An autumnal wind bites my cheeks under the shade of a grandmother willow, the afternoon sun warms the dark driveway, my young sons gleefully laugh as they race on their bikes, and geese honk overhead. I breathe in my favorite season. I exhale and open my book, pausing to appreciate the crocheted flower bookmark.
But before I can read a single word of The Richest Man in Babylon, utter calamity.
“ROGER, NO!” Screams my three-year old son, Marcus, at his younger brother. Then Roger’s eardrum-popping scream of defiance. I drop my book and run just in time to watch Marcus ram his black and yellow balance bike into Roger, knocking him off his small balance bike.
Roger doesn’t fall – I watch the ground sprint up toward him and collide with his head, as if Marcus’s rage summoned a tide of rock. Thank goodness for helmets. When I reach my little sons, they’re both crying. Marcus in frustration. Roger, from pain. His scratched, chubby hands shake as he reaches up for me. He wails, “Mama!” through heartbroken sobs, and tears fill his chocolate brown eyes.
I’m breathing heavy from my sudden sprint, but deep in my belly a familiar monster uncoils, and I hear my breathing become guttural. Animal. A wall of red descends over my eyes and the adrenaline in my system demands action, retribution. I don’t reach for my distressed 18-month-old boy. I prowl to the one who hurt him, rage making me tremble.
Let me add some context here, the kind that is only obvious if you’ve known me for several years, especially since childhood. This fury I felt toward Marcus? My beautiful firstborn, the one who made me a mother, who opens my world to the unending wonder he always sees in the seemingly mundane? While the anger is mine, it is mine through inheritance. Sadly, when I think about my dad, my memories are full of fear of angering him, the numbness I escaped into to survive his cataclysmic bouts of rage, or my own confused anger and love for this man I both idolized and despised.
By the time I entered ninth grade, the person who I became around Dad was only a device to mirror back to him what he expected of me. She earned excellent grades, had time-consuming extracurricular activities that would look amazing on her college applications, thought logically rather than emotionally, and always did whatever he asked. It was a show for him, to please him. I had to rediscover my own softness and interests when I started college.
He died five years ago, very suddenly, after a year of not speaking to him. I didn’t invite him to my wedding. Even though he missed my wedding, my biggest regret is how little he got to know the depth of my being, the breadth of my mountainous emotions, and the dreams I see peeking over distant horizons. I mourn not my dad, but the relationship we could have had my entire life if he hadn’t been so angry.
His anger grew in me, too. I’d discipline my younger siblings if he wasn’t present, in ways I had experienced at his hands or I unleashed ceiling-rattling screams if I thought they did something wrong. My anger grew after I realized who I was becoming and blamed my behavior on Dad. But the monstrous anger within me reached a blazing inferno when I finally admitted the truth: only I am responsible for my thoughts, emotions, and actions. In that awful moment of truth, I wanted to burn myself out of existence.
When I get angry, it burns hot and immediate, demanding a righted wrong and absolute penitence from the perpetrator. After seeing how awfully I burned loved friends, family, and myself, I decided my future children would never experience this monstrous, dark side of me. No child deserves such scary retribution from the person who gave them life. I chose then, years before I met my future husband, long before the idea of children became my reality, to be the loving mother my children deserved. I make this choice every day.
So now you’ll understand how terrified I felt, feeling this monster rising into my throat, words I wanted to yell at Marcus choking me, and my already half-raised hands clenching into fists.
But in all those long years of making the same choice every day to be the mother my children deserve, I’ve learned something invaluable: I know the calm I want in a situation starts with me. This is the hardest choice available to a parent in a heated situation with volatile, small humans with emotions so big I can’t comprehend how their bodies manage to hold them inside their skin. The ability to regulate your own emotions as a parent when your kid is having a meltdown and you’re in the midst of one yourself is the single most important talent a parent can develop. And I cannot think of anything harder to do, especially when I’ve had anger as a constant companion in my home and in my heart for most of my life
There’s some closure to be found in knowing my own dad faced this same impossible situation and simply decided it was easier to demand calm from his children instead of showing us how to calm down. That was his choice. But he made that choice at every opportunity; I can’t remember a time self-imposed stillness followed his eruptions of emotion. I can choose to show my kids how to calm their emotions, because humans are not volcanoes. Simply because I feel the mounting pressure of destructive emotion does not mean an eruption is inevitable. There is always space to choose. And if Dad made the wrong choice just about every time, then I will make the right choice. This time, and every time.
Since I didn’t have an example of healthy emotional regulation, in college I dived headlong into every book I could find about this branch of psychology and human development. I discussed my findings and struggles with my therapist. When I recognized healthy emotional regulation in people around me, I sought them out. By the time I became a mom and held Marcus on my suddenly vacant belly for the first time and his cries stopped the second he touched my skin and his newborn-black eyes stared into mine with absolute trust, I felt confident in my ability to regulate my emotions. But there’s a difference between taking practice tests and sitting for the final exam.
This recent autumn day is a difficult final. I sense my anger pointing at Marcus like a bloodhound. But I know what to do. I take a deep breath, imagining my exhale flowing down my legs, my feet and toes, strengthening the sensation of support from the ground. But still, it’s through clenched teeth I say, “Marcus, what happened that made you want to push Roger?” Marcus is inconsolable, hitting his fists on the driveway. His screams rise and I feel my whole body tremble in the anger I’m suppressing.
I try to redirect my need to act into something constructive. Roger is tugging on my pants, breathless from crying. I turn away from Marcus and pick up his brother, holding him tight, one arm supporting his legs, the other hand rubbing slow and firm circles over his shoulder blades. “Shh, shh, I’ve got you,” I murmur under his bike helmet. “Mama’s here, I love you, I’m sorry I didn’t pick you up right away, I love you.” I lose myself in the weight of him, his deafening cries in my ear, his perfectly Roger smell, and I look at jagged peaks in the distance. There is only me and Roger, and all I have to do right now is let him know I love him.
I kiss his scraped hands. The scratches aren’t deep, but his sobs are still full of pain. Then I hum, an invaluable trick I learned from My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakim that helps stabilize distressed emotional systems. I love the feeling of my bones vibrating the same rhythm as my boys when I hold them and feeling their hurts unwind. Roger’s head pops up after humming my love into him for a couple of minutes. The monster in me feels relaxed now, though still tense. I wipe Roger’s face, but he bats my hand away.
“Down,” he commands. I oblige. He brushes his hands off, picks up his fallen balance bike, mounts it, and takes off up the driveway like the Roadrunner leaving Wile E. Coyote in the dust. I sense Marcus, still crying behind me, start to run after his brother.
I aspire to remember what it is like to be a child. Everything is bigger in their view and their heart. At thirty, and with a very limited supply of journal entries from before my eighteenth birthday, I struggle a lot with stepping into such tiny socks and shoes. The only clear thought I have about being a child is stored with the freshly sharpened pencil smell of early first grade: “adults don’t get it.” I honor the young me by accepting this statement at face value.
Marcus runs past me, red Lightning McQueen helmet bouncing on his head, face scrunched in pain, and the truth hits me in the gut, further quelling the monster there.
I really don’t get it.
Whatever he experienced that made him feel hurting Roger was the best course of action? I don’t get it – yet. There’s nothing I want more than to understand the way my loved ones see the world and why, and that is most true for these amazing humans I am so lucky to mother and watch grow.
Marcus runs past me, and I hurry after him, picking him up the moment before he kicks Roger. He fights me, limbs flailing, but I have one arm wrapped around his legs and the other supporting his shoulders. I gather him in my arms like I did when he was new and I was so terrified I’d hurt him, and start to rock him.
“Marcus, I love you and want to understand what happened. Can you breathe with me? Can you use your words and tell me why you got angry?” More flailing. More screaming, but it sounds like he’s trying to say something. I squat on the ground and have him sit on my thigh, still holding him close.
“Hey, that was a good try. Let’s try again. Breathe out.” I force all the air from my lungs. He tries, but hiccups. “Breathe in.”After a couple more rounds, his breathing is steady. I give him a hug, tell him I’m so proud of him and love him so much, and again ask what happened.
“Roger didn’t want to follow me to the mountain!” Ah. Of course. Suddenly, I see what he must have seen, and his anger makes sense. He and Roger call a small ramp for their bikes “the mountain,” and it’s on a concrete patio behind the driveway. Marcus inviting Roger to go to the mountain was his attempt to play together and connect with his brother. Roger making it clear he wanted to stay on the driveway crushed Marcus because, at three, he struggles to see anyone else’s perspective.
We talk for a couple minutes about how sad it is Roger wanted to do something different, how we don’t hurt people even when we’re sad, and then make a plan for how Marcus can act the next time Roger declines an invitation to play the exact way Marcus wants to play.
“What’s a good choice you can make right now to show Roger you love him?” I ask.
“I can hug Roger and say sorry, Mommy,” Marcus says.
“What a good choice!” I say, squishing him in hugs and kisses. “I feel happy to see you apologizing because I love you both so much and feel upset when you hurt each other. And now you know how to make a good choice next time Roger wants to play differently than you do.”
As a happy heavenly bonus, by the time we finish chatting, Roger is going over the mountain. Marcus ended up getting what he wanted after all. But forty-seven seconds and one page of my book later and bike riding became forest exploration. Happily, I follow my boys into the woods. We’re discussing the beauty of a particularly interesting rock when Marcus suddenly hugs me and says, “Mommy, I looooove you.”
I smile. This is a game I taught him before he could talk. My dad only told me he loved me when I had accomplished something, or randomly saying “you know I love you, right?” instead of just saying he loved me. His question was more for his ego than any genuine expression of love; there was a wrong answer. Better to keep the peace than be emotionally vulnerable. The few times I felt Dad’s love left me desperate for his approval.
I resolved to tell my kids I loved them every single time I felt love for them, to shower them in my love. But I wanted it to become a ritual, a way for us to share our love freely.
I smile huge at Marcus. Knowing my part, I hug him back and say, “That’s amazing because I love you, too! Thiiiiiis much!”and I spread my hands as wide as they can go.
Marcus beams and says, “Mommy, I love you thiiiiiiis much!” He spreads his hands apart as far as he can and stands on his tiptoes.
“Really? That much? I am the luckiest mommy in the world to be loved by my Marcus!” And I hug him again, until he pulls away.
Roger is learning lots of words, but not enough to fully participate so he expresses his love during these tender moments with a running start. My job? When he jumps to me, catch him. Hold him close and kiss his big toddler belly while he laughs. When Marcus jumps on us, my job is to act like the Academy is looking for a new Best Actress and say, “Oh no! Aahhh! They got me!” and tumble in slow motion to the ground. Their breathless giggles crowd into my face and all I see are their loving eyes above wide smiles.
Those moments of laughs and chaos shine brighter than gold and silver in my memory because I know I am winning at nurturing my little men into people who can share their feelings with people they trust. I had little trust for my dad, and I am so sad he didn’t get to feel my unrestrained heart. From screaming tantrums to tender whispers of “Mommy, I love you thiiiiiiiis much,” I recognize the precious treasure my boys give me with the full force of their emotions. I don’t keep this knowledge or this treasure to myself. When they give me their heart, I thank them for telling me how they feel. I show them the gratitude in my heart, hoping my efforts to give like a little child will prepare me to give in the way of a preteen, a teenager, and a young adult. My job description will evolve as these boys grow too big for my arms, but they will forever make my heart burst – and that assurance is the most precious treasure I can give them.
Follow along on my Substack for more posts about being a bit better than our parents