I’ve been having a little bit of an issue with random things disappearing from my house. What’s strange is that it’s usually food that’s missing and it’s totally random. An entire container of ‘no-salt spices’ went missing for almost three days. Then it just showed up as mysteriously as is disappeared! Honey mustard, here today, gone tomorrow….then it’s back again. Then, finally a brand new jar of relish that was in the refrigerator barely 48 hours goes M.I.A. too!!
I seriously was starting to get a bit freaked out about my mental state. This kind of thing doesn’t happen every day, but when it does, I’m left feeling like either there are little critters swiping stuff through the night to create their secret stash or I’m clearly losing my mind. Part of me was just thinking, “it must be here somewhere” especially because I have a husband that puts things in weird places when he doesn’t know where they go. So, I thought “wait, I don’t think motherhood has completely depleted me of my sanity yet”, I decided to interrogate the ‘usual suspects’. Of course, my husband had no information….not like I expected to hear anything else. Then I asked my son, who will fess up and tell the truth or rat out a person under no pressure or bribery whatsoever. He also knew nothing. That leaves my daughter….hmmm. Could it be?? I call her at work to ask if she knew where the relish was. To my surprise, she had it with her! WTF?? Who takes relish to work? It was then that I asked about the other missing food items to which she says “oh yeah, I take stuff to make my lunches at work”!!! OK, I would normally not even care, but I guess it was driving me nuts with all these random disappearing acts so I kind of bitched her out a bit, she apologized and we hung up.
My daughter and I have a very close relationship and I speak with or text her a few times a day. She lives with me, but she goes to college and works a lot and during the day we’re on different schedules. We sign off every conversation by saying “I love you”, but that whole day I was quite busy and I pretty much rushed through every call because I was constantly multi-tasking. A day or two goes by and I was having a quiet moment with my daughter and out of nowhere she says “I guess you’re not made at me anymore”….to which I was dumbfounded because I had no clue what she was talking about. She clarified by saying she thought I was mad at her on the day of the “missing relish incident” because (as she timidly stated) “you didn’t say “I love you” the whole day. She felt that I was doing that intentionally out of anger! Aaaaaaaahhhh! My heart stopped and I felt like someone punched me in the stomach. I immediately hugged her and said “first, that’s insane if you think I’d be that petty – second, you dork, you seriously think I love relish that much, enough to make you feel bad – third, I LOVE YOU and I’m sorry you felt that way, it wasn’t intentional at all”. We both laughed at how ridiculous it was, but ladies, talk about daggers to the heart! It really made me step back and recognize how much of what we do and say affects our children every day. I was especially moved at knowing how much comfort she gets in hearing me say those three simple words everyday…. which I know I will never take for granted….ever again!
PEACE,
– judy
4 Modern Moms 