“Sooner or later in life, we will all take our own turn being in the position we once had someone else in.” ― Ashly Lorenzana

This has been the week of the girls upstairs.  My great reckoning that, truly, what goes around comes around.  One of the girls is little, 16 months old, the other around 5.  I don’t know their names yet but I know like I know that the older is some reincarnation of the reason why I don’t have children.  I was that girl; the one who could throw a tantrum at a moment’s notice with the veracity of a studied lunatic.  These were no ordinary tantrums they came complete with the true belief in the injustice that was being thrust upon me by…whatever, whoever.  They had screaming, crying, hair pulling, foot stomping and the throwing of oneself on the floor.  Kid you not. They are the reason my mother would turn, usually calmly, and issue the Italian curse; you should have children just like you.  Oh no you don’t, watch this I vowed.  And years later I became the favorite Aunt and all was well.  Until now.

The upstairs Momma is genius, she leaves for work early and Dad gets the girls ready for the day.  Older girl wants none of it.  Every morning, I mean every morning.  As I’m making my coffee she begins to escalate into a fervor that can only be described as a percolation into boil over.  They are right above my kitchen, stomping and carrying on as if she is being tortured, which in the scheme of this five year old who boasts a princess on board sticker on the car, the latest outfits, and her own music (can we shut Brittney Spears up for just a minute? Really?), seems unlikely.   Dad is amazing, quiet, calm, going about the duties of the morning.  I can just picture him stepping over her toward the door and waiting at the bottom of the stairs for her to stomp down.  And stomp she does, all through the house.  In the kitchen she stomps so hard that my kitchen light blinks.  In their bedroom, above my office, she stomps so loud that Lina dives under my desk where I’ve put two cushions for her to sleep on.

In her moments of distain for the little one she can lash out with the standard, I hate you.  She will scream at whoever will listen (and that’s everyone when the windows are open) she’s not the good one…I know, I know I still say that my sister is the good one.  Because, well, this really didn’t happen from her.  And then there are the moments when she turns on the little one, in any number of ways, and the little one begins to cry.  That completely devastated sobbing that is the thing that will haunt big sister many years from now.  I know like I know.

I don’t get angry at all this morning chaos, it only lasts a short time, but I do get nostalgic in that I wish I had behaved differently kind of way when I was a kid.  In that how in the world did my parents ever talk to me again once I passed that stage? In that I will never forget the look on my sister’s face when I hit her and it took about three minutes for the tears to actually come out of her eyes.  God she was being brave but shit was that a crappy thing for me to do. “You have to appreciate where you have come from to know who you are in the present and who you would like to be in the future.”  ― Truth Devour

What I actually do is pray every morning now, for those girls, for those parents.  I have come to realize the power of that particular Italian curse and that even though you think you got over somehow you didn’t even come close.  And I pray that I have amassed enough Karmic equity so they move along from this stage quickly.

Amen.