Don’t stop laughing because of me.

My corporate identity was shattered this morning. Busted into smithereens. And the damage is wholly, utterly, and completely irreparable.

I worked for years to build this identity, deliberately arranging the pieces of the puzzle that formed my image as the unflappable, serene, ever-loving and soft-spoken mother.

But today my neighbor heard me yelling at my four-year-old son, and now it’s all over. Had I been yelling at him for doing something ghastly, like trying to choke the baby or overturn a pot on the stove, I could have held onto some vestiges of my carefully built identity.

But I was yelling at him for — I’m embarrassed to even say this — laughing. He was laughing like a hyena, and it was grating on my nerves, and I couldn’t get him to stop, so finally I just yelled. I’ll spare you the gory details, but let’s put it this way — I sounded a lot worse than a hyena.

He stopped laughing, my little boy, when he heard me yell. Then I wished he would continue. Laugh, I silently begged him. Don’t stop laughing because of me.

He didn’t even cry. If he had cried, or thrown a tantrum, I think I would have felt better. He just looked at me in bewilderment, his eyes two pools of fear and hurt.

That was bad enough. But then I heard a timid knock at the door. I straightened my snood and shoved my rattled composure back into place as I opened the door for my neighbor.

“Hi, Rivky,” I said with as much equanimity as I could muster.

She looked a little uncomfortable.

“Um, can I borrow two eggs? I’m sorry for bothering you again, but you know I’m always running out.”

She was always running out, and I was the neighbor who never ran out of anything. Or if I did run out of something, I managed without. Borrowing from a neighbor was not part of my corporate identity, any more than yelling at my kids was.

“Sure,” I said agreeably, trying desperately to remember how much of the noise in my house you were able to hear when you stood outside the door. Everything, I knew. But maybe she wasn’t paying attention?

Not a chance. Rivky had heard me yell, and there was nothing to do about it. Should I fib and tell her that little Chezky had been holding a butcher knife? Nah, better to pretend nothing had happened. This way maybe she would think the noise had been coming from a different house. The houses on our block were built very close to one another, after all.

Grasping onto that shred of hope for dear life, I smiled sweetly at Chezky and patted him on the cheek. Surely Rivky wouldn’t think that a mother who patted her son on the cheek lovingly could possibly have been shrieking like a banshee just moments earlier?

After I waved a cheery goodbye and closed the door behind Rivky, I sank into the couch and rested my head in my arms.

Would I ever be able to lift my head again in front of Rivky? Or in front of anyone, for that matter, now that my cover was blown?

I looked at Chezky, who still looked discomfited, and then it occurred to me that it didn’t really matter what Rivky thought. She probably never gave a moment’s thought to my corporate identity, and she probably cared more about her eggs than about what was going on inside my house.

The only one who cared about my shattered corporate identity was … me. I would never again be the mother who didn’t yell at her children, or the neighbor who always had her kids under perfect control without raising her voice.

That vision of myself was gone, finished, kaput.

Now, I had no choice but to develop a new corporate identity, one that would stand by me even at times when I didn’t quite live up to the image I wanted to maintain, or to the expectations I had of myself. Less perfect, but more forgiving.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 257)