Good Night, TCOY

1. Walked to and from town, 25 minutes each way.
2. Met my friend Rachael for breakfast at Marcel. Beautiful person, health coach and gifted poet.
3. Worked for a while at Joyist, on important personal writing and on paid work. Enjoyed my Greg blend smoothie for lunch and a half-size bowl of chia pudding at 3:30.
4. Deli turkey and Swiss rollups for snack.
5. While Dan took Punch to gymnastics, I took a bubble bath. It was soothing, but doesn’t wash away worries about Punchy’s behavior this first year on the gymnastics team. She is a graceful, talented gymnast, but is reportedly sometimes mean during practice and the coach says she will be off the team if that behavior continues. I talk to Punch about it. I hope and pray. I worry. Tonight, I told her about a girl in high school who was really cruel to me and lots of other people, and how at age 57, my friend and I still remember that, because it hurt so much. This meanness, I believe, stems from the period from age 15 months to 6.5 years, when Division of Youth and Family Services took Punch from our care and reunited w ----.  It was a rough ride. And then surely a speed bump to be moved back to us at age 6.5--a relief [she opened her eyes in our house the first morning and said Yay!] but a bump. A child’s heart can get hardened. I feel terrible about this behavior and wish I could fix it. I want to be the parent of a kind person, kind like Figgy is, not to a person other parents may talk about. To some degree, if Punch fails at this, I will feel that we have failed her, too. Oh well, no one is perfect. One day at a time--but it’s rough.
6. Ate a garden tomato.