Parenthood: Week 317 - The Fleeting Anger

It takes a lot of energy to not stay mad.

Last week, after a day that was stressful, and after evening where chores took up too much time and kept me up too late, I was awoken around 2am by Ethan crying. In only a couple hours I’d have to be up getting ready for work, on a day where my 5th graders had a culminating musical performance that I was leading.

Ethan’s awakening at that time pretty much ensured that a feeling of being rested was an impossibility. If he had gotten up a couple hours earlier, most likely he would have gotten back to sleep and provide time after settling down for me to get a couple hours of sleep. Getting up a 2am though meant that even if he did get back down to sleep, the hour or two afterwards before I needed to get going in the morning would not be that restful.

I was frustrated to be woken up, and somewhere inside of me, in a place more primal than logical, I was mad at Ethan. His disturbance in the early morning was going to make my entire day more difficult. There was no time to have a nap that day or to somehow magically make it right until the next evening. Even that wasn’t a guaranteed fix, because there was a chance that the next night wouldn’t be much better.

Of course, I couldn’t be mad at Ethan. He’s only one and half years old. Ethan isn’t waking up to spite me. Maybe he’s hungry, maybe he’s cold, or maybe he woke up lonely, fearful in the dark that his memory of his family was only a fleeting impression in his mind.

The process, the mental exercise of changing this emotion, this feeling from anger to calm, anytime, especially in the early morning is very difficult. It’s a process that goes counter to how I normally work to validate my own emotions. It’s asking me to push aside an emotion quickly, and not deal with it, which run contrary to how I try to treat the people I encounter in my life. It’s a selfless refocusing of a  pragmatic need over emotion.  Ethan needed to fell my clam to calm down himself. 

This emotional process would be close to impossible if not for the baby in my arms, and the sadness in his cry. As Brandi Carlile, so eloquently sings in “The Mother,” “The first things that she took from me were selfishness and sleep.” It is this lack of selfishness, that helps us endure through the lack of sleep and the anger. Because our children teach us that while our emotions are important, in some moments how others feel are more important.  If we allow ourselves to be for another, our emotions can change. This is not an invalidation, but rather a way that we as humans can inspire change, and be better for each other, and in turn be better for ourselves.