See {Five Minute Friday}

I’ve been away from this community for far too long. While we all took December off, I feel like I’ve been out for so much more.  The beauty of Five Minute Friday, though, is that no matter how long I’m gone, this flash mob of writers–mamas and students and single ladies and the occasional brave man–always welcomes me back.

It’s a place to belong.  Community, not competition.

Today’s prompt?

See

He was afraid.  I could hear it in his shrieking cry and his pitiful wail for “dada” because he’s such a smart boy that he knew such a dilemma as locking himself in his sister’s room would be better solved by daddy than mommy.

Mommy, who didn’t come with a hurry at first because I thought the sisters were kidding and there are three of them after all, so surely one was in the room too?  But no, they were crowded in the narrow hall twisting the handle in vain and jumping on toes that are never still between 3:30 and 5:30 in the afternoon.  I had a friend over.  A sweet girl who has shared teaching with me and students and Bible studies and last Friday bid her grandfather goodbye in the hospice facility two rooms down from where I had watched mine draw his last breath only hours before. So we were bonded, but a meltdown in front of her?

I didn’t want her to see me lose it, to see me become unglued over such a simple task as twisting the lock on the bedroom door to free my stranded toddler.

But I couldn’t get it open.  I couldn’t jimmy the bent hanger in the hole just right like daddy does and I sure couldn’t break down that door with my bare hands.

Though I might have if she hadn’t been there to see.

I took the knob off finally and he stumbled out into my arms wiping snot and tears on my favorite sweatshirt and jerking his arm from the sisters who were trying to pet him back into submission.

I didn’t want her to see me lose it, but I did want her to see me be a good mom because I hate to think anyone thinks I’m less than. But maybe, maybe, I should have been thinking about what my kids see?

They see that mommy is willing to hold it in for others but not for them.

That may be a lesson worth talking about.