Today I want to talk about families. Not just mine but all families. They have one thing in common universally. They're not perfect. Not a single member of any family is immune to mistakes. I've made them, you've made them, and we're each a victim of, most likely, numerous mistakes made by your family members. Having said that I feel it appropriate that I "come clean" about the mistakes I've made.
First, I got married too young. I was 19 and too young to know how harsh life can be. I didn't know that every cross word or broken promise in the life of your relationship deals an un-healing wound. When those wounds become too deep to prolong the life of your relationship, hurt turns to hate and hate is the cancer that will kill any relationship. Some sooner than others.
Second, I had children for the wrong reason. I thought that children would be the glue that would hold my relationship together when, in fact, they are the emotional casualties when the relationship fails. Don't get me wrong. I love each of my children with a power and scope you can't understand until you become a parent yourself. I would jump in front of a train to protect my children. Alas, I was not always that kind of parent and this brings me to the third thing about families.
You are required by law to have a license to drive a car. You are required to have a marriage license. I believe you should be required to have a license to have children as well and this is why.
I was 20 when my first daughter was born. I had no clue what I was doing when she was little. I dealt with her, the way I was dealt with as a child. When she grew into a toddler and she misbehaved, I spanked her. God help me, I didn't protect her from the neighbor who, when she spoke to her and got no response, began calling her "Duh!Duh!" I know now how profoundly hurtful that was. But I wasn't always that oblivious. When she refused to go to school when she was in third grade, I found out that the teacher had allowed the class to watch "Friday the 13th" and they read stories about murders where the perpetrator was a Police officer. I practically laid waste to the school board to discipline the teacher and protect my child from further inappropriate classroom content. But one good act does not atone for previous bad acts. All I could do at that point was, move forward and try my best to be better than before. I endured a 4 year interruption in our relationship during which my daughter refused to talk to me and I missed the first two years of my grandson's life. When she forgave me shortly before her younger sister got married, Everything was great till I made a mistake and published a very generic poem about abuse and now she has once again broken communication with me because she thought I had some nerve to speak about abuse after what I did to her and I'm told that this time its permanent. There are so many more reasons behind this situation that it would take a novel to explain and maybe someday I'll go farther but for the purposes of this post, I'll leave it there.
When my eldest daughter was 3, I had a second daughter. Having learned nothing from parenting her sister, I made the same mistake again. By this time my relationship with their father was more of a "Mexican standoff" interspersed with attempts to rekindle what we had lost. I was an automaton who simply moved through the days one step at a time and while I tried my best to care for the two of them, for the most part I had checked out and thus deprived her of the warm and loving parenting she so richly deserved. Pictures of her at that time show the face of a child who is so sad and unhappy it makes me cry just to look at them. Again, I wasn't in a constant fog. My daughter was hypoglycemic and she was uncontrollable until she had breakfast in the morning and she needed regular snacks to keep her blood sugar up where it needs to be. So, on the first day of 2nd grade I packed her lunch with a couple of snacks like peanut butter crackers or cheese crackers with a note for the teacher explaining her medical problem and to please allow her to have a snack a couple of hours before and a couple of hours after lunch just to keep her level during the day. The first week every day this little Tasmanian devil would get off the bus and throw temper tantrums and scream for about an hour till her afternoon snack kicked in. About the third day of the second week I got a note from the teacher that she wanted a parent teacher conference. I went the next day and she proceeded to complain that she was having a hard time with my daughter who was acting out and disrupting the class. I asked her if she was giving my daughter the snacks I sent and she said "no because I don't think it's fair for one child to have snacks when all the other children don't get them." I wanted to reach across the table and slap her full on the face. But - I took a deep breath and I asked her if she got the note I sent explaining why she needed the snacks and she said yes but in her experience that these mood swings are simply the child trying to manipulate the adults and so she ignored it. (At this point - which the principal noted - I was literally sitting on my hands to keep from attacking this moron posing as a teacher) and I said, "I quite specifically explained her medical condition - which I was willing to back up with a letter from her pediatrician - that stated when she was not allowed these snacks it would render her uncontrollable which is proved because I'm sitting here talking about my uncontrollable child and until you whip out your medical school degree then I expect my child to receive her snack every day and perhaps instead of looking at it like a special privilege you could explain to the class that sometimes people have a sickness you can't see and they need medicine and sometimes that medicine is a snack. Or maybe you could just send her to the office for her snack or any of a dozen other ways to handle this situation. After all if she was hypoglycemic and needed insulin, you wouldn't dream of withholding her insulin just because the whole class doesn't get insulin injections now would you (and this is where I lost control); you pompous undereducated jackass????" It was a sterling performance on my part and the snacks were no longer a power struggle and my affectionate adorable second born once again exited the bus after school was over.
Five years later, I had a third daughter. For her the crisis came about in kindergarten. We went to a screening prior to the start of kindergarten where she was asked to identify the letters of the alphabet and count to 50 or 100 I don't remember which, and other general knowledge question and she was pronounced ready for kindergarten. Great!! But then about a month in to kindergarten I got a letter that told me that she was going to be dropped from kindergarten because they had enrolled too many students and with her being a borderline age group (she was a week or two over the limit for starting kindergarten) she was being left behind. A little back story here...this child would watch her sisters go off to school every day and every day she would ask, "When can I go too?" She was so excited when the day came that she could get on the bus with her sisters and go to school and every day she would bounce off the bus full of stories about how much fun she was having. What the school was asking me to do was tell this innocent young child that she was going to have to wait a year before she could go back school and do it without making her feel like she was somehow to blame. Not in this life or the next!! I made an appointment and went to the school administration building where I met Superintendent Nimrod and demanded to see the idiot who was responsible for kindergarten enrollment. I explained that we followed all the rules. We went to the screening, we provided her immunization records, and everything else they wanted way back in June when they were deciding who could go and who wouldn't and I pointed out that they had made this mess and I was not about to make my daughter pay the price for their stupidity so either suck it up and try to make it work or rest assured - if they persisted with this course of action - they would hear from my attorney who be glad to take a couple of million dollars out of their future budgets to treat my daughter for the pain, suffering and humiliation of being dropped from school due to circumstances beyond her control. I did not hear any more about the notion she would be dropped from school. I just could not allow them to destroy this child. She was a persistently happy child and given the choice, would live on macaroni
and cheese. However, when she was two, my relationship with their
father had diminished to the point where I was self-medicating with
"pot" and "crank" (more mismatched pharmaceuticals could not exist)I was almost completely dead inside and when he professed his love for someone else, I took my cue and ran from the situation like my hair was on fire. I left my daughters with their Dad because, even at my most delusional mental state, I recognized that there was no way I could raise them and, in addition, I was completely suicidal at that point. Many people think that it was wrong for me to leave them behind, but it was because I loved them so much that I wanted them to be far away from suicidal me.
I appeared for the major crises but there were many minor ones that I was unaware of or just unavailable (polite term for hungover) to deal with. So you see, this is the first time, I have publicly acknowledged that I was a lousy mother, mentally ill, and suicidal. This is something I can't undo. Even though. I went through therapy and eventually straightened myself out, this won't undo the damage I did to my three precious children. All I can do is say I'm sorry for what I did and move on from there. So, I'm so profoundly sorry for what I did and I can only hope my children can forgive me because I love them more than they know. In spite of my parenting failures, they are all fantastic, beautiful, self-sufficient, intelligent young women. They are 100 X's the mother I was. Each of their children is loved and cared for and happy and well adjusted. I am in awe of them every day and I am grateful, sooooo grateful for every moment I am able to be around them.
More family info to come. I'm only just beginning but in the interest of honesty, I felt I should divulge my biggest screwed up mess. There you have it. I was completely guilty of being young and immature and unable to see the forest for the trees.
