We accidentally wake up the kids in the middle of the night on a regular basis, putting laundry back in their drawers or checking on them.  Usually they roll over and go back to sleep, but every once in a while, we hit their sleep cycle at the wrong moment and they sit up in bed, wide awake.  This happened last week to the ChickieNob, and she informed us in the morning that she needed to snap at us because she was overtired.

We apologized and she forgave us, but she kept bringing up the fact that she was overtired and it was our fault.  When Josh pointed out that she had already accepted the apology, she said, “I accepted the apology.  That doesn’t mean it de-faults you from what you did.  You still woke me up in the middle of the night.  I’m still tired in the morning.  And it’s still your fault.”

I don’t know why, but I thought about this all day because granting forgiveness doesn’t really let the other person off the hook.  Forgiveness is just acknowledging that you heard them and believe them when they express their regret.  It doesn’t mean, as the ChickieNob stated, they are absolved of blame.  They still committed the action, the end result is exactly the same.  Apologies don’t erase; they just move things forward.

Plus apologies may come before the other person is ready to stop discussing their feelings.  Clearly she was willing to accept our quickly given apology, but she still wanted to vent the rest of her frustrations over the situation.  Just because we were ready to apologize and she was ready to accept that apology didn’t mean that she was also ready to stop feeling whatever she needed to feel about having her sleep interrupted.

I don’t know — it just was sort of a brilliant revelation for me.  Both the fact that apology does not equal absolution on all fronts, just some, and that the timing of an apology doesn’t knock the possibility of more discussion on the subject.  If not, after all, a person could apologize quickly just to get past the discussion part where the real work of acceptance is done.

Plus I liked the word “de-faulted.”  You can’t un-fault yourself, can you?

The topic of DC restaurants banning kids came up at a meeting last week.  Josh and I personally don’t patron restaurants that ban kids any more than we would patron a restaurant that banned Jews.  (Well, technically, if they banned Jews, we wouldn’t be allowed to patron the restaurant.  But you get the point.)  Ban a behaviour — such as screaming and crying — fine.  Ban a group of people — no.

But I’m also of the ideology that the moment I leave my home, I am no longer an individual in my individual space, but I’m now an individual who is operating as part of a greater community.  There are plenty of benefits of being part of a community but there are also drawbacks.  Leaving my home means that I don’t get everything my way.  I don’t get everyone to stop talking on their mobile on the train.  I don’t get people to stop wearing perfume.  I don’t get people to walk faster on the sidewalk.

When I can’t handle the fact that other people are going to impede on my world with their sounds and smells and space-grabbing measures, I get carryout.  But when I can handle the fact that I can’t shape the world around me to my personal liking, I end up having interesting experiences when my own existence bumps up against the people around me.

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I think the reason we discriminate against kids is because we have no chance of ever becoming a kid again.  Whereas we don’t discriminate against the elderly (even though, as a society, we treat them like crap) because we know that we will one day become the elderly.

Esquire recently had a piece on Mr. Rogers, a series of connected stories about the man.  He was asked to write a chapter in a book for ophthalmologists about how to interact with kids in their office.  His chapter started with this sentence: “You were a child once, too.”

I think if we all start from that space, remembering that we were once children, it would not only help us to not be frustrated with them but would also give us the door to reach them.

I’m going to guess that you interact with kids on a somewhat daily basis.  Either you are a parent or an aunt or a teacher or a member of a community who encounters kids when you exit your house.

Spend one week saying to yourself before every interaction, “I was a child once, too.”  When you come from that mindset, you realize that just as you never purposefully tried to annoy the people around you when you were a child, the kids you’re interacting with are not trying to negatively impact you.  Their crying is not personal to you.  While it may be affecting you, it’s not about you at all.

Your child or your niece or your student or the kid in the grocery store may be annoying you.  But this isn’t their intention and if they were guided toward a different way to act and if they had the ability to choose that different way to act as their default state, they would act in a different way.

The only way that can happen — that crying, screaming kids turn into functioning members of society — is to keep them around and teach them a better way to act.  They won’t learn it by being kept out of spaces.  They’ll learn it by the adults around them silently saying to themselves, “I was a child once, too.”

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People think that because I’m a parent, I must enjoy being around babies.  I don’t.  I like the babies who belong somewhat to me — nieces or nephews or cousins or close friends’ children — but all the others are just tangible reminders of what my body can’t produce.  My family is not the size I want it to be, and while I accept that and am at peace with it, I don’t want to be around babies and think about it.

So I understand all the arguments about wanting a baby-free space.  But I still can’t get behind discriminating against kids any more than I can get behind discriminating against a person for their sex, race, or sexuality.

Image: Lars Plougmann via Flickr via Creative Commons license

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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The ChickieNob beat me in cards, and I told her that she could pick the prize.  She narrowed it down to a Buffy soundtrack or a Buffy episode, but that was as far as she got.

We talked about it a lot, and I pointed out that it was a pretty low stakes decision.  She could (1) play me in cards again and probably beat me a second time (if not on the first try then some point in the future) and (2) she had the money to buy herself the soundtrack AND the episodes.  But she still couldn’t make up her mind.  It was like knowing she had a prize was even better than choosing the prize.

The Wolvog is the same way.  It is so hard for him to choose what he wants to do when we go hang out somewhere, even when I promise him that it’s a low stakes decision: we can go out again the next week and do something different.

As someone who held onto a massage gift certificate for years because knowing I had it was better than using it, I get it.  The apples didn’t fall far from this neurotic tree.

Do you like to choose prizes (or use gifts) quickly or hold onto them indefinitely?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

It has been a strangely busy week — travel, work, bathroom remodeling, weekend guests, and hosting Pesach on Monday — which means something had to fall through the cracks, and so far it’s the interactive fiction game I was set to play for my monthly interactive fiction club.  (It’s like a book club, but instead of a book, we play a game and then get together and discuss it.)

I’m still attempting to get to it tonight, but it isn’t looking good.  That matzo ball soup isn’t going to cook itself, friends.  But it brings up a question: should you attend a club (book club, video game club, etc) if you haven’t done the prep work?  I’m not bothered by the game being ruined for me.  Well, I mean, I am, but I understand that is the risk.  But is it obnoxious to show and admit, “I didn’t play this one.”

Um… in case any of the guys are reading: I didn’t play this one.  I suck.  But I will see you guys this weekend because I’m leaning towards being obnoxious and begging for mercy.

Do you show up for book clubs if you haven’t read the book?

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Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Top Ten Things That Suck About Delayed Fertility” (Lady Part Adventures)
• “Sometimes I’m Firing on All Cylinders” (Bent Not Broken)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Hope Floats Among the Cherry Blossoms has a post that is so beautiful, heartbreaking, and brief that it is poetry.

My Path to Mommyhood runs into her old RE at the grocery store.  She writes, “I can revel in the fact that we are friends with someone who tried real hard to get us pregnant and tried to keep it real even as the quest failed miserably, and who still gives really great hugs and truly enjoys our presence, whether at events, the grocery store, or in the mail. Maybe, in a weird way, more so because we weren’t a success story.”  It’s a great post about reconnecting with someone who was a big part of your journey.

Too Many Fish to Fry has an important post to read about the death of a friend and a lesson learned.  She explains, “Stoicism never pretends life isn’t horrible. It never assumes that challenges won’t rear up and the philosophy won’t promise a perfect life. Instead, the stoics teach us that challenges will happen, terrible events will occur. They advise that the only way to prepare for such things is to count the good things we have, over and over again.”  I’ll be thinking about the story inside the post for a long time.  (And likely thinking about it every time I climb a long flight of stairs.)

Lastly, Riding the IVF Roller Coaster has a post about telling her child about a loss.  This is a post for everyone who worries about talking about pregnancy loss, stillbirth, or neonatal death with a child.  My experience has been about the same when the ChickieNob and Wolvog have asked.

The roundup to the Roundup: Showing up for a (book) club when you haven’t read the (book).  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between March 31st and April 7th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

One of the rooms at the Yayoi Kusama exhibit is a series of enormous pink blow-up balls covered in black polka dots.

Kusama really loves polka dots — they are everywhere in the exhibit including the final white room that is covered in colourful polka dot stickers.

And you know what — I don’t.  I don’t love polka dots.  Given the choice between polka dots and stripes, I would take stripes almost every single time*.

Which are you?  Dots or stripes?

* The one exception is the shower curtain in the twins’ bathroom.  It has dots in vibrant shades of blue against a white background.  I really like it.  Not enough to put it in my own bathroom.  In ours?  We have stripes.