Unlike yesterday, today was emotionally tumultuous, happy moments and mad moments. The day began with a mad moment.
Yesterday L was sick with a generally feeling of malaise, a very sore throat and probably a fever. (The fever never registered on the thermometer, but she walked around the cold house all day in a tank top and bare feet, but claimed she was warm. Hmmm. Sounds like a fever to me.) She was exposed to strep throat last week, and she has this ballet exam this weekend. So I made an appointment with the pediatrician to have her checked for strep first thing this morning, hoping to get it nipped in the bud. I figured if she could get on an antibiotic right away, she'd be well enough to do her exam.
Surprisingly, she woke up this morning feeling all better! No sore throat, back to her old energy, not even any cold symptoms! It's a mystery how that happened, but since the appointment was the first one of the day, I couldn't even cancel. So I decided to drive on up there and use the appointment to ask the doc come questions about something else that had been on my mind.
I walk in the office a little before 9:00 and hoped to talk to the gal at the desk about my change in plan. [Annoyed side note: wouldn't you think that the appointment being at 9:00 should mean that I'd be talking to the doctor at 9:00??? Which should mean that I'd be signing in and walking back to the examining room before 9:00??? Anyway, back to the original story, I was only hoping to talk to the gal behind the desk a minute or two before the actual 9:00 appointment, but...] Oh no. It wasn't 9:00 yet so they were all going to walk around back there and not acknowledge the person standing behind the window, so I gave up and sat down. At 9:00 the window finally opens and I go over to talk to the gal. I explain that since my daughter woke up not sick anymore, I wanted to use the appointment instead to consult with the doctor, to ask a few questions about whether I should pursue a particular line of thinking.
Ohhh nooo. No can do. Consultations are hour long appointments and only done at 4:00 on Wednesdays and the person in question must be present along with various official documents.
Excuse me? I don't even know if I should be pursuing this at all. I only need to ask a few questions and I have an appointment anyway. No. And there's a line behind you, so could you please move out of the way. Hello. If you'd acknowledged my presence before 9:00 we could have had this discussion before the line formed! You can write the doctor a note and she can call you if you want.
ARRRRGGGGGHHHH. So I left and the doctor had a no-show that she couldn't bill for. She called me later in the day, cordial but obviously in a hurry, probably squeezing the phone call in between appointments. If she had office staff with any sense at all she could have seen me during an appointment time when she would not have needed to rush, when she would not have felt the need to continually interrupt me, and when she would have actually been paid for the conversation. So that was one mad moment.
A happy moment came during dinner. T is out in Colorado, so it was just the three of us, R, L and me, and truthfully, we were a little bored at dinner. Nobody had much to say. Somehow that morphed into a silly shoot-food-at-R-from-mouth type of game (Craisins, not gravy.) He retaliated. R's craisin landed in L's salad, which was gross enough to end the game, but it was fun and funny for a bit. =)
Then another mad moment. (These moments are not in chronological order. They actually went mad, mad, happy, happy, rather than mad, happy, mad, happy as they're being cataloged here. But I think it makes for a more interesting post to alternate them. =) Anyway, my next mad moment: )
R is my quiet, low-key guy. Social, but not assertively so, so he spends a lot of time hanging with the family (which I am totally fine with!). This afternoon, the mother of an old friend of his, Joel, called. Joel is the kid he always went to camp with in past years, but he lives in a different city and they never saw a whole lot of each other outside of camp. But this weekend their family has plans to do some help project, painting and cleaning a house, something like that, with their small group at church, and Joel wanted to bring a friend. R's name came up and they were wondering if he'd like to join them on Sunday. They'd be taking off right after church. Sounded great. Logistically one thing led to another, and they invited him just to spend the night on Saturday night. Then she called me again today and said she forgot that Joel had plans to do some fund-raiser activity Saturday night, so could R just meet up with him there. It would be fun and two other kids, J and K might be there.
She meant this last bit to be extra enticement for R to want to go, but it made me mad! This mom had no way of knowing this, but J and K happen to be the reason R wants nothing to do with our church youth group.
T and I have conflicted feelings about church youth groups in general, so we are not bothered by R's lack of involvement there. If any of our kids had wanted to jump into it, we would have supported them entirely, but as none of them have, we were fine with that too.
But at one point, say sixth grade or so, R loved the church youth group, was on their "leadership team," and it was a good place for him. J had been a friend of R's from babyhood since J's parents are old, pre-marriage friends of ours, so J was his "homie" when he went to youth group. R is a totally low-maintenance guy socially, but everyone wants someone to hang with, and J was his comfortable buddy, his longtime friend.
Then K came onto the scene. K was a classic ADHD kid, a lot of fun and a lot of energy. So I don't know exactly what happened or how it went down, but when K came on the scene, somehow R got squeezed out. If they were all girls, it would totally make sense. The mystery to me is that they are not girls, and three boys usually do fine together. Why there was no room for R anymore has always been a question mark. (And R being R means we got no information from him.) From that point on though, R just refused to have anything to do with the youth group, even their Sunday morning meetings. T and I weren't about to push it because we've seen bad things as well as good come out of church youth groups, but it had been looking like a good place for R until this happened.
Who knows if J and K will even be there Saturday night, or even factor into the evening very much if they are there, but the mere mention of their names, with the innocent suggestion that their presence would be a happy thing for R, made me mad. I seethed for the rest of the day. My kids are way more me than T when it comes to all things social, which means they make friends slowly and carefully, and the ones they have are precious. If one of my girls were to lose a friend like that, it would be hard, but I think it's harder for a boy. Somehow they seem less emotionally resilient just because they're less willing to talk and share the hurt. Boys' emotional wounds stay all closed up inside, without the benefit of air and sunshine to help them heal over.
So J and K still pierce me to the heart. They hurt my kid senselessly and unnecessarily. That was another mad moment.
But never fear, the day ended with a happy moment! I have to be a little tight-lipped about this, but there has been a big, bad worry clouding my world for a number of months, and the first step to the solution had to be broaching a sensitive topic to someone near and dear to my heart. Everything hinged on my near and dear someone being open to addressing the problem. I'd been praying for the right moment and the right response, that God would pave the way and prepare the heart of my precious hearer. Tonight I sensed the moment was right, and it was. The first, perhaps the hardest, step toward chasing this cloud away was successfully accomplished, and I could have leaped for joy! This happy moment completely eclipsed both of my mad moments! Thank You, Lord!
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