It wasn't just a lizard

We get out of the car and start toward her weekly pre-school class. Halfway to the entrance she notices something.

"Mama, where's my lizard," Kalina asks.

"Oh, we left it in the car," I respond. Not thinking much of it.

Kalina begins to cry. Not just a whimper, no, more like a terrible cry as if her entire world was shattered.  We walk into her class and she is not happy.

"Hi, Kalina!" says a staffer. But Kalina doesn't respond. She's red in the face and sweaty. She's crying harder.

"Kalina, I can bring the lizard later," I tell her. I'm thinking that later is better than never. Right?

"No, no, no, I need it, Mama. I need it now," she says behind her tears.

I hug her and tell her that her class has already started but she doesn't care. She needs her lizard. That is all she knows. A classmate walks in a few minutes later and tries to get Kalina's attention.

"Kalina, are you okay?" The little girl asks. Her voice is soft and sweet.

Kalina ignores her. There was nothing I could say that would make Kalina feel better. No promises, not even attempting to distract her with a cute newborn nearby. Nothing.

"Do you want me to just take her to the class?" asks a staffer.

"Yes, ok," I say reluctantly. The pit of my stomach is unwell.

*  *  * 

I know that Kalina had created an image in her mind of showing all her classmates and her teachers the lizard SHE made at home. The one SHE painted. The one SHE decorated. The one SHE was proud of.

How could I have not acknowledged how important this was for her? It wasn't JUST a lizard, it was her work and her passion. Her emotions were very real to her and I felt it.

It's so easy to make 'little' of the things that seem small to us adults. They're not so small to the little ones in this big world.

I pushed the glass door open and walked back to my car. I realized what Kalina meant and I did what I felt was right in my heart.

I got her lizard and brought it back to her class. I let her teacher give it to her.

When Kalina got home later, she walked in with a big smile.

"Thank you, mama! Thank you for bringing my lizard!" she said.

We hugged.

Early song

I awoke to a little voice singing a made up song next to my ear, she was bouncing a little stuffed penguin on my pillow.

"It's morning, it's morning, mama!" Kalina said to me in between her made up lyrics.

"I know." I said with a smile and still trying to open my eyes little by little.

She continued her song, her golden curls cascading all around her neck... "Today is a beautiful day and I'm bouncing away. I love my sweet, sweet mama and today is the morning... I like today, I like the day and I'm a sweet penguin that wants to go home. I like you, mama." 


I hugged her close to me, her little body fitting like the perfect piece to a jigsaw puzzle into the curve of my torso. I inhaled the scent of her soft hair before she wriggled out.


I simply lay watching her. A slight glimmer of sunlight peered into the room from the corner of a window. If the scent of her sweet skin were colors, they'd be a mix of yellow and baby blue, yellow for its subtle quality and baby blue for its delicate nature.

Today, on my 35th birthday, this simple little moment is what I'll look back at and remember. The mundane quiet morning that grabbed my attention and allowed me to feel the joy of my daughter's giggles and happiness. It was the perfect gift to my day...

Sitting with anger and compassion

Meltdowns are inevitable. My two older daughters still get them from time to time. More recently, my eight-year-old had one. It was over a petty issue and not pretty.

Nevertheless, she was angry. What didn't help was having a slew of people around her that only made her embarrassment and frustration grow bigger. Outside comments from others rarely help. Even I, as her mother, can only offer some solace, if any.

So what does one do? As a parent? As someone witnessing their child in an uncontrollable state of sometimes 'whacky' outrage?

I started by talking to her. I failed.

I tried again. I failed again.

Finally, I had to remove her from the entire situation. She was not happy. It made her angrier!

What does a parent do, again?

Words fail us in moments like these. Words are irrelevant during these highly emotional bouts of anger, frustration and emotional exhaustion. Words do not suffice. Words are merely that, words. The feeling is what is important.

I took her to the car and we left. My husband and I let her grunt and sob her way through her anger. We asked her to breathe and try to 'collect' herself. I'm sure in her young mind she thought, "Collect myself? Clearly, you have no clue mom and dad!" 


Before going home, DH dropped me off at a frozen yogurt cafe with the younger two. He stayed in the car with Sabrina.

He's really good at talking her down from her anger most of the time. My role is more disciplinarian/authoritative since I'm the one that spends most of the time with them while DH works. This is just how the dynamics work in our home. We try to gauge our strengths with respect to balancing parenting issues. There is never an ideal situation but we do our best.

In the 10 minutes we were gone, DH did an interesting exercise with Sabrina. He guided her through sitting with her anger and owning it and deeply feeling every ounce of it. He shared this with me later.

He said to her, "Sabrina, you've very angry so I want you to say the first thing about me that comes to your mind. Anything."

Sabrina: "You are the worst daddy in the entire world! I hate you!" she yelled as she cried more.

DH: "Okay. That was good!" he responded to her.

Sabrina: "Daddy, I really didn't mean that but I do feel better." She said through teary eyes.

DH: "This is good, Sabrina. This is what you're supposed to feel. Being angry is not a bad thing. It is an emotion that you have to allow yourself to feel."

Then he proceeded with her to channel her anger with how she felt about me.

Sabrina: "But I don't want to hurt mommy's feelings. I love her but I am angry!"

DH: "This is okay. This is not bad. You're allowed to be angry at mommy. Being angry doesn't make you a bad person."

She ended up saying the same thing she had said when she used my husband as the focus, that I was the 'worst mom in the world.' Then her heart became compassionate because she became aware of herself and how she felt when she was angry.

So what was the purpose of all this?
He was teaching her the beauty of anger. Anger is not bad, it is an opportunity for compassion. Compassion is inevitably born. Compassion for herself. Compassion for others. Knowing the difference between anger and compassion was what he wanted her to feel.

Maybe you think that all this sounds lovely and easy? It is not. We all know that parenting is a challenge (if you are a parent, that is.) Melding personalities and emotions and situations are never-ending. There is always work to be done, but you knew that already.

I struggle everyday with trying to live in awareness. Trying to parent in awareness. It is a work in progress. I don't have the answers to most things. Who does?

What we all have is the way we 'feel' things. This is a moment to moment experience and we are trying to build this awareness within our children. It is very easy to get caught up in the minutiae of life, I do it all the time.

I've noticed that when I allow myself to sit with my anger, no matter how big or small it may be, I release something new about myself. I find a different perspective, meaning, experience that I can glean from. I want my children to have this experience as well. No thing is absolute or guaranteed to give you a certain outcome but in order to see the lesson in things, we must become aware and sit with whatever it is that we're experiencing.

Just as my daughter will continue to experience many meltdown moments, I will be learning something new each time she faces a challenge because this is what parenting and life is all about. Learning and becoming aware of our 'selves' because there is beauty in this.

Pain and suffering certainly sucks but somewhere between the ugliness and pain of it all, there is something to glean from it... something raw, something beautiful, something healing...

Why gun violence is a touchy topic for me

Once again I'm shocked at the news today. The shooting in Aurora, CO has siphoned another spine chilling memory for me. Gun violence is a touchy subject in my world.

No child should ever have to endure the paralyzing fear of their life being threatened with a firearm. Still, it happens too often. No child should ever have to question such horrid stories like the Columbine shooting or the Virginia Tech Massacre. I don't agree that these are topics are ones that children need to be privy to.

But what about those of us that have endured gun violence first-hand? At the age of five my life was threatened by a very sick and broken person who pointed a gun to my left temple. This memory was seared in my psyche for life. The fear is still palpable to me today.

On days like today I'm faced with the choice of whether I should share these horrific stories with my children ages 8, 6 and 4.  Am I wrong for sharing the facts with them if I feel I need to?

I want my children to live a happy and almost carefree life. I don't want them burdened with the violence in today's world. I want them to understand that not every situation is perfect but that there are also so many things to be grateful for and to feel fulfilled about. I want them to be well-rounded people.

I'm trying to raise my three daughters to be aware of the world at large by cultivating compassion within them. I'm far from exceptional but am doing my best. So when I read today's headline, I had to choose how to go about sharing it with them because well, this is the world we live in.

I decided to share it with my eldest in private. She's almost 9. I've been incredibly candid with her about most things so I felt in my gut that she'd be okay with learning about the Aurora Theater shooting. Her empathy swelled in a matter of seconds for the people that were hurt and killed in the shooting. I decided to keep it from my 6 and 4 year old because my gut told me so.

I went on to explain to her that people that do these things are broken themselves. She understood perfectly. I also expressed to her to never forget that all beings, good and bad deserve compassion. I often tell her that people are born innocent and pure but that the world and other humans are what make them broken. We all have something good inside of us.

I respect all parents who choose not to share these awful stories with their children. Perhaps if my situation and experience were different, I'd choose the same thing. It's a heavy subject for me, still.

I find these moments in parenting challenging because the decisions we make on behalf of our children ultimately stay with them for the remainder of their lives. I've had to live with the traumatic memory of the day my life was 'almost taken' (all melodrama aside) and have had to dance around subjects such as the one like today's with respect to how I share them with my daughter(s) with the utmost care and sensitivity.

This is why gun violence is a touchy topic for me. No, it is not easy. No, it is not pleasant. No, I don't know if I'm choosing the correct answer but I'm doing my best and listening to my gut most of the time. Life is precious and so are our children.