Maia massages my temples

"Close your eyes," she said. "Just relax. Don't think about your case. Or about having an accident. Or anything bad." We were outside the Moon Garden, one of our family's favorite restaurants. Everyone else was still inside--Kristina, her mom, David and Kalei. At dinner, Kristina's mom had tried to press more food on me, and I had begged off, pleading a headache. David had wanted to know if I had a cold coming on. "No, I've had it for a few weeks," I said. "A month," Kristina corrected. "I think it's stress from my case," I had continued. All of that must have stuck in Maia's head. "Pretend that you win your case," she continued--she was talking about the appeal. "And that we get the beach house." She was sitting on a wall she likes to climb. It put her knees at the level of my shoulders. My back was to her, and she was working on my temples. "Is that better?" she finally asked. "Yes," I said, because, in fact, it was. "Are you just saying that," she wanted to know. "No. It really is better," I said. John, Saturday, Saturday, September 8, 2012.

"I have anger issues!"

We had been at the Bark Park and were driving home. This was two days ago. I had chosen that time to talk with her about the problem she had had with her mom. My wife had told me about by cell phone while we were at the park. Evidently her sister had called her while she was driving, the call was picked up by the car's blue tooth device and had come out the radio, but Maia had turned off the radio and then had overtalked my wife's sister when my wife had turned the radio back on. A complicated scene. But the bottomline is that there had been a contest of wills that had left my wife exhausted. I asked Maia why she had done all of that. My wife and her sister had been talking about going out to dinner. Maia's explanation, which didn't make a heck of a lot of sense, but which she stuck to, is that she didn't want to hear where we were going to go for dinner because she had wanted the news of it to come as a surprise from me. ALl that my wife had heard was, "I don't want to hear it!" from Maia, as she talked to her sister. She had been embarrassed by what sounded like Maia's disrespect of her. "I don't want to hear it!" "But why, Maia? Why did you have to do that?" "Because when people talk about me, I get angry." What she meant was that she got angry when people criticize her. "And [inaudible]." "What?" [Inaudible] "I have anger issues!" she was finally able to say, loud enough for me to hear. I am nearly deaf, and even my hearing aids aren't much use sometimes. "Boy, do you ever," I said, trying to make a joke of that, which was exactly the wrong thing to do. "I'm not that bad!" she protested. "I didn't say you were bad, Sweetie." But it was too late. By the time we got home, we had agreed that she didn't really have anger issues at all. I don't know how much of this is because she was alone for her first two years, and how much is just being 10. You're going to have to figure that out, Sweetness. But I figured I should make a note of the first time you expressed this idea. John, Monday (Labor Day), September 3, 2012