The keeping of commitments
“I need to go check my tooth!” Patch announced as we walked in the door from Kindergarten. He dashed upstairs to his room. I wasn’t really paying attention. I thought he might be running for a mirror to check on the progress of the wiggly tooth in his mouth. But then the crying started. Patch was in his room, with his pillow pulled back to reveal…nothing. “Mom, It’s gone!”
Thoughts cascaded into place. Something was missing from under Patch’s pillow. But he hadn’t lost a tooth recently. How long ago did he lose that first tooth? I remember writing about it being the last first tooth, but when was that exactly? A month ago? Two months ago? Why are we sad about it now? And then with a sinking feeling I realized that though I remember him losing the tooth, I do not remember ever replacing the tooth with money in approved tooth fairy fashion. In fact I remember forgetting the first night and promising to do better. But I must not have. I forgot. And he forgot. Until today, when he remembered to check. We found the tooth where it had slid under the bed.
“I’m sorry buddy. I’m not a very good tooth fairy. But you know what? I think that if you have to wait this long, you should get a whole dollar for that tooth.” The usual rate is a quarter. This pleases Patch.
“Can I keep the tooth?” he asks.
Of course he can keep the tooth. He can keep anything that will help this small rite of passage be a happy experience rather than a disappointing one. The first lost tooth and the magical appearance of money in exchange is one of those special moments of childhood. And I dropped the ball. I forgot.
When I was 13 years old my church youth group put on an Italian dinner as a service project. We were all to come dressed in Italian style clothes and I was assigned to bring the salad. I don’t remember how I occupied that day, but I do remember the last minute rush to get me to where I was supposed to be. I’d scrambled into my costume and arrived, breathless, apologetic for my lateness. My youth group leader simply asked where the salad was. I didn’t have it. I spilled over into more apologies and excuses, but she stopped me. I don’t remember her exact words, but I do remember standing in that kitchen, watching her pull salad fixings from her own fridge, and realizing with a sinking feeling that all the excuses in the world did not change the fact that I had been responsible for bringing the salad and I had not lived up to the responsibility. My leader salvaged the dinner I had nearly ruined, by stepping in to do the work that I should have done.
I know I have been busy these past few months, but all the explanations in the world does not change the fact that I forgot Patch’s tooth. If that were the only forgotten thing I would not feel so bad, but I just wrote a note of apology to Gleek’s piano teacher. I forgot to send Gleek to lessons several weeks in a row and then when I did send her she had not practiced. The result was pretty miserable for both Gleek and the teacher. Gleek will not be taking any more lessons until she wants them again. It may take several years before she wants them. The piano teacher has no idea what I am doing with my time. She does not know what I chose to do instead of requiring my child to practice daily. All the piano teacher knows is that I can not be reliably depended upon to help my child prepare for a weekly lesson. I fear my children’s school teachers have similar assessments of me. I fear their assessments are valid as I stare at a pile of worksheets that I never got around to making the kids do. It is fortunate that the one child for whom the grades really matter, has become very responsible about getting her own work done. I can’t go back and re prioritize. I don’t get a do over. All I can do is throw the worksheets away and plan to do better next year.
Don’t bother with excuses, take responsibility and make apologies. I’ve apologized to Patch about the tooth. I’ve apologized to all of my kids multiple times for all of the small times I was busy or distracted. The apologies soothe hurt feelings and provide closure, but for an apology to be truly effective, part of it must be a commitment not to do the same thing again. And so here I am, looking back and trying to figure out how to do things differently. I chose the projects that made my life so psychotically busy. I don’t regret those choices and the business opportunities that the choices will bring. But I need to also look squarely at the results of the choices so that I can plan for the future. In this case the damages are minimal. Our family has experienced some minor erosion due to extreme busy-ness. It will take a some repair effort to return the structure to its previous sturdy state. I need to make sure that the future holds repair and renewal rather than continued erosion.
In all of this I think the greatest damage was done inside my own head. Ever since that lesson I received as a 13 year old girl, I have been silently determined to be both dependable and reliable. These things are part of how I define myself. When I agree to do a task I want the other person to know that it will get done. This is all fine until I enter the area of implied agreement. When I put my kids into public school, I am giving the school and the teachers power to put tasks onto my To Do list. They assign homework and schedule events, both of which I am expected to support, no matter what else may be on my schedule. I attend a church which relies heavily on volunteers and social activities to run. The church often puts things onto my To Do list without explicit consent from me. Schlock Mercenary depends upon fans and customers who are all free to email and make requests without my prior consent. By participating in the larger organization I am giving implied consent to an endless stream of small To Do items. I can eschew the To Do lists, but not without injuring the social structure upon which these organizations rely. If I stop answering customer support emails, then the customer base will wither. If I stop attending church functions, then I will cease to be tied into that community. If I don’t come to my kid’s school events, I have failed to support that event and that child. And so this spring I had a perfect storm of things I had explicitly agreed to do and things I had implicitly agreed to do. I had 27-30 hours of stuff for each 24 hour day. It was impossible for me to accomplish it all, and so I didn’t. Now I am surrounded by evidence of commitments I failed to fulfill. This makes me feel quite bleak, particularly when the commitments are in high priority categories like “Nurturing the Children.”
I am left with the question “If I am not reliable, then who am I?” It is not a helpful question, but it looms in my head nevertheless. The need to scale back is obvious and already under way. But the emotional rebalancing is taking a bit longer. It took me this long to identify the effect these broken commitments were having on my emotional state. I will be very grateful for a fresh start next school year. In fact the fresh start begins tomorrow as we enter into the summer schedule.
This afternoon I spent 90 minutes just hanging out in the back yard with my kids. Patch and Gleek were in need of distraction, so we wandered around and picked flowers. Then we discovered that rosebud petals make beautiful little boats. We soon had a regatta of rose petal boats crewed by forget-me-not sailors crossing a sea of lawn. The last bleeding-heart flower was given a bachelor button hat and declared to be the queen. Kiki joined us and showered me with white flowers from the snowball bush. It was all very light-hearted which is not something I have been much of late. I could see the kids unwinding, just glad to have me there with them. Patch may always remember that mom forgot his first tooth under his pillow. I hope he will also remember the rose petal regatta, or something like it. It will give him a very real view of his human mother who sometimes fails at her commitments, but picks up again and tries to do better.
