Instinct and Forgiveness

Today was not my finest day. I had two instances that I did not handle well. First, Jocelyn was late to her dance class. Ben was supposed to get off work early enough to take her, but he hit traffic. Then it took forever to creep along the kiss-n-ride line to pick up Ava, and the other girl we take to the dance studio was even later still. I was so annoyed - I'm such a stickler for punctuality and hate to be late more than just about anything. So I did what any sane adult should NOT do, and screamed at the top of my lungs. In the car. With all three of my daughters watching confused as hell. (Our carpool was not in the car yet - at least I haven't lost it THAT badly.) I felt bad for setting such a poor example, but I just couldn't cope anymore and had to let off that little bit of steam.

Then coming home from dance, I got as close as I've ever come to being involved in a car crash. Out of nowhere the van two cars ahead of me slammed on his brakes and swerved onto the shoulder to avoid hitting the car in front of him. I have no idea why - traffic was slow but not stopped, and I didn't see anyone cut in front of this van. Regardless, his abrupt stop caused both the car ahead of me and I to brake hard as well, and I found myself veering to the shoulder to safely make the stop without hitting anyone. Needless to say, I was pretty shaken by the event. My children were trying to cope with it in their own way, of course. Ava said, "Wow, we were almost in a crash! It's a good thing we didn't crash. Wasn't that close to being a crash?" etc. I very curtly asked there just to be no talking the rest of the (2 1/2 mile) ride home.

I write all this to ultimately praise my children. They took my craziness in stride today. When I was losing it and throwing my temper tantrum. they knew better than to engage me. When I asked for quiet after our almost-crash, there was total silence the whole way home. At the end of the evening, I sat down with Ava and Jocie. I told them that I had made some bad behavior choices today and was sorry for that. Jocelyn immediately came and hugged me and Ava told me she forgave me. I don't know how these little people can be so resilient and understandng, but I hope to learn from them and become half as accepting and forgiving as them.