Esme asked to go to the park first thing off the bus today. I told her that would not be possible because a lot had happened while she was at school - a tree had fallen onto our truck and broken it (the windows) and someone had come to take it away to see if it could be fixed. It happened just after we put her on the school bus this morning and I had not been able to drive to work because of it. She wanted to see it - I told her she could see the tree and the glass in the driveway, and the tractor - which had a broken front tire now because Mark had used it to get the tree off of the truck. She said 'oh no - two broken things? Why is it the thing?' She really wanted to see the truck and was worried that we had no car, and could not go do the things she wanted. I told her I could not go to work, either, because of the situation - and that we hoped the man could fix our truck well enough that we could drive it soon, but we did not know what day it would be ready. She was despairing in a very major way, about maybe to just have a frustration right there. We were halfway down the driveway now. I told her we were working on a solution to the problem, but she said that there was no solution, it was unsolveable, because there was no car to drive to go buy a new car and were just stuck, and all was lost. I repeated again we were working on a solution - making some calls, we had gotten this far to get someone to come get it to be repaired... she was unconvinced. I asked her if she thought Mom and Dad were smart enough to find a solution to this - didn't we usually work together and figure things out? She disagreed - 'Nooooo! you cannot solve it -there is no truck to drive to get the things!' The expression in her voice was priceless...
I said we were going to make dinner, give her a bath and get her ready for school tomorrow and when she was at school we would continue to work on it and maybe figure it out. Then she began to run down towards the tractor, got there, and she said 'It is gone!'.. yes, the truck is gone. I told you that.. but she meant the tree was gone from where it was supposed to be. I pointed across the driveway to the fallen log that was the tree - and she stared at it for a millisecond, then marched right up to the hole she had been looking at - nearly walking over the glass - and prodded around - it is all gone, it is not right, the things are not in the usual places, and it is all not right. I pointed to the tree again, and she finally looked at it. For the record she asked to go to the park again after we got into the house and did her homework. *facepalm* but was extremely good after that - took her bath, ate her dinner, asked for things politely... she was trying really hard to be good (and did say that at least once) to help with the situation by being good. *impressed*. She listened to the phone ring from the insurance company and said 'good maybe it is the car man with the fixed on the truck?' but was sad to hear it was not. She wanted to play a game on Daddy's computer but we said he was doing 'his work' looking at cars we might be able to buy to replace the truck. She accepted this gracefully. I was knitting dishcloths during her bath and she said I was doing good work for the house making things we needed and she would be brave and do good work washing her hair. She did... and that is usually a frustration for her, wanting to do it but not wanting to etc...
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