Last night in my kitchen, I lost a fight with a roll of plastic wrap.

I was trying to tightly wrap up half of the pound cake I’d made that morning, so I could freeze it, and the plastic started out fine but then split down the middle and would only come out on half the roll. The situation did not improve when I took the roll out of the box and attempted to peel the layers to get one full-sized sheet going again. It got more and more stuck and convoluted and it responded to my stubbornness with its own silent defiant mockery. I finally got fed up and threw it violently into the recycling bin, and turned to pull an alternative wrap option out of the kitchen drawer – only to slam my leg into said drawer and almost trip over it and fall. The resultant gash was very unpleasant and added injury to insult. I finished wrapping the cake as quickly as I could, turned off the kitchen light, and trudged upstairs to bed, where I bandaged up my leg and grumpily groused at my husband that he’d better not need plastic wrap before tomorrow afternoon at the earliest. (My ever-wise husband learned a long time ago that no response is the best response at moments like these. Who knew adulthood would involve this much slapstick? Anyone else..? No, just me? Alright then.)

Today I was at the store with my daughter and remembered I needed to buy new plastic wrap, so I told her that’s where we were headed next. When she asked me why, I told her what happened last night – that I got frustrated and gave up on the plastic wrap and threw it out so now we need a new one. She’s a big fan of Sesame Street, my kid, and on that show there’s a character who often gets frustrated and says “I give up” and then the other characters encourage him to come up with a creative solution to the problem at hand. Essentially, she’s familiar with “I give up” and knows the script now for such situations. So she said, “Mama! You can’t give up!” She then said something to the effect of how I shouldn’t be getting angry, before parroting the words of encouragement from Sesame Street.

In the middle of the aisle, surrounded by boxes of aluminum foil and packages of paper towels, I told her that it’s okay to feel angry and frustrated, those are normal important feelings – but she was right, I shouldn’t have given up. I pulled down a new box of plastic wrap from the shelf, and told her that next time, I won’t give up when I have a hard time with it. We were overheard by another shopper who commended my normalizing of feelings, which I almost do subconsciously these days, it’s become such an integral part of my approach to parenting and teaching. But that interaction reminded me that we are constantly demonstrating to young people how to handle our emotions. It’s crucial to talk about them, explicitly. If we don’t handle them in healthy ways sometimes, it’s important to discuss that explicitly with children too. The goal is to raise emotionally healthy kids; we can’t do that by hiding our emotions and pretending everything is always fine. They’re going to experience every feeling in the box, whether we help them understand those feelings or not. But if we don’t help them make sense of it all, they won’t know how to properly handle things like anger, frustration, jealousy, depression, anxiety, and pain – and it will be to the detriment of all sooner or later.

We ran errands all morning and into early afternoon today, and I’m exhausted. But in spite of my fatigue, I’m struck by how normal today was. I’m still not used to normalcy. Sometimes my mind wanders to how I live now in an idyllic neighborhood, quaint and quiet, with my perfect little family. Loving and patient husband, gentle sweet dog, smart little girl learning so much every day. Warm home, big backyard, wonderful neighbors next door. No fighting, no threats, no need for fear. I no longer feel like my new life is contained inside a soap bubble, fragile and temporary. However, I don’t think I’ll ever get past this feeling of how I traveled across a vast wasteland to finally get to such soft, green meadows here.

In the end, it isn’t really about how many miles of hell through which you need to perform your Olympic gymnastics routine. It’s all about sticking the landing.

P.S. Bargain brand plastic wrap from fifteen years ago sucks. Splurge the extra few cents on the name brand stuff, trust me!