Crazy Mom Turning Less Crazy

Months ago the scene below would have made me crazy – full on “Why can’t you leave my stuff alone?!?! I’ve been asking you for weeks where this is…” yelling, cabinet banging crazy.

Yesterday, it made me smile. Rylie was notorious for making things disappear and stashing them in hidden spots. Whether it was a tupperware with half-eaten strawberries, a glass bowl with her latest DIY face mask mix, my good tweezers, or a candy wrapper, we got to a point that if it was missing, we assumed it was somewhere Rylie had hidden it.

It was bad… So bad, that I bought a set of containers that I declared untouchable by anyone else in my family. Nothing got me fired up, like trying to pack my lunch only to find that I didn’t have any small containers to use.

So bad, that I often had to apologize to Rylie when I found that my brush had just landed underneath a pile of stuff that I was too busy to put away instead of being hijacked by her.

But it was a pattern too. A behavioral pattern that caused our family to have numerous discussions about honesty, and the perception of respect. These were good conversations, the kind we all need to have with our kids. They were also broken record conversations -there were days that I thought, “Man, if I never had to say this again…”

Someone recently told me, “You’ll never be the same person you were before she died”. It’s true, I’m not in so many ways – some good, some not good, but mostly just different.

I won’t say I’m a better person now because I smiled instead of going ballistic. Hardly, I still go ballistic when the video games or tv have been on for hours on end. Or when I pick up a pair of shoes for the 800th time.

I just have a reason to look at it differently. What I wouldn’t give to be able to “yell” at Rylie again.

I’m trying to tone down the ballisticness, though – now I might just slam one cabinet instead of all of them. My eyes still roll, but not quite as drastically. I still have my passive aggressive, snarky comments – there’s just a little less snark in them, or they come more slowly.

I’m a work in progress. We all are. Here’s the thing, tragedy doesn’t have to strike to help us grow or change.

What can we look at differently today? Can the pile of mysterious items that you uncover in a backpack make you think about the way it’s owner was always busy – busy helping, busy making, busy being – and just never wanted to stop to put the stuff away? Can it make you smile fondly at the realization that perhaps the apple didn’t fall from the tree and you have your own squirreling away tendencies? Can you slam one less cabinet, or say one less snarky comment? Just that one small change, may make a world of difference.