Mother Amber, full of grace...

Last night, in the parking lot of Best Buy, I was unbuckling Jack from his stroller when I heard a terribly curt voice say, "I don't want to hear about it! Deal with it!" I looked up involuntarily and saw a woman walking toward me who looked like she had simply had it. I mean, if looks could kill, the whole parking lot would have blown up in a mushroom cloud. Ticked off and annoyed wouldn't even come close to describing how this woman was feeling. Walking behind her was a waif-y teenage girl, presumably her daughter, wearing a look of smug indifference to match her very short denim shorts. I immediately hated her.

Now, on any other day and prior to becoming a mother myself, I would have thought something like, "My, my, my... What horrible parenting. Clearly she needs to work on her anger management skills and learn how to communicate her frustration with her daughter's behavior in a less hurtful way. I'm so glad that I'm such a better person, altogether." Today, I just wanted to hug her and hand her a Margarita.

The worst parts of me show up on days like today. I never thought I would be the type of mother (or nanny) who would snap at her kids, say things with total exasperation like, "What do you WANT?!" I didn't expect to be able to identify, so clearly, with the parents that I have been in judgment of for so long. I'm not sure what I did expect. To be able to rise above what every other human mother has experienced? To be so enlightened that the sound of crying for an hour and a half straight doesn't make me dream about hopping in my car, driving to Mexico, and never coming back?

Maybe it's time to start accepting that being in human form is awkward and difficult and it comes with all sorts of wild emotions and experiences that can't always be perfectly contained or managed, no matter how young or old we are or how many master's degrees we have accumulated. Maybe it's time I stop making this wrong, making myself wrong, making others wrong for having a human experience. Like Lorenzo, who has been screaming from his bedroom for the past 55 minutes while I've been writing this. And me, who wants to go up there and "give him something to really cry about."