Anger Schmanger

We don't do anger well in this family. I was reminded of this fact two days ago when Craig and I had a minor upset over one of those robotized phone calls. The robot from Direct TV called asking to confirm an appointment that I did not know about. I could not confirm, was vaguely afraid of confirming some kind of expensive upgrade and said: I don't know. The robot interepreted that as "no". The appointment was cancelled. When Craig found out, he was angry with me because he had spent a week arranging the thing. You would think that the company would know that meant he really wanted the appointment, but no, they had to have their robot call to confirm. Anyways, he was mad at me and that upset me because I could not tolerate his anger and I started feeling stupid that I had not figured it out at the time. His anger was really a brief flash, no yelling, no breakage, no words really were involved. But I was deeply offended and truly embarrassed and my reaction got out of hand. A few hours later, yes, it took a few hours including a dunk in the hot tub to settle down, Craig said we do not know how to fight. That is my point in saying our family does not do anger well. The kids will have to weigh in on this, but it is my observation that they also do not do anger well because of this big lack in parenting. It's along the lines of teaching them to drive which will be another blog. The result of not doing anger well is avoiding confrontations. In some ways I think we try to be kind to each other which is never a bad thing. I discovered very late in my children's lives that if I scratch their backs while asking intrusive questions, they seem to respond and forget to be angry with my nosiness. So we did not teach them about properly expressing anger, fighting and living to tell etc. I am sure that this has it's effects on their relationships.

And the point of Mother's Day?

I have always had mixed emotions about Mother's Day. No, that is not a true statement. I have developed mixed emotions about the day in the last 10 years or so. My first Mother's Day as a Mother felt wonderful. I was a mother. I had an extraordinary child. I had fallen madly in love with this child and she seemed to return the feelings. Her existence gave me proper entree into this special club. I loved everything about being a mother. I loved the care, feeding, dressing, changing and cooing involved in mothering. Then the next child arrived, a boy, and he added to the delight. The third child came along a few years later and even more delight. Of course, that is the end of the story (their births) so there will be no more on the subject of births until much later. The children were not aware of Mother's Day for many, many years. Their father, took on the responsibility of acknowledging the holiday with the usual card, flowers maybe some candy. Mostly a very nice card. One year I got a paddle boat. It's a great boat and I still use it every summer. Somewhere along the way, I asked for mulch and since it arrived around Mother's Day it became a tradition for the family to give me mulch on Mother's Day. We still call it Mother's Day mulch even though I buy it myself and not anywhere near Mother's Day. But there you have it. A few years ago I told the children that I did not want any special attention on Mother's Day. No card, no gift, no phone call. Well, I call each of them on Sundays anyways. So I call them on Mother's Day. My rationale is that every day is mother's day. I am a mother every day. There is no need to call attention to this role on the designated day in May. Erica pointed out that this aversion to Mother's Day is exactly opposite to my feelings about my birthday. I love my birthday and expect all family members to join me in celebrating the day. I think everyone in the family also loves my birthday. But back to Mother's Day. Besides my own personal thoughts and reactions to the day there is also the larger societal issues such as the fact that many people have complicated relationships with their mothers. Some people no longer have their mother. Some women are not mothers and never will be. Mother's Day just rubs their noses in their losses, pain or choices. So tomorrow is Mother's Day and I will be buying my own mulch and calling each of my three children.

I always did like the to read the end of the story first

I have been thinking about my parenting style/philosophy/credo for a few months now since receiving the best compliment of my life. One of my children, ok it was Erica, evoked curiosity from her boss about how she turned out to be an incredible young woman. I am interpreting the compliment here, but it certainly was something that meant incredible. Of course, there were two of us and my co-parent will be invited to comment. I really want my children to also comment because, after all, they taught the parents how to be parents. They did it as we went along, you know, parenting as you go. I think it must have been frustrating at times because they were working with some fairly strong-willed people. But we seemed to be open to suggestions after struggling with our own ideas about what good parenting was about. I am going to start with the end product. Christopher told me that they, our three young adult children, are not finished. But they are well on their way to being interesting and cool adults. I realize that hearing that your mother thinks that you are cool immediately nullifies being cool. They are so cool that they will disregard this uncool mom thing. Anyways, they turned out really well. They are all kind, socially conscientious, artistic, have good taste in music, art and literature and know how to make and keep friends. They know how to love and receive love. They appreciate what they have and are generous to others. They are all three my favorite people in the world. How did this happen? I go back to the premise that the children taught the parents. I will be writing in this blog about parenting with comments from the children until we work our way back to pregnancy.