Tonight Josh knocked over a framed picture of Topher sitting on the stoop in Brooklyn. In it, he's little and holding a toy airplane in one hand and a toy firetruck in the other. The picture fell on the floor face down and the glass broke. Danielle and I were in the kitchen and Alex was doing homework in the living room and saw it happen.
When we heard (I just wrote that as hurd at first - my psych teacher would say that means something) the crash Dani and I went to see what happened. We saw Alex standing on the couch with a look of pure rage on her face, fists clenched, glaring at Josh.
FIX. IT. We stood in the kitchen doorway watching, as Josh realized how upset Alex was. First he started to pick up the frame pieces and then stopped and began to go toward Alex. She shook her head. I'm not really sure how auras work but the rage was rolling off Alex in waves. I could feel it totally clearly.
Josh backed up and again went to pick up the frame pieces. It was so weird. Alex seriously never ever gets angry. Never. She gets hurt. She cries. Never yells. We were all kind of frantically shooting each other looks of ohmigod Ali is angry?? what do we do?
I whispered to Dani to go help Josh clean up and I went and stepped onto the couch next to Alex. Sliding a finger inside her fist I whispered that he was fixing it. We stepped off the couch together. It felt like it was two hours but the whole thing was less than 30 seconds.
When we looked at the damage, the picture itself was totally fine. It's just the glass in the frame. Josh promised to find out from his mom where to get a different frame and Alex went back to her homework. Later, after my sisters were in bed, Josh told me he was scared of Alex in that moment. "Don't worry - if she'd gone for you I would have intercepted her before she charged you," I told him. Josh smiled. He was proud of me for learning his football terms he tried to teach me a couple of weeks ago.
3 comments:
It might be a good idea to make copies of those irreplaceable photos. Easy enough to do.
Glad the photo was unharmed. Abby has a good idea. Maybe a safety deposit box too?
Well done diffusing the situation. If Alex doesn't get angry, then it's good she was able to express her anger. Also sounds like she controlled it well while clearly expressing and feeling it.
If you make copies of photos that are already framed, be aware that taking them out of frames could damage them, so see about making copies while they remained framed.
Post a Comment