My Crazymaking Child
Imagine an oreo cookie.
Now imagine that somebody takes that oreo cookie. Places it inside a ziploc bag, and bangs it over and over with a heavy wooden rolling pin. “It’s already crushed!” you want to say. “Stop banging already!”
Now imagine, just imagine, that my home is that oreo’s delicate white filling, and the two chocolate cookies of the aforementioned oreo are the homes of my next-door neighbors, undergoing major renovations.
“Stop banging already!” I want to yell. Though, alas, nobody could hear me anyway over all the banging.
And that’s not all… A few days ago, behind us, another neighbor started jackhammering through bedrock, all day long. Why? Beats me.
But suffice it to say that the oreo metaphor no longer suffices. And the other metaphor that comes to mind is: Being a Mom.
You see, four years ago, before we moved into our new home, we did major renovations. But we were living in a different neighborhood. So back then, we drove our neighbors crazy. But I never realized just how much, until now, that we are on the receiving end, in their place.
Which reminds me, I’m thinking, of being a mom. Who is, also, the daughter of a mom.
For the last few months of reverberating walls, I haven’t been contemplating the little, little kid troubles I made for her. The diapers and the messes and the frequent fights with my brother.
I’ve been contemplating the troubles I made when I was no longer so little. Somewhere between a child and an adult. At times sweet, idealistic, kind. At times self-absorbed. Sulky. Ungrateful. Resentful.
And just like the fact that we did crazymaking renovations doesn’t make it easier to deal with our neighbors’ crazymaking renovations. So too the fact that I myself was, in some ways, a typical adolescent, doesn’t make it any easier to deal with my own.
But it does enable me to feel more love and understanding–for my own mom and my crazymaking child as well.
