Not My Proudest Moment

I wasn't going to share this and then I realized that this is exactly the sort of stuff I should be sharing. We took a loooong road trip to Montreal & Niagara Falls a few weeks ago. A 3.5 year old really doesn't like to be stuck in the car for a 7+ hour car ride. She slept and we had snacks and drinks and stopped quite a lot along the way, but it wasn't an ideal trip for a toddler.

We were somewhere past Lake George and saw a road sign for food. It was well past lunch, somewhere around 2:45, but since we had been snacking it wasn't so bad, but I thought we should take the exit and find lunch and we should fill up our gas tank too.

We followed the signs that pointed to food and fuel to the right and there was no food or fuel to be had. Frankly, there was no sign of life. It looked like a ghost town. Albert and I started bickering a little because I was annoyed that we couldn't stop and that we hadn't stopped at the previous rest stop that was on the highway earlier.

Katrina started to whine, as only 3.5 years olds can do so well and it was getting on my nerves. I told her to stop whining because we would find something to eat. She persisted and as we were heading back towards the interstate, I turned around and said, "If you don't stop whining, we're going to stop the car and leave you on the side of the road."

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew it was the dumbest thing in the world for me to have said. I know that my parents used to tell me and my brother this whenever we were squabbling in the backseat of a car on a family fun vacation, but there was a big difference. I wasn't actually left by my biological mother on the side of the road whereas Katrina actually was when she was one day old. (Okay, it was at the orphanage gate, but you get the idea).

Ouch. I wasn't thinking at all about her life story. It just popped out of my mouth, and that is the point, isn't it? I can't take things for granted. As much as I feel as if she is my little girl who has been with me since, birth, she wasn't. She had a whole history before she came to me at 10 months old. Things happened to her. She experienced things about which I can only imagine.

Did I traumatize her? I don't think so. My husband quickly changed the subject and she started playing with her Caribbean Princess Barbie, so it didn't seem to be a big deal to her. Later on I did talk to her about what I said and reassured her that I would never leave her anywhere. She said, "I know that mommy. You were just being silly."

Yes, and quite insensitive. It is so easy to forget, but I have to remember that she has a history and I need to be more conscious of it.