R took a spill on her bike this afternoon. It was a slow-moving spill, and she's only scraped a knee and her palm, a bit, and now has an arcing bruise in the shape of part of her tire on her inner thigh. I was down the street walking home with S at the time, and I saw that R didn't shed a tear as she got up and hobbled to our driveway. Another mom, who was collecting her daughter from a play-date when R fell, commented on how brave R was. I also praised her for being so calm while I cleaned up the cuts and applied antiseptic and bandages.
"That was quite a spill," I said. "I saw you fall."
"Me too. Up close," she answered.
Later, when we were talking about our best thing/worst thing for the day, R said that her best thing had been the fall. "I know it sounds weird," she said. But then she explained that when she was going down with the bike, it made her get rid of some anger she'd been holding inside about other things in her life. I can only guess that this is the anger and frustration that she catalogued for me yesterday: anger over having to endure the STAR testing at school, over being friends with people who aren't friends with each other, over her little sister getting on her nerves. She said that the fall pushed everything out of her except what was happening at that moment, and she sort of felt better afterwards for it. I wasn't sure whether to be relieved that she had this kind of release (I understand what she means), or whether to be afraid that it's the beginning of some lifelong pattern of self-abuse in the name of catharsis. This is just one example, too, of me extrapolating some little event out to an extreme conclusion.
But then she said that her worst thing was also the fall. So I think we're all right.
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