2.05.2004

Mother Of The Year, Yet Again

We had babysitting last night. Seymour ran off to finally see ROTK. I ran off with the generous duo of Ep and Clyde, who treated me to an excellent dinner and fine conversation (thank you thank you). Before leaving, I set up Pee Wee's Big Adventure on TiV0, since Iz had seen it before and I knew she liked it.

I returned home to a hysterical girl who could not stop crying and who absolutely would not go to bed. The reason? I'd completely forgotten about the movie's Large Marge exploding face scene. The last time she'd watched PWBA, I was there the whole time and had fast-forwarded past it. This time, she had had the holy shit scared out of her.

Iz was shaking and sobbing, and kept repeating that she "just couldn't get the face out of her head, [she] couldn't stop thinking about it." The poor bit wouldn't go more than five feet from me, and cried until I put her in my bed and laid down with her. Then she kept waking up every 20 minutes or so to make sure I was still there to protect her.

Which means that I slept in my bra. Painful, but appropriate punishment for being so careless, in my mind. She is usually such a brave girl. I worry that her armor has been pierced, that she is now vulnerable to the silly cowardices that wracked me throughout childhood. Fuck.

I hereby swear that I will not give her the your-pain-is-inconvenient-for-me brush-off that I got for my outlandish fears ("there couldn't possibly be giant squids or earwigs in your bed, now be quiet and go to sleep"). Nor will I coddle her for more than a day or two--but I will take her terror seriously, and am going to try to counsel her through it.

And maybe she'll take me seriously the next time I insist that she's not ready to encounter Sauron.

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