This past Tuesday, two days before my eldest daughter turned six, I found myself screaming “Serenity Now” on the ride home from swim lessons.

Big A was being so mean to her little sister, so uncharacteristically bratty and whiny that when she finally said something about how Little A and another kid in her daycare ruined the dresses she had made for her stuffed animal kittens and then smacked her sister in the head, I responded the only way I knew how.

I yelled. “That is NO excuse for this nonsense,” I said. “KNOCK IT OFF RIGHT NOW!!!”

My angry mom voice works when it needs to. It shut her up for about 10 minutes. And then the screams returned. All evening it was something. One complaint after another.

“Ohmygod, Ohmygod,” I said to Mr. D before stepping outside to hit the bowl.

I came back to more fights. Unfinished dinners. Whines and tantrums and smacks and cries.

“Bedtime,” I ordered at 7:30.

The girls marched upstairs and screamed in bed. Obnoxiously. Incessantly. And it might have been the 35^th “MOM!” or the second bong hit, or some combination of the two, but about 15 minutes later, I realized that they were literally calling for me. That they needed me. That the only real job of any importance I have is to be there in these moments, the ones where they are at their brattiest, nastiest little selves.

So up I went. And I don’t remember how exactly we got to talking, but we wound up in my bed, the Little One to my left, my almost-six year old sitting to my right.

“I was thinking how—I actually told Ms. Julie how proud of me you’d be when you saw the dresses I made,” Big A told me. “I got to show the dresses to another mom, but I didn’t get to show them to you.”

The honesty and heartache of her voice reminded me of my own situation at work. (This was just before the happy ending, back when I assumed someone else would be taking credit for the kitten dresses I had worked so hard on.)

And I felt terrible for trivializing Big A’s pain earlier. So I held her and told her how very sorry I was, how difficult it is to watch something you love be taken away from you, but how you can always make more dresses for your kittens, how all you need is the talent and passion to make great dresses, and if you made them once, you can make even better ones again.

Then Little A started crying sweet tears of remorse.

“I’m crying, Big A,” she said, softly, and I could hear the beautiful confusion in her voice, the salty discharge an unexpected reaction from her three-year-old eyes.

Big A took her hand.

“You feel bad, Little A,” she explained, in her empathetic, wise-beyond-her-years way. “I’m crying, too. And actually,” she said, pausing as the realization seemed to sink in, “I know ripping up the dresses wasn’t your idea. It was the other kid’s.”

“I love you, Big A.”

“I love you too, Little A.”

Then they hugged, and I watched the entire exchange with so much pride that even now I can’t write this without experiencing an avalanche of tears.

“Mom’s probably love crying,” Big A said and then touched my eyes. “You actually are crying,” she gasped, surprised by her accuracy.

We hugged and kissed and they fell asleep, arms intertwined, curled together in the same big bed. I didn’t move them that night. I needed their love beside me, to guide me.

The next day, I had a long conversation with my boss. An honest one. I channeled my daughters’ wisdom and humility and told my boss how I had felt hurt by certain things in the office, but how I wanted to work together to move forward.

And she responded with kindness. With compassion. Then she gave me the good news I had been waiting months to hear. (It didn’t feel real until days later, but still, it was everything I had been working for over the last year).

And I realized I would have never reached this place were it not for my girls.

So thank you, thank you, thank you.

To quote Little A as she once waddled up to a Black Jack game between me and Mr. D, picked up our cards, and then waddled away: “Thunk ooo. Thunk ooo. Thunk ooo.”