We have an interesting dynamic in our family. My daughter Sarah
is just five years older than her brother’s first child, Lucy. This age
difference means that the girls generally behave more like cousins than they do
an aunt and her niece. On the day after her 10th birthday, however, Sarah
decided to emphasize the generational difference in their roles. Her intent was
to be helpful. And she was. But it was not without conflict.
She volunteered to “supervise bedtime.” She was going to help
Lucy get a bath, brush her teeth, read books, and snuggle to sleep. While they
headed off to the kids’ bathroom, I went to take a shower of my own.
As so often happens, I stood under the stream of warm water and
mused about life. When we have a full house and my grown children are home with
their small children, it’s oh-so-easy to ponder what was and what became of it
all. I admit that in that shower the night after my baby’s 10th birthday, I was
doing a mental reconciliation of all my parenting hopes and aspirations and what
actually happened. And I was kicking myself a little.
As soon as I turned off the water, I heard the screaming. Lucy
was having none of Sarah’s plan. I shrugged on a bathrobe and hustled
downstairs, hair still dripping, and gathered Lucy onto my lap, where her hair
dripped together with mine to make puddles on the floor.
Sarah tearfully related to me that Lucy didn’t want to read
stories. She wanted to color princesses. But Sarah — older and wiser — knew
that reading stories was part of the bedtime routine. And the bedtime routine
was pretty much written in stone.
Sarah began to lament. “I’m so sorry. I was trying to do a good
job. It was all going so well. And now she’s yelling, and it’s just not turning
out right.”
I looked into the eyes of my daughter, and I talked to the woman
who was just musing in the shower.
“Did you do your best? Did you cheerfully try to get Lucy to
follow the good plan? Were you kind to her?”
Slow, sad nodding on the part of my littlest.
“Lucy, did Sarah have a good idea about bedtime? Did she help you
to do the right thing?”
Nodding and a considerable bit of dripping hair.
“But you didn’t want to? Because coloring in the sunroom seemed
like a better idea to you?”
Sniffling and dripping and nodding.
And then Sarah chimed in. “It’s all my fault. I wanted to do the
best job and be the best helper. I wanted to be a grownup since I’m 10, and I
wanted to get Lucy to bed all by myself. But now she’s yelling and waking the
babies and I’m crying.”
Welcome to being a grownup, I said silently.
Out loud, I said, “Sarah, you did your very best. It’s not your
fault that Lucy is sad. We all get to make choices. God lets us do that. Lucy
didn’t want to do what you wanted her to do. If she’s unhappy, it’s not your
fault. You can’t make someone be happy about the grownup choices. And you can’t
make them un-sad when their choices don’t work out. All you can do is the best
you can do to let her see how good your choices are.”
Also, when it is 8 p.m. the night after Halloween and you’ve
spent all day playing hard, no choices look especially good.
In the end, they took the princess pictures up to bed, where Lucy
colored while Sarah read to her.
And I sat there thinking about how hard some of us try to make
other people happy, and how sad we are when they are unhappy.
We can be sad about it. We can even try to offer solutions for
it. But we can’t own it. Because their choices and their consequences
ultimately don’t belong to us.
Do the best you can, mama. Be kind and be firm. Pray hard. And
rejoice that the same God who granted them free will is with them in both their
happiness and their unhappiness, and He sees you, too. He knows how hard you’re
trying, and all he sees is how well you love. If they’re sad, it’s not your
fault.
Foss, whose website is
takeupandread.org, is a freelance writer from Northern Virginia.