Learning To Be Soft

     We live in a quaint little town in Southern California that prides itself on its ties to the past when it was once the biggest producer of citrus in the world. Our house is on a main street that is near a local elementary school. When you live in a small town like this and you live on a main street, just about everyone knows where you live. We love our little ranch house and the neighborhood its in, but when our daughter hit middle school we began to question our choice of locations. We have been vandalized too many times to count in the last four years. It started with teepeeing, that was not a big deal, then they moved on to eggs, then nasty messages scrawled on our picket fence, our daughters car has been egged, written on with crayon, bananas stuffed in the tail pipe, feces smeared on our garage door, a bottle of urine thrown into our yard, it has been pretty brutal emotionally on all of us. Jayne is now a senior and it feels like things are beginning to settle down or, as my grandma used to say, “God willing and the creek don't rise...” I learned on Friday night that I might just have a minor case of post traumatic stress syndrome related to our teen vandals. I have been pretty unnerved at my own behavior on Friday and was talking with a friend today about the whole incident, as we laughed at my ridiculous behavior, I decided the incident was the perfect topic for me to blog about.

     This past Friday Jayne was out with friends, and she checked in and said she would be home around 2 AM, as they were watching movies at a friend's house. Around 1:45 our dogs started barking, so we assumed Jayne was home. Yet they continued to bark, so I pulled on my robe and headed out to see what was going on. As I looked out the back fence I noticed our neighbors were getting teepeed; the kids were still at it even though it looked to me like every square inch of their front yard was covered in toilet paper. I stepped out and said, “It's late and you're keeping us up. Enough!” Some of them ran giggling, which is what I expected, but a few of them kept up with their assault on our neighbors' trees. I said in what I hoped was an even more focreful voice, “Enough. Our dogs are barking and keeping up the whole neighborhood.” As I stood in the driveway clad only in a robe and bare-feet, one of the girls began barking and running at me, and then she threw a roll of toilet paper at my head! She missed, but I felt like a dam broke inside of me and I ran after her (there were two cars waiting for them). I began to bang my fists on the mini-vans windows screaming obscenities at them until they tore out, then I moved on to the little blue hatchback and started to bang on the window screaming that they were vandals and that I was taking their license and calling the police. At this point the poor girl behind the wheel was pleading with me that they were just teenagers having fun and to leave them alone. She then took off in pursuit of her friends. They came back a few minutes later hanging out of the mini-van screaming and hurling eggs at our driveway, but I suppose I brought that one on myself.

     Since then, besides frequently chuckling at the image of the crazed yoga teacher running down the street in a robe and swearing at teenagers, I have been questioning my lack of control. Was I not the adult in the situation? Or is it simply that I had a human moment? I don't lose my cool very often; I can think of only four times in almost eighteen years of parenting that I regret my behavior with Jayne. I have certainly made more than four mistakes as a parent, but most of the time when I make mistakes my intention is fueled by love, not anger. Through this incident with the teens I have found new insight. Perhaps it is in those times that my anger gets the best of me that I can learn the most. I have held myself up to some pretty high standards and when I don't meet them and my own humanness shines through, I am quick to condemn myself. If I can learn to forgive myself my mistakes then maybe I can begin to more quickly forgive the people I love their own mistakes. So next time I lose it and do something wacky I am going to try and let it roll off and move on without allowing self-deprecating thoughts to go on for days. I'm going to try and be soft on myself so that I can be soft with the world.