Ah, April Fools Day. A lovely holiday celebrating the time-honored tradition of making asses of each other. I've never particularly understood the point of this "holiday." It makes about as much sense to me as Daylight Savings Time. (Seriously, I suspect Daylight Savings Time started out as an elaborate April Fools hoax by one clever prankster who wanted to prove how easy it could be to convince an entire country to do his bidding, even when the directive makes no sense. And 80+ years later, said prankster is still waiting for us all to get the joke.) I've been on the wrong end of several April Fools' Gotcha! moments over the years, and I've tried to be a good sport about it. But this year, I was not a good sport...or a good mother, for that matter.
We were leaving a friend's house, and I was getting the kids settled into the car when I heard my phone beep. I checked the phone, and a text from Emma's best friend's mom was waiting for me: "O said she don't want to be friends with Emma anymore. She won't tell me why." Em and O do just about everything together. They are in the same class, they ride together on the bus, they go to summer camp together, they have multiple play dates and sleepovers. To say they are close would be an understatement. So when I got this message, I felt like I'd been sucker punched. I immediately turned to Emma and asked if she and Olivia had had a fight. When she asked why, I told her what the text said. Yes, you read that sentence right: I TOLD MY DAUGHTER THAT HER BEST FRIEND NO LONGER WANTED TO BE FRIENDS WITH HER.
Emma, understandably, was devastated. What proceeded was one of the worst 45 minutes of my life. I'm not exaggerating. Emma sobbed, and I sobbed at seeing her sob. The sobbing was bad enough, but she soon quieted and just stared into space while silent tears coursed down her face. She looked shell-shocked. Now, most regular readers of this blog are aware of my oldest child's penchant for the dramatic. My daughter has had wailing fits that would rival those in the darkest Greek tragedies. But I have never ever seen her as she was during that car ride home. I drove as fast as I could, threw Sophie into her crib the minute we arrived back, and found Emma curled into a fetal position on the top of her bed, mewing quietly like an injured animal. At that moment, I would have pulled my own skin off to alleviate her pain. I have never felt that sort of visceral empathy before, for anyone, ever. It rendered me breathless. I put my arms around her and we just lay there, snuggling and crying. Then we heard my phone beep again. Of course, when I checked the message, it said, "April Fools!!!!!"
I was stunned. Never, not even for one fleeting second, did it occur to me that the first text was a joke. I was outraged. Who joked about something like that? When I essentially asked the mother that very question, she insisted that she never thought I'd actually tell Emma. She figured I'd call to find out what happened, and the joke would stay between her and me. In the mother's defense, she felt really horrible about the whole thing. (And rightly so, I say.) Emma was SO relieved, although the first words out of her mouth were, "That's a really stupid thing to joke about." But then she started laughing and thinking up jokes she could do to others in the spirit of the day. She recovered much more quickly than I did. I was still emotionally blasted by what had transpired. I was frustrated that I'd needlessly upset Emma, but the full bizarreness of my choice to tell her still hadn't hit me. I told my close friend about the incident. The first words she texted back to me were, "I can't believe you told her without calling the Mom first. How awful, Jen." Wha?? Huh?! Talk about kicking someone when they are down! I know she meant well, and she dutifully proceeded after that to shower me with sympathy. She was just sharing her first gut response, which was disbelief that I'd screwed up so epically. She is not only one of my closest friends, but also a fellow mother whose opinion I greatly value, so her perspective on the situation hit me hard. Then I told my Mom. She was gentler about it, but essentially concurred with my friend's assessment that telling Emma about the text was not my most stellar Mom moment, to say the least. I finally grasped the full horror and ineptitude of what I'd done. Yes, I was still annoyed with the Mom for pulling such a tasteless prank. But the blame for Emma's anguish fell squarely on my shoulders, and mine alone.
So why did I do it? I generally consider myself a pretty good mother, with a good head on my shoulders. Why, in this instance, didn't I make a better choice? Maybe just butt out of it and let Em and O work it out on their own? Or call the mother about it, as she had expected, without dragging Emma into the drama? I think the closest I can come to answering that question is by pointing out that the one person who instantly understood what I'd done and why I'd done it was my husband. His first words to me when I told him what happened were, "I'd have done exactly the same thing." And I think the reason he gets it is because he's the only other person in the world who knows what it is like to be Emma's parent. She is a fabulous child, truly. I am not just saying that because I'm her mother. Em is smart, clever, funny, insightful, expressive, inquisitive, loving, sensitive and sublime. I adore her. Chris and I both do. However, she can also be a pill. Perhaps that's not a cool thing to say about one's own child, but hey - it's the truth. She can be rude and bossy and controlling. (I still have no idea where she gets any of that from.) And when interacting with friends, she can be domineering and obnoxious. Chris and I have privately shared our fear that eventually she'll piss everyone off and find herself friendless. So I think when I got that text, my first instinct was...Emma, what did you do? It's a horrible thing to admit, but in the interest of truth, there it is. So I asked her about it. Because I figured she would already be aware of the situation, and I wanted to hear her side about what happened before I spoke with the mother. Of course, the second I saw Emma's face after I told her, I knew I'd made a terrible mistake. But by then, it was too late.
Hearing that Chris would have had the exact same instinct in the situation made me feel validated, but also deeply guilty. I mean, what does it say about us as parents that our gut reaction to any conflict in our child's life is to assume she's responsible? Isn't it supposed to be the other way around? I made a huge, huge, huge mistake that day, and I can't take it back. Not for Emma, and not for myself. Because not only did I tell Em something she didn't need to know and upset her greatly, but I got my first glimpse into what it is gonna be like when Em does experience the first loss of someone she loves. Most relationships don't last forever, and at some point in the future, odds are that a boy or girl she cares deeply about will break her heart. And I don't know if I'll be able to handle seeing her in that kind of pain. Hopefully next time, I'll at least have the very small consolation that I was not the person who caused it.
Most parenting missteps I try to shrug off after the requisite time of self-loathing has passed, reassuring myself that we all make mistakes. But I don't think I will be able to forgive myself for this one. April fool, indeed.
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