Terry's 3M's

Mea culpa! Mea culpa! Mea maxima culpa!

I was sitting here at the computer, going thru my zdnetmail (I was all the way up to August 11th.)when I heard my son scream in agony. I rush to him and he has his hand over his eye and is yelling at Bryan for hitting him in the eye when Bryan through a deck of cards at him. The injured eye is bright pink and tearing. There are several marks around the edge of the eyes that were left from the ridges of the cards and he will be sporting a black eye for a few days.

I lost it.

I started hurling verbal abuses at Bryan, stating that I knew full well that I would probably regret saying them later, but, as for now, I was too mad to care. I used foul language indicative of my inability to think rationally at that point. And when Bryan accused me of always taking my son's side in everything...that John had hurled the cards at him first, I struck him. And I struck him again as I told him that it was always John that got hurt. That he wasn't the one that had gotten hit in the eye. That he was always leaving bruises on my kid. (While all that is true, John gets lectured daily and punished with standing in the corner or standing with his arms raised overhead [although that punishment is a very short one--usually 2 or 3 minutes] because he does start trouble...or end up in trouble because he can get obnoxious with the other kids.) We exchanged even more words.

It was over in a couple of minutes and I sat on a kitchen chair weeping because my behavior was so brutal.

When I had calmed down and had a moment to think, I realized that Bryan's behavior and my behavior were clues. I hadn't escaped all the emotional side effects of hormonal imbalance caused by menopause after all. And he is just beginning to feel the raging hormones of adolescence.

While I was doing part of his chores as an atonement for my behavior, we discussed this. He agreed that it was probably the logical answer. Especially when he counted in his mood swings with my mood swings. We agreed that we still love each other and hugged and kissed.

There was a prequel to the above incident. Bryan and I had already had a earlier run-in this morning. At 3:33 this morning, I turned on my alarm which was set to go off at 6:30. It was set so that I could wake up Bryan who wanted to get a jump start at his chores today. And when the alarm went off, I went into his bedroom and tapped him on the should until his eyes were open. Then I told Bryan that it was 6:30, that I had had less than 3 hours sleep and was going back to bed, and that his mother was downstairs on the computer.

Well, Bryan didn't get out of bed. When he woke up at 8:30, he accused me of letting him sleep too long. And I told him about waking him up earlier. The accusations that I was mistaken and then that I should have made sure that he was up and out of bed went on for over an hour. Anyway, I was already ticked off when he hit Johnny with the cards.

Anyway, Johnny's eye got better within a couple of hours. Bryan and I have kissed and made up. Bryan made a fresh pot of coffee to make up for the words he hurled at me. We went upstairs and were watching The Empire Strikes Back until I had to come down to continue cooking dinner.