River Flows

My standard disclaimer applies.

Sometimes I’ll be reading a book and something will just jump out at me, like it’s written in glowing text.  The quote above was one of those.  It’s like this person was writing about stuff from inside my head, putting into words what had always been there, but only as this messy clump of sad-angry unspoken feeling.

It’s not that my parents were intentionally cruel to me … well, my father was now & then, and my two older brothers were when I crossed them or they were in a bad mood … mostly general anger, fecal matter flowing downhill, I think.

But I don’t think my father or my brothers gave a rap about what I became when I grew up.  My father didn’t particularly seem to care about my happiness, but he didn’t lay any expectations on me about who or what I should be when I grew up.  As long as I did what I was told, he pretty much left me alone.

My mother was the one who had plans for me.  She was a very strict religious fundamentalist (Southern Baptist), and, according to her, I was supposed to grow up to be a preacher.  As far back as I can remember, I was going to church with her 2 or 3 times a week, except for revivals in the summer, when it was every night except Saturday.

When I was 10 or 11 years old she had me read the entire Bible, a chapter or two at a time, over the course of a year.  It wasn’t really how I wanted to spend my childhood, though I did get a lot of attention from her in the process.

When I finally broke free, left home, and quit pretending to be this little religious robot that my mom seemed to want, I detested almost everything about the fundamentalist Christian religion I had felt imprisoned by while growing up.  I then spent a lot of years being guided by the principle that, when in doubt, I should do exactly the opposite of what my mother and the church would want me to do.

Drinking, drugs, sexual acting out, and other dubious and illegal behaviors were supposed to be my declaration of independence.  Way too many years later, I finally figured out (duh!) that when I knee-jerk did the opposite of what I thought my mom & the church would want, I was no more free than when I did what they wanted … either way, it was my mom & the church that were guiding my behavior.

To feel compelled to rebel against and oppose some belief system, some set of values, is still a form of slavery to whatever’s being opposed.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So here I was, reading this lively werewolf-focused paranormal romance, and this sentence I quoted above jumped out and grabbed me and I started thinking.  I would say my mom was pretty much the opposite, that she cared so much about what I accomplished in life and so little about my happiness.

I think she would probably have said she cared about my happiness because she wanted me to go to heaven & stay out of hell, but that’s not what I’m talking about.  And I think that excuse is just easy, automatic, religious-based rationalization for wanting me to be something that would make her look good, be who she wanted me, allow her to shape my life.

That whole “I’m only doing this for your own good” shtick is way too often a cover for something like “I want you to be what I want you to be, not what you want to be.  I want you to make me look good, I want to be able to see you be this or that and feel good about myself as a parent, be able to tell myself that I made you what you are, and take pride in that.”

How do we show we care about the happiness of our kids?  I don’t think it’s by indulging their every whim, and I don’t think it’s by forcing them to do exactly as we say and become exactly what we tell them to.  Neither of these approaches seem loving, kind, or compassionate to me.

How about we show our kids, by our example, what it’s like to live a life that includes play, joy, excitement, working things out with love … maybe loud, excited, passionate expression of feelings and differences, but how to live a life that includes happiness.  I would have loved to have seen a little of that in my home while growing up.

How about, if we’re unhappy, we deal with our own crap, work it out for ourselves, instead of trying to makes ourselves happier and reach some of our goals vicariously, at the expense of our kids (and, speaking to my own kids, I’m so sorry about being so caught up in my own stuff, thinking only about my own needs and ignoring yours so much while you were growing up).

How about we just set reasonable limits and requirements on our kids and then listen to them, support them as they play with life, trying this or that on for size, finding out what works for them and what doesn’t.  How about if, instead of telling them what we want them to be, we ask them about their hopes and dreams, what they like and don’t like, and then listen and don’t try to pull rank or discourage them from making their own choices.  As parents, we know when we care about our kids’ happiness.

There’s no recipe … the only way to care is to care.  Part of caring is accepting them for who they are and staying away from caring too much about who or what you want them to be.  And I know teenagers can be hard to communicate with … but I can still care.  Love goes a long way, love of the developing person temporarily in my charge, not love of showing off this or that thing that my child can do.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

My oldest daughter grew up without me (a story for another day, one in which I’m the guy in the black hat), and she ended up marrying a strict right-wing conservative religious fundamentalist and adapting herself to his lifestyle.  Her husband is a humorless, arrogant, rigid man who has told me he likes his “good Pentecostal wife” exactly as she is and doesn’t want me communicating with her for any reason, because he doesn’t want me trying to “open her up.”

She goes along with him on this, partly because of a rift we had over the fact that I had read some paranormal romances by an author that she disapproves of (with heroine Anita Blake) and refused to apologize or agree with her that my reading such books was wrong … this is despite (or maybe partly because of) the fact that said daughter grew up as a voracious reader of romance novels.

This incommunicado situation is not exactly comfortable for me, but what really torques me is that my daughter is my mother all over again, only more so.  Her home-schooled children (two older daughters, two younger sons) have no access to television, the Internet, or long-distance telephone service, all avenues by which they might become corrupted by the world.  They follow a strict dietary and exercise routine, supervised by their mom.

She constantly brags to other family members about her kids’ high scores in this or that subject, or on national scholastic achievement exams (home-schooled, so this is also the teacher bragging about her students’ performance).  The kids are praised for being thin and censured & ridiculed any time they deviate from mom’s standard of how her children should look.  Mom & dad decide which schools their kids should go to (like MIT and Duke) … you get the picture.

I feel sorry for the kids.  Projection, I think; if I were in their shoes, I’d be miserable.  They may turn out fine … I hope so, but I have this image of a few more screwed-up souls coming unprepared into the real world having no idea who they are underneath the masks they wear for mom & dad, no idea what their own values and beliefs are.  Good luck, guys.  You’ll need it.

If you’re reading this and have memories of growing up in a world where someone cared so much about your happiness and so little about what you accomplished in life, I hope you realize how lucky you are.  Anyway, that’s the view from my window.

And thanks, Kelley Armstrong, for saying it.

Peace.
~riverflows

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