Looking for a mothering miracle? Forgive your kids for bumming you out.

NOTE: Since this is a week of utter distraction and total unpredictability, I thought that instead of trying to guess where we’d all be on Friday when the blog is published, this would be a good week to share a readers’ favorite excerpt from my book STRANGE SITUATION.

Forgiving our kids, and ourselves, for bumming us out is just another way of letting go of our ideas of who we think we’re all supposed to be.

Letting go of expectations is the only way to clear the deck for surprises.

And who couldn’t use a miracle? Of the mothering variety, or otherwise?

Photo Credit: Hillary Harvey

EXCERPT FROM STRANGE SITUATION (with a foreword by Dr. Dan Siegel)

WHEN AZALEA WAS three or four, I took her to Chinatown in New York City. Because I have always considered it my parental duty to encourage an appreciation of the finer things, I researched where to get the best dim sum. I thought she’d get a kick out of the food being brought around on a cart, and all the savory, chewy, pillowy steamed treasures inside. After much online perusing, I discovered a place that was reported to be a serious hole in the wall, but over-the-top delicious. Authentic.

After looping around and around a block, both of us getting a little hot and cranky, I finally found the place, wedged between a vegetable stand and a tourist mart, and we went in. The air-conditioning was on, but just barely. We were hit with that garlicky, fishy scent I love. 

“It smells funny in here,” Azalea said.

“It doesn’t smell funny, it smells good!” I said, trying to sound cheerful as a familiar tightness began to settle around my eyes and mouth. We were seated at a sticky table near the back, by the bathroom and the bin of dirty dishes. Azalea swung her legs under the table, chatting in her raspy voice, with her tiny front teeth and sausage curls in pigtails. I ordered a Diet Coke for myself and an apple juice for Azalea. When I realized there were no real dim sum carts— only on weekends— I was disappointed, but the show must go on. So I ordered fried dumplings, noodle soup with chunks of red- tinged pork swimming in glistening fat, and shrimp wontons stuffed with scallions. Azalea ate gingerly, looking worried. “The soup tas-tes . . . funny.” It was incredibly strong. And sour. Even for me. But I didn’t want to hear it. 

My jaw started to set as I thought about all my efforts clicking away at the computer, all my hard work that was so not appreciated. I felt that familiar chasm opening up, and scrambled to close the gap. I asked Azalea if she was okay. I wanted her to say, “Yes, Mommy, are you kidding? I’m having the time of my life!” 

But she just nodded and gazed around the tiny restaurant. When she nervously spilled her apple juice and the waitress cleaned it up by smearing big gray rags all over our table, I started to free- fall away from myself. And her. 

“Can I have another apple juice, Mommy?”

“Because I’m made of money?” I snapped, pushing the tumbler-size plastic cup of warm water toward her. 

Sitting at the table, withdrawn, my face set in a cold and punishing mask, I couldn’t see the small, really trying person sitting across from me anymore, the one I had dragged through the city streets to satisfy some dream I had. Azalea disappeared. She was over there. I, separate, was over here. 

And then, for some mysterious reason, in that moment I was able to see—in the very moment of my separation—that I was so desperate to be close with Azalea, I was willing to climb through the morass of myself to do it. I shook off the distance and came to. Azalea—soft face, blue eyes lined with feathery lashes, her little jeans and yellow shirt with white trim, her ears, her small chest rising as she pulled air in and out—was just sitting there. She was looking at me, sadly, around at the room, then back at me again. 

The instant I let go of myself, I was able to see Azalea in all her little-kid glory. In fact, we arrived on the scene simultaneously. The waitresses’ faces also softened, and the other diners looked a little more alive as they slurped their noodles. The place was filling up with spectacularly ordinary human beings.

It was a miracle.

I paid the check and we went straight to a Chinese bakery, where we bought sugary lemonade and a piece of toasted Wonder bread with margarine. We sat together in the dingy booth, watching people find their way through the crowds on the sidewalk, like a flock of birds moving across a cement sky.