Category Archives: parenting

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Mundane Monday #183: getting ready

For Mundane Monday #183: getting ready.

This organized chaos is from 2010. I am thinking about parents and kids. Here we were getting ready for our yearly synchronized swim team show. This involves painting the hair to stay in place with thick very warm gelatin. We did that outside. It’s messy.Β  Synchronized swimming might not be mundane to you but we all have times when we get ready or help others get ready.

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My daughter is the one on the left: mom, you are bugging us.

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Ready. Pretty much. With a little trepidation.

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And ready hair.

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And the whole team in the water, in the finale, hooray, we did it!

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If you want to join in, I will list the entries next week.

For last week’s theme: kitchen close up:

KLAllendorfer with lots of lovely kitchen photographs.

 

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crossroads

Regardless of how the vote goes, I will keep speaking up.

It is so painful to have woman after woman saying, “I have stories too.”

And to the “nice” men who say, “I can’t believe that sort of thing. I can’t read about it. It hurts too much.” YOU are silencing too. YOU are part of the problem. As long as YOU refuse to listen, refuse to speak up, refuse to read about it: YOU PRETEND TO YOURSELF THAT IT IS NOT HAPPENING TO YOUR WIFE, YOUR SISTER, YOUR MOTHER, YOUR DAUGHTER. YOU PRETEND THAT IT ONLY HAPPENS TO “THOSE” WOMEN, THAT THEY ARE FEW, THAT IF THEY HAD TAKEN PRECAUTIONS IT WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED, THAT YOU ARE PROTECTING “YOUR” WOMEN.

Speak up, “nice” men. Are you ASKING the women in your life? Or are you silencing them?

Sweet Honey in the Rock: Joanne Little.

 

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The extroverted feeler and the teacher

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: brace.

My sister was an extroverted feeler.

In fourth grade, she started getting sick a lot. My mother noticed a pattern. My sister was sick on Monday. She was avoiding school like crazy.

My parents were having difficulty figuring it out. EF’s grades were great. She was unhappy.

Then my parents went to a parent teacher conference.

My mother told this story: “The teacher said that EF came to her desk and asked to borrow a paper clip. Later, she came and asked to borrow a second paperclip. The teacher then produced the two paper clips. “Your daughter made braces with the paperclips. For her teeth!” The paperclips were bent.

“Um. Don’t you think that is sort of creative?” asked my mother.

“No.” said the teacher.

My mother would laugh telling the story and say, “After that, I pretty much let EF miss every Monday. I would not have wanted to go to school with that teacher either.”

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The extroverted feeler and responsible behavior

My son is an extroverted feeler and my daughter is an introverted thinker.

When he was 12 and she was 7, their father and I were working out the details of a divorce. Their father moved out for a year, moved back in for a year, and now was out again. It had taken me two years of couple’s counseling to decide that yes, we did need to get divorced. Now we were in the year of hammering out the details.

One day he came over and was obnoxious and rude. I got angry and yelled and threw him out. I slammed the door after him. I didn’t usually do that and it felt both good and bad.

The kids were conferring. I wondered if I’d scared them, losing my temper. They both came to me.

“Mom, we don’t want you to yell at dad and make him leave.” said the EF, arms crossed. The IT stood beside him. “And no slamming doors.”

“But he was rude first!” I said, realizing as I said it, uh, lame. And where have I had this conversation before?

“We know that he was rude. But we aren’t talking about him. We are talking about your behavior. We don’t care what he does.” They both looked stern and fierce.

“So I have to behave no matter what he does.” I said. They nodded. “You are right. I apologize for yelling at dad, throwing him out and slamming the door. I need to behave anyhow. That’s what I tell you, right?”

“Yes, mom.” And then they both hugged me to comfort me.

I felt sheepish for behaving badly, but mostly proud. Proud that my kids felt comfortable confronting a misbehaving adult and the one with whom they were living, me. Right after a yelling tantrum, too. And proud that they were giving me back the message that I’d given them for years: I don’t care what the other kid did, that is not acceptable behavior. And overall I felt pretty good that I really had not yelled and slammed doors very often: we’d done the majority of our fighting in the counselor’s office and had tried to make it very clear that it was not the kids’ fault.

The photograph is of my son in Thailand. He was a Rotary Exchange Student, to Trang. I don’t know who took the photograph.

Previously published on everything2.com.

 

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separation

This is one of the most beautiful and saddest photographs I have taken. It is my sister, about a month before she died of cancer. And her daughter, who was 13.

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On the last visit to my sister, she was in kidney failure, dying. We had conversations that were surreal. All I wanted was to stay with her.

One day a friend of hers, another mother and I, were working to make her more comfortable.

“I am sad!” my sister said, and started crying.

“Why are you sad?” I said, “What are you sad about?”

“I won’t be there! I won’t be there when she graduates from high school! I won’t be there for her first date! I won’t be there when she gets married! I don’t want to die!”

By now we are all crying. “You will be there!” I say. I am certain. “You won’t be in this form. You will be in another form!”

“I will?” my sister said, crying.

“Yes.” I said, crying too. “You have to go. You have to transform. You can’t stay. But you will be there for her.”

We cried and held her.

And I know for certain that she is there, she is here, she is with her daughter as her daughter graduates from high school, goes on a date, does all the things that daughters do.

Now and forever.

And the living children must be returned to the living parents. We cannot do otherwise and call ourselves humans.

 

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mother and child

I have a collection of parent and children pictures and sculptures. This is one. A mother ox and her baby. I was born in the Chinese Year of the Ox and so was my daughter. This little sculpture is about 3 by 2 inches, but both my daughter and I love it.

I am so proud of everyone who stood up for children yesterday, and for everyone who is saying, if it was MY child, I would want someone to stand up for them and for me.

Blessing and bring the children back to their parents.

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young alone

I have a double lot, L shaped, because the 1930s garage extends 5 feet into the second lot.

I don’t mow the second lot. It is in the center of the block and has an apple tree, a plum tree, a maple with a tree house, wild roses and weeds.

The deer leave their young to stay. Intemittently there are young alone in my lot. I went to go in the tree house this weekend, but this small one was alone. I don’t like to scare them into the streets or more exposed yards, so I backed off.

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containment in ceremony

This is for Taleweaver #147 – What brings you joy?

My minister talks about containment in ceremony.

That the ceremony can be a container for us to handle our worst selves and our best selves safely.

The Catholic mass is an example, particularly when it was in Latin. That it takes us through horror and suffering and death and then resurrection. This past weekend we performed the Mozart Requiem, from grief through joy.

My minister says that Western Civilization has lost the container for spirituality in the churches and instead holds the sacred in a love relationship. He says that the projection of one’s best self on the loved one can then flip into the projection of one’s worst, if we are not careful. We are attracted to people who have some of the aspects that we hide in our unconscious, so these are activated and projected. We magnify the talents and the beauty and wisdom of the love object. They are not real. True love is when we can slowly withdraw the projection and see the actual person who is there and then really love them.

I am taking a class where we are reading The Maiden Tsar. I am thinking of the chicken feet that Baba Yaga’s house stands on. We say that a person is chicken when they are afraid and won’t go forward, a coward. So Baba Yaga’s house on chicken feet: it is a house of fear, fear alive, terrifying. And what do we find in this most frightening place? We find that that our culture has most devalued: an old woman, not beautiful, not fertile. And she cares nothing for logic. In order to meet her challenge and not be destroyed, we must use our intuition, not our logic. No linear thinking, but a respect for magic and for humor.

I am thinking of the grandmother theory, that women have a dramatic menopause because they are the tribal memory. They have to survive the famine, raise the grandchildren, remember where there might be food, remember tricks and things forgotten. A useful man may remain fertile for the tribe, but a useful woman loses hers, because she is now a walking repository of knowledge. And western civilization has denigrated and ignored her: so she lives in the house with chicken feet.

My children are now adults but they do not have children yet. I am a practicing grandmother though. I am living alone for the first time in 28 years. I practice on other people’s children. A two year old loves my house: there is a stick dragon in the closet that roars if you press his throat. There are toys that he can’t take home. “That is mine. You may play with it while you are visiting.” I put a towel on the floor and get the espresso set out. I have never made espresso. He sits on the towel and pours water from the coffee pot until the cup overflows, the saucer overflows, the towel is soaked. He looks up at me, holding the coffee pot. “More?” I say. He hands it to me and I fill it with water again. His mother is surprised that he is wet from head to toe when she picks him up. By then the towel is cleared, the coffee set is drying, and he and I share a glance, our secrets safe. Until the next visit.