Driving to School

I was driving my youngest daughter to school today when the song Why Don’t You Stay?, by Sugarland, came on the radio. It’s a song from the point of view of the “other woman”.

My daughter wondered out loud what that would be like. “If you loved someone,” she said, “you would totally forgive them, right?”

Hoo boy! Loaded question for a five minute drive to school.

So I hedge my bets. “You know,” I say, pausing and breathing deeply, “everybody’s situation is different. It is so easy to be black and white about things, except that’s not real life. Everybody has their own set of circumstances and their own points of view and their own reasons.”

Silence.

I glance over at her in the passenger seat. She is looking at me and she nods her head, encouraging me to continue.

I tact to the left. “Did you know that every cell in your body regenerates itself? You know how you’re constantly sloughing off old skin cells and replacing them with new ones. Well, every cell in your body does the same sort of thing. I’m not sure what the time frame is, but at some point, you have a completely different body than you used to have. And that happens repeatedly throughout your life. So you are literally, physically, not the same person.”

“Wow. That’s kinda weird to think about.”

“It is. So the person I am today, is not the same person as I will be next year or next month or next week. Even tomorrow, I will be different. Like with you and your sister. I was a different person when your sister was your age. I made different decisions with her than I do with you.”

My daughter chuckles. “Yeah, she was your practice child.”
She has heard her sister throw this accusation at me more than once, but I am still surprised to hear it repeated.
I think she is surprised that she said it and when I turn toward her, she can’t look at me and instead glances out the window to watch a leaf blow down the sidewalk.

“No, she was not a practice child, but I know more things now than I did then. I see things differently and I understand more than I did when she was your age. I made the best decisions I could given the set of circumstances that I had. I might make different decisions today, I might not. And, I have not changed any of our basic rules, just my reaction to the breaking of those rules has changed.”

“Yeah. Totally!” she agrees.
“You know how you act differently when you are with your basketball friends or your volleyball friends or your middle school friends?”

“Yeah?” she answers a bit warily, unsure of where I am going with this.

“It’s the same thing with parents. Each child is different. If I tried to be the same with each of you, it would be unfair to all of you.”

We reach the school and I begin circling, looking for a place to park.
I go off on a tangent about how different my sisters and I are and about how the circumstances in which we were raised were different. I keep on babbling and the moment changes from a teachable moment for my daughter into an “aha” moment for me. The fist tight fingers of resentment surrounding issues I have with my mother begin to loosen, not completely, but a little, and my lungs have room to breathe.

We loop around the block and another song comes on the radio “…and your high school sweetheart becomes your bride,” warbles the country singer.
My daughter is humming along and I turn to her and ask, “So, are you going to marry your high school sweetheart?”
She smiles, a big, wide, grin. “Weell, I would say “no”, but I don’t know really know what all the circumstances will be when that time comes, so…” she finishes with a shrug.

I laugh. “I guess you do listen to your mama’s babblings.”
“Duh!” she says, pursing her lips and giving me a kissy face.