We've been going through the annual hatred of summer camp at the Arens house. She hates bowling. Rather, she hates the fact that her team never gets any strikes. She's sick of swimming with the babies and hasn't passed the swimming test yet. She doesn't want to get up in the morning.
And she blames me.
"I promise I won't bother you," she says, noticing for the 800th time that my office is in our house.
Beloved reinforced it had nothing to do with that. "You know why you have to go to summer camp."
She splashed water up the sides of the bathtub. "Because Mommy thinks I'll bother her here," she said, making the mad eyes at me. "But I'll be really quiet. I just want to be home like a normal kid."
"What are you talking about?" I said. "Almost everyone you know goes to summer camp. All your friends from your old school, all your friends from this camp, nearly all of your cousins. You are not the only child in the world who has two parents with jobs. You are completely normal."
She started crying. "I just want to stay home with you."
I didn't react well. For a variety of reasons, yesterday was a shit day, and that sort of knocked me over the edge. I picked myself up, put myself in time out in my bedroom and sobbed into the pillows.
She knocked on the door after a little while. "I'm sorry I made you cry," she said.
I tried to tell her it wasn't her, but I could see she didn't believe me.
In the wee hours of the morning, she woke up with the pirate nightmare and I woke up with puffy eyes and a crying hangover.
I don't know what normal kids do. I just know what we do, how we adjust and react.
I'm pretty sure it's normal to want whatever it is you don't have.
