A Potpourri of Parenting and Positivity

When I go a long time between blogs, it is hard to remember what all I have been listening to. I think I will go with the day of the classics

Boston - Boston

Journey - Escape

Rolling Stones - Hot Rocks - 1964-1971

I haven’t listened to the Boston album in ages - I forgot how good it is. I think at some point in my life it trended in my playlist, but I can't grab the mental image of when that would have been. When I am picking records to listen to, I always seem to go to the new wave and such, but then I get lucky when I pull out something I’ve taken for granted.

The Journey album is not one I remember having as a kid, so I don’t know all the songs that well, but it has lots of the classics and is just such a great album too. Steve Perry has a killer voice of course, but I saw them several years ago with Arnel Pineda and he was fantastic. I watched a documentary about how shitty he was treated by some (former) fans because of racism when he joined the band, and how hard he had to work at keeping his singing sustainable for such a gruelling schedule. At that concert, Arnel ran back and forth across the stage for two hours, singing his heart out. Totally entertaining. I would never have known he was in his forties. After all, I’m in my forties and I can neither sing nor run!

I have never been a Rolling Stones fan. I heard once that there are Beatles fans and Stones Fans, but generally people don’t like both. So I considered myself more on the Beatles side and found the Stones to be a little too … rock? For me. After watching another documentary called 20 Feet from Stardom, I took another look. In 1969, Merry Clayton was woken in the middle of the night asked to come down and record a background part for The Rolling Stones, who she had never heard of. She arrived in curlers and a robe, pregnant, and was given the line “Rape/Murder - It’s just a shot away” to sing, and she sings the hell out of it. Even though she said "it left a dark taste in my mouth." The part where her voice slightly squeaks because she is right at the edge gives me chills. I love the story, and I now appreciate the song as a result. Kyle and I decided to try a greatest hits record because neither of us listened to them much, and although I have never put on a Stones record before this one (I’m sure my parents did, I remember seeing some), they are so iconic that every hit is one you know all the words to, just from hearing it on the radio your whole life. I have to say I range from tolerating to enjoying. I find Sympathy of the Devil grates on me because of that annoying background woo-hoo vocal, and I can’t stand the term “Honky Tonk”, so that song is not a favourite either. My mom used to sing “You can’t always get what you want” when I asked for something, so yeah, I find that one annoying too. (I like Supertramp enough that “Dreamer” is still okay, that was an alternative track for saying no to my requests). This is a great segue into my next part, which I actually wrote first. Happy accident.

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Mother’s day just passed, and I spent time making my mom a wreath which she and I named “Wreath on Earth”. I really love how it came out, and I made her a cute card with a stamp I bought on one of those direct from China apps, along with some special flowers for her wreath. When I looked up the mushroom so I could colour it accurately, I concluded that it could only be Amanita Muscaria. All signs on my internet search implied this is a Magic Mushroom, which thought was hilarious. Do the Asians making the stuff for North Americans think we all do mushrooms and that we even craft about our favourite hallucinogens? I was wrong however. Although this mushroom has hallucinogenic properties, it is not the notorious kind. Rather, it is simply the most iconic of all mushrooms - associated with Alice in Wonderland, Super Mario Bros and even Christmas - yes Christmas. SO, sorry for the misinformation written in your card Mom.

For Father’s day, I also made my dad a card with different supplies from that same order. (I had to buy a lot of shit to get free shipping). I didn’t take a picture, because although it came together basically as I hoped, I was not satisfied with my water colour background and therefore didn’t need a record of it. In this card, rather than stupid quips about Asians thinking we all do ‘shrooms, I thanked him for the adventures he took me on when I was a kid.

This got me to feeling guilty about not saying something more sentimental to my mom, and it made me think about my mom’s participation in the adventures that she was always there for.

And now the long boring part:

I’ll start at the beginning with a brief history - my mom and dad had me at 17. Mom was a natural mother - she had been caring for her siblings’ children for years and loved babies. I think it was probably less natural for my dad, but the benefit to that is that he and my mom took me everywhere, and never really let having a child hinder their activities. So my childhood was amazing. I had no idea I was a kid and I thought my parents friends were my friends and we went to wonderful places! The reason I am so nostalgic about music is because of it’s ties to my happy upbringing. Thank you mom and dad!

It seems there is a lot of therapy that digs into the past and helps explain our current problems by delving into the shitty parts of our childhood. This concept hurts me for two reasons. The first is that I don’t see how it helps - it can’t be undone. Does dredging it up and blaming our parents and pinpoint them for being antecedent* to our issues help the current situation? I suppose there wouldn’t be therapy around it if I didn’t help some people. I’m not judging - lord knows I have my battles and want answers. It’s just that my second reason is that most parents do what they can with the tools they have. Some have a big tool box - money, education, nice homes, research, planning… and other’s have less. Some have far less. I don’t think anybody takes their babies home intending to do a shitty job raising them. Sometimes it happens, but it isn’t malicious. There is no manual. You just walk into the hospital with a weird belly and walk out with the alien that was growing inside it. I swear there are billions of planets out there and every alien inside each of us comes from a different one. And we just have to figure it out and try to turn it into a good human being, all the while trying to cope with the rest of our lives and our backpack full of demons.

I know for Matthew, things haven’t always been easy for him when dealing with my mental illness, however it hurts my heart to think that might end up in therapy blaming me for his challenges. Sure, his upbringing may have led to some degree of mental illness or weight issues etc, but genetics or media or whatever aren’t blameless either. And who cares what started it - will the self pity or hyperawareness of it make his life better or help him grow or remember that good things in his childhood? Will he spend money telling someone that I stayed in bed all the time and yelled every morning for him to get up and flew off the handle sometimes and made excuses for things and now his life sucks and it’s all my fault? Will they have to talk through these traumas like one would about abuse or neglect? Hell, as a parent we fuck up. We make bad choices, we have the wrong reactions, veer off our fantasy of perfect parenting when life happens. We know this - I know this, and every day I shoulder the guilt. I constantly tell myself that I shouldn’t have had a kid because the world is hard and I can’t protect him or I over protect him and I’m not good enough and that I didn’t do enough and that I’m out of time and I ruined his life. I know I talk about myself, when parenting has been with Kyle, but I never view him as a problem - I think he is a great dad and I marvel that this is the boy I met when he was Matthew’s age and how he turned out to be such a great father. The fact is one of the pitfalls of mental illness is beating yourself up and taking on the burden of guilt for everything. Like how I said I felt guilty about my mom's card. All kinds of guilt. It might even be normal. I was normal in my last blog, right? (Actually, in retrospect, I think it was mania. Bummer.)

You might not know it, but I just said something mind altering. Kyle was 18 when I met him. Matthew’s age. Can I look at the man I see today, who I love so dearly and who inspires me and supports me and works so hard and has accomplished so much, as the same boy who I met nearly 30 years ago who had never had a real job (okay he informs me he had brief ones) and woke up at noon every day? Can I not see that my terror about Matthew needing therapy because of me is likely unfounded and that he is a normal teenager with a normal teenager attitude. I need to chill out. I didn’t do my homework for this morning’s group therapy session, struggling to focus and pinpoint examples of the various traps I fall into and distorted thoughts and biases, and yet here I am writing about them accidentally. What a great realization to brighten my day. Oh, I speaking about positivity in my life - three or so weeks ago, Kyle and I did a local walk which has 300 stairs. My calves seized up and I could barely walk for 3 days and I am like “no way, girl. Not acceptable”. So I vowed I would do those damn steps every week until it didn’t kill me. I have done them probably 6 times since then, and the first time I retried, I recorded my time - it took just under 13 minutes. Today I have group, and my “fun” goal was to make sure I did it this week, with my dream goal of eventually doing it in 10 minutes. Well shit, I procrastinated and didn’t do it this week. Surprise, surprise. Well, I am not going to go to group and telling all those amazing people that I didn’t do it! So I got up early and my foot was on the first stair at 6:05 am. And my foot was back on that stair with my last step at 6:15! I did it in 9:33 minutes. I’m sure this may not be impressive for someone fit, but for me, I am really proud of myself. Next week I will try for 9. Sad note - I swallowed a mosquito while gasping on my way down. It died in the incident. Not sorry. Ha!

History and philosophy over. Okay, actually neither are over they are just on a different track.

The card for my dad was an homage to the camping adventures of my childhood. We drove on crazy routes with unknown destinations, some of them terrifying. My dad was the hero, the pioneer, the adventurer. He was all the fun. But my mom was always there, getting no glory. She was sometimes grouchy and I had no concept why. For example, an 8 year old doesn’t understand that bouncing down remote and scary roads in pitch darkness, cooking and cleaning in a little camper with no shower while you are 4 or 5 months pregnant might not actually be a holiday. It might be more like being a nanny and maid on a hormonal roller coaster. Mom had a be a super planner - making sure all the practical things were packed for the vacation, which took a long time. I was always impatient to go - I was a kid after all, and my dad always had different priorities - like making sure the camper was secure and the truck was running, and he had the appropriate assortment of tools to fix it when it would usually break somehow etc. Well, inevitably there would be stress and fighting and my mom would declare she wasn’t coming. We would have to beg and apologize and she would give in and come along to make the trip amazing without any acknowledgement of her exhausting contributions. Would it have been fun without delicious food? Would it have been fun if we had to figure out what to pack and do dishes in a tiny sink with cold water (she boiled it obviously)? No, it wouldn’t have. She made it family. She made it home. She’s the best mom. Yet I wrote something stupid in her card about magic mushrooms. My parents started together as kids, but I don’t know if they know that they really made a great team, just using the tools they picked up as they went.

Oh yeah! The * beside “antecedent”. I know you were thinking, shit, this blog is never long enough! I need more!

* I was in university, taking Forest Ecology with the internationally renowned (in forest ecology) professor Dr. Hamish Kimmins. As the final exam approached, people shared hints about how to pass, and one of them was to ensure to use one of his favourite terms “antecedent determinants” liberally. I noted this advice well enough to remember it being said in 1996, however I didn’t know what “antecedent” even meant. Did I look it up? Nope. I failed that final. Did I look it up to do the retake? Nope. Luckily did a very good retake which would have been an A if I didn’t have to take the penalty for rewriting it - in spite of the antecedent determinants). Anyway, fast forward to about 2012. I'm back at school to get my Early Childhood Education certificate, and I am taking a course called “Guiding and Caring”. We are learning this concept with the acronym ABC - Antecedent, Behaviour, Consequence. Antecedent. Again. After 16 years, I still didn’t know what that fucking word meant! So I shamefully raised my hand and asked the teacher (who is the only teacher I’ve ever had who noticeably didn’t like me) what it meant. She simply replied “What came before”. It was one of those movie moments where the whole universe zooms in to a single point of focus, and it all made sense. Like an ohhhhhhhhhhh...

realization. So I use it whenever I can, probably sounding like a pretentious asshole and making other people feel just as stupid, because it seems a lot of people aren’t familiar with the word either. So now I have educated you. You’re welcome.