I am angry, I yell. I am irritated, I yell. I am tired and overwhelmed, I yell. It's not always screaming and shouting. Often it is just loud and sharp. Over the years, yelling has become an intrinsic part of my personal communication style.
The first time Simon and I went to marriage counseling, the therapist asked us to describe our coming-home-from-work routines. I said I got the mail, came inside, yelled at the cats, fed the cats, and started dinner. She looked up from her notebook. "Why do you yell at the cats?" she asked, cautiously.
"Well," I said, slowly, trying to understand her curiosity about the behavior, "I walk in, and they are meowing, loudly, and tripping under my feet, and I'm just trying to hang up my coat, so I yell at them." I didn't go into the specific profanities I hurled at the cats, or the fact that some evenings I also threw the mail at them. I mean, it's not as if I kicked the cats, or set fire to the cats. Being cats, they barely even noticed the yelling. If I threw the mail they might scatter for a minute, but then they were back at my ankles, mewling for dinner.
The therapist just stared at me, wide eyed, then pursed her lips and went back to writing in her little book. Two sessions later she declared that I was a "prickly pear" whom no one could love.
Still, I didn't really consider that yelling could be a problem until a few years later, when I became a parent. I don't curse at Henry and Amelia, and I certainly don't throw things at them. Early in the day I am even able to calmly say things like, "I know you don't like it when Amelia plays with your cars, honey, but I don't want you to grab from her. What could you do instead?" But by the afternoon, when the grabbing and growling between them escalate, and I am tired and trying to do some tedious chore such as cooking or vacuuming, I am barking little motherly gems like, "If I see you grab something from her again, I will take the item, and throw it directly in the garbage can."
These children, they are not like the cats. They don't see this as part of our repartee. Instead, they cry. Especially Henry. His eyes grow watery and his lip trembles as he says, "I feel bad for myself," before bursting into sobs.
And I feel like a monster. I tell myself I won't yell anymore, I will be patient and kind and will finally take one of those classes on positive discipline. And then Amelia is back in the warming drawer, and I am yelling, "No babies in the warming drawer," and then she is crying, and then I think maybe I am just not temperamentally cut out for this parenting business.
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