Washing clean

Obviously yesterday I posted when I was upset, because, well, I was upset. I don't think I mentioned in that post but it has been close to 40 degrees and almost 90% humidity every day here for the last week. Sweltering awful weather. Heat makes everything harder to deal with and the long "nearly" raining days were making me utterly miserable without the stress of parenting. I just could not be rational at all.

This morning though it broke - it started pouring with rain and with the girls looking at it wistfully from the screen door I told them to take off their PJs and go run through it. And they did - joyful squeals of laughter as the sticky sweatiness of the last week sluiced off them. Big puddles appeared and they frog hopped through it and splashed each other. Already feeling lighter as the atmosphere gave relief I watched them without that closed anxiousness that has pervaded my parenting for the last week.

I walked out to the porch as they discovered what rain tastes like and watched as they shook sparkling drops from their hair before walking out into it myself. Looking up into the heavens and letting it all just wash off me. The stress, the anxiousness and that tight little ball unwinding until I could just smile. Taste the water that ran in rivulets down my face. Feel Harry kicking me as my pyjamas stuck to my body.

Sometimes it is really that hard to take a step back and just breathe. To be so desperate to do this parenting thing *right* and then falling in a heap when you just don't know what to do. To be at the end of your rope and seeing how far there is left to fall.

As much as I enjoy this doctoring thing, the most important thing in my life is my children. They are my raison d'etre and I want so much to do the right thing by them so that they are happy, healthy, loved (as do all parents), but also for them to have the skills that allow them to easily mix with all in society: humility; manners; empathy; respect. I know that I've been getting the first bit right but it's the last few that are hardest, because it's mostly modelling your own behaviour.

Bring on more rain.