When Everything Seems to Go Wrong

Yesterday was one of those days that the pages of history tell us are better spent lying down, at least according to one of my favorite movies, The Philadelphia Story.

My youngest son, Nico, has suddenly made the leap from childhood to adolescence, fueled by raging hormones with an emphasis on raging. He came into our bedroom at 6:45 am to ask why I wasn't up helping him get ready for school. "You're 12 years old, Nico." I responded sleepily, "Can't you get yourself up?"

"Well, it's much easier if you help me," he responded. "Otherwise, I'm late for school," he added, in a tone that clearly meant, "And it's your fault if I am."

If there had been a "please" involved, I might have gotten up. But Nico had been difficult the night before, and I wasn't ready to face Little Lord Fauntleroy so early in the day.

It went downhill from there as Nico returned to his list of grievances from the night before, namely the fact that there had been no dessert after dinner. This has been a point of contention for a while now, with me arguing that if he wants dessert, he's old enough to make it, or eat what's around, like fruit, or the ice cream that's been in the freezer for a couple of months. In my view, I'm responsible for making sure dinner is on the table; dessert is optional.

Once my husband got involved, there were more raised voices, slammed doors, and I ended up driving Nico to school since he was on the point of melting down in tears, shifting back from adolescence to childhood in the blink of an eye.

The bad mood had already taken hold though. When I got back from dropping him off, I made the mistake of taking a look at the remains of breakfast still sitting out on the kitchen counter and made a sarcastic comment to my husband about his lack of commitment to housekeeping. This resulted in more slammed doors and domestic drama, with me feeling equal parts guilt and frustration.

Then my husband called me later that afternoon to tell me that my eighteen-year-old, Tomas, had been in a car accident. Since he had recently damaged our mini-van during a close encounter with a dumpster, this did nothing to improve my mood.

I was fuming, when my husband called again to clarify. It wasn't the car that was in an accident. It was Tomas. He had been hit by a woman, who was backing out of a parking space and didn't see him.

Suddenly, anger shifted to guilt and fear. Here he was out looking for a job to pay for the damage to the car, and I had assumed he was at fault for another accident, when he was actually the victim of someone else's carelessness. Fortunately, he was only bruised and scraped. And, of course, he hadn't gotten the name of the driver or her insurance information. "She could barely speak English," he told me, as if that was a sufficient excuse.

But I had already let go of my irritation over that when I saw that he really was okay. No broken bones, just scrapes and bruises. No further damage to a car, that after all, could still be driven, even if one sliding door was permanently wedged shut.

It had been one of those days when everything seemed to go wrong, but in the end, nothing really did. And that's a good thing after all.