When James was 7 and in the first grade, I was 27 and new at each stage of parenting.

Cute, no?

I pretty much raised Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes, dudes.  He was reading those books as soon as he could read and I’m afraid they rubbed off a weeee bit.

This is one of the ‘love notes’ he gave me:

“The heads of our enimy’s” is a particularly moving expression, don’t you think?

He even has a stuffed tiger collection.

It’s been interesting parenting James FOR CERTAIN.

My boy is as gregarious, theatrical and extroverted as they come but when he is upset or not wanting to talk about something HE WILL NOT BE MOVED.

Stubborn as they come, that one.

One particularly memorable parenting moment with James came on a hot day at the tail end of May. I was in my third trimester with Matthew. While all my pregnancies have been really difficult and high risk, carrying Matthew was particularly hard. I had just been released from the hospital after a 3-day stay and was laying in bed feeling miserable when my phone rang.

It was James’ school.

I was serving as the Parent Organization President (I know, I know, but I was great at it! 3.5-terms served, yo!) and the school knew what bad shape I was in, so I knew there must be a huge problem for them to bother me with it.

“Loralee, I am so sorry to call you, but James is at field day and well…he’s crawled underneath a shrub and refuses to come out for anyone. We HATE to call you, but you are the only one he wants.”

Oh, dear.

Nobody was around to help me at the moment, so I hauled my whale-like body painfully into my car and headed to the park where the school was having the annual end-of-year rack & field day. (At least I got to see all our hard work in action. That was always cool.)

It took a LOT of doing to get my small son out of that freaking bush.

When all was said and done, I was exhausted.

And James REFUSED to tell me why he was under the shrub in the first place.

I tried being kind.

I tried being firm.

I tried threatening, cajoling and in the end I lost my temper and told him he was going to sit in that room until he told me why it got to the point that the school had to call me to pull him out from the freaking hedge.

I went and curled up on my bed for a bit and once my contractions settled and my head stopped pounding, I calmed down and realized that whatever the problem was it must have been pretty crappy to put him under a hedge on the most fun day of the school year.

So, I made him some lunch with his favorite things, put it on a tray and took it to his room.

He still didn’t say anything.

I decided to take a long, hot shower since I had gotten pretty sweaty and dirty and had some twigs in my hair.

When I got out and was walking down the hall to my bedroom, I saw a piece of folded paper slide out into the hallway.

On it my son had scrawled in big black letters,

“DEER MOM. I WANT MORE FUD.”

After I finished laughing for about 5-minutes straight, I went and made him a plate of “fud” and took it to his room.

Because I am a total softy.

(And we have laughed at this many, many, many times over the years and we often say we need “FUD”.)

Even though I tried my hardest, my son still didn’t tell me what happened that day.

Or the next day.

Or even the next.

But eventually, we found out that he was being horribly bullied by a kid in his class. And I went all roaring pregnant mama bear and put a stop to it. It hurt my heart that I had gotten so upset that he wouldn’t talk to me when he had been hurting so much over this situation. I wish he had talked to me earlier about it.

Fast forward eight years to tonight.

We had such great plans for our evening and I was SO looking forward to it. We had the house cleaned, homemade pizzas in the oven and I was looking forward to some family time with my kids and my husband when it happened. A stupid argument between teen and parent and it all culminated in James being sent to his room for the evening.

It ruined our evening.

It made me frustrated and sad.

I talked to my husband about it and then brought a plate of dinner into my son.

And I told them both that I hoped that they would each see where they were wrong and apologize to each other.

Since I just barely had to do that, I know how difficult it can be to say you are sorry in the midst of big emotion and feelings of being wronged.

It’s not easy to do, not at all.

But when it’s the right thing to do, it’s the right thing to do…and the sooner you do it, the less damage you do and the sooner you can start to move on and ditch the perpetually grody feeling that comes with stupid arguments. Because nobody ever wins in stupid arguments. (NOW, if only I could just manage to be so wise in the midst of all that stupidity…) I wish I could say that both of them were more open to my nudging but like I said, wisdom in the midst of stupidity can take a bit to come.

After Butterlump was in bed and Jon and Christopher were in watching TV, I went and picked up the empty plate from James room and then I sat down here to write.

Thing is, I had nothing to say.

But then it happened.

A paper airplane landed on my keyboard.

It was from James.

I unfolded it.

And I laughed.

And I knew I had to write this moment down and share it, because that is what I love the very most about doing what I do.

But before I started typing, I took my son a plate with more “fud”.

Because I’m still a total softy.