patience

so elliot and i were at the park the other day, and she insisted on climbing onto a tricycle all by herself. as you can see from the length of the video, it took her a really long time. at one point, she got so frustrated that she just dangled from the seat and kicked her legs in frustration. but after struggling and struggling and a couple breaks to see what I was doing with the phone, she did it. and that tiny one second smirk says it all--she was real proud.

lately cole and i have been really frustrated with things that seem small, like a dirty old rusty tricycle. and maybe we are just big old babies, but getting out of bed to haul ourselves onto the giant tricycles that have become our daily struggles has been tough. it's not that any one thing in particular is going on, but it just seems like a million little trials and issues and difficulties have begun piling up in the corners of our lives, and then along the walls and on tables--stacked nicely at first, but then finally exploding all over until we are drowning in all the tiny problems that were really no big deal from the get go. lately i have really wanted to just kick my legs 3 inches off the ground in frustration.

my first instinct when i'm at the end of my rope is to snap at cole and elliot. i justified losing my temper because i have felt overwhelmed and pushed to my limit every day, which made it easy to feel okay with the frequency that i lose my temper--once a day, maybe every other. but tonight i remembered something that i had forgotten:

my elementary school had a huge play structure with slides and monkey bars and climbing pegs--the works. but it was wooden, and the railing shed inch-long splinters that lodged themselves on the pads of your hands or under your nails. i played on it every day and probably got 2 or 3 splinters, but they hurt like crazy, especially for a little pansy like me. after a couple of those, i almost never touched the rails, because who would even want to go near something that hurt them, however infrequently? i don't want to justify hurting anyone out of frustration or anger because i do it so "rarely"--know that even one or two times could make someone forever uneasy around me. they would never know when i could stick a splinter in them without provocation--something small, but sharp and painful that would not be easily forgotten.

so i'm going to take a lesson from elliot on this one--when i get frustrated, i'm going to work on channeling that energy positively instead of firing it at others (i don't know if the video picks up her little voice, but she is coaching herself almost the whole way: "i can do it. i can do it. yes. yes.") even if my task to be accomplished takes an absurdly long time, like 3 and a half minutes.