Sometimes as mama hens, we have to step back while our little chicks figure things out on their own.
It’s not easy learning that life is not fair, or that friends can betray, or that illness can strike – even if you are a really good person.
Right now, we’re dealing with all of that in our house.
Friends who are no longer friends and who make sure others know that. “What? You can’t sit next to us in the lunchroom.”
It’s painful when you are young and what had seemed like a life-long friendship ends on a whim. It’s even more painful when those people go out of their way to make sure you hurt – that tears flow – proof that they’re bigger, tougher, – they’ve won – leaving you to erroneously believe you’ve been reduced to insignificance.
Kids just have so much to learn about making this world a better place.
You hold your chick and let her know that this will pass. People will come and go from your life. It’s up to you to cherish the ones who add value, let go of those who don’t, and to know the difference between the two.
Not every friend you meet along the way will be a friend.
And we also have illness in the house where a mother’s plea to the heavens of “enough is enough – just leave my kid alone” doesn’t seem to be heard (even though it is uttered millions of times a day.)
One of our chicks is struggling with severe illness. He has chronic Lyme with about as many complications as you can have and we are hoping that he can make it through the last few weeks of school after which I’ve already told him that he’ll be entering “mommy-ICU” where we’ll try to build up his body in order to endure.
It’s not fair. He’s a great kid but his illness keeps attacking again and again. Pain, disability, fatigue severe enough that he sleeps 12 hours at a time – this shouldn’t be the life of a college kid. It belongs to that of an old man – someone who has lived a full and adventure filled life. It’s what the end of your days should be like, not the beginning.
Just make it until the semester is over is our collective goal.
And then I can take care of you again.
There is no rhyme or reason to chronic, painful illness. There is no rhyme or reason to kids being mean to each other.
You just hope that you’ve provided a solid base at home, where your kids know they can always return to become one with the flock while they lick their life wounds preparing themselves to go out once again.
As an update – it’s not all gloom and doom over here (it never is with 6 kids) Trevor, who split his head open last week at gymnastics, did well enough at the regionals meet to qualify for the Junior Olympics National competition in Cincinnati Ohio. Looks like Trevor and I will be taking a little road trip (by plane) out there come May.
