For the past few days, Ava has had a bit of a hard time. She manages to get herself in a teeny tiny bit of trouble, and when reprimanded, she makes it a whole lot worse, to put it mildly. It is almost like she is embarrassed and so to save face she ups the ante. No need for great detail, but suffice it so say that she ends up losing control and in a puddle of angry tantrum-y tears screaming things that are unbelievable. It is hard to deal with, and it has befuddled me these last few days. A couple of times I have managed to get her to stop and reflect before she dives in, and was very proud of myself that one of those moments was in the grocery store. She is shifting a lot, and I am always curious if a developmental change is the root of some of these issues.

However, tonight was different. Everything was winding down and the only task left was to brush teeth. She was happy and playing and then she melted. She came up to me, sobbing, saying that she did not want to brush her teeth, she didn’t like it, and so on. I stared at her. She has NEVER protested brushing her teeth. Not once. Carter, yes. Ava? Loves it. And yet, with huge tears dropping off the end of her nose, she wailed that she just couldn’t brush her teeth. I knelt down and said “now, who are you? Did you take Ava away? You must be someone new. Because Ava loves to brush her teeth…”

In any other scenario, this would usually get her to laugh, but no. More choking tears. So, we lay down on the bed, while she sobbed and sobbed. Obviously “I don’t like to brush my teeth” translated to “I have no idea why I am so upset but I am really upset and have this huge gush of emotion that I cannot cope with because I am four and I have tried being mad but that did not work and now I am just sad and very much at the mercy of this giant unknown that is myself…”
So, we just lay there, and finally, finally, I was able to sing a song and brush her teeth. I sang her “this little light of mine,” a song she loves, and she relaxed and let me brush her teeth, all the while with huge, sad, and, frankly, scared eyes.

After that, we were ready to go to bed. She was on the cusp of being ok when Carter ran in and jumped on us, and a new onslaught of tears hit her as she begged for some quiet time, just Ava and Mom. That was next to impossible, as Carter was also exhausted and would not have put up with being excommunicated from the evening ritual. So she lay there clinging to me and sobbing quietly as I prepared to read them their story. It was heart wrenching.

I looked at her, and knew that any sort of platitudes would be useless, because it was obvious that everything was not ok and would not be ok in the foreseeable future and to suggest something so banal would be really callous of me, denying the fact that there was something, even if unidentifiable, very wrong. So, I asked her if she would like to say a prayer to help her feel better.

“Yes” she said.

Now, I have made an effort to teach her about god by including beliefs, rituals and stories (simple ideas, obviously) from all sorts of religious traditions. Thus, she knows about the ideas of Jesus and Mary, yoga, hindu mantras, reincarnation, etc. I have taken great pains to tell her that God is the good energy in the world, and that people have all sorts of ways of describing that good energy. We have adopted a tradition that I gleaned from a Quaker magazine in which we sit and talk about where we found god in the course of our day (sometimes it is pretty funny), and we say a Buddhist prayer for people we both love and have trouble loving, and sometimes we sing OM (Carter loves that), and sometimes we say the Hail Mary.

Tonight I asked her what prayer she would like, and she said “the Hail Mary.” It was so heartfelt that I nearly started crying myself. I personally think Mary is terrific, especially that she has transcended so much of the current religious rigamorole paralyzing this world. It is almost like since she is someone’s mom, no one is about to mess with her. Everyone just steps back and lets Mary be her graceful self. I don’t really see her as a Catholic thing, though of course that is an obvious bias on my part, even if I am a very lapsed Catholic.

So, the Hail Mary it was. I said it a couple of times and she repeated lines, and then at the end I closed my eyes and said “Dear Mary, please please please wrap Ava up in your wonderful grace and love and warmth and help her feel happy and safe and cared for and loved. She is sad and I don’t want her to be sad.” And by this point she was crying and clutching me, and I was crying, and she said “please say it again.” So I did, three times, and finally she stopped sobbing, and then she relaxed her grip, and with a huge sigh she said “thank you mommy.”

Thank you Mary.