This was the kind of day these projects are all about. I wasn't bursting with gratitude, delighting in the possibilities of a shiny new month, the coming holidays. Today was Day 2, the comedown from yesterday's lovefest. Yesterday everyone was about grace and gratitude. This project was popping up all over FB and the web and my email and I felt so connected, so plugged in, so, well, grateful.
Today? not so much. Today flew by in a whirlwind of stopping and starting and unproductivity. Everything took longer than it should have - getting to work, getting work done, getting home in god-awful traffic. I was late gathering the girls, we still had to deliver dinner co-op food, the sun had set too quickly, I was cranky on the phone with dear husband. I was irritated and stretched and exhausted. And in the midst of this, I had to think, for what am I grateful?
I couldn't decide whether to be flippant, serious, or self-deprecating. The whole day has felt as such. What to do with myself under these conditions?
And then I read my Mama friend Shannon's lovely This I Believe essay, an example she used for her rhet/comp classes who are assigned the same task. Shannon believes in failure and what it teaches us. This is never more true than in parenting, the fertile ground on which she uncovers her belief. Just like her, I too used to believe I could get an A in parenting. Going back further, I used to believe I could get an A in anything: the degree program, the job, the relationship.
And I realize, right this very minute, that it is failure that has defined me most effectively. Oh sure, success has been great too, but the things I really like about myself right now at this age, in this life, have been brought forward by failure.
Mostly this is my ability to laugh at myself and the absurdity that surrounds me. My god, I used to take myself so seriously. I feared failure deeply, could never imagine embracing it. I cringe sometimes when I look at old photographs and see that strained and serious person looking back at me. She is so foreign to me. Right now? In this house covered with toys and jelly and dirty laundry? Failure and I are buddies. We hang out and tell jokes and get shit-faced together. And I realize that failing is a lot softer, a lot more gracious, than I ever realized. I realize (gulp) that I am grateful for failure. And that I actually like the person I see in pictures now, the one who fails all the time, who rolls with the punches and laughs a whole lot more. She is much wiser, much softer, more honest.
This morning, E threw her baby doll Daisy into the playroom. She flung her with a great rush of emotion and cried out when she did it, a raw, get-away-from-me sound. Before I could stop myself, I heard me saying, "Oh, we don't yell and throw our babies. Mamas don't yell at their babies." My heart sank. I was telling a lie and we both knew it. I immediately gathered her into my arms and nestled my face in her hair and revised, "Mamas shouldn't yell at their babies." I added quietly with my heart in my throat, "Mamas love their babies."
She graciously accepted my hug and then explained, "Well, little mamas yell at their pretend babies. And that's okay." And it is. Why, of course it is. Yell at that baby all you want, little one. But there it was again right out there in the open - my failure, looking at me with that lop-sided grin. I was caught once again in its wily and weirdly twisted sense of humor.
You suck, is what I thought. You have yelled at your very real baby. But I knew, still, that there was something bigger taking place. My seeing my failure, my three year-old seeing it with me, and the way it was defining this intimate connection between us in the rush of getting fed and ready on a rushed and cold morning.
And that is truly something to be grateful for.
