Tag Archives: parenting

Teach Your Children. . . Well

Posted on by
21

I am getting so damned sick of having to bandage shaving wounds I inflict upon myself with gauze and medical tape to stop the bleeding, then having to go back to clean up scenes reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho in my shower.  This is what I get for having epiphanies while holding a razor so near to my ankle.

But this time, it’s worth it.  I haven’t had words for a very long time, they had literally gone, but thanks to a friend of mine (whom shall be henceforth known simply as The Muse, she has inspired so much that matters in what I write) and a conversation we had, I have something important to say, and I know how to say it.

So sit down and listen, because when Mama Ruby talks like this, those who fail to pay attention do so at their own peril.

Now I am going to say one word, and I’ll only say it once, so you will not turn away because you are over-saturated-sick-to-death of reading and hearing about it:  Steubenville.

SIT.  BACK.  DOWN.

That’s not what I’m going to talk about, not directly.  A lot of people have already done a much better job than I ever could, and I’ll provide some links at the bottom for those who are interested.

But, as it would turn out, I have something to say related to this that hasn’t yet shown up on my radar as having been discussed.  And if it has, it bears repeating.  Mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, anyone who is raising children, this matters.

I’m going to tell you how to talk your children about sex, and how not to.  I don’t mean I’m going to give you my value system, so you in the back there, getting up?  Yes, I see you.  Sit.

I had a conversation some time ago with a child of mine.*  I’m going to withhold all details of which one out of respect to her.  She’s old enough to be talking about sex (I think nowadays kids start doing that at preschool, right?), but what popped out of her mouth that day floored me.  It was a remark that came from some of her friends about rape, and if it hadn’t gotten me so livid, the subject matter probably would have taken me a bit by surprise.

The comment was how “such-and-such” behavior meant boys were going to rape her, if she didn’t do it differently.  Again, not mine to share, also not the point.  I got so whipped into a frenzy by this, I gave her the “doesn’t matter what you wear, do, if you’re drunk, etc.” and moved on and on, performing my denouement somewhere around, “I don’t care if you are lying naked on a bed, with a man you have had sex with hundreds of times before, I don’t care if he’s your husband, if you say no, he has no right.“

She got a little quiet by the end of my soliloquy — and I mean in demeanor, she never breaks in on me when I “get like that”, which isn’t very often.  In fact, she smiled a little inside.  Being able to read her, I can tell you it is exactly why she mentioned it, consciously or not.  She knew, but she needed the kind of fiery hot rage of reassurance that only Mama Ruby can provide.

She has good parents.  Wonderful parents.  And I guarantee that they have talked to her about sex.  Rape?

Here’s the thing, my loves.  I don’t believe in an abstinence only approach.  I also don’t believe that every child should be given condoms at a certain age.  I believe that if you are raising a child, you should absolutely do your best to instill your values into them (unless your values are really messed up, in which case you shouldn’t be raising a child and God help them).

But.

Your children are going to grow up, and they’re probably going to do some things you don’t agree with.  And even if they don’t, the odds are extremely high that they’ll have something done to them.  Every parent has that worst nightmare, and so do I, and every parent says, “not my child”.  That second thing I hope and I pray with everything in me, but I don’t say it blindly.  In the United States, one out of every six women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime.**

Here is where the conversation parents have with their children needs undergo a seismic shift.  Because we live in a rape culture, that is a fact.  It’s an ugly one, and one that needs to change, but I’m not dealing in what “should be” right now, I’m dealing in the ugly reality of what is.

Parents, when you talk with your daughters (and sons) about sex, if you tell them to wait for marriage, if that is fundamental to your beliefs, I support you wholeheartedly.  With two caveats.  And to clarify, the second caveat applies to whatever stance you take when you talk with your kids, so those of you who have no problem with pre-marital sex, back in your seats.

The first is that you do not ever use the words “wrong”, “bad”, “immoral” or even “sin” when you do it.  That isn’t going to change the mind of a child/young adult/teenager/adult when they have decided to explore sex outside of the bonds of marriage.  I know, I’m sorry, it hurts to hear that, but it just isn’t.  What it is going to do is plant a deep seed of shame within them.  Such that if they are ever molested, raped, or sexually assaulted in any way, they’re going to be that much more hesitant to come forward and talk to you.  After all, if sex outside of marriage is so bad and wrong and sinful, then they must be bad and sinful, too.  Think what that does to someone who has just been horribly traumatized.

Don’t tell me it doesn’t work like that, either.  You expect them to listen when you say don’t have sex before marriage, but not remember all the other things you said when someone forces sex upon them against their will, their want, the very beliefs you have instilled?  Uh-uh.  No way.  You can’t have both.

Which brings us to caveat number two.  When you talk to your daughters and sons about sex, talk to them about sexual assault and rape, too.  I know.  Really big and really scary and my guts are churning just thinking of how to broach it.  But bite the damned bullet and do it.  Make sure that whether or not you think sex should only occur in marriage, when you teach your child about sex, you also teach them that if they are raped, if they are attacked in any way, it is never their fault.  That even if they have broken every rule you have ever made for them, if they have had sex before, if they were out drunk partying, I don’t care, doesn’t matter, they can come back and tell you what happened and you will support them with all of your heart.  And follow through on that.

If, God forbid, your daughter should come stumbling in at three a.m., clothes a mess, sobbing, and tell you she was assaulted, don’t ask what she was doing out, don’t ask her where she got that dress that’s so short.  Sit down with her and tell her that you love her and will do anything she needs you to.  I can’t tell you what that may be.  Maybe the foundation you laid will be enough to help her want to call 911 and report it.  Maybe she won’t be able to do that, and it won’t be anyone’s fault but the scum who put her in such a state.  But at least she’ll know that you have her back 110%, that you don’t think she’s “bad” or “sinful”, and that you want to do whatever you can to help her.

And, sadly, even that won’t make her magically feel better, like when you used to be able to kiss a bump and make it go away.  But it may make it easier for her to see herself as a worthwhile, valuable, beautiful human being once again.

*For those who don’t know, I have no children of my own.  I do have several “daughters of my heart” that I used to care for and still consider “mine”.

**Source:  RAINN | Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network

Relevant Reads:
I’m angry | Meizac
The Wrong Message | The Bad Luck Detective (trigger warning)

And if you read nothing else, please read this piece:
Steubenville’s Jane Doe asked people to do something…

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Inspiration To Take On Yet Another Project (Of A Sort)

Posted on by
4

Or, ‘I Know, I Do It To Myself’

Some interesting things happened while I wasn’t paying attention.  I got older and so did my babies.  I’m not really that old, I’m roughly around the third decade of life.  And my babies – well, they’re eight and eleven, which to me is hard to wrap my head around as I met them when they were days old.

In case you missed it, my babies are neither biologically nor legally my own.  I was a nanny, but they are the only kids I will ever have, and I love them every bit as much as I would had I birthed them.  Trust me on that one.  Also, because it’s relevant, they’re both girls.

Thing is, even though I don’t have them in my care full-time anymore, I still want to do everything I can to help them navigate the challenges life throws at them.  And I also think I have a very unique and special opportunity to play an important role in their lives, because we have a bond that is similar to parent/child in some ways, but now that they’re older it’s turned a lot more into a friendship.

Do you have any idea how immensely beneficial that could be?  For them to have an adult in their life who has known them forever, whom they trust and are comfortable talking to, who won’t judge or punish, who will keep their secrets, who will talk with them openly and honestly, and whom they might feel more comfortable discussing certain things with than they would their parents?

I am not trying to take over the role of parent or make Mom or Dad obsolete.  I hope that they both feel they can always turn to their parents, first and foremost.  But let’s face it, different adolescent and teenage girls have different comfort levels talking about certain things, there are different dynamics involved when you talk to a parent than someone you think of as a friend (albeit a much older one), and I am not so old as to have forgotten there were definitely things I was never comfortable mentioning to my parents.  That’s just how it goes.

The other part is that a general paradigm shift occurred as my girls and I got older.  I went from being the typical, bugged by teens as a group and their perceived lack of awareness of the world around them adult to a curious observer who was intrigued, and wanted to know what they thought and what they faced in their lives and what interested them and distressed them and made them happy.  I want to know about pressure and insecurity and role models and how they feel about the lives they live.  What is their relationship with their parents like?  How young do they really start to think seriously about sex, and when and why do they have it for the first time?  What about fashion and media and trends and everything?

But how do I go about finding this kind of stuff out?  I don’t want to get a degree in psychology and become a counselor, I just want to talk to teenagers, especially the female ones, in groups and one-on-one and figure out their world.  But you can’t just go up to a group of teen girls and introduce yourself and say, “Hey, tell me all about your most secret dreams and fears and hopes and desires.”  Creepy much?

I don’t know a single teenager.  I need an “in.”  I did some cursory surfing of blogs here on WordPress and didn’t find much.  So tell me, what do I do?  How do I go about this?  Does anyone reading this have any resources for me?  Do any of you have teenage or tween daughters (or nieces, or cousins, or anythings) that you could send this link to?  Are any of you who are reading this serendipitously teenage girls?

Help me out, for me and for my babies.  And if you are a parent or a counselor or anyone who could direct me towards groups for teenagers or even a single individual but want reassurances that I’m not a weird, creepy troll, email me at mywonderfulabnormalmind@gmail.com.  I will forgo certain rules I have on this blog as far as anonymity in private correspondence if you can help me to help be a resource to my girls.  Ask and I will answer.

Moral of the story:  Sometimes the best way to find help is to flat-out ask for it.  I know, novel concept.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Whatever You Do In Life, You’re Going To Regret It

Posted on by
4

I spoke with someone yesterday at some length about my decision not to have children.  Actually, she spoke, I nodded and smiled (even though it was on the phone and she couldn’t see me) and tried very hard to change the subject.

People in my life, even my closest friends, most of them don’t seem to understand that just because I have made the decision not to have kids, that doesn’t mean it’s an easy topic to discuss.  As it happens, it’s one of the more difficult in my life.

I helped to raise the two most perfect baby girls you could ever imagine.  I was there every step of the way (literally as well as figuratively), from the magical to the hellish to the every day.  Every moment on the spectrum.  And I never held them at arm’s length because they were “someone else’s kids.”  They were, and are still, my kids.  Their triumphs are mine, I endure their trials alongside them, when they bleed I scar.

I don’t think anyone in the world who has made the decision not to have children knows quite so well as I do exactly the particulars and consequences of that choice.  I would love to have a child, and I would be an incredible mother.  But this is something I have thought about long and hard over a course of years, it’s a decision I make again most every day, and whether it’s an easy or a difficult conclusion for me to accept, it’s the right one.

There are so many things I could have been, could still be, and I would be wonderful at them.  A doctor, a mother, a linguist, a writer, a photographer, a teacher, an advocate.  But I don’t do things in my life half-way.  I won’t throw myself into a million different ventures, because you cannot devote yourself to any of them wholeheartedly when you do.

Were I to have a child, everything else would be dropped completely.  Having spent so much time raising other people’s children, I’ll be damned if I will miss out on any of the moments in my own baby’s life.  From bath time to play time to meal time to nap time to being thrown up on and wakened because a diaper needs changing or a nightmare has caused for my little one the need to climb into bed with me.

Eventually, when my child started school, I might be able to return to writing.  The only way that I know how to write, you see, is to give it my undivided attention.  No phone calls, no knocks on the door, no distractions at all.  That’s how I’m wired, the end.

And we’re talking strictly of the “me” aspect on this one, not even beginning to consider whom the child’s father might be and his role and understanding of the way I am wired.  I am not going to deliberately bring a child into this world without a man whom I love and trust to help me parent, and that ship sailed long ago.  I know that there are many out there who think I am just being cynical, but you know not the details of that particular aspect of my life.  And you never will.  The best way I can choose to be a good, responsible, loving, caring, nurturing parent to my child is not to conceive them.

Still, last night, after I got off the phone with this dear friend, I did something I haven’t done in some time.  I curled up on the floor in my bedroom and I cried some.  Was I crying for my baby?  Yes.  Was I crying for love?  Yes.  Was I crying for the doctor I will never be and the roads I will never walk?  Also yes.

It isn’t something which can properly be explained, but that doesn’t mean I won’t attempt it.

Every choice you make in your life, big or little, automatically eliminates endless other choices.  You choose today to get the mint chocolate chip ice cream?  Well that rules out the strawberry.  You choose to spend your money on a plane ticket?  The newest bestseller and that dress you fell in love with and the shoes that would be perfect with it?  You can’t have them now.  You choose to devote your life to one path?  You rule out almost every other.  You choose instead to include in your life many different pursuits?  You miss the smallest pieces, the finest mundane moments of each.

I (I was going to preface this statement with ‘I think,’ but I don’t think,  I know) have a capacity to feel and understand and grasp the ramifications and subtleties of those things in life that nearly no one can.  Most people just aren’t wired that way, some are but choose not to let it all in.  And it has absolutely nothing to do with my manic-depression or mental differences.  Except perhaps insofar as the combination of my innate ability for seeing what others don’t coupled with my bipolar makes certain moments and life experiences more visceral.

The title of this post is, ‘Whatever You Do In Life, You’re Going To Regret It.’  Most people won’t, because most people don’t see the smallest, most infinitesimal threads that make up the greater fabric of life.  And that’s for the best, it’s as it should be.

Moral of the story:  I know I will look back and regret the choices I didn’t make, and the lives I didn’t lead.  But that doesn’t mean that those choices would have been right for me, nor those lives ones I should have lived instead.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

A Real Woman

Posted on by
2

I’m trying something new here, so bear with me.

A friend of mine posted the following on her fb status this morning:

“A real woman always keeps her house clean & organized. The laundry basket is always empty. She’s always well dressed, hair done. She never swears, behaves gracefully in all situations. She has more than enough patience to take care of her family, always has a smile on her lips, & a kind word for everyone. Post this as your status if you, too, have just realized that you might be a man.”

My response follows.  It was fun for me, because I was given the opportunity to be both honest and creative (my two favorite things!).

“A real woman spends 30 minutes searching amongst the toys and other junk the kids have piled up to try to find her car keys when she is already late. She has spit-up from the baby on her shoulder, and finger paint from the toddler on her shorts. She hasn’t washed her hair in three or four days because it takes too damned long and – oh look, there’s the pasta the baby threw at lunch today. She is constantly repeating to her eldest, “Mommy did not just say shit,” and she swears that she heard the baby say something close to it the other day. Grace is achieved when she balances a purse on one shoulder, a diaper bag on the other, keeps hold of her toddler’s hand, and carries the baby on her hip without spilling her coffee more than a few times. She takes care of her family despite the fact that the veneer wore thin in the third trimester of her first pregnancy, the smile you see is perma-glued and the only truly kind words that come for others are when they pick up for her the Blankie that life would have been unlivable without.”

Shout out to me if you know what I mean!

Love,
Ruby

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

It Would Seem The Concept Of Modesty Eludes Me. . . Utterly

Posted on by
2

So it would seem, to the ignorant observer.  Actually, I understand the concept completely.  I just don’t much care about it.  But then again I have pretty much always lived with a violent distaste for things considered socially acceptable.  I also never lived my life with a fear of offending.  The former is due to the fact that I think what is considered socially acceptable is absurd and verging on completely twisted – it’s okay to watch a show like Jersey Shore, as long as you profess to people that you do it with horror and disdain, but standing up against society in defense of your principles will more often than not get you “cast out,” as it were, and called all sorts of things, rarely positive.

As far as offending people, hey, their hang-ups are exactly that – theirs.  Also there’s the kid thing.  I always thought that women talked about losing any sense of modesty when they had children because of the constant checks, everyone and anyone poking around their nether regions, other lovely details about the actual birthing experience which I’ll spare you, breastfeeding in front of people, etc.  Maybe that’s what does it for most women, but it wasn’t for me.

I played a big part in raising up two beautiful baby girls.  One of them I would take in the shower with me (before you flip, hunt me down, and sick CPS on me, her mom knew and was cool with it), both of them frequently saw me in the bathroom.  I was around for potty-training, and you can’t potty-train a child while not ever letting them see how it’s done, aside from which when you’re in charge of a little one, the door stays partially open when you have to use the powder room.  You want to be able to monitor them, and of course this means they could pop in on you at any moment (and more often than not, they do).

I changed in front of them, they saw me in various forms of dress and undress throughout the course of an average day, and I never hesitated or thought twice about it.  Maybe I would have had their parents all (two families) not been such good friends, but we’ll never know that, will we?

In any case, I’m very glad that I was completely uninhibited around them, because I truly believed it contributed to them being comfortable with and loving their bodies.  Obviously we discussed things like not running around in the front yard stark naked, but that’s another topic altogether.

Now I won’t deny that I am naturally a fairly uninhibited creature.  But those girls definitely took what was left of any hang-ups and shattered them.  Thank you, meine Lieblinge, though I know you are decidedly not reading this (and pardon any grammatical mistakes there, many years and 16 rounds of ECT later).

I have been known to pop out of a dressing room, nothing on my top half but a bra, to ask for a different size.  I’ve also shocked pretty much every Victoria’s Secret employee I’ve ever encountered.  Oftentimes, when you’re looking for a specific style of bra, they’ll ask if you’re comfortable showing them the strap (in the middle of the store).  We have the most insanely repressed population of women ever, if they have to dance around the subject like that.  They ask me that, I pull down the front of my shirt and show them the bra.

Yesterday was really loads of fun though, because I was talking tattoos with two lovely ladies at the BE boutique.  Now my tattoos happen to be covered by clothing at all times (except when in a bikini), but all save one I can easily lift clothing to show without compromising the common, dearly held concept of “modesty.”  Yesterday I was wearing a denim mini, and some barely-there undergarments.  So what did I do?  Without even checking to see if there was anyone else present – as it happened, there wasn’t – I hiked my skirt way up to display my ink.  I say it was especially fun because these beautiful women weren’t shocked or offended or in any way upset by my less-than-commonly seen body parts.  They loved the ink for the ink, and didn’t act at all perturbed by my blatant display.

Morals of the story:  Modesty is a ridiculous concept, my baby girls are wonderful, and we need many more women like those I discussed in this world (three in one – I rock).

Now, ladies and gentlemen, I am officially in the pressure cooker.  Tell you why in my next post.  ;)

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Thinking Over

Posted on by
1

“There are two roads to walk down, and one road to choose. . .” ~ Dana Glover

I have two diametrically opposed desires for my life.  Yes.  As in, the rest of my life, this is the it of all its.  Perhaps if this blog were 100% anonymous, I might write about them – but most likely not.  It’s one thing when you’re young and trying to figure things out, to solicit advice and talk with friends, but when you get to be older, and especially when it’s something that pretty much determines the course of the rest of your life. . .  I just feel that at some point you have to figure things out on your own.  You don’t need others’ ideas and thoughts – well-meaning and insightful  though they might be – undermining or confusing you.  Inner nest and all that.  What you need is complete solitude of mind, so that you are certain that you are making choices based only on your thoughts, your feelings, your desires and experiences.

But even before I “grew up,” I was always like that.  I told a fellow blogger that I didn’t disclose to my family that I was diagnosed as bipolar until months after the fact, even though they were paying for the psychiatrist.  I wasn’t ashamed, I was re-framing.  I had to decide what this fact meant to me, to my life, from the inside, and completely independent of anyone’s input.  It was very important to me to make sure that the attitudes and methods of acceptance and feelings and thoughts were mine alone.  I didn’t want anyone else’s advice, even good advice, confusing or clouding what my brain and body were telling me.

I guess that I had to make some kind of peace with the situation, and get my thoughts in order.

Like I said, though, that attitude doesn’t just apply to my current state of being or my bipolar.  I was always the free-thinking, independent, anti-popular-sentiment girl, even among my friends.  They were (and are) wonderful individuals, so they let me just be my very different self and loved me for it.  Thank you.

But it was never a matter of rejecting what the crowd did simply because they did it, or brushing off the snide remarks and innuendos of classmates externally while hurting internally.  I mean, yes, there were times when I hurt inside, more deeply and consumingly than I could ever describe.  But I know now that was because of my undiagnosed bipolar and not external abusiveness.

I remember being made fun of on the school bus in the fourth or fifth grade, because I still played with Barbie dolls.  Water off a duck’s back.  It didn’t matter to me what other people thought, and it still doesn’t.  Shit, by the time I had been in high school two weeks no one bothered to make fun of me (and I was very different), because they knew I would either give it right back to them, or more likely, ignore them altogether.

I like to give my parents credit for raising me to have such confidence and sense of self.  They certainly encouraged me in it, and didn’t try to squelch me, even when I must have driven them bonkers.  ;)  They gave me a solid foundation, they encouraged me to investigate the world around me on my own terms, and to question everyone and everything I encountered.  There was never any attitude of, “This person is an adult – or a teacher or a police officer or a doctor – so what they say is right, and you cannot contradict them.”  They taught me respect, but they taught me to look at everyone for who they were, whether it was my best friend or my eighth grade principal, and evaluate them all with the same yardstick.  And they always backed me 110%.  I think that was a really important component, knowing my parents would take my word over my teachers’ (or pretty much anyone’s), and go to bat for me when necessary.  Although honestly, by about the sixth grade, it wasn’t really necessary for them to ever step up to the plate.  I handled things.  And I don’t just mean I handled things, I handled things.

Case in point – I had an extended illness in my final year of middle school hell, and I missed a lot of time.  So much that my parents and I met with all of my teachers to see how we could actually accomplish the task of getting me passing grades so that I could leave that rat hole.  My Algebra teacher spoke up during the meeting, with this I’m-so-kind-and-helpful-and-altruistic attitude, and said to me, “Well, I’ve already reduced your daily homework assignments by a lot.”  And I looked her dead in the eye, before anyone could say a thing, and replied, “And did I ask you to do that?”  I wasn’t trying to be a teenaged shit, I was merely pointing out that the action had been solely her choice, and though I did appreciate it, I was in no way obligated to be grateful to her for her decisions.

And then there was the – well, I guess the accurate term for it would be tongue-lashing – I gave my principal a few days later.  It was her, my parents, and myself in her office.  I’m not sure what set me off, I know it had to do with the above issue of me being graduated from middle school and the petty stances held and games being played by some of my teachers (I seriously would not have destroyed their fragile and messed up senses of self so completely if they weren’t trying to compensate for their unhappy existences by attempting to play God with my life).  So the four of us – Miss B~, my mom, my dad, and I – sat in her office, and I laid into her.  And she was flabbergasted, to say the very least.  She did initially try to get in a word or two, but I think she eventually just realized it was a losing battle for her (my parents stayed virtually mum, because they knew).  My mother still remembers that incident, and will tell me, “I just don’t think she had any idea what to do or say,” (I get that a lot, even now).  Said principal did, actually, walk out of that meeting with a newfound respect for me, which in retrospect makes me realize that she was a whole lot smarter than I ever imagined.

There are more stories, many more stories.

I do give my parents credit.  They allowed  me to cultivate my confidence and sense of self.  Another thing my mother told me recently was that she didn’t worry about me, because I had such an innate esteem and assurance in myself that she knew that whatever happened in my life, I would always “land on my feet.”  This is true, despite the recent temporary lapse.  I am back, firmly standing my ground, and ain’t no one gonna knock me down again.

But I give myself credit, as well.  My sister (the other one) was raised in the same house, by the same parents, with the same fairness, love, and support, and her self-image was always terrible.  I know that we had different experiences outside of our home, but this goes above and beyond and back to when I first met her 30+ years ago.   It may be improving a little as she gets older, it may not.  These are things I would know if we ever interacted.

Culmination of this post being that I decided I wasn’t going to take it, I wasn’t going to let people get by merely on age or credentials or authority, that I was going to make them prove to me why I should respect them.  Most people come to this (if they’re lucky enough ever to ever do so), I would say around their mid-thirties, at the earliest.  I came to it at three.

Moral of the story:  Courage of conviction.  Strong sense of self.  Being certain that whatever life throws your way, you will, in fact, “Land on your feet.”  Just as I will with this decision before me.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Calling All Cars, Calling All Cars!!!

Posted on by
1

I rant and rave about how parents screw up their kids all of the time.  I want to post on the good things that parents do, but I want for it to be a collaborative effort.  So give me some input, people!  It can be in the form of an anecdote, things you appreciate about your own parents, things you’ve done as a parent yourself, things you admire in other parents, anything.

Not in the comments, though, please email me at mywondefulabnormalmind@gmail.com.  Also, please let me know how you would like to be credited (first and last name, first name only, pseudonym, anonymous).

Thank you all so much!

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Human Frailty

Posted on by
6

“There are also those people that think every woman should have a child and will eventually want one.” ~ Melissa

This completely struck a note in me, which probably won’t surprise anyone who knows me or has read this blog more than twice.  What likely will surprise is why it struck a note, and which note it was.

As far as all women wanting children – I actually agree that with very, very rare exceptions, this statement is completely and utterly true (surprise!) –  at its most basic level, before we get into finer points and specifics.  I think women (and men, as well) all pretty much have a time when they think about how much they want a child.  That’s totally irrelevant.  The finer points and specifics are what matter.  Devil in the details.

For some women, this desire happens when they see another woman with a child and the feeling lingers, or doesn’t.  For others, it happens when they’re shit-faced and melancholy at a bar and either passes by the time the next round is served, or is transformed into sheer terror when they wake up the following morning next to some strange guy.  This terror has a more predictable lifespan than the feeling which occasioned it, lingering on average from 24 hours to 28 days (give or take), depending on their general knowledge of female biology and the specific biology of their particular female organs.

There are women who have wanted babies ever since they were babies, who were ‘born to be mothers.’  There are women who never wanted babies until they looked at the face of the one they had carried for nine months.  There are women who don’t want the babies they already are pregnant with, until they are gone.  And there are women who want their babies more than anything – until they are outside the uterus, demanding to be fed or changed or taken to the mall or protected or loved.

Oh boy.  In case you’re slow or new, this is definitely going to be one of those posts.

What the hell has wanting got to do with it, anyway?  Aside, of course, from being the impetus to something that could go anywhere from wonderfully to horrifically but in all cases is inevitably life-altering.

I bet when you were about a year old, you found a shiny pre-1982 penny and you really wanted to stick that thing in your mouth and suck the hell out of it.  I know I must have at some point, because I still fondly remember the taste of copper on my tongue.  No, seriously.  I don’t know what it is with little kids finding things that are small and shiny and immediately deciding they belong in their mouths.  There’s probably some scientific link in the undeveloped brain to the tune of, ‘It looks good, so it must taste good.  It’s even handily bite-sized!’  Or more likely it has something to do with exploring newly discovered items in the environment with all of our primitive senses.

So would you say your parents were using good judgment if they had watched you discover that shiny pre-1982 penny, pick it up, examine it, stick it in your tiny mouth, and suck on it, without once trying to stop you or take the penny out of your mouth?   You wouldn’t?  (As for me, I was a sneaky little thing and I’m sure my mom fished the thing out the moment she caught me, because my parents are perfect!)

And I know that some of you, when you got older (let’s put the ballpark range at 12 and up, because I cannot traumatize myself anymore at this moment and 12 is really traumatic enough), wanted to know what the big deal was about having sex/smoking meth/binge drinking so you tried it, quite possibly more than just once, and now wish that you had either waited until you were older or never done it at all.

But you’re all grown up and you understand consequences now, and you’ve never done something in your whole adult life simply because you wanted to that you didn’t realize you really shouldn’t have later.

Who’s kidding whom here?

A woman can want a child for all her life and be a terrible mother.  A woman can want a child for that same time period and be an excellent one.  A woman can never want to have children and be a fantastic mom.  Same as above, she can turn out to be like Mommie Dearest.  She can waffle about her decision to have or not have children until she is dead, and it is very seldom directly related to the kind of mother she is or isn’t.

Doesn’t wanting children just strike you as such a compellingly good rationale for actually having them now?

Moral of the story:  I already warned you about the pennies in another post, so I’ll stick with the obvious.  No wire hangers.  ;)

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Talk About Bad Parenting. . .

Posted on by
7

So the hot topic of the day apparently is the looming Rapture, and people are either all thrilled that they’re going to be chillin’ with The Almighty come six o’clock, or making fun of people who are all thrilled that they’re going to be chillin’ with The Almighty come six o’clock.

I read a really interesting article yesterday on the New York Times‘ website.  It talked about a family, an average, everyday family – mother, father, three teenage kids.  Mom and Dad think the Rapture’s going down today.  Kids aren’t so sure, but I gathered they’re leaning towards no.

By the way, if you ever thought your parents were embarrassing to you, think about these three teens.

Mom and Dad stopped saving for college (or anything, far as I can tell) a few years back.  They wear t-shirts and proclaim end times and haul their kids to rallies.  I guess it’s a parent’s prerogative to make their children miserable in the pursuit of, y’know, saving their immortal souls.  That isn’t why they’re bad parents.

It was never explicitly stated in the article, but the impression was pretty much given that Mom and Dad don’t think that their children are coming along for the eternal ride.  Huh?  You’re so pure and holy that you’re going to be taken bodily into Heaven, and yet your children don’t make the cut?  How exactly does that one work?  Moreover, you’re not real upset about this?  Call me a heathen (cause, well, I can be), but if I had to choose between ascending to the Kingdom of God without my kids, or telling the man upstairs, “Fuck off, if the next five months really are going to be Apocalyptic then you better believe I want to be here to make Hell on Earth as bearable for my kids as possible. . .”

How is that even a choice (in case you’re drunk, slow, or both, that’s why they’re bad parents)?

I know, I know, I’m trying to make the illogical logical.  It’s a character flaw.  It’s God’s will and all, and if He thinks I’m worthy and my children aren’t, I have to trust in Him. . .

But come on!

How can you possibly be so worthy if you’ll abandon your children like that?  How can you be so worthy if you’re thinking, ‘Awesome, I get to see Jesus and live with Him in eternal peace, who cares that my three children – the ones that I brought into this world and promised to protect from all harm - are going to be left to fend for themselves through earthquakes, floods, pestilence, famine, etc.?  After which they’ll rot in Hell for the rest of eternity.’

I wouldn’t be cool with going to Heaven if I knew that fate awaited a hobo on the corner, let alone my kids.  Apparently I missed something about the worth of the soul and humility and letting God be the judge and all of that.

But if people start disappearin’ ’round six, I think I’m going to go hunt those kids down so that I can help them through the end of the world.

Moral of the story:  ”Familiarity breeds contempt.  And children.” ~ Mark Twain

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

My First Turn As The Easter Bunny

Posted on by
Reply

I used to love Easter as a child.  The candy, the gifts, most of all hunting for the carefully decorated eggs.  Oh, and boy was my family something when it came to decorating Easter eggs!

There were the traditional dyes, the glitter eggs, the stencil kits, the crayons, the stickers, and most exciting of all, the oil dyes.  I think they were so thrilling because we had to do them out in the garage on newspaper, they stained so terribly.  Plus they looked amazing and the little bottles of dye had lids shaped like bunny heads.

Then off to Easter Mass in our pretty dresses, which we obediently sat through, longing to get home and eat more candy!

What can I say, the children grew up and moved on, and while we did have the occasional year when we got to dye eggs with my girls, it was nothing too festive.  My mom would always set out some candy, and we would nibble half-heartedly.

Last night my mom decided that she was going to dye eggs.  I wanted to help, but I couldn’t.  My hands were shaking so badly that they all would have been goners the minute I got near them.  So my mother did them by herself, me in the next room.  She doesn’t really get how upsetting it is to me to not be able to do something like dye eggs with her.  She jokes about it.  She jokes, I hurt, oh well.  She doesn’t mean it to be hurtful.

But somewhere in the early hours of the morning I realized how much my mother loves Easter.  Yes, she loves it in the good, Catholic way.  But she loves it in the completely commercialized, pretty nearly secular way as well.  She loves to dye eggs, she loves the candy and the annoying plastic Easter grass that we stopped buying when we had cats (do they even still make that?) for fear that it would kill them.

So, out I dashed in my pajamas and Gillian Holroyd cloak (if you missed that last reference, go watch Bell, Book, And Candle) to the local market.  I picked up a slightly sad Easter lily – when you wait until the 13th hour, you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit – and an assortment of Easter candy.  I forgot the damned jelly beans, of course.  They’re more for my dad, but still.  I made a nice little display on the kitchen counter for her to find.  I kind of think that I’ll miss the occasion, as my head is beginning to throb once again.

My parents have done so much for me over my lifetime, so much that I will never be able to repay.  And they’ll do a great deal more for the rest of their lives.  If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to seize moments like this to convey a small measure of my gratitude.  Yes, they owe it to me to be there for me in every way, since it was their choice to thrust me into this world and not mine (if you don’t believe me, ask Dr. John Wade Prentice).  But that doesn’t mean I get a free pass and I shouldn’t take every moment to express my profound appreciation when I can pull it together enough to do so.  These moments are more fleeting than I would like, so I have to do what I can when I can.  While I can.

I’ll never have children entirely my own.  I’ll never get to feign surprise over what Santa Claus has left on Christmas morning, or throw birthday parties or hide the eggs.  Or wait up long nights for my daughter to come home from a date that I feel like she’s far too young to be going on, but that I have to trust her to experience on her own.

So instead I cobble together a last minute Easter surprise for my mom, I wait up for my dad to see that he’s safe home from gigs.  It’s not the same life, but it’s my life, and it will do.

Moral of the story:  I am now going to enjoy some Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream and watch The Mary Tyler Moore Show.  What, The Bunny doesn’t get a reward for her hard work?  ;)

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.