Oh, Emery!

Feelings are such fragile things. Some people's feelings are like fine crystal - scary and easily broken. If you want to hang out with my family, your feelings should more closely resemble Tupperware.

My ten year old daughter, Emery, is so beautiful and sweet that I am sometimes tempted to fold her up and put her in my pocket just to keep her with me at all times. You would think that every word out of her mouth would be kind and loving. You don't expect to suffer from her brutal honesty.

It is a tricky thing to teach children about feelings. We tell them to never lie, but then expect them to act as if they love the sweater Grandma sent for Christmas. We expect them to overlook our occasional meltdowns without saying things like, "Oh, I get it. You're a good Mommy and a bad Mommy." Not that such a thing happened six years ago.

Emery loves to answer the phone, and we love to let her. She is our telemarketer screener. She will patiently listen to a longwinded sales pitch and then say something like, "I'm just a kid, and I don't know what you are talking about," before quickly hanging up. It works great.

So when I heard her answer the phone and say, "I don't know who you are or what you are saying," I wasn't too worried.

"Another telemarketer?" I asked.
"No," she answered. "It was a friend from school."
"What! Why did you say you didn't know her?" I gasped.
"Well, since we are going to Grandma's, I just said that so I wouldn't hurt her feelings by telling her I couldn't play."

We have a lot of work to do.