incorrigible

In the shower tonight, after I momentarily lost my mind and agreed to let Gabriel wield the shower head (ostensibly to rinse himself off, but really to feel powerful and soak the entire bathroom, including his mother), he began dancing with it and singing:

Dang me.

Dang me.

Oughtta take a rope and hang me. 

Hang me from the highest tree! 

Mama would you weep for me?

Which of course made me laugh. And abruptly turn off the water, residual shampoo notwithstanding. He has been gripped by the compulsion to make mischief of late, especially in matters concerning his sister. She has been overtaken by the same disease: baiting, taunting, and engaging her brother in wild wrestling matches that sadly - this should not happen so soon to a big sister - often end with Gabriel pinning her, crowing with satisfaction while she shrieks under his considerable weight. 

Last night she shut him out of her room while he beat on her door in agony. How he hates to be excluded from her doings! So in retaliation he ripped her meticulously written "room rules" off her door, tore the sheet in half, and shoved it into the kitchen trash. Well. Furor erupted from Frances's light, long-limbed form. She screamed at him from the other side of her door, something about being a bad brother and never, never forgiving him.

A moment passed - long enough for Gabriel to realize what he'd done - and he knocked. She screamed some more. Then she heard his tearful voice choke out: Didi. I am trying to say I'm sorry.

She threw the door and her arms open to him. I saw the whole thing go down. They were wearing matching bright yellow over-sized sleep shirts from the University of Iowa (my sister's alma mater), clutching at and hugging each other, Gabriel with tears of remorse streaming down his face, repeating his apologies, and Frances tenderly comforting him and eventually taking him downstairs to read Green Eggs and Ham. 

I watched the whole scene, slack-jawed. The drama, the mysteries of sibling intimacy! Only later, after Gabriel was in bed, did Frances look pensively at me and say, I don't think I really did forgive him, Mama. I'm still mad. But when he cried like that I got so confused.

It happens to the best of us, kid. The thing is, the gripped-by-naughtiness bug is not limited to sibling relations around here. Since school started last week, my daughter has been push, push, pushing me. My patience wears thin during these spells. On Friday night, as I was saying goodnight, she said something complaining and mean to me that stopped me in my tracks. I told her it was disrespectful and hurt my feelings. 

She gasped, immediately apologized, and then earnestly blurted out: I've been evil for the past four days Mama. I say and do mean things when I don't even want to. But I can't stop. I don't know why this is happening. I'm sorry!

Well, that took all the windy indignation out of my sails and gave empathy a chance to make itself felt, something I am always grateful for during difficult times. Her confession reminded me of a passage that resonated deeply when I first read Anne Frank's diary, so many years ago. Do you remember this? She describes standing back and watching herself be cruel to other people, while feeling powerless to stop the behavior. How comforted I was by that eloquent echo of my experience as an eleven year old! And Frances, at seven, was somehow also able to articulate that awful, trapped feeling too.

At dinner Mike talked with us about the story of the golden calf from Exodus, as he was planning to ask an opening question about that passage for seminar at St. John's tonight. About three minutes after the Israelites receive the ten commandments, they build themselves an idol, thereby breaking the very first one. Curious. I sneakily but steadily ate four chocolate chip cookies this afternoon, having just told my children one cookie was plenty. We humans are incorrigible. We do the things we know we should not do. But oh, if we could express remorse whole-heartedly as Gabriel did, and in turn receive the kind of abundant, open-armed forgiveness Frances offered (at least in that moment!), those inevitable bouts of saying and doing the wrong thing might become a lighter burden to bear.