Lola, my daughter, is a fire-cracker. Part of it is age three; part of it is who she is meant to be.
Between us: friction.
Every feeling she has is grand. Every thought she has is big. She likes to run around and entertain and she loves to lasso and marshal and make you bend to her will, which is endless, intense and disconcertingly effective.
My baby: she’s fierce.
In her circles, she’s the boss, the star, the sun, the Empress. The rest of us are satellites, lesser planets or possibly minions.
But Lola’s a lover, too.
It is her mission in life to torment me all day with unreasonable and non-negotiable demands, and then at night, after all of that, she rounds her small body into my corners. She starts off in her own bed but almost inevitably finishes sleeping on my head. She sleeps curled in the small of my back. She slumbers with her cheek on my shoulder while her small fists clutch handfuls of my hair. Wherever I move or shift or try to draw a border between us in the bed she remorselessly colonizes, her body tracks me and finds me – even through the depths of sleep. We are magnetic.
It is what saves us.
Her extravagant moods, dogged determination to challenge everything, and commitment to charming and owning the souls of every creature she encounters is modulated only by the generosity of her affection.
I submit to you the events of last Tuesday.
I was fried. My last nerve had been cooked and eaten by two cannibals two days earlier.
In short, I wasn’t negotiating bed time.
Bed time, however, was under formal protest, and I met that one-person riot with beatific resistance.
Thank you Ghandi. Thank you MLK.
I told her I simply couldn’t, and wouldn’t, read stories to people who yell at me.
And left her in her bed. She was story-less, and mad as fuck.
She screamed. She raged. She wanted a story, she wanted a new mommy, she wanted to live with daddy, she hated me.
Yes she did. She screamed, “I hate my mommy!”
My baby hates me.
Distraught. Both of us.
I lovehated her right back, right then.
Tantrums and time have a curious relationship. Time slows with each raised decibel. I waited forever. She screamed for a millennium.
Then Lola wanted her mama – the beloved mother she hates – who enrages her and torments her with bedtimes, vegetables and non-violent revolution. Only a mama can calmly surf a tidal wave of going-on four-ness. Sometimes only the one who hurts you can heal you.
My baby was drowning in grief. She’d swam too far out to get back on her own.
I went to her. I knelt beside her bed and put my arms around her. She put her hand on my cheek, and her teary, tired eyes met mine. Her face was wet. Her heart was unravelling with each raggedy breath.
“I love you, but I hate you,” she sighed. It escaped her like the last of the air in a furiously deflating balloon.
She spoke without malice. She spoke the truth.
Lola’s sighing surrender to love and rage felt like emotional organization, to me. I rocked her while she sorted her passions and catalogued her surprise at the fierceness of her feelings.
Then she let go and melted into me. And she slept.
“Her extravagant moods, dogged determination to challenge everything, and commitment to charming and owning the souls of every creature she encounters is modulated only by the generosity of her affection.”
Sounds just like her Momma.
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Kelly Diels
replied:
on April 10th, 2010 at 7:31 am
@Julie, you might not be the first person who has said that. I know, you’re shocked.
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Sometimes you’re the ocean.
Sometimes, you’re the rock.
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Kelly Diels
replied:
on April 10th, 2010 at 7:31 am
@Dave Doolin, sometimes you’re a cryptic beat poet.
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Dave Doolin
replied:
on April 10th, 2010 at 8:15 am
@Kelly Diels, Lover’s Rock.
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damn, girl, you sure can write. and love. and see.
beautiful.
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Kelly Diels
replied:
on April 10th, 2010 at 7:32 am
@Jen, oh my. you’ve got a haiku talent for comments, my friend.
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Wow, Kelly, this is lovely – and, as you can imagine, I can totally relate. She sounds like a marvel, your Lola, a little ball of feelings and energy and determination … sounds familiar!
And she’s a lucky, lucky girl.
xo
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Kelly Diels
replied:
on April 10th, 2010 at 7:34 am
@Lindsey, I knew you could relate, that’s why I linked to your grace-and-tub piece, which I recognized, intimately.
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Anyone (parent or not) who has “swam too far out to get back on their own” will appreciate this piece, Kelly. What a wondrous wordsmith you are.
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Kelly Diels
replied:
on April 10th, 2010 at 7:34 am
@cjwright, even I recognize how quickly we all can get in over our heads. I do. A lot.
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Now I can type after having to wipe the tears and blow my nose!
Very beautifully written Kelly. I was right there, as I have been so many times with my own daughter. The fierceness of their feelings is incredible. Sometimes I wonder where it comes from when they are so young.
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That is the most beautiful description I have ever read of a child beginning to develop intergrative functioning (the ability to hold mixed emotions) or as you call it “emotional organization” (love that). A sure sign of a warm, nurturing and accepting environment. Again, beautiful.
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Kelly Diels
replied:
on April 10th, 2010 at 8:25 am
@Lianne, my goodness, you can make me weep in less than a paragraph, which in turn triggers the urge look at houses your hood so you can teach my kids one day. thank you. mwah.xoxoxoxo
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So much truth in this piece. So much emotion. So much love!
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Kelly – I recognize this scene. Those little people are a terror and a joy all wrapped up in a ball of energy, and you captured that perfectly. Wonderful.
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lola’s a lucky girl – i can’t imagine how awesome it’ll feel like for her to read this in 10-15 years!
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Wonderful post. Motherhood is the most passionate love affair. My daughter was strong-willed, although differently. Maybe what I told myself will be useful to you. I always used to say, well, will she and I be glad if she is like this when she’s 21? If the answer was yes, I held myself back from trying to enforce change. If the answer was no, I tried to figure out how to help her out. Help, of course, sometimes meaning speak very strictly to her:).
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Your daughter sounds amazing.
This reminds me of my high school years. My parents divorced the summer before I started high school, and I became a bit of a strong-willed teenager. There was a lot of passionate love/hate between my mom and I (my brother and I lived with her). Then I went away to college, came home for Christmas break, and discovered that all that tension during my four years of high school had been released and a lovely adult daughter/mother relationship had formed. The passionate moments can give birth to something amazing.
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You make me want to examine my relationship with my kiddos in a more poetic way… through your writing – you can tell you’ve given every feeling and emotion and give and take so much thought, it must really help you gain perspective. That’s beautiful.
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really beautiful
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Goodness Kelly…your stories of Lola are so terribly/wonderfully fascinating. Honestly, reading about your relationship with your kids makes me look forward to being a father more.
I don’t know if you know this, but I used to work at 2 different preschools, one of them for behavior disordered kids. The thing I found universally true is that the kids that I disciplined the most, put in time out the most, had the greatest struggles with, were the kids that had the greatest love for me.
It’s a terrible feeling to stick to your guns and make a kid cry and yell and rage with your discipline, but it’s really all smoke and mirrors. The truth is that they crave it, they need it as much as food and breath and love…because it is love. None of the kids loved me more than the ones that screamed the worst obscenities at me. No teacher was more precious to them than me.
I say all this just to emphasize that it’s not only your role as mother that earns you a place in Lola’s heart as a person she can love and trust, even when you make her furious, but that the love/discipline itself makes her love you more, even when she’s screaming about it. I know you know it, but it can be hard to feel the truth of it when you hear that precious child crying and screaming.
What I’m trying to say is, good job. Your child loves you for very good reason. It is inspiring and I hope to earn that kind of love when I have my own.
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Your daughter posts, although alien to me, the one who chose cats and dogs over human children, are still poignant, touching, real, and full of every human emotion, but especially love. These relationships you have with your girls are precious and rare. Well done!
They make me long for a childhood I would like to remember.
Hugs and butterflies,
~T~
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You write so beautifully! I’m so emotional reading this post. My son is almost 13. It feels like yesterday that he was throwing his tantrums at three. Enjoy every single decibel. It passes way too soon!
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Oh how I love this post. It sounds like you are describing my relationship with my mini me. It’s a beautiful and tumultuous thing and you described it beautifully.
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Oh man, you make me feel better about my “battles” with my youngest son. Three kids and it would have to be the youngest who is fierce, passionate, particular… stubborn. I’ve never had my feelings hurt so much as by this little five year old… but when he curls up for bed and he has to be touching both mommy and daddy to feel safe… it melts all the rest away.
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haha man i probably would have (maybe) saved me and my parents a world of stress if i’d been that capable of expressing myself at 3 years old. All i could ever managed was saying i wanted to go home, even if i was already at my parents place.
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What a fireball! ….the kid and the mama. Keep it kindled.
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“Only a mama can calmly surf a tidal wave of going-on four-ness”.
….or going-on nineteen-ness….as is my case. I was/am you. And it gets better/worse.
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This is one of the many reasons I stay subscribed Kelly. Loved it.
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kellydiels
replied:
on January 23rd, 2011 at 8:56 pm
thankyouthankyouthankyou
truly, I appreciate it.
xo
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