Serenity NOW...Spring Has Sprung...

      She was lying in bed...trying to avoid bed time...
      Isobel:" "Daddy my nose hurts."
      Daddy: "Go to sleep, Izzy."
      Isobel: "No really, my nose hurts. I hit it on the bathroom stall door."
      Daddy: "Wait, what? How did you hit your nose on the stall door?"
      Isobel: "I was turning around and when I turned back I wasn't looking and I hit my nose across the door."
      Daddy: "I guess that'll teach you to keep your nose out of other people's business."
      Isobel: "Wait, what? Daddy, that doesn't even make sense when you are trying to do something. You are  smelling someone else's business."
      Daddy: "Wait, what?"
      Isobel: "And that's just gross."


      I have been in the parenting game precisely seven years. Coincidentally that is the same amount of bad luck one gets from breaking a mirror...So what I am seeing now is a side of my daughter that I frankly, don't much care for. The attitude that comes from this kid is staggering and I guess my question -is this kind of thing normal? Is it a little girl thing? Is it a thing for her age? Am I wrong to want to chain her to a pipe in the basement until it all goes away?
      It really wasn't that long ago when I was the world to my little girl. I still am but lately I am a source of disappointment and contempt for her. It's not an occasional thing either, it is all the time.
     "I am full." she'll say.
     "How can you be full, you've had no snacks and you ate two bites of your food?"
     "I don't like it."
     "I don't care, this isn't a restaurant." I have waited years to fling this chestnut at my child...it is the birthright of all parents to state the painfully obvious to their children. My problem is the inner child that is so firmly rooted beside the writing desk in my mind always answers for Izzy; 'You're damn right this isn't a restaurant, if it was, I wouldn't have ordered this shit.'
      I suppose she comes by it honestly. Mules will run away from her mother after she's made her mind up about something and I am about as dark and moody as it gets. I don't shout for long but I stew forever. I can remember my mother making me sit at the table until all my peas were gone. In childhood terms, this meant I had to sit at the table until the dog or I or both of us vomited whole peas. The whole while, grumbling under my breath that she'd get hers...somehow. Either way, I figured I didn't really have to do as she told me. That dog had a cast iron constitution but between me and my sister having to sit at the table, it had developed a pathological fear of peas.
      It isn't always about food, though that is a gigantic source of friction. Her inability to pick up after herself is also one of the bones of contention that litter this house like the Paris catacombs. My ex-wife used to jokingly call me 'Pig-Pen' and say a little cloud of dust followed me wherever I went. She probably wasn't too far off the mark and again...my progeny has only just dropped from the tree. She can take the living room from neat and tidy to ground zero in about three seconds. She's a passionate and inventive player. Didn't they call it the Passion when Jesus died?
     I think the worst is the out and out defiance. She did something...probably a great many things over the course of the day that culminated in pin point accuracy of the final act of ghastly indignation-sitting on the counter and I had just had enough.
       "Go to your room, now!"
     She did not. She went to the living room, sat down and began watching T.V.
      "I thought I said go to your room?" I asked incredulously.
      "I don't want to." she said.
   I suddenly understood why we got hit with wooden spoons, spatulas, Hot Wheels tracks, hands, the cat, really anything within arms reach.
      I don't want to...if I had told either of my parent I didn't want to do something I was told to do, I would still be walking with a limp.
      But what could I do...I can't hit her, even writing it seems stupid and ignorant. We are a lot of things around this place but ignorant and violent isn't one of them. No, I'm afraid the answer is simple and staring me right in the face and also scaring the living shit out of me. The only real answer is to hold on and weather the storm...keep steering her in the right direction and hope she doesn't insist on making too many really bad decisions like I did...just the same, I better be ready when she does.



     It has been a long cold winter and it seems spring has finally arrived. As far as Isobel is concerned it has.
        "Can I go outside in just a hoodie?" she asked.
       "I guess," I said. "Will you be warm enough? It's not that warm out."
      "I'll be OK." she said.
      I didn't pay much attention to it. I looked out the window sometime later and she was in her usual summer position-sitting on the hood of my car barking at the minions wearing just a t-shirt.
      I called her to the door.
      "It is not warm enough for just a t-shirt. You need to wear more than that.Put your sweater on and do it up." I said using the Father voice.
      "Daddy," she began.
      "No," I said. "Look at your arms, they are beet red."
      "What does that mean?" she asked.
      "It means you are getting to cold, the blood is rushing around your body trying to keep you warm. If you don't put on something warm
 all the blood will move from your skin and start surrounding your insides, trying to keep them warm. Then your skin will go blue."
      "Blue?" she asked.
      "Yes, blue." I said. "And then in a little while from that, you would die from hypothermia."
      Gigantically dramatic but she really did need a sweater."
      "Would I come back as a zombie?"
      "Oh forget it, put a damn sweater on, will ya."