Tribulations of Love and Hate

I have a wonderful mother. I remember when I was pregnant with my first child; I received a profound letter from her. It has been one of the basis which I tried raising my children by, sometimes I would succeed, sometimes not. The one thing that really stood out in the letter was that there were going to be times I hated my children. I would be resentful of their incursion into my life, even though it was my desire to have them. She said it was impossible to love someone so deeply and fully, not to hate him or her from time to time. She told me this was normal; but it was how I handled it would determine what kind of a parent I would end up being.

She was soooooo right. I did find that there were times when I hated my children. There were times when I wished I were single and carefree again. But then I would remember her letter. Take a step back and a big breath. Sometimes I succeeded; sometimes I yelled my head off; and sometimes I used "the" switch. I had a bad temper, though I hoped I learned from my mistakes.

But the time her letter hit home the most was when Scamp was a tot of about 4. He had gotten mad at me for some reason or another and came into the kitchen while I was doing dishes. “I HATE you mom,” he cried out. This time before opening my mouth, I thought about the letter. I slowly turned around, kneeled on the floor in front of him and quietly said, “That’s okay Scamp, I understand. Sometimes I hate you too.”

Time seemed to stop as I kneeled and he stood there, face to face, those big beautiful eyes, welling with tears. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, he turned and ran out of the room. At this point I had to stop his father (not Pan) from going after him with a switch for talking to his mother like that. After settling the father down, I went back to doing the dishes.

Soon there were little arms draped around my legs. I turned and bent down to scoop up this precious and precocious child. As he wound his arms around my neck he leaned in close and whispered in my ear, “I love you best mommy.” And my heart melted.

We did have a sit down and talk about feelings and why it is okay to sometimes hate someone else. We also talked about the appropriate way to release those feelings and what is not appropriate. But I will never forget those five little words he whispered in my ear.