A Christmas Lesson

On Christmas night, after we'd spent the day drinking mimosas (adults) and orange juice (kids) in our pajamas while playing an endless stream of board games, we sat around the bar in the kitchen answering questions from this gift Santa brought for the family.

The questions are interesting and it's a good way to hear what your kids think about things (and an easy way to slip in your own indoctrinations if you wish). Of course, Max's answers are usually incredibly simple: "Monster Trucks" are the answer to just about anything he needs to think about. Madison's answers make her sound a little like a Miss America pageant contestant.

"If I could be any animal for a day, I would be a dog because dogs are cute and do great tricks."

It was still fun and we kept playing over our Christmas dinner and "What do you wish you could erase from your past?"

There's a big fat Matzo ball on the table. There's something to be said for being up front with your kids but then there's also something to be said for giving kids information they can handle when they can handle it. Like maybe an 8 year old doesn't need to hear that her mother wishes she could erase pretty much her entire childhood.

A-hem.

So I said I wished I could erase my tattoo, which is unfortunately (and unintentionally on my part) the fucking Procter and Gamble corporate logo. I love Pampers as much as the next guy but not enough to carry around their parent company's logo on my ankle for the rest of my life. Live and learn I guess.

It came around to Madison then and her answer was so emotionally revealing and honest and very, very sad, if someone in the Table Topics board room had come up with this idea for a commercial during a brainstorming session, everyone would have rolled their eyes and said, "That's totally unbelievable. No family is that schmaltzy."

But The Summers are that melodramatic!

"I wish I could erase this one day in second grade. I'm kind of embarassed to talk about this....I had a substitute again [she had a LOT of substitutes in second grade and it was really hard for her] and when you dropped me off in the morning I followed you out the door to the car because I didn't want to stay. And you had to bring me back in and the substitute had to hold onto me so I didn't run back to you. I'm sorry I did that."

And she started to cry and I felt about 2 inches tall because I remember that day. I remember how frustrated I was with the morning drop off routine. And how little patience I'd had for the crying after 3 years of it. How every time she cried when I dropped her off I questioned my decision to send her to school as a young 5 (her birthday is 3 weeks before the cut off). I questioned her sense of attachment to me and what I'd done wrong that made her think she couldn't be away from me for a few hours.

The crying at drop off brought out all my fears that I'd failed her as a mother.

And her fear of going to school made her feel like she'd failed me as my child.

I thought I felt like a shitty mother because she was afraid of school but wow, I found a new level of feeling like a shitty mother when my daughter told me she was sorry she was afraid.