One weekend morning a few weeks ago, I woke up to discover that the meat loaf I had made the night before was sitting on the stove; I had forgotten to put it in the fridge before heading to bed. I was mad at myself, and irritated that I would have to toss out what was intended to be that night’s dinner, and I started, as Q would call it, huffing and puffing. The girls were standing in the kitchen with me, clearly perplexed by what I was so upset about it, and wound up following me as I headed to the bedroom (still upset) to tell Q what had happened.

Later that morning, after I was feeling better (and another meat loaf was prepared), Q gently reminded me not to get so upset over little things. “I thought something bad had happened,” he said. And he pointed out that the girls were watching the whole thing: “They were right behind you when you came into the bedroom,” he said. “They’re like little ducks, always following their mom.”

Q’s words – and the vision they created in my head – have stuck with me ever since. He’s totally right, of course: The girls are like little ducks, looking to their mom (and dad) for guidance on how to act and be, and I don’t want to teach them that it’s okay to get upset over life’s tiny disappointments. The fact that we, as parents, are being so carefully watched – and mimicked – could easily feel like a great burden, but I hope I can instead use it as an incentive to be a better (calmer) person. The next time I start to fret over a forgotten-meat-loaf type of thing, I’m going to remind myself that I’m the Mama Duck, and my little ducks are counting on me to not freak out!

-M

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 6th, 2011 at 7:00 am and is filed under 56.Two kids-March 11. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.