powderkeg summer

I think my news feed is killing me. I cannot get through a day without tears coming to my eyes, over and over and over. My two year old looks quizzically at me, asking, “Are you angry? Are you sad? I am angry also.” She assumes an exaggerated pose of anger, lip stuck out in defiance, arms crossed, head bowed. I have to laugh, and hug her, my voice still shaky for another minute till the day’s demands take over and pull me back to the present. 

I thought this was going to be a crappy summer. I knew it was. My husband left for a month for an archeological dig, I was perpetually nauseous from a surprise pregnancy that we didn’t feel quite ready for, and my oldest baby was moving to Israel at the end of the summer, for good. I wasn’t prepared, and didn’t have time to prepare, for homeschooling a kindergartener, second grader, and fifth grader this coming fall (only days away!) The deck was definitely stacked against me feeling any kind of peace.

And then they kidnapped the 3 boys. 

Since then, its been spiraling into more and more grief, the tears coming every single day for more loss, more unbearable sadness and the world’s condemnations of a nation that deeply loves life. 

So I follow every moment of it feverishly, and in those moments of tears, feeling like my own personal troubles are tiny, petty, nothing. And then I’m yanked back into daily reality and back to my own worries, snapping at my husband, my children, feeling the weight of exhaustion crush me and make me reactive and un-thoughtful, in a way that i haven’t been in quite some time. 

My two year old and five year old sit on either side of me with books in hand for me to read, and then fight each other over whose turn it is to be read to first. My two year old swings her hardcover copy of The Pigeon Wants to Drive a Bus and slams me on the head. I am immediately furious at the pain, at the unfairness and hopelessness of trying to do something nice for them and feeling like theres no way to win, no way to have it go smoothly, peacefully. It just makes no sense to me, this fight of theirs. I blindly, furiously, grab the two year old and put her in her room, wailing, and slam the door. 

There was a day once where I would have never dreamed of yelling at a two year old. Two? Barely verbal, minimal impulse control, raging passions and emotions, just a hint, a whisper of the civilization that will take years yet to fully emerge. Yelling? Physically handling them with fury etched in every muscle, every line of my face? I feel sick immediately after doing it. 

Is this what it is to be ruled by your raging, swirling, unmanageable emotions? Is this in some tiny way like what Israel’s enemies are feeling? Is it calculated and thought out, a philosophy of absolute hatred and murder, or is it just blind, unthinking rage? 

This way no one wins. Deep breaths. Vague glimmerings of memory that there has to be a better way. I remember reading Maria Montessori’s On Peace and Education years and years ago when I was doing my masters degree. “Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.” (And sometimes not even that apparently.) 

So I try to inhale consciously. Let go of a little of my anger at myself for being so damn reactive this entire summer. All we can do is keep fighting our own tiny (or not so tiny) daily battles, trying to let peace win and our roiling swirling emotions be, without owning our every move. No one said this would be an easy summer. Accept the chaos, and let the tears flow. Something tells me there will be more before this gets better.