Sara's Very Bad Day

Sara does this thing. When she gets home, she pulls a stormcloud face and her eyes fill a little. She won't look at me. She did this yesterday after she got home from soccer practice, and I thought it might have something to do with the blood on her jersey and face.

"Hey, how did you get the nosebleed?"

She was momentarily distracted from her personal downpour. "Huh?"

"You have a nosebleed, Kiddo. Go look."

For a few minutes, she was occupied with pinching her nose. Then the stormcloud returned. (Sigh) OK, I'll bite.

"What's wrong, Sweetheart?"

Her face cracked immediately into a grimace, then a sob. "I had a really horrible bad day!"

I pulled up a kitchen stool and pulled her onto my lap. "What happened?"

Well, there was a list:

1. Her two best friends both went home at mid-day because they weren't feeling well.
2. The soccer practice was supposed to be a special clinic with a professional soccer player, but he didn't show up.
3. She got clobbered in the shins. She was wearing shin-guards but it still hurt.
4. She got a nosebleed.
5. It's Wednesday, and Mom is going to work.

I work nights on Tuesday and Thursday, generally; my kids are used to that. But once in a while, I have to go in on a Monday or a Wednesday. We have a program that meets on those nights, and those teachers are also under my supervision. From time to time, I need to do observations, help with testing, etc... Yesterday, the plan was to cook and eat supper, then return to school for an hour or so.

Si walked into the kitchen to see Sara snuffling wetly on my lap. "What?'' he mouthed at me. "Hormones." I mouthed back. Remember, she is growing a boob...

I don't know if you follow NPR very closely, but if you do, you may have heard Melissa Block's coverage of the earthquake in China. That woman is going to win a radio journalism award of some sort. Yesterday, she spent the day covering a family who was searching through the rubble of an apartment building for the husband's parents and their 2-year-old son. She stayed with them while they commandeered rescuers and heavy equipment, while they dug through he rubble with their bare hands. the grandparents and baby were all found dead. I don't speak Chinese, but this woman's screams were in a universal language of parental horror.

Through an interpreter, the woman told Melissa Block that, just before she left her son at the in-law's apartment and left for work, her son was saying, "Don't leave! Take me with you!"

I sat in the supermarket parking lot crying until my tears soaked through the lap of my skirt. "Great," I thought. "Now it looks like I peed myself."

So, my daughter is having a really bad day, and I'm thinking, "Oh, cry me a river."

But I took her with me when I went back to the office, just because I could.