soapboxdiner

There are no excuses

Here we are again, Sunday night. The child is in bed asleep and the peace is wonderful. Quiet.

Today was incredibly beautiful in that way that only sunny early spring days can be, when your skin jumps at the sight of the sun and tingles when it's touched by its warmth.

This weekend was Find a Sewing Machine weekend. After purchasing a cheap-o starter machine and bringing it home Saturday to find that the guider plate jumped with each down stroke of the needle, and that when the stitches weren't getting missed, the feeder foot ate the material, it was returned to the store and replaced with a different machine that cost twice as much. So worth it. We came home and I turned an old, outgrown T-shirt into a pair of pants for an action figure that has worn duct tape for underpants for the last year. He even has a built in cumberbun.

I got the kid a kite Saturday, which promptly fell apart in the wind. I fixed it with superglue. The child and I then went back out to test the handy work. The kite just as promptly broke its supports when it bumped into the car in the driveway. Steven cried and I attempted to console him with promises to go back out Sunday to replace the defective kite with a better one. I hugged him and he told me he would never have a kite again. He whined and stuck his lips out and slammed the doors and pounded the ground until things fell off the walls and my ears started to bleed. Then my brain exploded the way it does when he throws tantrums like that.

I told him if he needed a reason to act that way, I would oblige him with one, and in a fit of hazy blurry blinding anger and irritation and Jesus Fucking Christ, I Cannot Take All This Stress and Noise and Unproductive Negativity That Refuses To Let Even One Day Go By Without A Tantrum Even When I Breathe Deep and Try To Be a Good and Loving and Understanding Mommy Who Consoles Her Baby Who Then Calms Down and Acts Human, I grabbed a hanger and spanked him with it.

I have turned into Mommy Dearest. Dear God, when did that happen? How, when just eight years ago I threw away everything I knew to become a mother to this child, could I have changed into a person who loses control and beats him? And look at him and say, I alone am responsible for moulding him? For giving him his security and love? For teaching him everything from the importance of brushing him teeth every day to showing compassion to persevering in adversity and facing challenges with ingenuity and humor and honor?

It's all too much, too unending, too without support and too all alone. Sometimes, anyway.

I would pledge to be better and provide him with what he deserves, but I know he will throw another tantrum. I knew I will spin under the vertiginous rise in blood pressure it causes. I know it because that is who I am. I need stoicism and pragmatism at home. I need it level. He, on the other hand, has only me to teach him emotional balance. And he is a child of intense presence and emotion.

I have no answers. Besides knowing that I'm the grown up, even when he storms and I am reduced to a ball of mommy rocking in the corner screaming I can't take this anymore! Or a mommy who is only able to assert herself as mommy with an instrument of abuse.

Fucking insane.

9:37 pm - 02.22.04
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