Bill and I take a get-lost trip every year. Two years ago we went through North Dakota. Last year we went to South Dakota. This year we decided on Wisconsin. Just the two of us. For four days. Let’s see - take one nine year old with endless energy, and an almost 49 year old with great, but not endless, energy. Mix them together for three days, and what do you get? Fatigue. I just wanted to rest for one hour, after a full day at the waterpark. I told Bill I wanted to just rest for one hour before we went out again. It was hot, humid, muggy, and really really sunny. Bill wanted to go to the arcade. Okay, I said, just take your phone and keep in touch. 10 minutes later he called and said the arcade was through the parking lot and he didn’t want to walk outside there alone, and could I please come walk with him. I grit my teeth, proud that he’d called me instead of going off to do something potentially dangerous, and started walking with him. Across the parking lot to door 9. Where do we go? I asked him. He turned right, and started curving back around from where we’d come. Now, the Wilderness Hotel is REALLY huge, with six waterparks IN the hotel, so this walk was the equivalent of about 1/2 mile, and remember, I’m tired, hot, and muggy.
I stopped halfway back around, walked outside again, and as I briskly walked BACK toward door 9, I said loudly to Bill, “and don’t even try to tell me you know where the arcade is,” as I walked back IN door 9 to look for directions. Sure I apologized later, but as I think back on it (and I can’t stop thinking about it), that was about the stupidest thing I could have ever said to my nine-year-old. What in the hell did I hope to accomplish by saying that to him? Open the dialogue between the two of us? Bring us closer? Make him feel so ashamed that he’s only nine and somehow not able to totally take care of himself? What kind of a mother am I? I’m ashamed of myself.
Bill told me last night that when I said that to him he hung his head a little (I didn’t see as I was storming fast ahead of him). I suggested that he may tease me about it later, say when we’re in the car and I’m lost. He could say, “And don’t even try to tell me you know where we’re going.” “No,” he says solemnly, “two wrongs don’t make a right.” I explain that if we make a joke about it I won’t feel so badly, but he says that’s not right to hurt me back, when I hardly ever say anything hurtful to him. I try to explain that it isn’t hurtful if we make a joke about it. I’m desperate to be exonerated, anxious for atonement for this horrible act of lapsed understanding, but my relief doesn’t come. I’ve said it, and I can’t take it back. I know the moral is to just watch what comes out of your mouth and don’t say it if it’s hurtful.
But in that moment of fatigue, resentment, and heat, I saw myself as something separate from normal. It was almost as if I couldn’t help what I said as I weighed my words and decided to say them anyway. I knew I was wrong, I knew it was bad… and I said it anyway. And now I regret it. Yes, you can never take anything back, and in the back of my mind I think that if that’s the worse he ever hears from me that’s still doing pretty well, but still. I told him it was my fault for not taking better care of myself. I reminded him that if people are happy they aren’t mean. I told him that I tried to do everything he wanted to do on the trip, but that it’s hard to be the only one in charge the whole time. And I know he understands. He says, “Life can’t be perfect. There have to be bumps in the road,” and I can hear him carefully choosing his words to say the right thing. Why can’t I do that all the time? Why the lapse? Am I really angry at Steve for not wanting to come along, for wanting to just be at home? Probably. But why punish Bill for that? It’s not his fault that he has old parents. Well, I’m not really old, but old-ish. Certainly with less energy than I had 20 years ago.
What is the point of my pain? That this is Bill’s only childhood, and I want it to be golden for him. He doesn’t have any siblings at home, so what does he have? I’m sorry, Bill - I apologize in advance for anything that’s not perfect, or sweet, or kind. I apologize for every mean thing I say, no matter my reasons. I apologize for you not having siblings close in age. I apologize for not playing catch with you every night, or for organizing outings with your friends enough. For all of those things, and anything else I may have missed, I apologize. I always do the best I can, and the hard part is that I expect perfection from myself. I hope I don’t pass that on to you, because humans are messy things. We do messy things and say messy things, and in general just mess up sometimes. But we’re all really good, and sweet, and ever hopeful that next time we’ll do better. And I know we will, sweetie - I just know it.