The "Oven Mitt" Incident...

...aka the story (OK, one of several) that will outlive me, probably. Sigh...
I've been thinking about kids a lot lately, mine and other peoples...and how they can sometimes drive us to the very BRINK of our sanity and we have to scramble for a toehold or handle or...something. So here's a snapshot of one of the times I was really teetering close to the edge:

First you have to understand that my husband died Dec. 6th of 1978, right before Jen's 8th birthday (and Christmas)...so things were in an upheaval at our house for quite some time...in addition, my boss died suddenly of colon cancer in early 1979 and I was "promoted" to a position I was seriously unprepared to handle, we found out our Great Dane Victor (husband's dog) had congenital heart disease and was allergic to the medication, so we had to put him down...in August of 1979, my Dad finally died of the brain tumor that had gone undiagnosed for 12 years. Yeah, there was some stress. I thought I was handling it pretty well, you know, "keep on keepin' on" sort of stuff...and really, when you have children, you can't just STOP and take time to regroup or whatever. Life Goes ON...and participation is required.

At any rate...I came home from work one evening (probably late-1979) and was in the kitchen making dinner when I heard a huge commotion coming from Jen's bedroom, just down the hall from the kitchen. So I stop what I'm doing and rush in to see what the problem is...and here are both my girls, standing in the middle of the bed...their little girlie fists all bunched up...just dukin' it out!
I lost it...I didn't realize I still had on the pair of oven mitts I'd been using in the kitchen, but I took them off my hands and proceeded to smack both girls with them, yelling "How dare you hit each other?!?!"

The girls stopped, looked at me, back at each other...and then just turned and stared at me...
As I recall, I ran back through the kitchen, dropped the oven mitts on the counter on the way into the living room, dropped into a chair, put my head in my hands and thought "It's finally happened...I've lost my mind!"
I'm not sure what the girls thought, but they were very quiet for the rest  of the evening...and gave me a wide berth...

We all survived my little "lapse", and all the other things as well, and just got on with our daily lives...this is what families do. For many years, it was the 3 of us against the world...and we did OK. There were some horrid times, and there were some good times...and we came out the other side stronger, I think, for having been through them. I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but we are who we are because of what we've been through together.

We often laugh (well, some of us more than others) about this now...and have been known to ask "Do I have to get the oven mitts out?" when arguments start, LOL. It's an inside joke, certainly, but it's one of those things that makes us "family".

Maybe next time I'll tell you about "This is Telephone in Rosemary Services."