Past Forward Volume 1 (52 page)

“No.”

“Aren’t you even curious about it?”

Willow paused. “Well, I know what’s in it.
It has my fingerprints, how I was conceived—I know all that stuff,
so why worry about it.”

“I don’t know. I thought it implied there
was more to it than that.”

Chad passed his journal across the table.
“The raw emotion here. I keep reading it and it kills me.”

Willow took the journal and frowned. She
wasn’t familiar with it. Somehow, she’d missed this journal. Chad
waited for her to comment but Willow lost herself in the text,
oblivious to the world around her.

April 8, 1989-

She is sleeping again. I am exhausted. This
little girl of mine is impossible to control. She’s so
strong-willed. I’ve tried everything I can think of, but there is
no rationalizing with her. I can’t even give her what she wants
without her demanding what she hates. At this rate, she’ll be a
criminal before she’s five.

Oh Lord, I can’t do this. I’m a failure. My
child is so ugly—so hateful. How anyone can call a child “innocent”
is beyond me. Either she’s possessed by demons, or all children are
the sinners that the Bible says they are. I want to quit.

No. I don’t. I love this life. It’s working.
It’s slow and hard and I’m not very good at it yet, but I love it.
I just don’t love the parenting that caused it. I hate this. I
don’t want to do it anymore. I find myself fighting back tears,
choking back screams of rage that I didn’t know I possessed, and
forcing myself not to strike out at her.

I reread all of my child development books.
They all say this is normal. I can’t believe it is true. It can’t
be true. There is no way the human race would have continued to
grow after the advent of birth control. Abortion— I understand it
now. I hate it, it’s wrong, but I can see the temptation. Do they
do orphanages anymore where you drop off a child and leave it there
for someone more qualified and more patient to rear it? Could I do
that?

I doubt it. Even amid the rage that she
ignites in my heart, I love this little girl. I see glimpses of who
she should be between the moments of selfish demanding. She wants
control. She’s like a mini-Eve, waiting for the opportunity to
improve her surroundings by the sheer force of her will and even if
it isn’t any better—well, at least it’s
her
way!

I sound so bitter and hateful. I despair of
ever helping her conquer the anger and willfulness in her heart. I
don’t think I can do it. The books tell me to affirm her wants and
needs, but all it seems to do is increase the terrible rages.

Lord help. Please. Help.

Willow glanced up. “I had no idea—” Before
she could continue, the next section caught her attention and she
continued to read.

April 17-

She hurt herself today. I refused to allow
her to go to the pool by herself and she ran. I didn’t know what
else to do, so I chased. As she looked back over her shoulder to
see if I followed, she tripped on her shoelace and hit her head on
a rock.

I wasn’t very sympathetic. It was probably
very wrong of me, but I had to keep my wits about me so I just
picked her up and carried her to the kitchen. She was so subdued.
Quiet and compliant all afternoon. I was tempted to test it to see
if she was trying to lull me into a false sense of her willingness
to obey, but I decided it was unjust.

She just asked me if the cut on her head was
God’s punishment for her disobedience. She knows what she does is
wrong. If I had any doubt, this would have to erase it, but I’ve
never doubted her understanding of her sin. Maybe that’s the real
issue. Perhaps I need to sincerely try to help her to a sincere
faith in Jesus. Maybe He can work in her heart where I cannot
reach.

April 28 -

My patience is at an all-time low. I have
none. I’ve cried out to the Lord, but everything I find in His Word
is so fully wrapped in symbolism that I don’t know what to do.
Solomon speaks of beating children. I have no doubt that it would
be wrong to beat her. As tempting as it is, it’s not the answer.
Moses talks about stoning a rebellious son. Not happening.

The strange thing is I think that whatever
I’m doing, I am exasperating her. She seems quite frustrated and
irritated with me most of the time. She’ll be three soon. Three.
She seems so much older. She’s so strong both physically and
mentally. My Willow is a wonderful little girl, but there must be a
curl somewhere in her forehead because when she’s bad, she truly is
horrid.

Is it a sin not to like your child? I love
her. I would die for her—forget that, I have lived for her. But… I
don’t like her. She’s unbearable, and I don’t know what to do to
help her.

April 30-

I cried today. Once Willow collapsed from
exhaustion I escaped to the barn and cried. I screamed and wailed
and threw the biggest temper tantrum humanly possible. I broke
things. In a stroke of genius, I pulled the galvanized metal
watering thing from the wall and I broke mason jars in it. Oh, it
was satisfying. Of course, now I have a lot of glass I have to
figure out what to do with, but who cares? It was so cathartic.

Now I know why God gave children to two
parents. Mothers need a break from their little darlings. I never
get a break. I can never be off my game. I must, every time, every
situation, be alert. No one is here to do it for me. I am weary.
That’s a lie. I’m exhausted. I’m emotionally spent. I cannot do
this. I cannot.

May 5-

We’ve had a breakthrough. I may be able to
control my Willow. While things are by no means peaceful, I now
know how to control her. Last night, or the first night in months,
I slept well.

It’s quite simple actually. The books I have
were wrong. Either that, or Willow is just an exception to the
rule. Either way, I’m doing it “my way” now. Wouldn’t Frank Sinatra
and Grammy be glad?

I quit letting her win for the sake of
peace. I quit letting the work I needed to do be the bargaining
chip. Monday, I woke up, whipped from spending half the night
forcing her back into her bed, and decided that enough was enough.
I’m the mom and she’s going to do as I say even if I have to use
those evil words, “I’m the mom, that’s why.”

At breakfast, I gave her blueberry pancakes.
Her favorite. (See, I tried not to exasperate her.) She screamed
for oatmeal. I finished making the pancakes and sat them in the
middle of the table. I ate mine. She demanded oatmeal. I didn’t get
up. At first, I think she was confused. Why isn’t mommy making
oatmeal? It would have been comical had I not been so tired and she
not had such an ugly history.

When I’d finished my breakfast, I put the
plate of pancakes on the stove, put away the syrup and the butter,
washed my dish, and went to get the brush. Immediately she
protested. “I don’t want you to brush my hair!”

I just sat on the couch, wrapped my legs and
arms around her, and waited for her to finish. It took twenty
minutes, but she eventually said, “You can brush my hair now.”
Something in her voice—her tone—the way she held her body,
something told me that I needed not to brush her hair right
away.

So, I just told her I had to use the
bathroom and to do a few other thing, and I’d brush it when I got
done. The whole day went like that. I didn’t get the garden weeded.
I was physically spent by noon, but I kept it up. If she didn’t do
what I said to do, I didn’t let her do anything else, but I didn’t
let her decide when she’d obey me. She had blueberry pancakes for
dinner. Cold. She decided that maybe she wanted some of the chicken
I made, but I told her that until her pancake was gone, she
couldn’t have anything else.

Anyway, it’s better. She still kicks and
screams and tries to control things but it’s better. Sometimes I’m
tempted to just spank her and see if it would help, but I think it
would just make her angrier and we’d have another battle to deal
with.

My child development books told me that
forcing my will on her was abusive and didn’t show respect for her
as a person. It said that my job is to keep her safe and teach her
what is socially acceptable, but that only bullies make others do
what they want. Well, I was doing that and all I was creating was
the very creature they told me not to be. Maybe I’m doing this all
wrong, but at least she’s more manageable. In time, who knows,
maybe she’ll be more pleasant.

Tears poured down Willow’s face. “I was such
a handful. How—”

“You were a typical child with a mother who
had no one to help her know what to do.”

“What would you have done with me?” Willow’s
curiosity was piqued.

“Well, I wouldn’t have let it get that bad
to begin with. Between Aunt Libby and Mom, I think someone would
have told me what to do. I guess that’s what Luke was doing with
Cari.”

Willow’s expression was understandably
confused. Chad described the scene in Aggie’s kitchen and how Luke
hadn’t allowed the child to answer back. “He just sent her to the
stair step until we were done talking.”

“For running in the house?” It seemed a bit
harsh to Willow.

“No. For arguing when he said to stop.”

“Harsh.”

Chad eyed her curiously. “I thought so too
but only because her mother was dead. Once I thought about it, I
realized that with any other child, I would have agreed. I was just
making excuses because of circumstances.”

They read for a while longer until Willow
tossed the journal aside and snatched Chad’s as well. “Bill offered
to bring a movie to my house once. He said something about a laptop
TV. Do you have one of those? I can’t read any more of this.”

Grabbing his keys, Chad poured her a glass
of water and shouted, “I’ll be back in a bit.”

Willow sat awkwardly on the couch, reading
the journal again when Chad returned with a portable DVD player and
movie. “I thought you were done with those for the day?”

“I was but I saw something as I was putting
the bookmark in and then I started reading, and then my leg got
tired and…”

She passed the journal to him. “I remember
that day. I was barely three but I remember that.”

July 31-

She lied to me today. She’s lied before but
this one was different. This was a calculated lie. She thought it,
planned it, and executed it flawlessly. Honestly, if I hadn’t seen
her myself, I would have believed her.

I spanked her. I know it’s the scourge of
the earth and almost grounds for jail, but honestly, I didn’t know
what else to do. I turned her over my knee, took the wooden spoon
from the crock, paddled her a couple of times, and told her never
to lie to me again.

She’s been happy as a clam all day. We’ve
played and laughed… She’s so delightful when she’s like this. I
don’t want to whale on her for every little thing, but I think I’ve
discovered something that my grandmother knew and didn’t share with
me. Sometimes you need to use the direct link from bottom to brain
to get something through to a toddler.

“
Oh that’s
funny.”

She smiled to herself as she gently closed
the book smoothing the cover as she did. “I remember thinking that
mother loved me, and I wanted to make her proud of me and not frown
anymore.”

The Princess Bride
on a tiny DVD
player was an entirely different experience than the cinema. She
brought a bed tray into the living room and set it between each of
their knees on the couch, and Chad pulled out microwave popcorn
that, of course, was useless. Willow offered to make homegrown
popcorn, but Chad envisioned woodstoves and wire mesh baskets in
fireplaces.

“How about a peach?”

From the video game start to the first “as
you wish,” Willow was entranced. She shrieked with laughter as
Vizzini insisted it was “inconceivable” that anyone could be
following them. Chad lost feeling in his arm as she clutched it
during the shrieking eel attack and laughed when Chad quoted with
Peter Falk, “you seemed a little nervous.”