small exchanges

It's possible to get from our house to school in 7 minutes.  If we hit the light right.  If we don't get behind a school bus.  If it's not trash pick up day.  Today we left the house with 9 minutes to spare.  But it took 13 minutes.  I tried to direct the speed and direction of the other cars on the road.  And I fumed, and sighed and rolled my eyes.  Why didn't I iron last night?  Why did I push snooze?  Why did I ask Josh if he wanted hot chocolate with his breakfast?  I hate being late.  Again. ARRGH.

And then I looked over at Josh sitting quietly in the passenger seat.  Josh is not a morning person.  But he will make conversation as we drive.  He will point out a colorful hot air balloon overhead, laugh at my jokes about downtown Candler, count wild turkeys at the side of the road. Today he sat quietly, looking out the window.  I suddenly wondered what effect my 13 minutes of road rage and impatience would have on my boy's day.

Twenty years ago, I heard a lecture by Daniel Goleman on Emotional Intelligence and bought his book.  These three paragraphs are the main thing that stuck with me from either, but I never forgot this picture he painted.

Say a two-month-old baby wakes up at 3 a.m. and starts crying.  Her mother comes in and, for the next half hour, the baby contentedly nurses in her mother's arms while her mother gazes at her affectionally, telling her that she's happy to see her, even in the middle of the night.  The baby, content in her mother's love, drifts back to sleep.

Now say another two-month-old baby, who also awoke crying in the wee hours, is met instead by a mother who is tense and irritable, having fallen asleep just an hour before after a fight with her husband.  The baby starts to tense up the moment his mother abruptly picks him up, telling him, "Just be quiet - I can't stand one more thing!  Come on, let's get it over with."   As the baby nurse his mother stares stonily ahead, not looking at him, reviewing her fight with his father, getting more agitated herself as she mulls it over.  The baby, sensing her tension, squirms, stiffens and stops nursing.  "That's all you want?" his mother says.  "then don't eat."  With the same abruptness she puts him back in his crib and stalks out, letting him cry until he falls back to sleep, exhausted.

These two scenarios are presented by the report from the National Center for Clinical Infant Programs as examples of the kinds of interaction that, if repeated over and over, instill very different feelings in a toddler about himself and his closet relationships...All the small exchanges between parent and child have an emotional subtext, and in the repetition of these messages over the years children form the core of their emotional outlook and capabilities...outlooks that will flavor their functioning in all realms of life, for better or worse.  Goleman, page 195

Our world is geared for the Big Deals.  Top stories on the news in the morning.  Squeakiest wheel at work gets the oil.  Vacation highlights go on Facebook.

But life is really made up of thousands of unnoticeable, unremarkable small exchanges.  Making lunches for my boys, feeding the cat, greeting students when they are dropped off at school, hugging my husband when he gets home from work.  Small exchanges that, according to Goleman, form and flavor all realms of life for people I love.   If it's true then I want to make the most of the small exchanges.

I only have a few more years of driving to school with Josh.  7 minutes a day.  Or if I'm lucky - 13 minutes.