I was so happy when my children were young. Apparently they weren’t.
Looking through an old photo album with my daughters…
Daughter 1:
Me: “Wasn’t that a wonderful summer at Brook Lake Camp? You got to ride a horse.”
She: “Yeah, sure, that was the summer I also got lice!”
Daughter 2:
Me: “Look how pretty you look?”
She: “In those gross floods you made me wear?”
Daughter 3:
Me: You had such beautiful curly hair.
She: “You’re kidding. How could you let me out of the house with that Brillo hair?”
I wondered about my memory. I still do today but for different reasons.
Everybody, knows how hard it is to be a mother.
Except fathers.
What mother can live up to the expectations we place on ourselves…and our kids place on us.
We’re blamed for being too strict or too permissive, for not being affectionate or for smothering. The blame mother list is a long one.
I know my “children” have blame lists about me.
About things I didn’t do when they were younger—like cook. But why cook every night when there was Pizza and Chinese delivery, and frozen meatloaf TV dinners that came with mashed potatoes and a brownie? And why use dishes you have to wash when there’s paper plates? How often I was reminded by one of my daughters that Mrs. Peyser used cloth napkins every night!
Their list about things I did they think I shouldn’t have done is a longer one. I had to remember not to hold their hand when we were at the mall, or talk to their friends if I was driving a car pool, or even worse, say anything to another mother about them.
My daughters weren’t easy to raise. It was hard for me to realize they weren’t me, didn’t think like me, didn’t worry about the same things I did.
My sons weren’t much easier.
They had absolutely no interest in shopping or spending time with me. But give them a ball and they were happy. They’d find someone to throw it to or a wall to throw it at. Otherwise, they’d go into their room and shut the door until it was time to eat.
I guess I should have taken my kids to eat at The Olive Garden. The kids in those commercials always look so happy being with their parents.
Actually, I didn’t know who to look to for a mother role model. My mother died when I was 12. Not enough time for me to make lists. My father was a no show.
So I went to live with my grandmother, Ettie. She was a smart woman but not a terrific mother role model. She was in her 70s and had little time or patience for a 12-year-old. She spent her days standing at the cash register or schmoozing with customers in the stationery store my grandparents owned.
What I remember most about Ettie was her pointing her finger at me and saying, “When you grow up and have children, I only hope they’re just like you!” At the time, I thought it was a compliment. Little did I know then that it was payback. She said it to me when I didn’t do what she wanted.
So I turned to Dr. Spock for parenting advice. Not the Dr. Spock of Star Trek. The one who wrote the book on permissive parenting. He was “modern.” Everybody believed in him in those days because we wanted our children to be happy.
I think I took his words too literally. I let my kids draw on the walls with magic markers, eat too many Yodels, and helped them too much with their homework.
Despite Dr. Spock and me, my kids turned out well. I guess the therapists helped.
Being a grandmother is so much easier.
You’re just a button click away and I’d love to hear from you.
About your world, your family, your joys and frustrations, growing up, growing older, even recipes– even though I stopped cooking–by request–years ago.
Goodbye until next time…
Hope your day turns out as well as I hope
(but doubt) mine will,
Gingy (Ilene)
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My three children always remember their childhoods so differently than their father and I do. I get a bit down when we look at old photos and they talk about those days.
One thing they all do is say that their brother always got everything he wanted and got to do everything he wanted to do….I don’t remember it that way at all. LOL
The girls think they were treated too strictly because they were girls. Maybe so – but we knew the possibilities for them to get into trouble.
This really struck a chord with me. I think most mums (honest ones anyway!) would identify with this because parenthood is not easy. At the time when I had my two boys,(‘80 and ‘83) I read a book called The Continuum Concept by Jean Leidloff. I did the whole co-sleeping thing, breast feeding on demand until the babies gave it up (both around 2 years) and not constricting them in play pens.
But what I didn’t allow for was how screwed up my own psyche was and how much negative stuff we pass on from our own childhoods. It ain’t easy! Us retired mums beat ourselves up way too much – I think we were mostly all ‘good enough’ to raise decent human beings. My sons have been critical of me at times but now that they have their own children, I think they get how hard it is to be the perfect parent. I love what you said – ‘everyone knows how hard it is to be a mother. Except father’s.’ So true!
Thanks for a good read and sharing thoughts that help us mums know we aren’t the only ones with critical grownup children. Maybe each generation has to be critical of the previous one in order for constant change for the better to take place – but not so sure it’s working properly with the way the world is going!
Gingy,
I love my mirror.
Thanx!
It’s a gift that’s keeps on giving.
Great for seeing if there is spinach on my front tooth as well as
I can see if anything is hanging out in back of me.
Again thanx for your thoughtful gift.
I was gonna write you today but couldn’t find an envelope.
I have a stamp so I’ll make one.
Hope all is well with you and your keeping warm.
Change your clocks tonite.
Lov ya
Arlyne “a bit crazy after all these years”
You’re so right. We can do no right!
Just as siblings remember the SAME CHILDHOOD experiences totally differently, so parents and children remember them differently.
My son’s birthday was in the summer, so every August–for years–I made a Birthday Box for camp. Sent him off to day camp with the Box filled with cupcakes, little favors for everyone in the group, little individual packets of candies. Then for sleep-away camp, packed up a Birthday Box surprise for the whole bunk, filled to the brim with treats, timed the arrival just right. It was a real challenge of coordination.
Recently I heard my son say, “You know, I never had a birthday party. Because I was born in the summer, I grew up never having a birthday party.”
Being a Mother has been rewarding & challenging for me as a single mom. I’m glad I made the decision to move in with my widowed mother and raise my daughter in the same Town as I was raised. My daughter has told me on several occasions that she was Glad I moved back home. She turns 40 this year and has a son & husband and lives in Ashland, OR. They use to live 45 minutes from me but now it’s 4 hours NE of me. I miss seeing them in person but have my memories
And glad there are cards in the mail & FaceTime and video on cell phones and phone calls and care pkgs To keep in touch with. We all will be together in June for a summer Family Reunion With cousins and their families my two sisters and their families and we will make new memories together . My mother always kept us in the same state when she was alive. Now we all live elsewhere but we all will come together and have fun together and catch up. I am crossing off the days on my calendar till we are all together. We will be “Happy Together” as the Turtles sang.
Haven’t heard that song for a while.
I highly recommend doting-aunthood + dog-mamahood 😉
O my dear Gingy, you’ve done it again!
You manage to use just the right number of words…and just the right number of breathes, to sum it all up perfectly: ‘we are blamed.’
And really:
‘Everybody, knows how hard it is to be a mother.
Except fathers.’
And your apt analysis of Y chromosome psycology? ‘…give them a ball… They’d find someone to throw it to or a wall to throw it at.’— which we know implies that they grow up and find someone to throw it AT.
Gingy, I love anything you write! I’m sure your daughters love your work also. I think that whatever you give your kids, you’re not giving them the opposite. So if you’re permissive and let them make their own decisions, you’re not giving them structure and disciple and deference to authority. If you give them a warm, loving, typical nuclear family, you’re not giving them the adventure of being out of the ordinary. If you read their mind and guess what they want or need before they even say it, you won’t give them the means to ask for what they need, the sense of reality in the world where you don’t just get what you want. So you might as well be yourself, and that will have to do. Which is what you did! How much they must love you to say what’s on their mind.
Love you. Keep on.
Ilene,
Besides making me laugh and nod–because I’ve been there and am still there–you make me feel you wrote this just for me. It’s so personal and so universal. And once again, you made me feel a whole lot less lonely.
Love, Nancy
Oh wow…love your blog! How many children do you have? I have one, and four grandkids…but the one was like having four, so now WE are even.
Gingy,
My parents were in Love with each other till the day my Father died at the age of 54. My dad was the bread winner and my mother stayed at home and took care of us. My mom baked and she cooked all the food my dads mother taught her
To cook as well as her mother was a great baker. This was in the 50s & 60s. I remember one meal she made it was stuffed peppers and mash potatoes and the rule was if you ate your dinner, you got dessert. Well this particular dinner, I didn’t like, so I waited till my parents left the table as well as my two older sisters and I spoon fed the wooden shoes from holland , that was the center piece on our kitchen table, I then put the plastic flowers inside it to cover it. I stuffed the stuffed peppers in the shoes.
My mother came back in the kitchen and saw my plate empty and she told me to go get my dessert.
I thought I had won until several months later…
Fast forward my mom smelled something awful in the kitchen and she searched and couldn’t find it until she picked up the wooden shoes that had the plastic flowers in them and out came the stinky shriveled Up stuffed gooey moldy stuffed pepper.
She called all 3 girls and asked us who did this and out of guilt I confessed. I was punished and I never did that again.
I’m a vegetarian now and when ever I go to the frozen section and see the Stouffers stuffed peppers this childhood memory from my past always surfaces.
I never liked meat but had to eat it in order to have the delicious desserts my mother made (rice pudding, tapioca, Apple pie, apple crisp, applesauce cake, jello’
Hugs!
Arlyne
Ps. Thanx for the VD surprise in the mail.