Apology
Posted on January 22, 2008
Filed Under marriage, kids, parenting, jealosuy, My Better Half |
I want to be funny today, after a long weekend, I’m thinking levity and tongue-in-cheek. But instead, there is some business I need to attend to. It’s my own sloppy, passionate fault that I let things rip here every now and again and people, namely My Better Half, get their feelings hurt. And so, today, I go about mopping up the mess I made on Friday. It’s an official apology that I utter. Something to assuage the sting of Friday’s post in which I lamented my role as care giver and resented My Better Half his most favored status.
On our way to dinner and mixed-doubles paddle tennis with friends he announced that my post was really, really hurtful and I was taken aback. I didn’t properly apologize, thinking, there in the darkness of a cold car on a Friday night, “Hey, wait a minute, I just announced to the world that our kids like you better than me. How does that deserve an apology?” But after an evening spent slamming the ball at each other across chilly courts, rough with friction, (I did hit myself in the head with my own paddle and also received a perfectly proportioned bruise just the size and shape of a paddle ball slammed directly at my upper thigh, so I’m feeling properly punished at this point), I came home and reread the hastily written post. And can admit that it was more than an admission that I’m second best. It was a suggestion that I am second best and he’s to blame for the status slip. And, upon dissection, I can say it’s really not his fault. I mean, what kid prefers the parent who insists on flossing their teeth and limits television viewing? Driven towards the fulfillment of some parental ideal, stuck on multi-vitamins and workbook lessons and non-sugar cereals, I have never been much good at fun.
While I might produce home baked goods of the chocolate chip variety, I’m not one for breaking out the aprons and letting the kids have hands on practice making cookie dough messes and licking the spoon. This weekend’s pizza making project was a good reminder that one parent needs to be able to appreciate the sloppy glee that is a child adding pepperoni and too much cheese and ushering the whole gluey mess into at 450 degrees oven for 15 minutes of breathless, noses-smashed-to-oven-window, waiting. It’s times like these that I can be found hiding in a well organized closet upstairs, avoiding the noise and the chaos and the flour cloud drifting head-high through the kitchen and out into the living room. I am fully ready to admit that my children are lucky to have a parent who can do these at-home kitchen projects even if it means we must replace cabinetry upon pizza completion.
I can admit that it is necessary and good that we have different roles and I can still long to switch it up every once in awhile. But My Better Half is essentially right when he says that I will never, ever just be able to let go and allow the kids to head off to school in whatever sloppy outfit they have pulled from messy drawers, without brushing teeth, with nary a pop tart in their stomachs. It’s not his fault that I expect collared shirts and neat hair and winter hats, a nutritious breakfast and a brown bag lunch packed with fresh fruit and some sort of whole wheat pretzels that will be thrown away in the classroom waste basket.
He is entirely right that this would be a home of staunch routine and superior nutrition and a total lack of joy without him. And so I’m sorry to have blamed him for the things that I cannot change about myself.
Comments
WordPress database error: [Can't open file: 'wp_comments.MYI' (errno: 144)]
SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_ID = '394' AND comment_approved = '1' ORDER BY comment_date
Leave a Reply
