A Parent…

When i left home for university, i was just 18. Other than a few weeks the following summer, i never lived with my parents again. Due to a combination of sheer will, and a bit of luck, i did not ‘bounce’ back. The youngest of the four children in my family, i was the only one who managed to make it to adulthood without a temporary return to the nest. They had worked hard to raise us all, and by the time i got to 18 they were tired. So very tired. i didn’t want to pile on heartache.

With my own children, it was a little different. The Girl moved back in after graduation, while pursuing work in the Foreign Service. She worked full time, saved money, studied for her exams. She was an excellent room mate and citizen of the household. Her cooking and baking skills were greatly appreciated (the best tabbouleh i’ve ever had). She was here about a year and a half before setting out for her life abroad.

The Boy? Bounced back a few times during The Wilderness Years*, while fighting his way through The Gargantuan State University. When he left school, to work full time on the road, he used my place as a mailing address, and would be home for a week a month. We had to revisit house rules, but he became a decent room mate.  When he enlisted in the Army, we both knew his time living with me was coming to an end – and we enjoyed each others company more than ever.

The Girl was really gone eight years ago. The Boy? Five. They are far enough away that time spent with them is rare, and quite precious. When The Girl comes home for a month in the summer, i adjust my schedule to accommodate another person in the household. There isn’t much she can do to annoy me. i know it’s brief. i know she has to go home again. The same with visits with The Boy. The chaos is disruptive, but never in a bad way.

What i’ve discovered is an ache – something new for my parental angst inventory. When they are headed home, or when i’m leaving after an extended visit, my heart simply hurts. It’s physical. It’s not debilitating, and it doesn’t last for more than a week or so… Just a soft blanket of melancholy.

It was my hope to raise independent, functional adults, living lives of deliberate choice. Clearly, in that way i succeeded.

When Mom died, i was surprised to find her calendar notes, carefully tracking my planned business trips, up until the month she died. She always asked questions about where i was headed, and i didn’t give it much thought. i think she just needed to know where on earth her kid was, even though the ‘kid’ was in her 50’s.

Looking back, i realize that the fiercely independent girl who left home at 18, determined to never ‘bounce’, wanting to spare her parents heartache failed. It can’t be avoided.

Source: The Artwork of Chad Knight(Digital Artist)

 

*Should be a trademark of kono over at The Asshat Lounge. If you’re not reading his blog, you are missing some of the sharpest, darkest, most honest writing on the internet. 

Reunion – Part VII: Eavesdropping

Our final night in Tennessee.  DQ and her troupe had moved into the loft of our cabin.  Mom was already snoring away in the downstairs bedroom. i was sacked out on the sofa.  It had been a rather eventful weekend, and i had a lot of shit to munch over inside my head.  Despite being very tired, i couldn’t sleep.

i didn’t want to eavesdrop.  In fact, i put a pillow over my head at one point to try to block out the sound of the voices drifting down from the upstairs loft.  DQ, BJ and the little critter, DQ, III were camped in the double bed, while DQ, III and Doogie had settled on the twin bed and trundle-bed.  It was almost midnight, and the four-year old was asleep right away.  It was close quarters up there for the five of them.  They were trying to keep their voices down, but the acoustics of the cabin made it impossible for me to stop listening.

At first?  They were horsing around —  BJ giving Doogie grief for ripping a fart, while the rest of them giggled.  DQ complaining that BJ had stolen the sheets.  Some comments i couldn’t hear, followed by more shushed giggles.  They were camping.  This is just what you do in close quarters.

It took a turn for the more serious.  DQ explaining to her seventeen year old daughter that she needed to tone down her posts on facebook.

DQ:  I know you’re crazy about JT, but some of the things you post…  It’s too much!  Do you want to be one of those girls? Everyone can see it.

DQ, III:  It’s not that bad!  I’ve seen a lot worse stuff on facebook.

DQ:  Just because your friends post TMI doesn’t make it right!

BJ:  Tweetering?  Is that what it’s called?  You gotta tweeter that you love him or else he won’t know?  You’re just making sure everyone else knows!

DQ:  We took away your phone and internet before, and if you keep posting that “I love you, Baby-Boy” crap, we can take it away again.

Parenting.  Honest-to-God parenting.  And a family.  A family that enjoys being together.

Maybe not my approach to parenting – and maybe not my priorities.  But they are engaged.  Tracking.  Paying attention.  Being adults.

When we were all packing up after breakfast at the Gathering Cabin, we were sorting out shared costs for the weekend.  i paid for the three cabins in advance.  Once I had the final body count, i did a straight calculation to figure out what folks would need to contribute — and it worked out to $40 per adult per night stayed, with no charge for the kids.  Since the younger cousins (DQ’s generation) tend to have less disposable income, i offered them all a bit of a discount.

DQ said she’d brought cash, and was prepared to pay for Doogie, too.  i told her Doogie was covered – the least i could do for having made a rather serious misjudgment.  Rather than take the discounted rate, she paid me in full.

pic found here

If we couldn’t laugh…

Another birthday.  Just a little over a week into June, and it’s already been a long month.  Despite some difficult moments over the past few weeks, my kids came through with another epic birthday card.

Note: i am not - at present - a grandmother.

Inside view:

For reference, my son has signed all cards with his first and last name since he was a small boy.

The presentation was topped off by them both rubbing their bellies: “Hmmm…. feels like a little soccer player” and “Guess who’s fireman wasn’t wearing a hat?”

Thanks, kids.  You turned out ok, despite my piss-poor parenting skills.  i’m a happy ol’ lady tonight.

If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane…

And you wait…

You take the highway this morning, hoping that the 65 mph air will blow the tears on your face dry before you get to the office.  You can’t do anything but wait for the call.  Will it be from The Self-Destructive One, the hospital or law enforcement this time?  No way to know.  So you drive…
 
Another night of sleep interrupted, as you learn of the latest incident.  Nothing to do but wait.  Helplessness.  You go over everything you could have done differently.  Should you have been tougher on the first infraction?  Could you have worked a little harder at the marriage?  Or are you simply unfit as a mother?  
 
What do you do when one of your children has The Rage?  Where did it come from?  Will it be there forever or will it mellow?  Will he survive long enough for you to find out? 
 
Not long ago, you read in “Freakonomics” that peer influence is far greater than parental influence as we develop as humans.  Should you have intervened when he stopped playing softball and took up skateboarding? Was it the peer influence that launched this, or is it simply how he’s wired?  And where did all that fucking anger come from?  He was such a laid back kid…
 
You’ve taken away everything from him that you can take away.  Cash.  Access to your home.  Everything but love.  And you will never do that. 
 
So you drive.  Let the wind blow against your face and dry it, hoping your swollen eyes can stay hidden behind the sunglasses when you get to the office.  And you wait for the call…

Sign language

Even before he pulled this stunt on me at ten years old, The Boy had a knack for embarrassing me…

Both kids were in after-school care at a local facility*, known for the spectacular staff.  Retrieving my sprogs after work one day, one of the teachers, Miss Sharla,  intercepted me as i entered, pulling me aside into an unused classroom. 

Needless to say, i was worried… He’d recently broken his arm falling from the book loft, and was in the midst of his artistic phase that involved putting “butt faces” on people.  There were many reasons Miss Sharla might have pulled me aside for a private conference…

Miss Sharla’s son, Ben, was a friend and playmate of The Boy.  She proceeded to tell me about an incident with her five year old son over the weekend. 

As they were driving, another driver cut them off in traffic, forcing Miss Sharla to hit the brakes.  Ben lifted his pudgy little boy arm from the back seat, and flipped off the rude bastard.  Miss Sharla, maintaining her composure said “Ben, that’s not a nice gesture.  Do you even know what it means?”

Ben:  Sure.  It means you’re a bad driver.  The Boy taught me that.  Says his mom does it all the time…

he was askin' for it...

* The Charles Manson Family Day Care Center had a waiting list…

Less is more…

Dad wasn’t around much when we were growing up, yet he managed to have a tremendous influence on me.  Mom was the logistical foundation for my childhood, but had far less influence on the person i am today…

On a typical day, we’d have an hour with him – at most.  Early mornings were chaos.  Six of us in a small, three bedroom house, with one bathroom.  Four children attempting to get ready for school, and every one of us jockeying to get to the toilet before Dad went in for his morning constitutional.

There was no ventilation.  As the youngest?  Guess who often got the short straw.  This is the closest i came to child abuse…

Forty five minutes of that hour was spent at dinner, which was a raucous multi-party shouted conversation, held amidst food being passed, thrown, and snuck under the table to the dog when Mom wasn’t looking.  Dinner was more about words than food*.

That was when he ‘held court’ with us.  Some nights he clearly just wanted to decompress from his work day, but others?  He’d sit down and bait us with a conversation starter – “Is there life after high school?” directed at my elder siblings, or “Why is MAD Magazine** so funny?” directed at the lot of us…

After dinner, he’d wander off to his bedroom with the evening newspaper.  Listening to a ball game, or talk radio, he’d pretty much stay there most nights.  Summer evenings would find him outside, doing yard work, or reading a book in his redwood chair… 

During my junior high years, my sister T and i played softball in a local recreational league.  While Mom handled the carpooling arrangements with the other Moms to get us to the park on time, Dad never missed a game.  Showing up, watching.  Tracking our success and failures on the field.  He’d leave after the games, letting us head off with our friends until it was time for the pick up.  Unobtrusive, but clearly paying attention.

In hindsight, i think it was that “paying attention” part that paid the dividends.  He watched all of us.  Met us where we were developmentally.  Working patiently as my sister, S, learned to play saxophone.  Lending guidance to my brother as he bashed his way through his latest HeathKit electronics project.  Coaching my sister, T, through trigonometry.  Teaching me to use woodworking tools in the garage after i’d sliced a good part of my finger off with a planer…

As he was dying, he retained a deep understanding of where we were developmentally.  The conversations i had with him were completely different than those held with my siblings***.  He was not confused about his purpose in life, and felt he had succeeded.  Rescuing Mom and her two young children from nasty circumstances, he didn’t hesitate to tell me that T and i were ‘bonus’ purpose. 

Musician, philosopher, engineer, teacher… He was truly a renaissance man before his time.  But of all the things he was?  i think he put “Father” at the top of his list.  He was a natural…

It took me a few decades to figure all that out.  The pixels of his life were slow in coming together.  There’s more, and i’m resolved to get it written down.  This blog – for all the faffing about and silliness – is really about him.  He’s the only reason i got out of the trailer park.  And the only reason i keep checking in to look after the residents…

~~~~~~~~~~~

* Thankful for the words since Mom wasn’t much of a cook.  “Shake and Bake” pork chops with applesauce and corn, Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks with Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and peas were weekly meals.  She burned dinner rolls so badly once, we went in the yard and played baseball with them after dinner.  She was kinda pissed about that, but they were inedible…

** Dad frequented bookstores on the weekends, and once a month brought home the latest MAD Magazine, which we fought over like rabid dogs.   i later found out it was a deliberate attempt to teach us the joy of satire, and train us to put popular media in its proper place…  My ex-husband and i later passed this along to our children, via weekly family time watching The Simpson’s…

***  He told me that i was the only one who would listen as he talked about death.  He was ready for it, they weren’t. 

“Lord of the Flies” parenting, c.a. 1967

My childhood was idyllic.  Perhaps because life was actually good, or perhaps because i didn’t know there could be anything different.  My only view of other realities was through books, television and movies.  And other than “Swiss Family Robinson“, i never found a childhood situation i liked better.

In the end, it didn’t matter.  Until my hormones shipped me off to the realm of teen angst, i was a happy kid.

Dad worked, Mom was home.  In the late 1960’s suburbs in the midwestern United States, that was how things were.  Very few working Moms in the neighborhood.  Reading recent discussions on “the mommy wars” over at Anniegirl1138, got me reflecting on my own childhood.

Mom was responsible for all logistics at the homestead, was chauffeur for car-pooling operations, maintained order and was Chief Justice of the Family Supreme Court.  Did she hover?  Help us with homework?  Anguish over our choices of classes at school?  Insert herself into every aspect of our extra-curricular lives?  Not exactly…

Summer mornings were all pretty much the same.  My sister and i would wake up and forage in the kitchen for breakfast*, scratch our bits in front of the television for maybe a half hour, and were then expected to get our sorry asses outside.  For the entire day.  Mom had work to do**. Fortunately, there were dozens of children our age – the golden years were between 7 and 12 for me – so there was always someone to tag up with for adventures.

What did we do?  Nothing and everything.  No structured sports, summer camps or organized activities.  We filled the days with pick-up games of wiffle ball, kick ball, football, pickle or just random shit we’d make up.  Climbed trees.  Construction materials were stolen from building sites and turned into tree houses and forts.  Pylons (also stolen) set up in the largest driveways for bike rodeos.  We put on summer carnivals***.  We played “Capture the Flag” in the soybean field behind our house, against the older boys down the street….

Did our mothers have any fucking idea what we were doing?  Nope.  We’d stumble home around lunch time, grab something to eat, then it was back outside again.  We played Army.  We were spies, keeping notes on the activities of people in the neighborhood.  We’d become characters from TV shows… Brady Bunch, Gilligan’s Island, F-Troop****, Partridge Family, Lost In Space – and my personal favorite, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. 

Barbies?  Absolutely!  Intricate societal games with the collective Barbie Arsenal – trundled to someone’s garage in an armada of busted American Tourister suitcases that doubled as our Barbie houses.  These games would last an entire day… we’d build cities, create “soap opera” situations, work through adult problems as only children can do… At the end of the day, we’d often retrieve the Ken dolls from a corner of the garage, tied up with dirty shoelaces and abandoned.  On occasion, there were Barbie mutilations and sacrifice. 

Were there Moms watching this?  Nope.  Sometimes they’d wander by and offer Kool-Aid, but in general, we were on our own until dinner time.  Oh, we could run home mid-afternoon, but we had to make damn sure we didn’t wake up Mom, as she snored in front of “The Guiding Light”.  Much like awakening a hibernating grizzly, we knew better…

So long as we were home for dinner?  No one really gave a shit what we’d been doing all afternoon.  My first beer, my first cigarette, and my fist look at the soft-focus porn in Playboy magazines all happened before 5:00 pm on sunny summer days.

After dinner, and washing dishes, it was back outside.  Sometimes the older brothers and sisters in the neighborhood would join up for pick-up sports, set off fireworks or – joy of joys – to take us for rides on motorcycles and dirt bikes.  Helmets?  Huh?

One of my fondest memories is of something we christened “Twilight Call”.  Summer nights, dusk.   The parents would call their children home… Voices wafting through the warm summer air.  Each voice distinct, not just by the name being called… “Taaaaaaaa-meeeeeeee!  TAAAAAAAAAA-meeeeee!” came the tiny bird-like voice of Tammy’s mom.  If Tammy ignored it?  We all knew that it would be followed in a few minutes by the gruff, angry voice of her father – who scared the collective crap out of us.  “TAMMY!  TAMMY!”  At the first staccato burst transmission, we’d generally get Tammy’s ass moving on her way before he came out looking for her…

We knew our boundaries.  We worked within them.  We had to stay within vocal range.  Simple, and universally understood by parents and children alike.  

Were there injuries?  Of course… Every summer one of us broke an extremity on the cable swing down by the pond.  Salt-pellet buckshot in the ass for stealing apples.  Walking barefoot through a construction site, scavenging plywood for the walls of a fort-in-progress, i managed to step on a nail in a 2″x4″, which went through my foot.  Tetanus shot and a pressure bandage and i was on my way…

Given such happy memories of my childhood, did i afford my own children the same latitude?  Not entirely, but we attempted to preserve elements of it for them.  We chose our family home partly because it was in a landlocked neighborhood, with low traffic, allowing kids to ride bikes in the street.  Oh, and there was a creek running through it.  Crawdads.  Frogs.  Turtles.  Oh, hell yeah!  

My son was fortunate enough to have a pack of boys to run with, but the girl situation was limited – so there were lots of ‘girl parties’ and sleepovers with school friends.  Since both of us worked, the kids were in after school care until The Girl was eleven and The Boy was nine.  After that they had fairly strict operational constraints as latch key kids. 

For three summers, i took a month off – without pay – and was damn lucky my profession/employer allowed the option.  Just to let them hang out and be bored.  Not to have to get them up early every morning and bundle them off to ‘day camp’.  They at least had a taste of it…

It was a balance that worked well for our family.  Perfect?  Hardly.  But allowing children a chance to live a little “Lord of the Flies” style may be the best way to prepare them for the big bad world…

Much nicer than anything we ever constructed - and probably a few less rusty nails sticking out at face level...

* Quisp and Quake were favorites — WITH SPOONFULS OF SUGAR ON TOP.  Seriously. We put sugar on top of cereal.  Pop Tarts were another staple… Fruit?  Whazzat?

** And she worked her ass off.  Three loads of laundry a day.  She ironed sheets, shirts and Dad’s damn handkerchiefs.  Ironed. Handkerchiefs.  Yeah.  That’s what i said, even as a kid.  “But he’s just gonna blow his nose on them?!?!”  Food, cleaning, basic home maintenance. 

*** This is a topic for a future post, but basically, our gang of kids put on a successful summer carnival — autonomously — every summer for five years.  Raised money for charity.  Virtually NO parental involvement.

**** Which turned out to be fine training for my future stint as a supervisor…

now what?

He was about 3 years old.  Playing on a short concrete wall at a local festival this afternoon.  Sky blue shorts – which no older boy would be caught dead in – and a matching print shirt.  Dad was watching close by, doing a good job balancing the need to let his child explore while maintaining situational awareness.  Knowing that a microsecond of inattention could lead to a multitude of problems…

Slapping me upside the head was the memory.  Taking my young creatures out to festivals, hauling their tired asses around in a wagon.  Watching parades.  Eating shit food at the amusement park, while they got sticky-gooey goodness all over their hands, faces and anything unfortunate enough to be within splash range.  Giving them the requisite ‘spit bath’ before throwing them back in the car…

There was clarity and focus then.  Every decision i made had to be weighed against potential impact to my children.  Not a formal process, just something my mind did naturally.  Often, the answer was “no impact, rock on…”, but there was a natural step in my decision calculus to assess how it might affect the kids.

i knew my purpose.  i knew my priorities.  And when necessary?  Nothing got between Momma Bear and her Cubs.  It made me stronger in so many ways.  More fearless.  More assertive.  i grew a great deal during those years…

Now?  With The Girl, at 22, graduated and seeking employment, even though she’s temporarily lodged in my basement, she does her own thing, and i do mine.  The Boy returns to the university in a couple weeks, and is pretty much on his own.  Our time together is different.  Very enjoyable, but the relationships have changed.

Seeing the little critter today, perhaps more so, watching his father… i realized that some of my aimlessness and restlessness could be directly attributable to the simple fact that no one needs me.  Not a single soul is dependent upon me for much of anything…  A thought that is simultaneously liberating and terrifying.

No parenting awards for 2009 either…

The Girl is splitting her time between her apartment and my condo while she explores future employment opportunities. When i got home from work tonight, she was busily texting her friend TW as they worked logistics for another friends bachelorette party this weekend.

The Girl: Hey, Mom? Do you have a penis mold? Something we could use for making chocolate party favors?

daisyfae: [gets up, walks into kitchen, produces penis mold] Like this?

The Girl: Exactly!

daisyfae: Well, i’ll need it back – i use that for making jello shots for parties…

The Girl: God! I can’t believe i can just ask my Mom for a penis mold… How strange is that? I’m going to let TW know that we don’t have to go out and buy one!  She was dreading that.

daisyfae: (sighing) But it’s important to be open and honest… i swear, i don’t think there’s anything the three of us could say to each other that would be a complete surprise…

The Girl: Oh, I bet The Boy probably has a few surprises up his sleeve…

daisyfae: i don’t wanna think about that…

The Girl: [laughing] TW wrote back – says she doesn’t find it the least bit surprising that you have a penis mold…

daisyfae: (sigh)

Three generations…

 Three generations of ‘fucked up’, that is…  Brought Mom up to stay with me for four days while my sister, S, and niece, DQ, are out of town for a family wedding.  Some dysfunctional moments…

– Mom eats.  A lot.  Constantly.  Before going to get her, i made a basic grocery run for healthy breakfast food.  Before we left her house, she bagged up an assortment of non-healthy snacks to make sure she’d have a little something to “take with her medicine”.  A bag of Doritos, box of snack crackers, pita bread and hummus, cookies, spreadable cheese… and two small orphaned bags of Cheetos.

– Celebrating my daughter’s university graduation, we had home made pizza, cake and ice cream for dinner Friday night.  Followed by the traditional “Granny kicks our asses and wins the kids tuition money” poker game.  This year?  The Girl won.  We bagged it, and watched “Slumdog Millionaire” – which required running commentary by me to explain what was going on throughout most of the movie.  But she enjoyed it…

Read 'em and weep. Bitches...

– Mom can’t read because of her failing eyesight.  But somehow managed the subtitles in the movie just fine, and was reading items from the New York Times to me this morning over breakfast.  i’m confused…

– Took Momma to a “drag race” Saturday afternoon.  That’d be a “Walk A Mile In Her Shoes” fundraiser… Over 100 men.  Racing around a quarter mile track, in heels.  Holy crap, it was funny…  To hear the little dears whining about the discomfort, blisters, twisted ankles?  Precious.  Seeing the contestants ‘high fiving’ Mom in her wheel chair as the “Pump Parade” passed?  Delicious.  We cheered the fastest ones, and encouraged the slow ones, telling them they still looked fetching in their peep-toe pumps…

Stiletto Boyz in da Hood

– Took both Momma and my children out for a very nice meal Saturday to celebrate Mother’s Day.  The Boy was hoping it was one of those ‘challenge’ restaurants, where you can order a 72 ounce steak, and get it for free if you can eat the whole thing.  Um…  no… Baby’s first Filet Mignon.  i think i’ve won him over on this one…  Perhaps he gained an understanding the concept of “quality” over “quantity” when it comes to cow parts.

– Not sure how it happened, but during the course of our dinner, we managed to cover a ridiculous number of horrible conversation topics.  Including, but not limited to:  “Prom Night Dumpster Babies“, incest, genocide, Stalin, photographing excrement and farting on toddlers. 

– Mr. Pickles is channeling Lassie.  Since Mom arrived, he has attached himself to her.  Sleeping by her bedside – almost in perfect position to trip her should she get up in the middle of the night.  We decided he’s waiting for her to fall down a well, so he can sound an alarm and get some good doggie treats…

Hey... Her pajamas are full of cake crumbs. I'm not going anywhere...

– As the bill for dinner arrived, i was surprised when The Boy reached for it.  He picked it up, and i looked over, somewhat confused… as he handed it across the table to me, he and The Girl both busted out laughing.  “Awww…. She looked hopeful!  Did you see that? Wasn’t that cute?”.  Bastards.  Complete bastards…

– Last year, my children did a lovely job of tormenting surprising me on Mother’s Day.  With a bit less fuss, this year, they were rewarded with a full five minutes of me laughing my ass off at their gorgeous card (created by one of The Girl’s friends).  Inside?   The handwritten sentiment:

Happy Mother’s Day!

Hey, you tried.