What’s that, you think you may have seen us the other night? Well, it’s hard to say.
We may or may not have left the school Christmas concert in the first five minutes because our six-year-old refused to perform with her choir, because she got there late, because in spite of an entire day’s worth of planning and organising on my part that included micro-managing the toddler’s nap, booking specialist appointments for a relative, driving a family home from school who don’t have a car, entertaining Bill’s parents, and having a roast dinner cooked by six it somehow got all fucked up.
And Bill may not have rung to let me know that actually he decided to work back at the office that evening and so wouldn’t be there like I expected to help with getting everyone fed and bathed and to the Christmas concert that night, and oh, sorry he didn’t let me know earlier.
And then we may or may not have run into Bill arriving even later at the school Christmas concert than we may have been ourselves, and just when everything was going to shit, and I may have been marching our howling daughter out of the concert with an enormously heavy two-year old on my hip at the time. Maybe.
And I may or may not have glared at Bill while whisper-yelling to him that we’re leaving can’t you see, thanks a bloody lot. I may or may not have been ever so slightly guilting our daughter out at the same time, too, like a shitty parent does – just once I would like to see you perform in a school Christmas concert instead of trying to shush you while you have some kind of meltdown with everyone staring at me, and why can’t we be the normal family for once. Bill may or may not have helpfully said at precisely that moment well, you did get her here late, I’m just saying, it isn’t her fault and come to think of it, isn’t mine either.
And that may or may not have led to some angry words from me, in the carpark, right outside the school concert hall, while storming past some loser dad escaping to smoke pot with teenagers who didn’t even blink an eye at our possible row right there. (Because when you are loser enough to be doing that shit on school grounds you may have participated in your share of domestic arguments before, I guess, but it may have also saved us from feeling like we were the most dysfunctional parents there that night).
So, maybe that was us you saw, maybe.
jebus
poor you
I would be saying no to any public appearances or performances for that one for a while
she’s not ready
She’s not ready… or I’m not ready?
Spirited introvert child but yay! she overcame some of this and in the same weekend managed to perform with her circus class in front of an audience of several hundred parents, astonishing me, so hooray hooray for the little button. Very brave.
Take a deep breath before reading (or click away) cause what follows is really opinionated and gratuitous, and possibly a bit invasive:
By ready, I mean ready to overcome how she feels about it, and do it anyway because she owes it to you to repay the effort you went to to get her there, and it was only five minutes.
That requires quite a lot of emotional maturity – of empathy, which is not an automatic emotion. It is quite a lot of ask of a young child. But it is what was needed.
It sounds like this is not the first time you have had an issue like this. She can perform, sure, but not when the stakes are raised too high, like when you are all of five minutes late. Or that is the impression you gave.
When you arrange the entire evening of the family around something she wants to do, when you have to deal with high levels of stress to make it happen, she has to be able to follow through. Five minutes late is too easy a failure. Especially after that series of unfortunate obstacles.
You are not ready to squeeze all those things into one evening, with an extremely tight deadline, without getting stressed. But you probably never will be. I wouldn’t.
The stakes got too high.
It sounds like she isn’t ready to perform when the emotional weather is stormy.
And she isn’t ready to just do it anyway, even if she has gone right off the idea, cause she knows Mum went to a shitload of trouble to get her there.
And she isn’t ready to see five minutes late as a minor thing, and not nearly as big as getting dinner on the table.
And she isn’t ready to understand that the whole shebang becomes meaningless if she doesn’t do her little bit by getting up on stage with the choir, so she owes it to everyone who made an effort to get there for her to do it anyway.
These are big things to understand. It would not expect it from her, at her age. But I think they need to be in place before an evening like that can be survived without drama.
On the other hand, you can learn a lot through witnessing a major meltdown in the car park that happened because you didn’t do your bit in the choir.
Maybe she has learnt that lesson now.
So brave! Hooray for her.
I had a good laugh at the whisper-yelling. Thanks for this post!
Bill should be glad he isn’t my partner. I would be LIVID if my husband did that to me.
Hah! I played that down waaaaay too much if I did’t give the impression of livid, there was so much yelling and stomping off in that carpark, so much. It was not our family’s shiniest moment.
omg, I love this post so much.
Righteous anger for the win!
I don’t think ‘normal’ families have kids that perform perfectly every time. God I remember some big ‘walk offs’, not that I was normal, but there were : stopped swimming mid pool and had to be rescued (5), refused to join in soccer when we moved and that was the end of team sports for me for 10 years (really think dad should have persevered, it was just shyness), walked out of a judo demonstration when I was paired with a girl (sorry, yes, but I was a 9 year old brat and girls had germs etc… I have little doubt she felt the same way!) …. g’luck =)
Oh my Gawwwwwwd. Congratulations on not killing anyone in this scenario. I’m glad Lauca made it through the next performance.
“well, you did get her here late, I’m just saying, it isn’t her fault and come to think of it, isn’t mine either.” ??!
Bill was unbelievably, breathtakingly callous-and-irresponsible. It WAS his fault because he was not there, did not ask you if you could rearrange everything to go without him, did not even call you until Too Late.
Tooooooootally.
Fantastic, I’m not the only mother incandescent with rage at some stage during the festive season (said after dragging two children to daycare, stopping off at the shops on the way home for some Gumption to scrub walls before the real estate agent came for the inspection, then off to my volunteer job, then via the post office on the way home to get the parcels, then home to make a “plate” for the daycare Christmas party, which I’ll be going to via a friend’s house to drop off her co-op fruit & veg. Bleep me, it’s barely midday.)
As far as I’ve ever seen, there is one mother in the world who is never incandescent with rage at some point in the holiday season, and the better I get to know her the more I think her incandescent is just under a layer of very, very, quiet and calm
Heh – Incandescence – the new holiday must have.
I am sending my Mr off to preschool concert tonight on his own – must warn him not to be late! Not that I will be having a fantastic evening – partying down with baby and toddler, who will be angry that they are not out too, and won’t want to go to bed without Daddeeeeeeeee.
righteous anger.
I had a very similar day on Saturday. Luckily, the kids were being uncharacteristically cooperative and the baby slept through all of it, so I was able to hold it together when DH arrived late at the kids’ holiday party for HIS office and said “thanks” instead of “sorry.” I didn’t fucking do it all by myself for YOU, I did it for the kids because I didn’t see why they should miss out just because he wouldn’t act like part of the family.
I can’t stand the stupid concerts for kids who are too little to perform ( like monkeys/dogs?) Should be opt in for the extraverts and everyone else – optional on the night.
Neither of my kids liked being in these sorts of things and the younger would get very anxious until I said to him : ” you know NO-ONE will be looking at you AT ALL – everyone will be staring at their own child the whole time. So it’s only Dad and I who’ll be looking, anyway.” This got him through and I remember one where he found me in the audience and he did not take his eyes off me the whole time, but he did it.
I think you were right to pull the plug that night though – the universe was against you.
Was it a full moon? Heh.
And now Bill is baking biscuits for all the teachers & childcarers in your lives right?
Yes, is it a full moon? Finally got around to having The Talk with husband about the increasing inequality of the domestic work in the last few years. Not completely sorted, but at least he is beginning to listen.
Have just told MyNigel that he has to take our son to work on Tuesdays during the holidays, when our daughter has a daycare day so I can have a day off. (MyNigel is away on and off for the next fortnight so I am doing all end of year stuff and juggling work and afterschool). I started laughing half way through though.
If I had been in your shoes, they would have been able to hear me over the concert.
Excellent. Very familiar scenario. Look Blue Milk, I am with you — if in fact that WAS you & your family in the car park out front that ES having a Situation the other night. A true personal anecdote, rendered here now in utter solidarity:
My (now former) husband was notorious about hanging me up in the manner you describe. Even in this day and age, so many men — men who are late-era Boomers and therefore presumably “OK” with the idea of “sharing” child-raising responsibilities, especially if the Wife actually WORKS TOO — engage in subtle, insidious passive aggressive crappy behavior such this. They often do it and then quite adeptly “flip the script” to put you on the defensive, as in, “Hey, YOU said you wanted to [fill in the blank, Have a kid but also work or work from home or stage a bday party for 20 kids, etc., and I only said I MIGHT be available to assist], as if they are not actually obliged to participate fully. It takes a “special” kind of “man,” one who tends to be immature at his core (yes, if this is the case, feel free to call it for what it is) but also heavily invested in always APPEARING to be the “Good Guy.” I pray, Blue Milk, that your Hubby does not fall into this category.
So — We were living in Boston. Our daughter was 2 years old. I worked from home, he worked at the local newspaper, as its mid-level city desk editor. We’d made plans to attend a “company party” being held at the home of a top editor who lived in an inner-ring ‘burb. This meant that I had to arrange for a babysitter to come to our home, so that I could pick up Hubby at the paper, and then drive to the party, which was set to begin at 6:30pm. I made the arrangements, and arrive at the paper at the appointed time. Phoned Hubby from the lobby — only to be told that an “important” story had just developed and that he would be delayed. Now: I am a Newsperson too, and as he described it, I knew instantly that the “development” was one easily handled by a subordinate editor. I reminded Hubby that A) it would take us 30 minutes to drive to the party and B) we only had babysitter on tap until 8 or 8:30….and C) that I rarely had any opportunity for weeknight socializing, as he usually returned home from work AFTER our daughter had been put to bed, around 8pm or so.
Couldn’t he please just leave the newsroom and come along to the party, monitor the “developing story” via cell? Long story short: We arrived at the big editor’s party in Newton nearly 90 minutes after it had begun; we had a rip-roaring argument in the car on the way there — Hubby insisted that I was “out of line” for suggesting he “bail out on an important story,” while I pushed back and insisted that HE was “out of line” for being unwilling to hand off the story to an underling, while keeping track of its progress via remote. Then, at one point during our short spin at the party, I burst out in tears and was led from the punch bowl table by the paper’s Managing Editor, who brought me to an ante-room, and talked quietly with me until the Storm passed.
Moral of this story?
If that WAS you all arguing in the car park out front of the school, your husband is quite lucky that you didn’t hand the two kids off to him, and peel out into the night alone in that car.
I promise Bill is not a dick. He very generously let’s me write what I like about him here, which is a big gift for someone so private, and I am increasingly aware that mostly I write about our arguments (and I think it is so important to talk about that on a feminist motherhood site) or funny things he has said, both of which might make him sound arsehole-ish, and I don’t write enough about all the mushy, lovely moments we have (because I guess I am a bit private about that stuff) and the ways in which he works hard to achieve some sense of equality with me in our relationship. He has a profound respect for my feminism, I need to acknowledge that, too.
It’s a fine line blue milk and I think you walk it well. I know when my RL girlfriends whinge about their husbands they are just letting off steam but I also get the other side of the story where they are happy that hubby has not only picked up the slack but practically pushed them out the door for some ‘me’ time. You might not say much about Bill, but the photos say a lot.
What I’m trying to say is that the love shines through.