miss Aunt Patty.” So I knew why he was crying as that glass fell to the floor tonight.
Once he was out of harms way, in his shoes and I had cleaned up the broken glass he came to me, hugged me and cried. I told him it was ok. He said, “But I wanted the whole set.” I was right. It wasn’t about the glass; it was about who the glass had belonged to. It was about what the glass meant to him.
As I tried to comfort him in my arms and tell him that it was just a glass and that while we have the glasses and use them and are happily reminded of the Aunt we both loved, they aren’t her. Even if we didn’t have the glasses, we would always have her in our hearts, in our thoughts. We would always have our memories of her. As I tired to get the words out the tears began to fall down my own face and I had to pause. My son looked up into my eyes, saw my own tears and just hugged me more. I went on to explain how we are blessed to have things that remind us of our Aunt Patty, but that even without them we can still keep her close.
It’s just nights like this that I wonder. I have to believe everything happens for a reason. You could say that’s my way of getting through life. I don’t have all the answers, quite the contrary. In fact, it’s nights like this that really make me think Someone Else thinks more of me than I do myself. That Someone Else must know I’m stronger than I feel because often times I really don’t feel that I’m completely cut out for this.
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Member: Melissa S.
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