Archive for 2010
Sunday, December 12th, 2010
I have written before about the choices we are faced with and the deliberating we do as a result. The do-we-don’t-we-have-a-baby? … The what-if-it’s-not-enough-not-having-one? … The will-I-regret-it-if-I don’t? … The pressure, the peers, the drama and the confusion … that doesn’t go away until you eventually just have the damn baby and deal with the consequences. Except consequences are never quite what you expect.
Life can either just continue to be the same or you can mix it up a bit and hope for the best. And, until you just do it, you will always wonder.
Now that I sit on the brink of divorce, I go through the same … the pressure, the peers, the drama and the confusion. The deliberating is the same really since I will wonder what it will be like to be divorced … until I just do it. Not that that helps in the slightest since I know what happened last time I took the plunge and things haven’t exactly been pretty ever since.
I love my child so much it hurts sometimes. But that doesn’t mean I am still not acutely aware of the person I would be without him, the life I would be leading and the relationships I would be having. I wouldn’t change a thing but I am fully aware of my parallel dweller living the life I could have had (Note: not should have had since my path is MY path and it is how it is and as it should be). So what of the other choices to be made?
Like those childless couples I listen to lament with tangible indecision about their need to procreate … or not … will I forever wonder about whether to divorce … or not. The first thing I always say when people say they want to start trying for a baby … followed quickly with the usual back-peddling about timing and differing opinions on the subject … is, “Listen, guys, until you just fall pregnant, you will always talk about whether or not you should. Once you have the baby, however, you will never again have this conversation because whether you are happy with your decision or not, the social pressure will never allow you to utter your dissatisfaction with your decision since that would diminish the life of the baby you are obligated to love from the moment it comes out of you … even though you may as well invite a perfect stranger off the street to live with you and be expected to love it with all your heart. Whether you plan it or not, it’s a huge fucken surprise when baby arrives.”
But then I have a lot to say on the subject … almost 60,000 words worth in fact … which has always been half the problem.
Does the fork in the road prompt the decision or does the decision create the fork in the road? Who knows? I wish I had the answers but you’re not going to get them here … these are just the overactive ramblings of a woman clearly in the throws of your possibly not-so-typical midlife crisis.
Tags: baby, choices, decisions, divorce, midlife crisis, paths, regret
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Tuesday, November 30th, 2010
Does it erode for everyone … that wet-your-pants hilarity? Does everyone get so serious when they have children or was it just me?
I went out to dinner with possibly my oldest friend (and I don’t mean age) and we got to discussing my very fuzzy predicament … as I – and almost everyone I know – got to do each and every time I went out for several months. It was boring. But it was necessary. She leaned in close. “What makes you laugh, Penn?” she asked in a low deep voice that indicated the conversation was taking a serious turn. “I don’t think I’ve heard your laugh in ages,” she added. I blinked, pulled back, swallowed and stammered something incomprehensible … then changed the subject. I hadn’t laughed in a long time and we both knew it.
There was a time when I couldn’t remember when the last time was that I cried but now I could remember that clearly since it seemed to be daily. But the laughter? I had given it up without even noticing. I had somehow slipped from post-natal-depression into the throws of a divorce and could no longer remember the moments of resurfacing in-between. The Art of Living course medicated me: it drained the puss and patched the wounds. It healed and soothed. But it also guided me to a different pathway that ripped me apart from all things familiar.
The Dalai Lama once said, “Just because someone is on a different path, does not mean they are lost.” We all get to the places we are meant to be eventually … even if we do have to endure the whispers … “You know Penny’s having a midlife crisis?
But at the moment of disentanglement, the moment I became the whole, I not only reconnected with myself but I gave myself to others … in a way that I remained me … and I reconnected with the joy that I hold in abundance. And I have been laughing ever since.
Sometimes we wish we arrived at the place of familiarity and friendly faces but, regardless, we will get to the place that’s waiting for us. I was on a different path before but it was the right path even though in retrospect it feels like it was so wrong.
If you’d seen me a couple of months ago, you might also have leaned in close. You might have scrutinised me. And you may even have offered to call a doctor.
“How’s the midlife crisis?” my friends now ask. It used to make me nervous but now it just makes me laugh.
Tags: Art of Living, Dalai Lama, divorce, hilarity, journey, joy, midlife crisis, path, serious
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Wednesday, November 10th, 2010
I wrote before about lost friendships feeling like severed limbs. Well, I have since read evidence that when two people are together for so long, certain connections form in the brain that attaches those two people in a physical sense. I suppose this is what creates the bond between parents and child and between long-term friends. Like symbiotic plants, this happens so effectively that no one notices … until you have to separate them. With plants you could barely do this without killing either one or both in the process. With people, separating can apparently be the same as amputating a limb. And I can now testify that when you split from a love so deep and so long, it feels as though each of your limbs is being severed … slowly … with a blunt instrument … and no painkillers.
So there’s Archangel Michael standing in his skimpy white shorts, with his long blonde locks and his huge … wings. He is standing with a large sword raised high. I stand in my mind’s eye opposite my husband with all our chakras connected by a spaghetti-junction of fine cords binding us to the point that neither of us knows where one ends and the other begins. My mind prompts the archangel to bring his sword down swiftly, wrapping the cords around the blade and flicking them away. The pain rips at my energy source and makes me want to throw up. I wrap the image of myself and my husband separately in soothing violet light to protect and heal. It is a visualisation that is taught to me, not to obliterate the pain but to speed up the amputation.
When practised over and over again, the process was complete in a month. The amputation was a success but I emerged from the operating theatre a few weeks ago, limbs in tact, heart replaced but bruised and energy restored and contained. But everything comes at a cost and I am still waiting to find out the cost of the amputation … did it come at the cost of a husband, a best friend, a lover …? or perhaps, and more hopefully, just that part of all three that had manifested itself into a tumour-like growth that we can both thrive without?
The joy of my gift will reveal itself over time. And, yes, there is a lot of joy. Just like a person can feel a sense of joy after losing someone they love, this does not mean they are happy about the loss but that there is a part of themselves that has been reawakened … there is a new beginning.
There are no happy endings, only joyful beginnings.
Tags: amputation, Archangel Michael, chakras, energy, gift, joy, new beginnings, separation, visualisation
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Tuesday, October 26th, 2010
I have been judged a lot lately for my need to share my personal stories. Although this is human nature and I don’t expect it to be any other way, I have always felt the need to try and justify why I do it and, mostly, I don’t do this particularly well. But, while reading The Dance by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, I came across the perfect line that sums up what it is in my heart that drives me to share what other people find far too personal to put out there:
“I share personal stories because I want to co-create a story of intimacy and cultivate our capacity for compassion in dealing with our human failings. I tell stories because I want to learn how to love well.”
I wrote while I was in India recently how being there brings me that sense of just being, a relaxation about self and an existence totally devoid of branding. As I grow, I define myself by the places my branches are reaching towards rather than by the place my roots are sucking from the earth. And with this comes a sense that, like the branches, my identity is being whipped around by my life’s experiences … and even when there is total calm, there is still a sense of movement within.
In many communities around the world there is a culture of story telling, of passing legends on from one generation to the next. We don’t live in a society like that and so we rely on the people who pass through our lives, imparting wisdom, spreading knowledge, sharing experiences that cultivate the compassion within us. We meet the people we need to and are fed by people who are guided our way. And this of course works in reverse too. We often think the work we do is where we end but every one of us has a part of us that needs to be shared. Every one of us has a story to tell.
I am a storyteller. That is what I do. I don’t write fiction because I am no good at it. My reality, my life, my shared humanity … to me, is enough story to tell. So, as I document whatever transformation happens in my life … and therefore in the lives of those around me who are part of my story by association … know that it is human nature to judge but know too that this is who I am whether you judge me or not. Judging me will not change who I am or what I write. But it may well change you.
I promise to be as honest as possible without hurting anyone. But don’t read my blog if personal issues offend or if you can’t get over my lack of the need for privacy.
Quoting the last stanza of one of my poems, Many mountains. I am:
… I am all the flowers and the trees. They are me
I am unpredictable. I am power. I am many
Penny, you are seen by all.
But you are things no one can see.
I’ll end by saying: Watch this YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKbet4RdSo4
I will expand and embellish – as I am only too good at doing – and explain its relevance to this context. In time. But not now.
Tags: compassion, humanity, judgement, opinion, Oriah Mountain Dreamer, personal, privacy, sharing, stories, story teller
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Thursday, October 7th, 2010
I have to apologise for my lack of communication. I have had to go underground for a while. I had just found my voice when my freedom of speech was curbed by certain individuals out to prove things to do with my character in order to get what they need … that and the mini legal matter to do with breach of privacy. I will have to be more careful about what I reveal about myself in future.
Having said that, my paranoia has nothing to do with the organic hydroponic weed I just smoked. I swear I didn’t inhale!
Tags: conspiracy, freedom of speech, underground
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Friday, September 10th, 2010
On the 5th anniversary of my child’s birth, I took a drive to the beach where my husband proposed. It is a place of dishevelled beauty, designed by nature’s architect and built by force and violence over millennia, resulting in a scattered tumble of rough rocks and pebbles. And I sat there, observed only by several of the twelve apostles, and Lion’s Head peering down fog-wrapped slopes.
I was looking for a sign.
Twisting my wedding band around and around, feeling the cold metal between my fingers, I closed my eyes and listened. But all I got was indifference. Thirteen years did nothing to change this place but did so much to change me. This place didn’t feel my presence all those years ago and certainly didn’t feel my presence now. The waves continued in their obedience to the moon, pushing and pulling with the tides, crashing on the shore, disguising the ocean’s gradual ascent towards me.
I slid the ring down my finger and immediately tugged it off. Something didn’t fit and I knew I couldn’t wear it again. I placed it instead in a small hole in the rock beside me where I was sure that one day it would be wrenched into the ocean by an errant wave.
Face tilted to the sun, chilled hands pushed down inside my sheepskin boots, I closed my eyes again. I thought about the guy with the metal detector, the happy picnickers and the bird that sees the glint of objects below and carries them off to places they don’t belong. Something to do with the fit was niggling again.
And after sitting there for almost an hour, contemplating my next move, I suddenly felt release. Paulo Coelho said that a boat is safe in the harbour but it is not a place for the boat. I felt at that moment that I was the boat, tethered to the harbour wall, comfortably bumping up against a row of rubber tyres. I was meant to be at sea. I smiled.
I stood up and, jumping tentatively from rock to rock, I made my way to the slippery green rocks at the edge of the sea where the waves suddenly took notice and sprayed me for my intrusion. I didn’t leap into the froth but, instead, lifted the ring in my hand and threw it.
But watching it disappear in a twinkle beneath the foam didn’t bring the finality I had come for. I got my sign but it was a totally unexpected one … one of hope rather than finality. The symbolism of the ring was a weight too great to wear. I couldn’t help but wonder what might happen without it.
Tags: hope, marriage, Paulo Coelho, release
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Tuesday, August 31st, 2010
At a time when I am learning who my friends are … or rather who my friends aren’t … I am learning other lessons that I would rather not and more and more I am becoming disillusioned with life’s textbook. In the process of discovering the extent that social norms dictate the opinions of others towards what we choose to do, I can’t help but notice how much it scares people when you do something out of the ordinary … it shakes up their ideals and makes them wonder how fallible their own nucleus is.
When we are children we are told over and over how to behave, what not to do, that we are being naughty when we are just being children, what constitutes the overly-important word: polite … and we are smacked or punished when we don’t conform. We are, in a nutshell, controlled until our natural instinct for life is sapped and we become clones of this Borg-like social colony that obsesses over the size of their TV, their bank balance and the latest SUV.
Not surprising then how if you sit still for long enough and listen to your heart’s strongest desires – when you choose to follow a path that doesn’t fit the norm – you are not honoured or revered. It’s just not part of what we have been taught as children. People think you’re a problem; they accuse you of having a midlife crisis if you are remotely close to ‘that age’ … and sometimes your therapist even asks you to check your hormones. You become the person people tut about while they wonder if you’ll ever get a reality check.
But whose reality exactly?
I think about how my child, since he could string a coherent sentence together, spoke maturely about his ‘other family’; the one with the brother called SiscoFranco and the father from Spain and the mother from Paraguay … or was that the grandparents? He will be able to remind me because the story has always been the same, which makes me believe that, at his age when he can’t even remember what he had for breakfast immediately after taking his plate to the kitchen, there has been no embellishing. Children are so close to the spirit world that they need encouragement to find who they are now, while they still know why they came and why they chose you … although my child has always stuck to his story that he chose me because no one else was available!
It is a cruel society that shapes our children to fit a mould rather than encourage them to find their own unique fit.
Sure, I’ve been on the other side, blaming people for either taking too many drugs, being in lala-land or possibly just not getting enough sleep. But now I am here, I realise how profound it is to give up the norm and be quiet enough with myself to access what exactly it was all those years ago that brought me into this world in the first place.
Whether out of compassion or ignorance, people tell me they hope I find out who I am. But I have always known … of course I have. We all have an inner knowledge of who we are; it just isn’t necessarily the person people feel comfortable knowing.
It is not so much about change. It is about finding your way back. It is about ‘un’change.
Tags: behaviour in children, calling, centered, change, children, control, desires, midlife crisis, mould, norm, society, spirit world
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Tuesday, August 31st, 2010
When you ask someone to please do a cartwheel for you and they say they can’t and you say try and they still won’t and then you beg them to just try the damn somersault and they dig their heels in and you say you are going inside if they don’t at least try … and they turn their back on you and refuse and you reiterate that you are going to walk inside if they don’t just do the somersault to see if they can or can at least do it to please you … Well, when you walk inside, is that a mutual decision or yours alone? Even a child’s logic can figure that one out. I know mine makes it very clear to me when he is doing something based on my not doing anything and he states with no ambiguity that his actions are really my decision.
I have not only been doing cartwheels for years but I have been shadow boxing too … against an opponent who has never bothered to show up but who has always taken credit for being in the fight. There doesn’t seem much point hanging around when the opponent is always a no-show. He will turn up one day and see … everyone has left and he is alone.
Tags: action, boxing, conflict, decisions, denial, non action, opponent
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Tuesday, August 17th, 2010
One of the reasons I started this blog when I had a baby was because I was amazed at how mothers gossip about each other. Everyone has an opinion on how other mothers are coping, whether they have PND, what they feed their babies, when they wean them, how their mothering effects their child’s behaviour, whether they follow a routine, if smacking is condoned and a range of other general issues including reasons for bedwetting and tantrums. Mothers, in their search to find balance and normality in a mind-blowing situation can become … well, they can become a bunch of bitches.
I was, however, determined to let people know how I was doing and what I was failing at and I wanted to make it public so that people could either empathise or just feel like they weren’t alone. I know most of this generation was brought up with a side of shame and guilt at every family meal and I wanted these to be the only things I was willing to conceal under the gem squash skin.
People have commented over the years about things I have written, they have empathised and they have disagreed but they have always taken this blog at face value. Now that I am being public about other areas of my life, however, people have been coming out of the woodwork like bora that you don’t know is there until it’s done a whole lot of damage … people are now judging me about having been so public about baby.
The purpose of my blog is to create a bit of unease; some tension to provoke debate … it is not about causing damage but alleviating pain, both for myself and for others who may be going through the same thing. Like I said in an earlier post, we are all part of the same humanity and what is happening to each of us is also happening to millions of others … so where is the shame in sharing?
People I have known for years, and some I have never met, have used my frank discussions to finally open up about going through the same thing and close friends have only gone public once they have already been through it. I can’t express the pain involved so I know that those people have been to hell and back before they have even told anyone what they were going through.
Despite judgement and criticism, I will always stand on my soapbox. Other people’s secrets are sacred to me but my own life belongs to the collective. I may be scrappy and I may offend people with my lack of regard for issues that some consider too private to divulge so publicly … but I believe my life should come out of my own mouth, not the mouths of others. And when people try and silence me, I only shout louder … only this time I can shout to a lawyer.
However my soap opera plays out in the end, I think I owe it to myself to explore the world out there for an opportunity to grow and connect to those millions of people with whom I share a part in this tragedy. If nothing else, I owe it to myself to rip the words right out of the mouths of people who would rather discuss my life with others.
Gossip is always easier than confronting any issue. It’s not surprising then that it is the people who devour magazines such at Heat and Hello! who are the ones that choose to base their opinions on the gossip that they hear rather than my truth that I publish.
Tags: disclosure, divorce, gossip, humanity, issues, judgement, publicity, secrets, sharing
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Monday, August 9th, 2010
I shouted at my child one evening because he was too afraid of the dark to go to the toilet about ten meters away from where I was making dinner. It’s one of my major faults: intolerance under stress. He threw a tantrum, I threw a wobbly … and I ended up leaving the food to burn while I went to turn the light on, still wondering what the performance was about when he doesn’t usually have a problem with the darkness. I start blaming myself and I get wrapped up in a kind of helpless feeling because I can’t make things right for him. Anyway, I recognised it as a problem and the next night I took him upstairs to the little area outside the two bedrooms. I made sure it was well lit where we were standing but dark in the bedrooms and I explained to him why I think he is scared of the dark – it’s not about monsters but about a time when he was much younger when he came downstairs in the dark while I was watching TV and I walked out of the TV room, got a fright myself, which terrified him so much I think his feet lifted off the ground.
I took him into the dark room and showed him how things looked lighter once he was inside and I showed him everything in the room. I then took him out again and explained to him how the pupil works and showed him the difference between how the dark room looks from an area flooded in light when the pupils constrict and how it looks when the pupils dilate on stepping into the darkness.
That’s all he needed – that’s all he ever needs – a few facts. I forget sometimes that he is only four and I also forget sometimes that he can process information so well. A simple explanation can make a huge difference. He went in by himself after that. He didn’t stay in there for long but I think we are on the right track now to overcoming a fear before it becomes so sunk in his psyche that there is no hope of ever extracting it.
Tags: blame, dark, explanation, faults, fright, helpless, monsters, nighttime, patience, psyche, scared
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Thursday, August 5th, 2010
People say I’m boring because I don’t drink. And I say I’m comfortable enough with myself to not have to alter my mindset when I go out to have a good time. It works for me. I have a great time out regardless, meet people, make friends, dance my fanny off and wake up with a clear head for my child, ready for a run first thing in the morning.
Besides the fact that I have had my quota in my lifetime already to not need another alcoholic beverage before I die, I honestly believe that if a child never sees his parents drink that he will somehow grow up into a teenager less inclined to succumb to peer pressure. I vomited from alcohol for the first time when I was nine years old. I had seen my parents and their friends drinking all day at the Christmas dinner table and I thought the little tap on the box of wine quite nifty … so I used it until it was dry. And that was me set up for a very early bout of alcohol poisoning and many years of over the recommended daily allowance of flavoured wine and cocktails.
Children who are exposed to parents who smoke or take drugs are more inclined to do so too so why should that not be true of more socially acceptable forms of substance abuse? I don’t know if it will work but surely it’s worth a try. It’s an easy enough experiment but it takes a fair amount of commitment to the cause.
Tags: alcohol, drugs, example, parents, peer pressure, substance abuse, teenagers
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Wednesday, August 4th, 2010
And since the last post I had no idea what I was going to get. I have since been a student on a crash course in duplicity. The great writer that I am (hah), I had to look it up when told that’s what we’re dealing with. It is a word I would prefer not to know and it is a course I would rather not be taking … but then I should have thought about that before dipping into the box of chocolates. Abstinence, like ignorance, can sometimes be bliss.
But just like everything in this wonderful life, there is a great flip side. I run. I run like Mr Gump. And nothing can stop me. And it’s made me remember the first time we took our baby to the paediatrician for his very first check-up. The first thing she did after checking the circumference of our brand new baby’s head was check my husband’s blood pressure. “Now is the time to get healthy,” she said. “You have a responsibility to look after your health now that you have a baby. You have to be sure you are there for him until he is old enough to go his way.”
I remember thinking what a great thing to say and how kind she was to look out for the family unit. We all need to remember those words when we become parents since that is what we need to live by when there is another human being at risk if we leave this earth too soon.
So watch this space for the launch of the Forrest Gump School of Fitness for flabby fathers and mothers. Just don’t expect any chocolates.
Tags: chocolates, duplicity, fitness, Forest Gump, health, lessons, parenting, responsibility, risk, running, student
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Wednesday, July 28th, 2010
I have taken the below passage out of my latest book club read, Mitch Albom’s, tuesdays with Morrie:
“I’ve learned this much about marriage,” he said now. “You get tested. You find out who you are, who the other person is, and how to accommodate or don’t.”
Is there some kind of rule to know if a marriage is going t work?
Morrie smiled. “Things are not that simple, Mitch.”
I know.
“Still,” he said, “there are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don’t respect the other person, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don’t know how to compromise, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can’t talk openly about what goes on between you, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don’t have a common set of values in life, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike.
“And the biggest one of those values, Mitch?”
Yes?
“Your belief in the importance of your marriage.”
There has been a minor Facebook war over my going public about my relationship, which, incidentally, has been neutralised. It had to do with balance and blame. But the above passage gave me a kick up the arse. The above passage showed me what I should have seen years ago. It isn’t so much about a lack of belief in the importance of our marriage so much as a total lack of importance. Importance comes from communication and my husband hasn’t spoken to me about anything in months and about very little in years. And that is the truth.
But people find it hard to hear the truth about things they have already formulated an opinion on and especially on something that makes them shine a light on issues in their own relationships. I continue to shine my torch under the carpet revealing what others believe should remain there. (see also: http://www.bhalababy.com/2010/06/28/my-life-as-an-open-book) I want people to see that there is no shame in sharing a very human failing. I won’t be silenced because people find what I say uncomfortable and the only thing I am sorry for is how vague I was previously.
Morrie used an analogy I think is appropriate to share: we are not all individual waves crashing on the shore but part of the same ocean.
I am a work in progress. But I have the courage to recognise my flaws, and the inner strength to erect the scaffolding and do the work. My husband, however, is a derelict building site … absolutely fine if it wasn’t for the fact that he thinks he is a palace.
I was asked recently by a lovely young man to be his life coach. He was sweet, I was flattered … tempted even … until I realised that I have done all the coaching I care to do for a while and the next man I am with will climb the scaffolding with me, chat to me while I work and add value to the renovations. He won’t be afraid of the change.
For almost two decades I have loved a man so much I thought I would die without him so I can tell you all that you can love someone with all the stars in the sky but unless he loves you back with the moon, he has the ability to snuff out every one of those lights. He loves me ‘in his way’ he says … but then so do wife beaters and adulterers have a ’way’ of loving. Love needs to shine for the sole benefit of the person it shines upon.
Love is a gamble – sometimes you put everything you have on the table and all you end up with is change for the car guard.
I am not a victim, just a student on one of life’s very cruel courses on love.
Tags: change, divorce, love, Mitch Albom, opinions, relationships, sharing, transition, tuesdays with Morrie
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Monday, July 26th, 2010
I was caught up in a cheesy email chain letter (try and say that fast) recently. It was about friendships, relationships and those people who drift through our lives passing on a little wisdom, or gathering some, before moving out of our lives again. Being close to those midlife crisis years (allegedly) has given me cause to seriously reflect on the words in the email even though I feel slightly ashamed to have passed it on. Having a baby shifts things with friends, as does getting a divorce. You change, situations change, others change … and you shift up and down rungs of friendship ladders all the time. Yet you still feel like mourning the loss of a friendship regardless of whether the parting is good or bad.
Escaping to Durban meant my child was away from his school friends again for another month. He forgot their names. Everywhere we went he played with other children, behaving like he had a new best friend each and every day … only to forget that person the next time he met someone new. I couldn’t help but wonder why we fixate on the breaking down of long-lasting friendships when often the best thing to do is just let them run their course and then let go.
There are a few friends that have just drifted away and then there are those I have turfed out intentionally. I can count on one hand only the ones I have turfed intentionally. They are: the girl I shared digs with who slept with every guy I brought home for ‘coffee’ … hence having to wait an extraordinarily long time before I could find someone to harvest my cherry tree; the guy who almost beat up my husband on a small road in Putney outside the house we shared with him … I suspect it had something to do with pent up frustrations over my forbidden fruits; and there is the guy who I have known for longer than I have known my husband who, like all good gentlemen do, has backed the horse he feels will come out tops and is giving my husband advice on our divorce.
I used to obsess over the severing of these relationships as though they were limbs I could still feel even though they were no longer there. But through my child I am learning to look at what I have right in front of me … not only the magnificent friends I have and love but the incredible people all around me waiting to be delved into; waiting for that spark that begins it all.
Tags: baby, children, divorce, friends, friendship, relationships
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Friday, July 23rd, 2010
“You’re not grumpy about me, you’re grumpy about your car,” he stated when I was short with him moments after failing to push-start my car down the hill, having to abandon it at the bottom of the neighbourhood. I had searched everywhere for my car key so I could get him to school and discovered it – as I often do – in the ignition. Only this time it was different … the key was halfway on. My luck never seems to run out when it comes to my car always waiting there in the morning with the key begging someone to steal it, but this morning I sensed my luck was not going to get the car to start as I remembered how, while I was washing my car, my child had been listening to the radio while imagining he was his favourite new TV personality, The Stig. After pushing it halfway around the neighbourhood, over two very tricky speed humps and down two monstrous hills – I know because I usually run up them – I gave up and marched my child along the road to school.
But he never lets me get away with taking my frustration out on him. He always reminds me how important it is to separate my mood from his behaviour, like the time he sensed my mood and told me, “I don’t want to talk about this now,” knowing the outcome would change if he waited until I was in a better mood.
I think the most tortuous path one takes as a parent must be the undoing of injustices in your own childhood, not knowing if you’re only creating a new path to perpetuate the cycle.
He stands up to me, which is a great start as it is something I am only now learning to do with my own parents. And speaking of my own parents, I have spent a month with them and he stood up to them as well. When my mother told him to eat his food he told her, “I will eat it when I am ready.” When she told him to look at the pretty smoke coming out of a factory chimney he said, “It is not pretty smoke, it is bad for the environment.” When my father was getting impatient he said, “Just calm down poppop, it will be done when it is done.” When my mother threatened to smack him if he did something naughty he told her he’d smack her back if she did. He is called cheeky, he is sometimes called rude, but I let it slide because I always took exactly what was given to me and it seems that’s a hard habit to break.
Tags: bold, childhood, confident, cycles, habits, parenting
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