Today feels like a good day to write after a string of days that haven’t. Nothing’s wrong; I’ve just had nothing to say and I refuse to write unless I can write something sincere. Sorry for the interval. I knew the longer it went on, the harder it would be to come back here, but it was never an option to abandon my blog altogether. I still feel I am sometimes getting it right here, and those of you who read regularly are most adored and esteemed.
I’ve been thinking about misbehaving. That childish impulse to do what is fully understood to be wrong. Because my children have been acting out lately. Transition time of year. Hormones. Inadequate parenting. All of these are certainly legitimate factors, alongside many unfathomable others, I’m sure. “I’m on the warpath,” my mother used to incant when she had had enough of her unruly, disobliging children. These words have been bouncing around in my head lately as JH and I have tried to reign in some unchecked behaviors.
Parenting can really suck sometimes. It’s not that I want to be friends with my children, but I weary of playing the role of the heavy all the time. But that seems to be what’s necessary at the moment. To quote Glenn Close’s character in The Big Chill, “Honestly, I can’t believe the things I hear myself saying sometimes.” I have not said (out loud) “I’m on the warpath,” but I have said, over and over again, things like:
- Life is not all fun and games.
- You may not say “no” to me.
- If you don’t X this instant, you can just forget about Y.
- You are going to find yourself sad and alone with an attitude like that.
- I love you, but right now I do not like you very much.
- I don’t care what Z does. My responsibility is you.
- Your priorities are completely upside down.
- This is not open to discussion — you will do what I say.
We’ve had to come down hard on both kids this week. In a nutshell, G doesn’t see the value in putting his full effort into anything he does, and N’s head is in the clouds and she doesn’t have appropriate work/play priorities. Talk leads to raised voices leads to yelling leads to tears leads to flight leads to slamming doors leads to working it out together. They can be so unreasonable, and I suppose so can I, from their perspective anyway. These storms form and blow over, and in the aftermath I think we each have a better understanding of our roles in this house and in the world. But you know, I don’t like the conflict in my home. Terrible scenes played out regularly in my house when I was growing up. My older sister would battle with my parents over who knows what. It always resulted in her thundering up the stairs and slamming her door shut. And then her absence from dinner. Eventually, she went off to boarding school, where she thrived in an ideal environment of independence (from family) and rigid structure (from school).
My sister’s turbulent nature was completely bizarre to me, because I was (am) a pleaser, preserving peace at any cost. I don’t remember any major blowouts with my parents — only a series of small disappointments, as when my mother said to me at 12 or 13, as I was retreating into myself, “You used to be so helpful around here. What’s happened to you?” I was growing up, pulling away from her. And I don’t know, my way might have been even more difficult for my mother to accept than my sister’s dramatic episodes.
Burned into my consciousness is that final scene from American Beauty, as the father is bleeding to death on the kitchen floor. The camera slowly pans to a photograph of his daughter, now an emotionally shut down teenager, on some sort of amusement park ride. She is small in the picture, maybe 7 or 8 years old, and her head is thrown back in pure, unrestrained joy. She is sitting between her parents, a normal, loving family unit, now utterly destroyed.
Not so long ago, we took our kids to Funtown as we do every year. N was about 7 years old, and she was riding on the merry-go-round. She had chosen a pretty white horse on the outside track, and every time she orbited back to me standing and watching her, she smiled and waved eagerly. She looked for me every time she came around, needing me to share in her joy. I cried behind my sunglasses as I watched her experience her pleasure so unselfconsciously, aware that this could be the last time she might look for me this way on an amusement park ride.
So when I’m feuding with my pre-teen daughter, when she insists, “You don’t get it, Mom,” I have to try to remember her on the merry-go-round that day, because that was us, too.
