Finding time to sit down and write can be challenging. Figuring out what to write can be just as challenging - I've been told I am "the sandwich" generation. Taking care of teenagers and my parents at the same time. Most of the time I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry.
My youngest son has always been very vocal. (That's being nice.) He's a fantastic fit thrower. When he was little he would scream when it was time to go pick up his brother from school. He would scream when it was time to leave a playdate. He would scream when it was time to go to bed. My neighbor finally said to me, "He's not good with transition". Well that much I had figured out!
He has come a long way over the years. There was the always screaming phase, the screaming when he was tired or angry phase (those might have been the same 10 years), the screaming when he was given consequences, and most recently screaming when he is tired or angry. Wait! We are going backwards. Crap.
Now a days he saves the screaming for interactions with his father. (I find it hard to reprimand him because his dad can lose it pretty quickly himself. Tree meet Apple.) But what I have seen more and more since Junior High is his sense of humor and his ability to defuse a difficulty or highly emotional situation. Thank Goodness! Because living with a Greek there is no shortage of highly emotional difficult situations. Deciding what to have for dinner can go DEFCON 5 in a heartbeat.
This New Year's Eve I texted everyone a question in the morning to think about during the day and have an answer ready for dinner. The questions was: someone you love woke up this morning with no memory of who they were....tell them about themselves.
My husband made notes but it was "You are all wonderful and beautiful. I have the best family and I am very lucky. I love you all very much." He was close - second language - he gets a pass. My oldest son shrugged. Being the one who sent out the question to begin with, feeling nostalgic and lonely for family, tradition, and ritual I wrote each person a three page paper. But it was my youngest who grabbed his phone and started typing as I finished dinner and the others set the table. My husband never stopped yelling at him to PUT HIS PHONE AWAY!!
When it came time to share, he pulled out his phone and started to read. You are Yiannis God of working out and Head of the Greek mafia. Recruited when you were just a boy, you infiltrated the mafia and made yourself indispensable by training all the hitmen. Bored with the Mafia life you came to America and posed as a college student where you met your future wife. You really had no intention of settling down but what you did not know about her was that she too was recruited at a young age to become a paid Siren for the CIA. There was no escaping her wiley ways once she got her sights set. After the CIA discovered that you were not a threat to anyone except the out of shape they deprogrammed both of you so that you could live happily ever after. But you had us and now you live angrily ever after.
Maybe there was something to all those screaming years......
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