“Patience is the companion of wisdom.”
Saint Augustine
Pip and Fig both have miserable colds at the moment. Neither of them are sleeping well, which means that I, too, am overtired. By about 4:00 pm yesterday, I noticed that my patience was disappearing. Pip was riding her new bike in the back alley and Fig had decided she didn’t want to walk, so I was carrying her. Pip needed a slight push every once in awhile after breaking, but she was also afraid of going too fast, so she wanted me to hold the handlebars occasionally to slow her down. It had been an afternoon of, “No, Mama, you don’t have to push me anymore…Mama, I need you to push me…NOSE BLOW Mama!!!” and “Mama, DON’T let go I’m going too fast!”
I’d interject with, “That’s not the way you speak to Mama…what’s the magic word…and, how could you ask nicely?” Needless to say, by the time my husband got home from work I was ready for a break. I passed Fig over to Daddy-O and my arms felt so light I thought they would float right off my body. The four of us spent another twenty minutes in the back alley together, then I said, “I’m going to go inside and start dinner, you girls stay outside with Daddy and I’ll call you in when it’s time to eat.”
A few minutes after I had entered the house, Pip came into the kitchen. “Mama, I came to help you with dinner.”
“Sweetie, you should stay outside and get some fresh-air. You haven’t seen Daddy all day!”
“NO Mama! I want to be with you,” she whined.
“Well Pip, I’m talking to your Auntie on the phone right now and it’s good for us to have a little break from each other.”
“I DON’T NEED A BREAK FROM YOU!!!” She was crying now. I had hurt her feelings. She was sick and tired, and I was tired too. I hung up the phone, dried her tears, pulled her into a hug and she calmed down.
After a moment, she pulled away from our embrace to say, “Are you ready to be a good Mama now and let me be around you?”
Nice.