I can't help hearing Dr. Seuss in my head.
A new chapter, for all of us, but especially for you, my son. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. There will be so many firsts. I am excited for you!
Take advantage of all of it, enjoy as much as possible. You are ready, you got this....
Love Mom
Twenty hours in the back of a minivan gives a woman plenty of time to read and think. While thinking about something that happened this year I was trying to figure out the best way to tell my boys NOT to be a Knight in Shining Armor.
Do girls today even want a Knight on a white stead to ride in and sweep them off their feet? Because I feel like there was a time that’s what I thought I wanted, but it’s long gone. Thinking of it now makes me cringe. I truly hope that girls today are not raised to believe they need to be protected, taken care of, or rescued.
Knowing what I’ve learned thirty years later and communications that to my boys with no life experience is hard. Women don’t need a Knight in Shining Armor, they need a Knight in Battered Armor. How do you get battered without getting beaten up by life, or women?
Is it just as effective to tell my boys that women need to be seen, heard, and acknowledged. We need to be equals not only in the housework and raising kids, but making decisions the tough stuff and the everyday stuff. We do not need someone to sweep us up, we need someone to sit with us. We do not need someone to FIX everything - fight the urge to fix it! Just lean in with us, even when its bad, hard, the ugly cry, the unintelligible speak.
My questions is, do girls know what they are looking for? Do they know how to communicate expectations? ( I didn't) Am I pointing my boys in the wrong directions completely?? Both of my boys have talked about how a lot of what girls today are doing on Social Media is male bashing. They come home from school and sports with examples all the time. Last year the girls soccer team literally had a whole season campaign about how they were 10x better than the boys team. still not sure what that was all about.
The only thing I can say, which I have been saying since they were born, is it is my job to keep you safe, and make you a gentleman. I will do my best. The last thing I want is to send these boys out in the world not knowing how to clean a house, do laundry, cook a meal, change a diaper, sew a little, hold a door, pay for dinner, carry on a conversation and most importantly be kind and take care of others.
JOMO - Just one mom's opinion. There is no woman's work and Man's work. It's just work that needs to be done. We don't need rescued: sometimes we need help, sometimes we need company. Kindness wins everything. And their elementary school credo holds true for life: Take care of yourself, take care of others, take care of our wonderful world.
Sighhhhhh…
Can you hear that from here! We are on a family vacation at the beach for five days and I can not tell you the feeling. I am SO incredibly grateful for this time with my family. Getting ready to go on vacation can be so stressful. Just lining up everything at work let alone finding the perfectly most imperfect gap in everyone’s schedule is exhausting.
But we are here. And my toes are in the sand and my kids are playing in the surf, catching fish, and even (Mother Nature cooperating) taking a ride on jet ski’s!! After all the world has been through in 2020, and continues to struggle with, I just can’t put into words how grateful I am to have this opportunity.
I can’t help thinking about the first time we went to the beach with the boys. The cutest part is how little has changed! My oldest is the water baby and is always the first in and last out. And the one who can pick up his mom and carry her out past the breakers. He is also my digger. Building a sandcastle or digging a hole that fits his now 6’4 frame. My youngest is the animal lover, or torturer I am not sure. Digging up sand crabs, holding them, and them watching them scuttle back under the sand. He also loves to chase seagulls, well any bird really. But he will run up and down the beach scattering them in every direction.
I was sitting alone for a bit on the beach and a woman not far from me was there for the second day all alone. As she got her book out I asked what she was reading because I needed a beach book. I struck up a conversation and as it turned out she was alone because her husband passed last year of Covid. She said this was part of her new start learning to do things alone. Her kids were worried about her, she said, if they are that concerned they could give me a few granbabies to take care of! We chatted a while before both going our separate ways.
I am so incredibly grateful for this time with my family and the memories to add to my collection.
Cheer up, sleepy Jean
About 10 years ago while volunteering in the library at the elementary school I watched the Media Specialist who was counseling some girls she overheard gossiping on the Golden Rule. I had never heard the Golden Rule stated quite like this "Treat other people, the way you want to be treated, no matter how they are acting."
When the kids cleared out I had to tell her that I was not only very impressed with how she handled the situation, but I was still stunned. I had never heard the Golden Rule stated like that. In all my years at Catholic School - in all the times someone had recited that idiom - no one had ever added "No Matter how they are Acting,"
This was a game changer. I had lived by that Rule my whole life! My life was ruled by that, rule. Treat other people the way you want to be treated. Just trying to treat others the way I wanted to be treated didn't require me to think, or feel, or change my beliefs in anyway. It was like emotional Garanimals. (And you know hoe much I like Garanimals)
I am not sure that I can explain my thoughts clearly yet but that's why I write, so don't be surprised if I come back to these thoughts later with edits.
If you think of the Golden Rule only as - I don't have to understand why people are mean, nasty, hateful, unkind, rude, snippy, or anything else - I just have to treat them with kindness. You are not only repressing a lot of rage (trust me on this one) but you are over looking the core of the Golden Rule. Empathy. Why is this person I don't know treating me like this? For example the co-worker who has not said Good Morning in 3 years. You continue to say Good Morning everyday, and everyday that you do not say something about this hurt to her, and you continue to say Good Morning cheerfully, you get more resentful. Did you ever stop to wonder what she is going through? Living in an unhappy marriage, leaving a three-year old off at daycare, trying to take care of aging parents, the list could go on....and on and on. Just because you can power through life with little available emotion doesn't mean everyone can. And FYI, that is not in the Golden Rule or the 10 Commandments. Thou shalt not feel emotions, especially at work.
If you think that everyone is following the Golden Rule - you are also going to be consumed by rage. Because not everyone follows the Golden Rule. If I am totally honest there were plenty of times in my life that I took the opposite approach. Usually during a break-up but there were also a few co-workers, loud neighbors, shirt stealing sisters that I plotted revenge against. (not that I ever came up with anything good enough to carry out) But my overall point being that when we assume everyone is playing by our rules and then they don't, it's really hard to show them empathy, kindness, and compassion.
The more time that I spend taking care of my aging parent, the more this phrase rattles in my head. My dad wasn't always (still isn't) the kindest most caring parent. When he gets anxious, or hungry, or needs alcohol he can be a real @hole. it's hard to be kind when your dad is hurling insults at you and harder when you hear him hurling them at your mom
Sigh...I have to keep repeating to myself. Treat other people the way you want to be treated no matter how they are acting. And I think it's starting to stick and in my head when I look at my dad I add - Because he is not trying to hurt you, he is _____ scared, anxious, hurting. He is watching the love of his life fade away from him a little more everyday. He is getting older and finding more wrong with his body everyday. He is facing a reality I am not yet in step with and I can not even imagine how hard it is to face.
It goes back, I guess in the end, it all goes back, to empathy. Taking a moment, taking a beat, taking the time to understand what may be going on and how you may be needed to step up in this situation because they can't. Or how much they may just may need that little bit of kindness at that moment. It's not always easy. Smiling at the driver who flipped me off, giving the cashier a compliment, sending a thank you note for the party you didn't want...those things are easier than telling your dad that it's ok to be scared, but it's not OK to call Mom names. Asking a co-worker if everything is OK, because you feel like maybe they haven't been, for a while. Putting ourselves out there, being vulnerable to people we love or see everyday is HARD.
That's my challenge. Gandhi's words: Be the change you want to see in the world.
Everything in my house requires an argument. Are you familiar with the teaching tool call the Socratic method?
The Socratic method (also known as method of Elenchus or Socratic debate) is a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out ideas and underlying presuppositions.
Perhaps it is genetic in Greeks, or my husband only got half the lesson? He tends to forget the COOPPERATIVE and DIALOGUE parts. When I met my husband my family would tease us by calling us Lucy and Ricky. The bickering was constant and would live both of us upset and one of us retreating to lick our wounded ego. But I specifically remember a time when my parents were visiting and I was driving, I don't think my husband had his license yet, and he was telling me to go a certain way. I told him which way I was going and he was, what I will call, arguing what they would say to day is Mansplaining. I got upset.
Gently from the backseat my mom responded that we were both saying the same thing just in a different way. It was like a lightbulb went off. No wonder I was so mad 50% of the time. I was saying the same thing I just wasn't feeling heard or acknowledged. I would like to tell you we have fixed that but alas...
Then we have two beautiful boys. Low and behold - I have two more boys to argue with. Sigh.
My boys have very different personalities so they do not generally both get argumentative at the same time - yet. Also the things they will push back on differ but that only meant that at any given time I am locked horns with one of my 3 boys. Pushing, pulling, hugging, yelling, laughing, loving working harf to get to the next thing: shower, clean up your room, finish your homework.
Last night, I think I broke. Literally. I am trying to plan a vacation and fast because our window of opportunity is running out and I have asked, cajoled, and pleaded. My youngest son sat down with me for a few minutes to look at the VRBO website and he said, "Mom what's your dream vacation." I just stared out the window and started to cry.
I HAVE NO CLUE!!
It was the word dream that struck me. Because if I could dream anymore, which having been beaten down my the Socratic argument for 25 years I can not, it would just be that none of it is this hard. That planning a vacation would be joyful, fun, exciting, hopeful.
That's when I broke. I just sent them all a text that said "FYI-I'm at the end of my rope, Goodnight." and went to bed. I am looking for a SA group - Socratic Anonymous.
