Day: December 7, 2010

Today has been a fairly good day. True, Kiki was a little emotionally fragile, but she handled it well. This is often the case when one person is emotionally off balance. The real excitement begins when two or three or six of us are all teetering, trying to hang on to rationality with the tips of our fingernails, and crashing into each other. We’ve had more than our fair share of crashing emotional conflicts this fall. The feminist in me is frustrated to admit that most of them centered around one or more of the females in our house. I do not think that this is due to our female-ness. We’re just the ones struggling to find balance. Howard has struggled a bit too. My sons are both ensconced in secure places and I pray that they stay there until the rest of us get sorted out.

Kiki’s frustration this evening is centered around her art. She feels stuck and all the solutions she can see require time (which she does not have to spare) or money (which she does not have at all.) She curled up in my lap and spilled her woes. I sat and listened, doing my best to just accept her feelings without feeling guilty for not fixing the problem. The minute I begin thinking about how I ought to have done something differently so that Kiki wouldn’t feel stuck, I have preempted her emotional experience and turned it into something which is about me. (Yes I do that. Far too often.) The conversation wended around in circles for a bit. Then I said:
“You know, the fact that we’re having this conversation means that things have already begun to get better. You have time and energy enough to feel frustrated, which is an improvement over the way things have been lately.”
Kiki quirked her eyebrows at me the way she does when I’ve said something for which she has no context. “That’s a weird way of looking at it.”

I suppose it is, but it also feels true. I feel like I’ve finally reached a place where life can slow down a little. We have whole weeks where we don’t host Clash of the Crises Part N. I finally have space in my brain to anticipate and head off the imbalances before they reach crisis level. I can organize the house and plan. Though I confess that my plans did not start with defrosting the freezer that was left open over night by someone undetermined. My plans are destined to be rearranged and that is okay too.