Remember

It’s the end of the day and as usual, I’m tired. My voice is tired and my patience is tired, as usual. And as usual, she gets up out of her seat when she should be sitting down, and as usual I remind her that she shouldn’t, and as usual she tells me to just wait - she’s doing something. And in a moment my patience is completely spent and the words flow out. The hot words, emptying out of a tired me, un-tempered by Patience which in now run completely dry. Hot words flowing freely, carried along by the river of Frustrations. I’m just so tired of being interrupted and so tired of being ignored and tired of saying and saying and saying and wasting my breath on ears that fall deaf to the patient reminders and this needs to stop and it needs to stop now and it needs to stop with you because I’m so tired of Never Seeing It Change. And finally I get a response and I see a reaction and I see the recognition of wrongdoing and it feels so good. Even as the words flow out I feel the tricklings of Regret seeping in to cool down my hot heart, but still I continue because finally, finally I have an audience.

When my tongue is finally stopped and she’s sitting meekly in her seat and they’re all sitting meekly in their seats, I turn away with a heart half-way Sorry for what just happened and it’s not two minutes later until I’m all Sorry. I was just the way I never want to be.

I call her to me and apologize, not for the words, but for the way. I tell her that no one should ever be with her the way I just was and that no one should ever speak to her the way I just did and that I am Sorry. And I can see that she, too, is Sorry. That she wants to remember to listen but that she just forgets when there’s something she wants more. And so we come up with a deal that from now on whenever she forgets I will remind her by simply saying, Remember? And now, whenever I say, Remember? I say it partially for her to remember that she wants to listen, and mostly for me to remember how I don’t want to be.

And with every Remember? I also remember the feel of her Forgiveness as she wraps her little arm around my neck and smiles out her sweetness and erases my wrongdoing from her heart. And every time, I’m so thankful for Forgiveness, and thankful that she reminds me to Remember.