Living in the Grey

Have you seen the, ‘I just want to be the person my dog thinks I am” memes?

Come on, you have. They look like this;

Or this;

I have my own personal mantra starting now. “I just want to be the person

I'm raising my daughter to be”. Case in point, library day!

We go every three weeks to return and replenish. But let’s be honest; you rarely see the shit side of kids like in a library where there are 1,000 rules and most of them involve whatever the opposite of a toddler is. Be quiet, don’t touch all the things, no running. It’s like taking a kid to an antique store. There’s a certain level of torture involved in that.

Now we generally b-line for the kids’ section where those rules are a little more slack but still. Aurora does best if I’m prepared with snacks and water in the car, keep it short, and go as shortly after her nap as possible. All of which we did yesterday.

But something happened as we were lugging our books, Chicco car seat stroller with a sleeping Jubilee in it, and the toddler training toilet that Aurora insisted we haul into the library bathroom, back to the car. There was a fellow library warrior with her little charge, a boy of about 6, having a conversation ala ‘gentle parenting’ on the sidewalk. She had him firmly by left arm, and was so gently explaining that they had to leave the library because though his energy level was perfectly acceptable for something like the park, it wasn’t working in the library. He was lunging and jerking away from her, attempting to fly some sort of airplane toy in the air with his right hand, and ignoring every word that came out of her mouth. He kept exclaiming that he just wanted to run, at which point, she said very calmly that she was happy to let him run to the car (it was clear the parking lot was free of moving vehicles) but that he was to stop there, rather than continue up the embankment and straight into the somewhat busy street right in front of the library. She let go of his arm and he did exactly what she said not to do. Straight up the embankment and straight towards the road. This poor mama shouted for him to stop and tore off after him – thankfully, he stopped about 2 feet from the road. She got a hold of him and escorted him back to the car. As he fought her down the embankment, he spotted my kiddos and l lugging that training potty back to the car. This kid pointed, laughed and asked in a somewhat mocking manner, "why do they have a potty!?" At that moment she and I were facing each other. We made eye contact. Her deadpan stare all but screaming "don't you dare judge me".

I tried my hardest to communicate “I’m not” with my eyes, but fuck man. That was hard to watch. It was right then that Aurora looked up at me and said,

“He’s not being very nice to his mama”.

Yikes. Even my two and a half year old could see this kid was acting like a little asshole.

What I wanted to say was, "RIGHT!? Jeez louise that kid. I'm glad you don't ever act like that in public!"

But she most certainly does in private, I am here to tell you. And is that any different? Does that make my parenting any better than that poor beleaguered woman at the library? Or does it make my child any better than the poor beleaguered 6 year old who'd had enough of "sit still and be quiet"?

I've been talking a lot with my husband about my own black or white morality. Now I can sit here and theorize about where it comes from - my upbringing in a fundamentalist Christian culture, my identity as a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps white American, my sun sign (where my Leo's at!?), or my Myers Briggs (INFJ-T) but that's not the point.

The point is, like the apostle Paul, I exist at the tension point between spirit and flesh. I have a spirit that says,

and a mind that often says,

These are not congruent thoughts my friend! One comes from my spirit, the other comes from my flesh (though to be perfectly frank, don't be a dick).

What I did say to my daughter as I buckled her into the car seat was,

"I appreciate that you noticed that little boy wasn't being a very good listener and that he almost got himself hurt. I'm sure that scared his mama a lot, and I'm so grateful that you are a good listener in public because it keeps you safe. But we don't know what kind of day that little boy is having. Maybe he's hungry, or tired. We don't always act our best when we are hungry and tired either. I hope he gets his needs met and he and his mama can have a good rest of the day".

I just wish that had been my first thought. Instead, I had to do some mental gymnastics the entire walk to the car in order to formulate that response. And sitting here now I'm still not sure that's what I really think. But I wish it was.

Because what I really want is to, "be transformed by the renewing of my mind" (Romans 12:2) so that I naturally emulate the kindness and mercy that I'm trying to instill in my kids. I want to be a person whose thought life is bent towards seeing the other side of the story or making room for the space between my own version of right and wrong for the vantage point of others.

I want to live in the grey.

I want to be a person that appreciates the traumas we all carry.

I want to be the person I'm raising my daughter to be.

And I fear the day she realizes that while I taught her to be compassionate first, to ask questions before coming to conclusion, to make room for other people's different moral codes; that the entire time I've been screaming "just go to therapy already and stop trauma dumping on all of us!" to just about... well just about everyone.

Perhaps by the time that comes around she will be able to teach me a thing or two.

And hopefully, I'll be able to listen.