Toro! Toro!

Home. That’s where the boys and I went for my birthday this year. Back to the house that was just a hole in the ground when I was ten. I remember feeling rather insignificant and sorry for myself during my tenth year of life. It all started on my tenth birthday. Eron, my childhood crush, was there with us that summer day. I remember nothing of a birthday party that must have happened, or what possessed us to visit the field whose ground had been broken for the house my parents were building, but I remember that day simply because I had insulted Eron while observing frogs by the lagoon (what else do ten-year-old girls do to show their affection for a boy who will not give her the time of day?), and my mother came to his aid (whose side was she on, anyway?) and had consequently scolded me, embarrassing me in front of him and all the other friends who were apparently there. That seemed to me to be the breaking of birthday code--being in trouble, let alone being publicly embarrassed, on one’s own birthday. I thought birthdays provided exemption from all retribution for bad behavior. Boy, was I wrong. That was just the start to a year of lost battles with my parents.

Home. Back to the place I was heading on foot that Fall, some nine miles from town, when I decided to run away from school. That was going to be a long walk. Thank goodness one of my mother's friends drove by and saw me blubbering and stumbling alongside of the road three miles from city limits. After having been chased by two angry dogs and outrun a suspicious old man on a lawnmower, I was relieved to see a familiar face. She picked me up and drove me the last six miles home. Just as soon as we pulled into the driveway, my father loaded me right back up into his car and took me straight back to town. I begged him not to make me go. I did not want to face my teachers, the principal, my classmates. I begged him to send me to Sacred Heart, the private Catholic school in the next town over where I could change my name, start a new life, and never look back. He said, "Stephanie, you can't leave the cat to clean up the spilt milk." I lost that battle, too.

Home. Back to sleep next to the window I used to climb through late at night while my brother, whom I had bribed, slept in my bed to provide the familiar lump in the shadows in case my parents peeked in. The window that taught me about the tough choices that come with independence, and that “no” was a respectable answer, and that the children you spend your whole life with can be just as degrading toward you at sixteen as you were toward them at ten, only nobody’s mother is there to come to your aid.

While I was home for my birthday we were all sitting out on the back porch, enjoying cupcakes and ice cream on another eighty degree July day, when a defensive yellow jacket slipped out from under the pool deck and zapped my dad right on the finger. That was a sucky battle to lose!

Funny, a friend had just written to me that morning about a time Cole had been stung by a wasp.  He would have been about five or six years old. Her daughter, Katie, had been babysitting when it happened. It had stung Cole right in the face and his eye had swollen shut, so I decided to take Cole to the emergency room.

When the doctor asked Cole what happened, Cole said, “I was playing Toro! Toro! with a wasp.”

The doctor said, “What’s Toro! Toro!?”

Cole replied, “You know. It’s when you hold the towel in front of you, wave it around for the bull to run through, and you say, Toro! Toro! and jump out of the way.”

The doctor chuckled and said, “Well, how did that work out for you, Cole?”

Cole retorted, “The wasp won.”

The doctor laughed. Cole shrugged his shoulders and said, “Eehh. You win some. You lose some.”

It’s a little comforting and a little strange to go home with your sons who are fourteen and (as of today) seventeen, towering over you, carrying around all the same kinds of adolescent drama and secrets you did when you were their age. I guess it's good for all of us to lose a battle every now and then. Battles that teach us that you win some and lose some. Battles that teach us the value of humility. Battles that teach us that it's never okay to insult someone to make yourself feel a little less rejected. Battles that teach us that we have to live with our mistakes, so setting boundaries is probably really important, even when it means people think less of you in the moment. I guess we all win some and lose some. I just hope we lose the right ones.