Last week was rough. Daniel and I could not get our groove on, and though I should wake him up now, I'll let him sleep so we have fewer minutes in which to struggle over breakfast cereal, backpacks and teeth-brushing. Morning battles are rough, but at least they are time-limited, whereas our evening battles can last an eternity. In one of last week's evening tussles, Daniel threw a book on the ground, and it happened to be The Day Mom Quit, by Nancy Seghetti. One of D's former teachers gave him this paperback, which he doesn't like because it's "scary."
Of course the idea of Mom quitting scares young children, and I made the situation ten times worse by saying that I did want to quit, that if he could not listen to me that I was going to head for the hills. That spurred his tears, which made me angrier (at myself), and it took us an hour to rewind and get him to bed As I staggered downstairs, figuratively beating my head against a wall, I wondered why God saw fit to make me a parent. He must know what's right, but at times I doubt His judgment.
So I'm sitting on the couch arguing with God and wallowing in guilt when the older kids turn on "Modern Family." In that particular episode, Claire and her husband and three kids are trapped in a hotel room together (5th level of hell). Claire yells, curses, and finally purchases a secret room as her own private get-away, abandoning the kids and hubby to noise and squalor. She's discovered, of course, and endless jokes and laughs ensue. I caught myself comparing my yells and runaway attempt with Claire's, wondering if they would be funny and not dreadful in the context of a sitcom. How can we let the characters on TV get away with so much in the name of laughs, but find our smallest actions weigh us down with unbearable guilt? In my next life I'm coming back as a sitcom character . . .
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