Hormone Soup

Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
- Elizabeth Stone

So, here's a story for you:

Every month, there is "Montre et Raconte" (Show and Tell) at Neva's school. Every month, there is a theme. This month's theme was to bring in a picture or craft that you were especially proud of. When Jeffy and I came home from Cuba and brought the kids the masks you see pictured on our homepage, Neva wanted to bring hers in for Montre et Raconte. Since she was supposed to do a craft for it, I suggested she trace the mask on to a piece of paper and colour it in. She liked the idea, so we worked on it this weekend. She worked so hard at it; colouring the spaces in the right spots, choosing the matching colours, even cutting out the eyeholes. (I hope to post a pic of it here soon.) She wanted a picture of the original to bring in as well to show what she'd copied from, so we took a photo of her with the mask and got that printed out. She had been planning this for days and days.

Today was the big day. After school, I asked her how her Montre et Raconte went. "Not well," she said, before clamming up in the back seat of the car. Efforts to question her on my part were futile so I let it go until we got home. Jeffy asked her the same question, and she gave the same response, and he managed to elicit from her why it didn't go well:

The kids laughed at her.

I know "heartbroken" is a strong word, but it's how I've been feeling all evening about this. She cried, and Jeffy gave her big hugs, and we talked a bit about it, and I think she's generally over it, but I've been weepy all evening. I'm so sad for her, that her peers laughed at something she worked so hard on, and so angry at these stupid little kids who made my little girl feel like crap. I know there are bigger, harder hurts coming, and that this is just a part of childhood, and kids are mean, and I can't protect her from everything, and all of that. But this is the first real "other kids laughed at me" event and it's really touching a nerve for me.

I'm hoping that my reaction tonight is at least somewhat attributable to the hormone soup I'm living in because of the pregnancy. I need to be able to keep it together to help take care of her when she needs me, and to try not to feel these things so acutely. (It probably didn't help that I had a rough session with a client today who disclosed years of abuse by a step-father. I was feeling a bit fragile and emotionally drained to begin with, I guess.)

Anyway, the quote at the top here is one of my all-time favourites about parenting, because it really is true. And today, I really felt it, deep down.