Them's fightin' words...

Yesterday, I was posed an unexpected question by Child Number Two:

Child Number Two: Mummy, how come you and Daddy fight sometimes? Don't you LOVE each other??!

My mind went immediately back to a book by Fred Rogers that I have recently read. It is a brilliant, sensitive compilation of little snippets of his wisdom, and in it, he deals with this very subject. I tried to paraphrase as best I could...

Mother: Of course we love each other. Sometimes, people who love each other fight, just like you and your sisters do. Fighting doesn't mean that you three don't love each other anymore; it's not possible that you will agree with each other all the time. Sometimes we ALL have angry feelings, and that's okay. It's important to let those feelings out, but it's also important to let angry feelings out in a way that doesn't hurt anybody else... I guess you could say that we fight sometimes BECAUSE we love each other. We trust that we won't stay mad at each other for very long. We let our feelings out, instead of holding them inside...

Child Number Two: (grinning HUGELY and looking me RIGHT in the eye...) You guys sure must love each other an AWFUL LOT, then!!!