Yep. Life and it's humorous irony. I know I have written on this before. That no matter what I plan, no matter what is happening life ALWAYS throws me a curveball.
Probably always throws you one too, huh?
I was planning on a great post all about my sister's beautiful wedding, how wonderful, albeit ironic, it was to have a "new" brother. I was gonna go on and on about how full I felt as I watched my girls play with their grown boy cousins--and maybe a little worried by the little crushy smile I saw on the oldest's face and what it would mean in the teen years.
Then life slammed me with a couple amazing research opportunities. I was going to write a post about that. About my wonderful research opportunities. About the fact I am working on a meta-analysis, which is a pretty high level stats type project. About the fact I can see long-term implications for this research. I was going to tell you all about my awesome bibliotherapy program I get to create from scratch and implement in a local kindergarten class to build empathy. I was going to share all the nitty gritty details with you about the projects, my hopes for what they could mean, and my worries about fitting it all in.
Then, the oldest came home from school with an itchy head. And school, work, research, my "new" brother, and you, my dear readers, no longer mattered. Because life has a funny sense of humor and thought, you know what that family needs right now? They need a full blown case of lice. Yep, long blonde hair, four kids, seven garbage bags full of stuffed animals--lice would be a really funny coincidence. It will be great to watch that mom try to wash all those kids hair and comb it all out with little skinny lice combs multiple times a day. Even better is watching that dad, who has never experienced lice, completely freak out and suggest shaving all the long beautiful blonde locks off of the kids (and maybe the mom).
So, that is what I have been doing for the past week and a half. Lots of laundry, lots of combing of hair, sitting on the kitchen floor with flashlights picking through the girls hair. So much fell through the cracks this week--school was a blur, I could barely count my hours. And, there is such a feeling of embarrassment. I mean, I know they caught it from somewhere, but the embarrassment is nearly unbearable. I actually made my husband call the school, because I just couldn't do it.
I remember reading an open letter on the internet from a mom whose daughter contracted lice at school. I could just feel her judgey, hateful words ripping through me. I was judging myself.
It took me a few days to realize, that woman has no room to speak. Hell, I had no room to judge myself. I did everything I could during the whole ordeal. I sat there and picked through their hair like a freakin' monkey. I rewashed sheets daily until there were no more bugs to be seen in anyone's head. I bags a shitload of stuffed animals. And, most importantly, I normalized the experience and kept my kids from feeling like the "buggies" in their hair were a poor reflection on them as people or on us as a family. So that woman can go to hell. Lice is not our fault. My kids didn't do anything wrong to catch it--likely they just played closely with friends--showing good interpersonal skills. We didn't do anything wrong--we called the school, we took that embarrassing step. I didn't do anything wrong--I did everything right.
And this is a lesson I need to keep repeating in my mind as I wade through other difficult areas--such as new research endeavors, continuing to deal with my brother's death, school--I didn't do anything wrong. I may not have control over much--as life so often likes to prove by throwing ridiculous things my way--but so far, I really haven't done too many "wrong" things with that which I have been thrown. So I need to ease up on my judgements of myself. I am the only one who knows where my faults lie and if I continue to fault myself for life's curveballs, then life's ironic twists are going to break me instead of providing me with a weird sense of comic relief.
What do you do to remind yourself to be easy on yourself? How do you forgive yourself? What is the most ridiculously silly thing life has sent you to teach you a lesson or provide ironic comic relief?