Last ditch effort…

Am I a bad mom if I stuff my 4-month-old in a pea costume and go trick or treating the day after her heart catheterization…or better yet, all the while telling my 3-year-old about the gates of hell? Okay, I’ll have to say, Mary Clare did exceptionally well during and after her heart catheteriztion, so how was I to let her miss her very first holiday? And McCanless, being the ever inquisitive, and imaginative child that she is pushed me to explain more details than I originally planned. Let me explain…

As we were finishing up trick-or-treating, I had to pause and breathe, as I so often do with McCanless, and for the one hundredth time explain that she needed to say, “thank you” and at least LOOK at people when they gush over her and say how beautiful she is. Instead, she tends to get an attitude, brush them off and be the complete diva that she thinks she is. She was very impatient and quite rude to everyone offering unlimited Halloween treats to her. So, I thought it was a good idea to explain to her what I remember my mother explaining to us when we were young and being “difficult.” (I don’t think I was three, but drastic measures for drastic times.)

As Mel drove us out to Nonnie’s house, I sat in the back of the car in between my diva and the sleeping pea, and began. “McCanless, Mommy tells you to be a nice girl because God wants us to be kind.” Started off great! Yes, great idea, I thought! After about 5 minutes of my “please be a good girl” spill, she looks at me and asks, “Why can’t I be bad?” Hmmm…my mind racing, I started. “We’ll the devil makes us say and do things that we shouldn’t.” …and before I knew it and after a long drive of chatting away and looking in the rear view mirror at Mel’s grimacing and laughing face, I had done it. She asked and I told. Not once thinking about what I was saying to my THREE year old! She asked where the devil lives and I said, “hell.” She asked what the devil does with bad people and I told her he takes them to live with him. “Like jail?” she said. Wide eyed and more curious than anything, she kept asking and asking until I just told her not to worry about it. I know she could have listened to me chat about Dante’s Inferno at this point. So, I drew it to a close.

I always wondered why my mother always told us about the devil. In my teens, I thought it was such a cruel thing. As children, my siblings and I would even tease each other and throw out, “ooooh, you’re going to the devil” if one of us said or did something bad. I didn’t know if it was the fact that she (and we) grew up Baptist and that was just a Baptist thing, or she just wanted to scare us to death, in hopes of making us mind her.

Now I know. In a last ditch effort of turning our lives into something worthy, and in an attempt to create respectful children, she had to do it. It probably wasn’t when we were three, and I’m sure it wasn’t on a spooky Halloween night, but she explained it and I’m truly thankful because I know that I’m a better person because of it. Hopefully, I’ve done the right thing, and one day when she stops screaming at every cop that drives by, McCanless will know why I explained this to her. 😉