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The Reckoning

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I knew it would come. The time when my children no longer believe that I am God and whatever I happen to do is Right and Just and Appropriate. It was honestly really weird being in that zone with them and this discomfort and tension is preferable. What I mean to say is last night my big kids and I cried together and talked about how hard it was when they were really small and I would scream at them for hours for stupid things that little kids do. They talked about how much I hurt them and why it wasn’t ok.

I said that it is true that I did these things. And I did hurt them. And I am sorry. I do not excuse my behavior. There isn’t a justification that makes it “ok”. We both just have to live with it being true. You get to decide how many more years of knowing me you can handle given how I treated you.

EC said he remembers one time when MC was screaming at him and I interrupted and told MC off and said it was entirely inappropriate for them to talk to him like that. He said he remembers asking me why it was ok for me to do that when it wasn’t ok for MC to do. I didn’t say anything. I walked away. He could hear that I went in another room and cried. He was confused and he couldn’t figure out what he had done wrong.

Last night I told him I was embarrassed. It’s pathetic for a grown ass woman to need to get called out by a child that small for her inappropriate behavior. I knew I was I was fucking up. I knew that my behavior was wrong. I also didn’t have much of a support network and I had very high needs children and I was still deep in the mess of my own trauma. I told him, “That’s why I went to therapy even though you told me you didn’t want me to go. Because you were showing me every single day how I did not have the skills to be the mother you deserved.” Last night I told him a little bit more about what I was going through at the time and why I was fucking up the ways I was. I told him that I could not talk to him about it way back then or I would have made him my confidant and I would have leaned on him for emotional support. He would have completely believed that it was his job to do whatever he had to do to “fix” me.

He said I was probably right and he was very glad I hadn’t told him any of it at the time. But it was hard.

I know.

I mean, I’m still not telling them everything about what I went through. But like: when the older kids talk about remembering me completely fucking freaking out about food waste… when I married their dad I was 2 years out from being food insecure. By the time EC remembers my earliest paranoia and panic and overly extreme reactions I was something like 5 years out from food insecurity? I am more calm about food now. It’s also been over 18 years. I feel in my bones that it’s ok now if we don’t eat every piece of food because there will definitely be more.

I told him that what he remembers and the ways that I hurt him are part of what I mean when I say that he has an ACE point because having a mentally ill parent is a heavy burden. It is hard on your body and I deeply regret the ways I have hurt my kids.

I know that there were people at the time who expressed concern about the level of screaming that I wrote about. I didn’t respond in the moment in the ways that you might have preferred, but I have done the work to change. I don’t do that anymore. It was very hard. I have hope that my third child will not have the need for such intense conversations about my fuck ups. I certainly don’t think I have been as hard on her.

EC told me he hates how in stories there is always this big deal made of the person in his position forgiving the person who hurt them. I told him that it’s partly because people in my position have nothing to forgive. We only have regret and guilt and shame and self recrimination and that doesn’t make for as interesting of a story. I told him that in the stories the character isn’t forgiving for the sake of the person who hurt them–they are forgiving so they can set this experience down and stop carrying it around in their head and in their heart. I told him that I cycle in and out of forgiving my mother and I expect he will have a similar experience.

I told him that I am not asking for his forgiveness. That is not something I deserve and it isn’t something he should feel compelled to give. I told him that if he wants to talk about this more over the years I will and I will explain more so that he can see a fuller picture of what was going on and I do not offer that as a justification. It’s not a justification.

There is a part of me that struggles with trying to figure out the intensity of my own self recrimination here. I didn’t call him names. I wasn’t hitting him. I wasn’t using inappropriate language. I was using inappropriate volume. I ranted for hours and at least a few times for days about stupid fucking shit because I did not have better coping tools for my emotions.

These days when I can feel that starting I walk away until I am calm enough to come back and say, “I am not ok with this for x, y, and z reasons. I need you to do a, b, or c to make amends because that was not acceptable.” I’m still really freaking not ok with active lying. You can tell me to my face that you are not going to obey some restriction I have put in place and have far fewer issues than you will if you tell me “Ok I won’t do it” and then you do.

In the birthday book that Noah and Pam put together years ago there is a quote from Jenny: “When you look at yourself you see how far you have to go. I see how far you have come.” Ok, I’m paraphrasing. I haven’t looked it up in a bit. I think I’m right +/-3ish words. I am a lot closer to being who I want to be in this world. I have dealt with a lot of my shit.

Hell, I wonder how much Andrew telling me off and telling me that I was addicted to my rage spurred me on. There have been a lot of things and a lot of pushes from people who love me.

I am not the parent I was and mostly I think that is good. If you can’t look back on yourself 18 months ago and think “Wow, I really sucked” you aren’t trying hard enough. I’m looking back 10 years ago. I really really really sucked. It is hard to feel that I deserve to have a relationship with my children as adults. And that’s one of those tricky self-fulfilling prophecies. If I feel that way I will act shitty and I will push them away.

I mean, even with telling me that sometimes the way I handled shit wasn’t ok he still comes into my room for snuggles on a regular basis. He still radiates confidence and self-assurance and happiness most of the time. He now says that he can foresee a future when he will probably want to move out but he’ll be surprised if it happens much before 30.

He looks back on the arc of his life and thinks I want to double this amount of time with my parents.

I agree that when I screamed like that it was abusive. Maybe it is kind of an ordinary level of abusive where if you knock it off people won’t reject you permanently. I don’t know. I don’t get to decide. I just need to keep on walking and keep on trying to be less of a prick.

How do you measure progress?

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“I think I am a better writer than I thought.”
“What leads you to draw this conclusion?”
“The sad story I posted has had over 1,000 hits in two days. It’s the first work I’ve posted!”
“Wait, I thought you had been posting for a long time?”
“Oh, that was back on Wattpad, this is my first AO3 post.”
“Ok, and how does this jump make you feel better about yourself?”
“Well, people on AO3 are more literate and have better grammar and spelling and in general the characters aren’t so simplistic.”
“Ah. You have gone from the middle school board to the high school board?”
“Basically, yes.”

“Congratulations! That’s awesome!”

Praying and sleep

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Tonight I managed to get some time with my fingers in dirt. It was after I probably should have been in bed, resting. I am told resting is important. But I have been rather a nasty bitch for a few days and I needed to get a serotonin boost somehow.

I am working on a stone spiral for herbs; I won’t really be able to plant in it this year because the growing season is short here in Inverness. As I was grunting and laughing as I dragged up rocks that I probably should not have been lifting I thought about what it means when I say that I will pray for you.

If I say that I will pray for you I mean that I will think of you when I shove my hands into the soil. As I pile rock on top of rock and I shove sticks and compost into gaps I will think your name and I will hope that this universe grants you the nutrients you need to grow. I think of the people in your life who build you up and whom you in turn support. I think of how I want the universe to build a safe and stable place for you to rest. I want you to have the right amount of support so you can present exactly the angle of yourself into life you want to project.

I think of how I want you to have space around you to spread your roots into new directions. I think of how I wish water would flow around you to bring growth and moisture and sustenance as you go through your life. I think of how I want you to have seeds of new life, whatever that means for you, come to you with the wind and the birds and the flow of the seasons. I want you to thrive.

And around then I noticed that it was just about pitch black and I should probably stop. Given when in the year we are I guessed it to be close to midnight. Cell phone said it was 11:40. I’m pretty good at time. Then I laughed and thought of something that my son said to me recently. He said, “I’m kind of embarrassed to admit this but I didn’t really think you slept until after you had our little sister. That pregnancy was the first time I really saw you sleep.”

I tried to protest that it was ridiculous. Of course I sleep. He stopped and looked at me all deadpan. Then he raised his hands to melodramatically indicate the walls and the ceilings of the room we were in that I had in fact painted in the middle of the night while everyone else slept. He said, “Really mom. You do?”

As I softly shift dirt back and forth and move rocks to create the form I want even when there is no longer light I have to admit…. no. I don’t. Not really. Maybe if I did my body would hate me less. But would I really live longer or would it just feel longer?

I know the garden I want to stand in on my 50th birthday. It is going to be fucking amazing. I am going to be able to push my toes down deep into the soil and harvest fruits and vegetables that I made flourish. There will be flowers and wee beasties and a whole damn ecosystem. It might already be cold or there might be a last gasping heat wave. Either way I am going to sit in a rocking chair and hold Noah’s hand. Maybe I will already be wrapped up in a blanket or maybe I’ll be wearing barely anything at all–global warming is even coming for the north. I’ll have some whisky.

And if I am very very lucky I will even have a smile before I fall asleep for a well deserved nap.

We are going to confuse people so much.

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I’m pretty sure that folks here are already aware that we use “kersquirble” to mean adding sugar and milk to tea to your personal taste.

The other night Noah and Youngest Child were at the table and she asked for a cheers. They clinked glasses and he said “Kanpai!” Then she said, “Cow pie!”

Our oldest kids observed that we are going to confuse people when they come over for the first time and we push the sugar/milk tray towards them and tell them they can kersquirble their tea then we hold up our classes and exclaim cow pie!

But I mean… in jokes are kind of our thing.

Insults in action

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Eldest child has decided that she is one of those ridiculous gamer people who call everyone (including me) “bruh”. For reasons that follow my usual extreme lack of logic this bugs the crap out of me.

Years ago she was saying/doing something where she was trying to “set someone straight” in a sassy voice and I said, “You got that right, sister.” She narrowed her eyes and and did the cat butt mouth and told me that I don’t get to call her that.

So last night when she started calling me “bruh” I said, “If you call me ‘bruh’ I’m going to start calling you ‘sister’ alllllllll the time.” She narrowed her eyes at me a little bit and carefully did not do a cat butt mouth (because I totally made fun of her for that until she stopped doing it) and then said…. “You know… I kind of love that our big name calling exchange is to refer to each other as siblings.” I skipped over and kissed her on the cheek and said “Me too.” Then she smiled and leaned her head towards me for a nuzzle.

ETA: I forgot to write down the funniest part! Middle child said “You also object to mum. Why are you so picky about names?” I said, “Because I’m not into mums. Definitely not my favorite flower.” MC said: “Yeah you aren’t into mums because you like dads!” I said, “Well I am into MILFs but that’s kind of a different thing.” MC looked puzzled but EC exploded across the room with “AHHHHH I CAN’T KNOW THIS” then she bolted across the room to glare at me as I laughed and laughed and laughed. She is feeling super smug lately about how she knows everything that can be made into a dirty joke because she is on the internet. Once in a while I am a twerp and I let her know that she isn’t the only one who can make dirty jokes. It cracks me up.

A while later I almost went up to bed without writing in the five year journal the kids just got me. Big eye roll here. Two years ago they both got 5 year journals in their stockings as a way to get them to practice handwriting just a little bit every day. This year they decided that if they have to suffer so do I. Well then! EC poked fun at me for almost forgetting then gloated about the fact that they will finish two years before me and she’ll be 16 when she finishes the book so I won’t be able to make her start a new one. I countered that oh yes I can. She said, “But I’ll be too old. You can’t tell me what to do by then.”

(Based on a reference to a comedian I watched a bit ago and I repeated it to the kids) I said: “Oh I’m going to be the whitest Mexican mom you’ve ever seen and if you sass me when you are 40 and married I’m still going to send you to your room. And you will go.” She furrowed her brow then gave a deep sigh and said, “Yeah. That tracks.”

What’s funny about that is I think I have only sent her to her room like once in the past two years because she was being unbearable. It’s not like that’s a big part of our relationship. With EC in particular usually all I have to do to let her know that she is over the line is to glare at her. She absolutely hates it and will crumble under the force of it. She still puts her hands up in front of her face so she “can’t see me”. Then she will loudly announce that she can’t see me and thus I have no power over her.

People ask me how often I hit my kids to get them to cooperate. Ha. My parenting is pretty much force of will, baybee. Also super long “discussions” where I explain that I am right and you are going to understand why I am insisting on (thing). For a few more years you don’t have to agree with me you have to obey. Then you’ll be an adult and we have to negotiate more.

Except for sassing me. Then you can go to your room.

If you need to hit your children to enforce your will you have already lost.

Life keeps plugging along.

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Today my toddler was so cute. Saying things like “Babies need hugs because babies get angry. Babies need hugs because babies get sad. Babies need hugs because babies get frustrated. Babies need hugs because babies feel loving. I love you. *big hug*” And: “I finished my cupcake, now it is time for chocolate!” Err, no kid. That’s not happening.

Eldest Child is, in my opinion, fully matriculated from home schooling. If the school goes on lock down and she has to distance learn through them it’s not my dog. I’ve been saying consistently that I am not withdrawing her from secondary school. Once she starts this school it is six years to the finish line. Today was the first day. She was elated. She should be along home… sometime soon.

Middle Child and I worked on their room today. The walls and trim are done. The closet is not done. The ceiling is not done. I cannot buy more paint for the ceiling because the paint store does not have any of the base in stock and hasn’t been able to get a shipment in a while. I cannot finish the closet until the wonderful handyman comes in and finishes the stuff he wants to add. So I’m relieved of painting duty for a while.

We started off the day with a walk to the park. We went out when EC left for school and the youngest two played for half an hour. Then we came back and I did laundry and dishes and we all had a snack. Then we painted. Then lunch. Then more laundry and dishes.

I need to sit down with MC and work out what her next “term” of home school will look like. I need to move most of the paint out of kid bedrooms and out to the shed.

I’m waiting for the handyman to put a backsplash in the kitchen because we are rubbing all the paint off the wall with our frequent cooking. The previous owners didn’t actually paint this house. They just used primer. Cheap fuckers.

Tomorrow we will go to the park when EC goes to school again and I told the littles we could stay longer. When we get home we are going to do a bunch of garden work. A lot of the plants inside the yard need thinning and I’m allowed to rip out grass and put plants along the edge of the road. I think I see a fun way to kill two birds with one project.

I need to figure out where will be the “paint clean up” zone in the future. Once we are completely done with this project I am going to scoop up all the fucked up dirt and put it in the garbage then keep working towards creating a pond.

I am really happy that all of my ongoing projects at this point feel tiny and/or easily contained/managed. They are all either a few hours at a time or they don’t create a cascading horror show of issues while they languish waiting to be finished.

I have a hard time when it feels like I can’t see the light at the end of the over-work tunnel. When I don’t know if I will be done in a week or a month or six months. I’ve been in that place for about a year now. Everytime I think I’m to the end of the big work push something breaks or there is some stall that makes things drag out forever.

I need a reduced work load. I need more rest. I can’t sustain what I have been doing. Not anymore. I’m out of spoons. I scraped the back of the drawer. I went to my neighbor’s house and borrowed all of theirs. I’m just… done.

In today’s “shit my kid says”

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My 12 year old did me a favor today. Here in Scotland you have to carry glass items to a centralized recycling unit, often near a store. She was taking her allowance over to get some candy and she offered to bring recycling. Sounded great to me.

While she was there a 25+ year old man noticed that she was putting a wine bottle in the recycling and said “Drinking already, huh?” and winked at her.

She said: “First of all, it’s my mom’s. Second of all, I’m twelve. Third of all, I’m lesbian. Bugger off.”

She said he was a bit startled and said “Damn.” But he walked away and made no more of it.

I have rarely felt so proud. I want to grow up and be like her.

smks: deep deep gulp

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“May I please have a sip of your water (torani syrup added to sparkling water)?”
“I don’t think you really want a sip.”
“I do! I want a tiny little sip!”
“Don’t you mean you want a gulp?”
“No! I want a tiny little sip!”
“Ok…” Hand off bottle.
*teeny tiny sip* Hand back bottle.
“Thank you for the teeny tiny sip. It was delicious.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
Sly look… “Now may I have a deep deep gulp?” Huge smile!
“Sure.”

smks: identity

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While flipping through a catalog I said to Shanna, “Ok, which one of you is the tomboy and which one is the ultra femme? I want to start decorating.” (Yes I had a playful tone of voice and I was kidding.)

Shanna said, “We are not tomboys and we are not ultra femmes. We are Shanna and Calli.”

smks: ice cream

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Today we were at the store buying ice cream (consolation prize for vaccination day) and uhhhh Shanna lectured a guy at the grocery store. She asked him what kind of ice cream he was buying. He said vanilla. She said, “All the ones my mama looked at have corn syrup. And that’s not good….”
He looked at her funny. Then he walked out with his two half gallons of store brand vanilla.

smks: evolving manipulation

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Shanna came toward me trying to get at my pizza sitting next to me. I picked it up and moved it out of reach. Then she said: “Oh mommy I love pizza. Daddy let me share his pizza. Oh Daddy is so nice! Thank you! Thank you, Daddy! I love you soooo much. You are so kind. Hey Mom, can I finish the movie now?”

Yeah. There was follow up in my direction. Awesome. 🙂

smks: rule bending

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Shanna was making up a story about how she lost her toy necklace. Then she got to the part where she said she put it in the box with the new necklace up on my dresser. I glared at her a little (playfully) and said, “You got something off my dresser?” You could see her eyes go off to the side and she said, “Uhhh… no, never…I think that the necklace got put in the box in some way that meant I didn’t take it off the dresser. (big perk up) And that’s ok!”

smks: pants!

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I was singing, “Oh fussy pants oh fussy pants, how fussy are your paaaaants” to the tune of “Oh Christmas Tree”. Shanna stopped whining/crying long enough to tell me, “I’m not wearing pants, only panties.” Then a fresh wail came out. It was hilarious!

(She’s crying because she is terribly upset that she can’t go with daddy to pick up take out that he is getting on his way home from work. Sorry kid.)