Weak, encore

"Your problem is . . ."

She pauses, looking at me reflectively, assessing.
Weighing up all of my thirty three years and finding them wanting.
Alas and alack, my daughter.

"Your problem is that you have never faced any real adversity. And, as a result, you never developed any emotional resilience. No bounce in you. You just crumple at the slightest thing."

This hurts. More than it should. The truth does have a tendency to do that.

I wonder why I am weak.
Why I am one of life's leaners.
Why I am one of life's 'walks-with-a-crutch'-ers.
Overindulged. Not loved enough. Loved too much.
Saw too much. Didn't see enough.
And I'm far too old to keep blaming my parents and their dear caring hearts.
The buck stops here.
With me.

Why, when things go wrong, do I stand with my arms reaching outwards?
Like a trusting, foolish child?
Eternally optimistic, expecting the very earth to have an interest in assisting me.
An enormous great cuckoo in the nest.

And, don't get me wrong, I do believe that being able to ask for help is a good thing.
Just not taken to this extreme.

I wish I could remember who I was before. Was I always so pathetic?
I want to plead my case. To say, "No, you have forgotten. You have forgotten that I wasn't always like this. That it was the adversity that punched everything out of me. THE Adversity. That one time that beat me up and stabbed me in the gut and fried my brain and took everything, including my first daughter. Leaving me flat and shrivelled with no reserves for anything else."

Broken down cars. Schools that insist your child attend them and then won't let her attend as she throws up every morning. Slow moving traffic. Office politics. Money worries. Marital problems.

Those little things that everyone else seems to cope with. Because they don't know any better?

Weak. Weak. Weak. Still like kindling.
But I don't want to start a fire.
Because if I burn away my mother, my husband. What is left?
So I leave those neatly tied bundles of tinder unlit.
Dry.

***

Reuben fell off his ride on this weekend. He fell forward and bumped his forehead on the floor. A huge bruise ensued. I took him to nursery and he cried and screamed and didn't want to be put down. They waved an enormous 'pre existing injuries' form at me. And I panicked. Because I'm scared.

Deep within me, I'm scared that they will be taken from me. Because I'm weak and pathetic.

So I smiled and said, "oh perhaps I'll just take him home."

Because it's safer there. I can lock the doors.

***

I stood in the playground with Jessica.

"It's Jessica!" scream the boys, wailing with delight. "It's Jessica."

She chases them, she keep going. In 'attack mode.' Or so I'm told by the boys.

Cough. Cough. Cough.

I touch her on the arm. I say, "Jessica, do you want to stop?"
And she stops and I cuddle her. She coughs until she is sick.

I ask the teacher if I may please have some wipes from her bag to clean it up. She says, "We can't take her now you know?"

I know. I know.

"Why are we leaving mummy?"

"Because you were sick my darling. I'm sorry."

***

And I need to get some strength. From where, I don't know.

Because there must come a time. There must come an age.
For putting away childish things.
To stop cooing 'cuckoo.'

A time for being strong.

When I was little, my parents were like totem poles holding up the sky.
I was certain of them.

But my children have seen me weeping.
As I whisper, "I'm sorry." into their necks.

But that doesn't cut it.
I need more. I owe them.
But it is a fight. It doesn't come easily to me. Calm. Stability.
Something bovine.
Gentle.
Something.
Not very much like me.

***

Doesn't mean I won't try.

Because I will try.
I'll try harder.
To grow those additional stiffening bones around the spine.
More vertebrae.
Because some of us were born without a sufficiency.
Doesn't mean we can't grow them.

And I want it.
I want strength.
Rings around the trunk.
Thick bark.
A ready smile.
Play dates. Friends.

Not yet.

But I do have.
I have something.
I hope that this is what they remember.
That and the fact that I am fighting.
Not against their sister.
But with her.

And it's something that is easily confused for something else.
It's hard to come by.
But it's all I've got.

Any tips?