Done Adulting Vol. 1 Ch. 100

So this is what soap tastes like, Jamie thought, sitting on the counter with the bar in his teeth and Becky standing in front of him with her arms crossed. She’d been pretty thorough about it, working up a good lather and making sure it got on his gums and most of his tongue.

Becky didn’t lecture or scold in the car, and Jamie sat wordlessly in carseat all the way home, flipping back and forth between the righteousness of his cause and regretting his loss of self-control. He wanted to argue his justification and confess his mistake; ask forgiveness from Becky, ask it of himself, and demand apologies from every amazon and human who had ever wronged him. Unable to pick either path, he gave up halfway home and accepted whatever was going to happen next, too tired and unsure to decide whether he deserved a consequence for his language or not.  Becky carried him inside, put him in his crib, unloaded the car, retrieved him and taken him to the bathroom, sitting him down on the counter without a word or struggle from Jamie, who had good idea what was about to happen.

She skipped the lecture, knowing he knew exactly what he should not have done. The only lesson she needed to drive home was he couldn’t get away with that kind of behavior and would get a consequence every time he behaved that way. Jamie watched in limp trepidation as she lathered the bar and said, “Open.” He meekly did as he was told.

Now he was sitting there feeling even sorrier for himself, waiting for the long three minutes to be up. He wanted to cry. As much as he tried not to, one tear escaped before Becky’s phone dinged.

She took the bar out of his mouth and filled a cup for him. He reached for it. “Uh-uh,” she said, holding it up to his lips. He swished it around, spit, and she gave him another mouthful. He swished and spit again, and she gave him more until the cup was empty.

She picked him up and carried him back to the nursery, sitting down in the rocking chair. “Now, do you want to tell me what’s wrong?”

“They ...”

“No,” Becky said in the gentle, firm, parental tone her voice took whenever she needed to be sure her words were taken seriously. She shook her head patiently, continuing with, “that’s just today. You’ve been heading toward this for four days. Do you want to tell me what’s really bothering you?”

Jamie wanted to tell her, but he wasn’t sure what the problem was. He’d just been short tempered and especially sensitive. Now he wasn’t so angry, at least for the moment. Now he was just regretful and tired and feeling guilty. He responded by leaning against her and sniffling.

Becky sighed and patted his back. You’re only ever as happy as your least happy child, she thought. She let him gently weep until he got control of himself. When he was done, she asked, “Then do you want to tell me happened at Tot Care?”

Jamie recounted the story, and Becky listened attentively. “Well, Jamie, you had every right to be upset and even angry.” She had been planning on having him write them an apology. Now she felt they were both in the wrong, the staff more incompetent than malicious and Jamie pushed the end of his tether; two wrongs don’t make a right, but neither did she think the staff, in the balance of things, deserved an apology. She would write a letter, though, to the manager registering a plainly worded complaint.

“But,” she told Jamie, “the way you handled it was unacceptable and unhelpful, and you know that. You made it worse.”

Jamie morosely replied, “I know.”

“We’ve had this conversation before, several times. You know these situations don’t get better when you’re rude back, and on top of that, the language you used. It’s not the words themselves. It’s that you used them at someone. You know better than that, don’t you?”

Jamie whimpered, “Yes.”

“Name-calling, especially like that, is never okay.”

“I know.” He sat silently for a moment and then started whimpering again and put his head back on Becky’s chest. Come on, Becky silently pleaded, just tell me what’s wrong! She just wanted to fix whatever it was, and she wanted to fix it right then.

“Baby, please just tell me what’s the matter,” she pleaded, kissing the top of his head and feeling a little stone in her throat. He just cried. Becky closed her eyes and sighed. Jamie hadn’t had lunch, and she knew it would make him feel a least a little better, so she opened her blouse and bra and repositioned Jamie. He looked up at her with wet eyes, then nuzzled back into her and latched on. He stopped whimpering, but Becky could feel his warm tears on her skin. She patted his back as he nursed until he fell asleep. It was a little early for his afternoon nap, but the extra rest was welcome for both of them.

When Amanda got home, she found her mom sitting in the kitchen with a cup of hot tea. “Hey, Amanda. Wanna cup?”

“Sure.” She put a teabag in a cup and poured hot water from the kettle.

“So shopping with Jamie did not go well,” Becky reported. Amanda sighed. She half expected it wouldn’t. She sat down at the table.

“What happened?” Rebecca recounted the story, including what Jamie had told her.

“Wow. So what happened when you got home?”

“I washed his mouth out with soap, and we had a talk about the right and wrong way to talk when he’s angry,” Becky said. Amanda’s tongue tingled at the memory of the two times her mom had washed her mouth out; it didn’t teach her to stop swearing, but it did teach to stop swearing around adults, at least until she became one. “I tried to get him to talk to me about what’s got him so upset lately, but he won’t say. He just got weepy, and I tried again. He still wouldn’t say; I nursed him and put him down for a nap. Poor little guy.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know what’s upsetting him.”

“Maybe, but he’s gotta figure it out, and he’s gotta let us help him do that if that’s what he needs.”

“Has he gotten any letters?” Amanda’s first instinct was Cheryl. Her letters always put Jamie in, at best, a funk.

“No.”

“Did Little Hearth say anything to you?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

“And if he told Mary, she’d have told us.”

“Maybe he just doesn’t know. Happens to all of us, right? We get in a bad mood for a while,” Amanda suggested.

“Maybe you can get him to talk to you.”

“Of course I’ll try, but maybe he really can’t say. Jamie’s gotten pretty bad at hiding his feelings, at least when he knows what they are.”