Rowan was pretty pleasant (for
Rowan was pretty pleasant (for her) this morning - got up no problem, made herself breakfast, got dressed, brushed teeth and hair, all pretty quickly and early, leaving us about 20 minutes to spare before leaving for school.
Then, just as we were preparing to leave, she snapped into a more normal Rowan morning-mood, complained that her dress was too short, then that it was too loose, tried on another dress but that was just as bad, started yelling and screaming at me, etc etc etc. Finally she found a dress she seemed happy with (it looked rather silly with her other clothes but what the hell, that’s the last thing I was going to tell her). She decided to wear her sandals, and though I pointed out that she’d get wet feet in the rain (and got a torrent of abuse in return) I let her because I wanted to get off quickly and just couldn’t face more arguing.
On the way to school there were more strops - I found myself walking down the street yelling at her at the top of my voice, and then felt pretty bad about it. Although we walked all the way to school holding hands (which she usually refuses to do nowadays) we were both smouldering and looking daggers at one another.
Just before we went into school I decided that I had to do something, didn’t want to part with us both in such a foul mood. So I said “can we be friends?” and she turned and gave me the most gorgeous (and unexpected) smile. I kissed her on the head and, surprisingly, she let me (normally the potential for social embarrasment that this causes would provoke another twirl of rage from her). More than that, she let me come into her classroom and showed me some of the things she’d done recently (normally she wouldn’t be seen dead with her dad in school). As I was looking around the classroom, her teacher told me that Rowan had performed amazingly well in a maths exercise they’d done the previous day - she had been showing the children how to add 11 or 9 to a number by first adding 10 and then adding or subtracting one - something that they wouldn’t normally be expected to do until a year later. Most of the other kids had struggled with the idea, but Rowan had taken to it immediately and got all of the answers right. As she told me this, I could see Rowan sitting at her table, a supressed smile of pride creeping over her face.
Funnily enough, I’m sure I remember discussing something similar with Rowan months ago - how I always do complicated sums by breaking them down into smaller simpler ones. I like to think that it helped her in some way.
I’m so happy that we parted in such a good atmosphere, compared to what had gone on minutes before.