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Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Little Shed/Shit

Little Boy was 6 months old. The Daughter had endured 6 months of maternal neglect. I looked upon my forlorn and skinny Little Girl... observed her fits of temper and her face all scrunched up with frustration. If you had put her in rags in the middle of winter, with a box of matches, she would have been the picture perfect Little Matchstick Girl.

I wanted to make her smile again. We left Little Boy at home and went out, the 3 of us. Mommy, Daddy and The Daughter. We ate, had ice cream, laughed and chatted. Then we rented bikes and went around the park.

It was a hot day and the sun's rays crackled on the bicycle path. The Husband said to me "Shall we stop at that Little Shed for a drink of water?"

Of a sudden, even as the sun shone all about us, the sunshine went out of our day. The Daughter cycled quickly ahead of us and kept at an unfriendly distance. Her pout returned and her forehead looked like an ox had just gone through it with a plough. The lower lip came right out and she wouldn't look us in the eye. "Come babe! Let's stop here for a drink of water." She shook her head and looked up at nothing in the trees.

I made her drink water because it was really hot and I didn't want her to get sunstroke. She sulked through her drink and then stalked off back to an unfriendly distance from me. This continued for the rest of the afternoon.

I was disappointed. Back then, I was still working full time and inflexible hours. Taking an entire afternoon off was a rather big thing for me. Arranging for The Husband to be off at the same time was twice a big thing. We had hoped to see her smile. Instead, she was simply tiresome in her bad temper. She also refused to explain herself. I was disappointed that we had wasted an afternoon of precious time.

I blew up. She broke down. There we were, 2 unhappy females in the same car, each looking out the window. Only then The Husband asked "Babe... When I told Mommy to stop by the Little Shed to give you water, did you think that I asked her to give The Little Shit some water?"

She turned around with stricken eyes and a nose as red as Rudolph's. And she nodded her head. There was the sound of one forlorn sniff. Well... I suppose I too would have been miserable had I thought that The Man I Loved Most in the World had called me a "Little Shit". But why in the world would she think that? And we wasted a whole afternoon of annual leave just because one little girl was deaf, and had not enough faith in the love of the man she calls her father.

Sigh! But I guess the 6 months of maternal neglect had taken their toll. She really didn't know whether she was still precious to us or not.

9 comments:

Malar said...

Oh dear! This sounds very sad! Poor little girl!
If i'm going to have another child,most probably i'm going to face the same situation!

Petunia Lee said...

Malar - You may not also... hee... they're all different. There's no telling how they'll respond.

My Sinfonia said...

That's such a good one! Faith with people we love is so difficult to build, so rare and so easily destroyed.

Petunia Lee said...

Sinfonia - Gee... your comment is profound. I hadn't thought of it from that perspective when I wrote this post.

Blur Ting said...

I notice that to kids, what and how we think of them means a lot to them. They want to feel special and treasured, especially by their parents. Sibling rivalry exists for this very reason.

Petunia Lee said...

Ting - Yeah... You are so right.

Wen-ai said...

I must remember that all kids are very sensitive creatures. Maybe I'll stick to speaking Mandarin exclusively to prevent any misunderstandings in the future! (as if that will help...)

Petunia Lee said...

Wen-Ai: LOL...It'll certainly help your child's Chinese grades!!

Open Kitchen Concept said...

Ohhh.. poor girl.. imagine who she felt for that afternoon!