Music, Murder, and Modern Parenting

I love music.  I'm not a particularly skilled musician (used to play a little guitar a long time ago), but I have a wickedly good ear and a special skill for keeping on key, vocally, and knowing (via an odd buzzing sensation at the base of my skull) when someone else isn't on key. 

My real talent?

Linking specific music to specific memories or events in my life.  When I hear, say, Bad Company or Billy Squier, I'm transported back to my teenage boulevard days.  When I hear John Denver, I'm lying in the grass next to a bubbling spring in the Wasatch Range, bees trundling lazily about, a horse snuffling my neck while I giggle.  Beatles?  I'm flat on my back on the living room floor, headphones on, listening to my Dad's LPs.

Don't ask me where I am when John Mayer, Avril Lavigne, or certain Maroon 5 songs play.  Just know it's a bad, sad, devastating place to be.  Made worse because I always assume that others have this same "talent."  So when John Mayer or Avril are meandering through the speakers, I assume everyone else is taking a stroll down memory lane, too.  And it tears my heart out.

This past two weeks I've been listening to a lot of My Chemical Romance.  Specifically, "The Black Parade."  One song in particular has been on me for these two weeks--it's called "Teenagers," and it strikes me as a cautionary/Columbine-type song.  It definitely strikes a chord with me, with its chorus:

They say that
Teenagers scare the living shit out of me
They could care less, so long as someone'll bleed
So darken your clothes
Or strike a violent pose
Maybe they'll leave you alone, but not me

The second verse, already dark in its Columbine-esque tone, hit me especially hard yesterday.  I was sitting in the car outside our boy's Hapkido studio, watching the Mockingbirds school the Blue Jays in the towering oak near the fence, when it came on the stereo:

The boys and girls in the clique
The awful names that they stick
You're never gonna fit in much, kid
But if you're troubled and hurt
What you got under your shirt
Will make them pay for the things that they did

We're probably not ever going to know what was going on in Adam Lanza's whirling, screwed-up head.  And no, he wasn't, officially, a teenager any more, but close enough.  Maybe he wasn't bullied or ostracized.  Maybe he didn't feel abused or outside the crowd. 

Maybe.

But that doesn't change just how screwed up our kids are today. Not individually--no, as individuals, they seem about as well-or-maladjusted as ever.  But in groups?

Packs?

I've been thinking a lot about this.  What happened?  What changed, aside from the pervasive, astounding violence thrown at kids from all angles and packaged as good, American fun?

I think we did.  The parents.

See, somehow, in some pretty important ways, we failed to grow up.  Instead of being the gatekeepers and authority figures, we've become the playmates, the competition.  Instead of punishing rudeness, we're encouraging it, laughing at it, even giving lessons on how to better deliver it.  Parents used to step in and discipline when their child was mean, rude, or destructive.  Now they step in and defend their child's actions and level their anger at the victims or accusers.  I remember when I was a kid, I dreaded bringing home a bad grade because I knew my father would look at ME and ask what the hell was wrong with ME.  Now?  Now the parent marches into the classroom, corners the TEACHER, and wags a righteous finger in her face, demanding to know what the hell is wrong with HER.  I remember always knowing that, if I screwed up, my parents didn't HAVE to see it happen--ANY adult in the neighborhood would step in, stop me, then drag me home to my parents.  Who would dare do that now?  Who wouldn't fear being met at the door by an angry, potentially violent parent? 

Obviously, I'm speaking in generalities--we're not ALL like this, but I believe enough of us are that we've created a childhood culture where rudeness, mob action, and even gun violence are valued.  If not always valued by adults, these things are definitely held in high esteem by other kids as often as not. 

I don't have a solution.  Ditching my entire generation AND the children we've produced and starting again from scratch isn't possible.  Apparently, intelligent, reasoned gun laws that reflect the realities of 2012 (rather than 1789) are also impossible.  Obviously--how else to explain  61 mass murders perpetrated with firearms since 1982 and THIRTY-ONE school shootings since Columbine, yet our gun laws remain stubbornly unchanged? 

I'm not sure where I'm going with this.  It's a sort of blue-skying, wandering journey.  A free-association fest.  Did I mention that the parents of one of those poor, beautiful children in Sandy Hook went to my high school?  That their older siblings and cousins were my classmates?  That their sweetheart was born in the town we just moved from?  That, in fact, they, too just recently moved to the east coast? 

Something has GOT to change.  We have GOT to get some sort of grip and stop letting the gun lobby subvert our political process with mega-cash and BS claims.  I'm not talking about banning guns--rarely is anyone saying that.  I'm talking about better, more thorough background checks, meaningful, in-depth sharing of information about psychiatric ailments (not just hospitals, but individual practitioners sharing pertinent information with state agencies), more attention paid to others living in the home of gun owners, and periodic re-registration of firearms with new background/psych checks.  And people can squeal that, no, it's not the guns, it's the mental illness, but that's a tub of garbage.  Mental illness can't take me out at 50 feet.  Mental illness can't perch on a clock tower and pick off terrified students.  Mental illness can't speed down a residential street killing innocent children in a burst of gang-related vengeance.  Mental illness can't storm through the halls of an elementary school and end 20 perfect hearts (and their brave defenders). 

Not without a firearm, anyway. 

We live in a country where it is easier to buy ammunition than it is to buy decongestants.  Don't believe me?  Head over to Walmart and buy a box of ammo for a .22.  And then buy five bottles of Robitussin.  See which one presents a greater challenge. 

And today?  Today Santa came through the neighborhood, tossing candy from atop a wailing fire engine.  And the rats across the street and the creepy child of drug addicts behind us ran along, scooping up all the candy before the other, younger neighborhood kids had a chance.  They did this as the rat children's mother looked on. 

And I didn't do a damned thing.  I didn't, the woman next door didn't, the folks who live next door to the rats didn't.  We just shook our heads, looked on in disgust.  And that, my friends, makes me and my neighbors part of the problem.

Because I Don't Cry Enough

Came across this today on Facebook.  It's a meaningful piece, a worthwhile piece, and, maybe, even a true piece.  For you.

For me?  It's beyond me.  I am broken. 

I have never felt beautiful.  Not since I was a little girl in toe shoes in Ft. Lee, Virginia--that was the last time I felt pretty. 

Me, Beautiful

My weight shot up when I was seven years old or so, and that was the end of me and beauty. I tried.  I did, I worked and worked.  I tried every diet, every exercise scheme, but my weight was beyond me.  My parents sent me such mixed messages--when they weren't ridiculing me for trying to diet, they were ridiculing me for being overweight.

When I was in fourth grade, my father, after making my life hell because I wasn't grasping the nuances of long division, told me that there are few "truly ugly people" in the world, and that, sadly, I was one of them. He said that I needed to work on my brain, I needed to be smarter than smart, because no man was ever going to want me for the way I looked. Considering this was the guy who handed me a fork, snorted at me, and offered to take my "fat ass" to the dump so I could have all the food I wanted, you'd think I'd have given his opinion a little less weight. But, hey, how could I? I was a kid. This was my dad.

Me, at around my "take a fork
 and feast at the dump" stage



Me at 13 years old

When I was 15, I'd had enough.  Enough of having the Jeff Abbots of the world tell me to get my "lard ass" off his Mustang.  Enough of being the girl who winds up alone while her friends find dates.  Enough of wearing shapeless, ugly clothing and being called names like "garbage gut" and "fat-ass."  I stopped eating.  Just stopped.  Told myself I had six months to get thin or end myself.  I dropped 135 lbs in six months. 

No kidding.

And was I beautiful then?

No.  No, I thought my legs were short, my knees and thighs were chunky, my rib cage broad.  Even in size one jeans, I felt I was awful.  I had stretch marks and crinkly skin and I saw myself as just horrible.  My dream of looking like the pretty brunette in the Playboy college layout? 

Dashed. 

Me, at 17

Again at 17

I kept that weight off for almost eight years, but I spent every moment feeling like a fraud.  Like I was just a hanger for clothing, a canvas for makeup, but if anyone could see beneath those things, they'd know how ugly I really was.  Then the pounds came piling viciously back on when I was 23.  I gained it all back, plus another 30-40 lbs. 

28 years old, after the second big weight loss

And then, at 27, I lost that weight, too. 

Only kept it off for a year before it came back again.  With 60 or so of its friends.

And I never did find "beautiful."

The devastating thing?  Sorting through old photos when packing to move, I came across two pictures of myself.  From early college days, when I had first met my ex-husband.  I was sitting at about 120 lbs, hated myself for being "fat."  Hated my "hawk" nose and my "crossed" eyes.  One problem?

None of those things were true.  I was beautiful.  I mean really beautiful.  I was lovely.  Lovely in a way my 47-year-old self can never hope to be again.  My skin was gorgeous, my hair was thick and natural.  But I had no idea.  I focused on every little flaw, every speck of "ugly," and never got past those things.  Until it was far too late.  I pored over those photos and I cried.



Note the "please don't
take my picture" expression.

21 or 22 years old, with 2nd husband

When I was 18, my first husband rode me about my weight--see, I'd gained enough weight to go from a size ONE to a size THREE, and, as far as he was concerned, that made me a tub of lard, and he never let me forget it.

My second husband?

He told me I was beautiful.  He told me that all the time.  He gave me cards and wrote me letters telling me I was gorgeous, I was everything he'd ever wanted.  And I never once believed he meant it.  I look back now, and I know he did mean it.  But even now, I see it as a temporary thing--I was okay for a minute, and then I was fat again.  Plus, it's always been easy for me to discount his opinion because--well, because he was emotionally dependent, adoring, and his views could hardly be called "objective."  Of course, it could be argued that objectivity and beauty are mutually exclusive.  It could also be argued that I want to discount his opinion because that makes my opinion of myself easier to reconcile.

I hate the mixed messages I've sent my son.  On the one hand, I tell him to never judge people based upon their appearance, to never base a relationship on the size or shape of the woman.  It's a good message, it's a right message.  But then he sees me cry, he sees my eyes dart away from the mirror, sees me dodge that camera.  Hears me say how awful I am, how ugly I am, how fat I am.  Those messages are absolutely contradictory.  And worse, it's got to hurt him to see me cry and down myself.  I try to do it while he's asleep these days.  Usually I succeed.  Sometimes I fail. 

When I was a kid, there was a family across the street, the mom was pretty heavy (not as heavy as me, though!).  She wore brightly flowered "muumuus" and would shout at those kids at the top of her lungs.  The children in the neighborhood were merciless, tormented those kids cruelly about their "fat" mom.  Believe me, that has been in my mind every step of my boy's childhood.  Am *I* that mom?  Have the kids in his world talked about ME the way those kids talked about HER?  Have I done that to my child?

How can I possibly love me?

Close to my heaviest, 2010 or so

My boy has always said that I'm beautiful.  And maybe, to him, I am.  I don't know.  I don't think so--not this far down the line, not at his age.  What I do know is that the way I look inspires people to cruelty.  Ever been followed through a garden center by teenage boys snorting and grunting at you?  I have.  That, and a dozen experiences like that. 

What would I say to anyone else who'd experienced that?  Don't put your self-worth into the crap opinions of others.  Don't let others determine your sense of who you are.  Don't value the opinions of people who are so obviously pieces of trash.  That's what I'd say.

But I don't know how to do that.  I don't know how to not hate myself for the way I look.  I don't know how to be kind to myself.  I never learned how, because no one ever showed me. I've had a couple of friends who've told me I'm beautiful, but that's what friends are supposed to do.  Fact is, nobody's going to look at me like I am today and say, "Wow, you're beautiful."  Sure, the occasional pictures I post on Facebook look okay--of course, they're the results of major posing, makeup application, and are selected from dozens of shots I discard because they're awful. For every picture I post, there are at least two dozen I toss.

And yet this article suggests that *I* should look at myself, as I am, and say, "I'm beautiful." 

See, I just typed that and started to cry. 

No one is ever going to stroke my thinning hair and tell me that I'm beautiful.  No one.  Because I'm not.  But sometimes I wish for it so hard.  And I know how messed up that is, I know that it's stupid and it's shallow and that, even now, at 47, I'm looking outside myself for approval.  Or comfort.  Or whatever the hell it is. 

No purpose to this.  None at all.  Just writing because that's how I get this stuff out of my head. Don't look to me for rational guidance on the issue of self-esteem.  Obviously, I'm a mess.  I hope you're doing better. 

I hope you can see that you're beautiful.  I hope you can see better than I. 

2012, but about 30 lbs down from now.

Oh, and, because I'm not mooching for compliments (!) and I don't even think this is going to stay up for long, I won't be publishing comments.  I'm sorry.







The Birthday Camel is Watching You!

I awoke this morning, after only three hours of sleep, chewing on a memory.  I repeated it aloud a few times so I wouldn't forget, but only really succeeded in waking myself up beyond the point of re-nap-ability.  So here I am--8 am, dishwasher unloaded and reloaded, load of laundry in, Hapkido uniform washed and hanging, just sweaty enough to feel gross.  And I'm thinking about the Birthday Camel.

I think we all have parenting failures.  I think that, often, they arise from that mix of personalities, the clash of different ways of thinking and feeling.  You see, our boy, especially when younger, didn't really respond to reason.  It wasn't possible to explain why he shouldn't do something.  He's on that "spectrum," you see, and so he fixated, reverberated, and often boiled over without ever really hearing us.  The one thing he DID respond to?

Threats. 

I know, I know--all the "wow, you suck at parenting" things you're thinking?  I thought them all myself.  But when reasoning, pleading, wheedling, and bribing fail, you're left with three things--punishing (like time out), threatening, and beating.  Since the first never worked (not allowed to use duct tape on five year olds, and he wasn't inclined to go alone with time outs otherwise), and the third isn't an option, we landed on the second.

Threats.

Santa, of course, was great for much "get in line or lose out" fodder.  Yes, we're atheists.  Yes, we went the Santa route.  I remember once cruising the local "Christmas Village" with my sister, her now-ex, and their kids, who were perhaps five and six.  They were (or actually, my sister was--her atheist husband was rolling his eyes) making a very big deal of waiting until our boy, who was then five years old, was within earshot, then pointing out that Santa isn't real, but baby Jesus is.  We made an equally big deal of telling our boy that the jury was still out on Santa, but that everyone knew Odin and his mythological pals were just fun stories from a long, long time ago.  Nothing like family to make the holidays warm and fuzzy.

So, the Santa threats worked.  Yes, there were many calls to Santa, letting him know our boy was misbehaving.  And every one of those calls had the desired effect--they diffused otherwise pitched situations.  Understand, Santa calls were always a last resort.  After everything else, including the confiscation/sequestration of toys, failed, we'd call Santa.  The problem?  Santa is a seasonal thing--he works great, maybe October through December, but in March? 

Not so effective. 

I don't know where the Birthday Camel came from.  I was caught in the throes of a particularly wowser boy-meltdown, grounding him off toys and activities wasn't working, and from some weird corner of my mind, I belched out, "Keep this up and the Birthday Camel's gonna trot right by on your birthday--NO presents for you!"

And it worked.  Just like that.  The eyes widened, the screaming stopped, and he said. "But . . . I'm sorry!" 

Now, you're probably wondering why we didn't just give him "cooling off" time.  The answer is simple--he didn't cool off.  As I said, he reverberated, he escalated, even when we refused to engage.  There was no way to put him off by himself--he would refuse to disengage.  Telling him to stay in his room or sit in a chair?  Fruitless--he'd follow, screaming, shouting, and sometimes more.  On rare occasions, he would require physical restraint to keep him from doing us harm.  I know, sounds horrible, and, at the time, it was.  He grew out of it.  Thank goodness, huh?


So the Birthday Camel galloped (gallumphed?) to our rescue.  Thank you, Birthday Camel!

On a different note, we cruised by Costco last night--they were closed (lousy hours!), but we wanted to check the gas prices.  We'd heard stories of their amazing petrol prices, but they were only three cents cheaper than the station we normally go to.  So much for imagining the gas savings would pay for the membership.  That leaves me leaning toward BJ's because their hours are markedly better and they accept manufacturer's coupons.  Plus, they hand out free 60 day trial memberships.  I'll have to see what BJ's return policy is like--Costco's rocks.  The next step?  Go to each place and write down prices. 


The boy's alarm just went off, but I'm not going to force it.  We were up playing Monopoly and bad 60s/70s music until after 3 am.  I'll give him another couple of hours.

Speaking of that boy (which is really all I've been doing all morning), I think we'll be signing him up for the next programming course through  Coursera.  If you haven't checked them out, you should.  They rock.

Oh, and also--the horse-head mask came yesterday.  For reasons completely beyond me, our boy saw one online and absolutely had to have one for Halloween.  Go figure. 

Hope Springs Infernal

I've always been the hopeful type. Many don't realize it, because I'm also a realist. What does that mean? It means I hope my hardest for the best, but I'm rarely suprised when it doesn't happen. That's not to say I'm not devastated by hope's failure--believe me, I am. But I put on a stoic face and, hey, at least I'm not surprised.

Except I am. Even though I fully comprehend and even expect the worst, my secret heart of hearts truly believes that good will come.

How stupid is that?

When I was 15, my mother announced, while we were vacationing in Pennsylvania, that we were moving back to the east coast. Back to Hallstead, our hometown. Back to beloved family, my Aunt and Uncle's Arabian horse farm, and the lazy, sweet, firefly-lit place of my childhood. I was so excited, so eager to return to where my heart had always been.

And then she reneged. She just blah. No reason, no explanation, she just kept putting off and making excuses until finally I realized that it wasn't happening. It had never been a plan, it had been a tale to entertain and impress. This wasn't the first time my Mom had made up a story to enlarge herself or made a big promise with no real intention of living up to her word. No, no--in fact, that's something of a hallmark. It was, however, the first time I was ever devastated by her bullshit. Not the last time, though. Not by any means.

Why am I rambling on about my Mother and her fanciful but faithless tales of wish fulfillment and dreams come true? Because I am so afraid that I'm doing the same thing to Sean--or at least that he will come to perceive it as so. He wants so badly to move back east, to be near the Franklin Institute, the Air and Space Museum, and the ocean. He wants it so deeply that he, like me, like his Daddy, breathes it, eats it, lives the dream of it. But each job that comes up, each opportunity to escape this place and be where we want to be, has fallen through. Hopes dashed time and again. I feel like I'm 15 again, and worse, I feel like my mother, too.

What if it doesn't happen? It's already been three years. What if another three pass and we're still stuck in this dry, dull place? What if five pass? What if we never, ever escape this desolate patch of dust? Poor Sean.

Poor us.

And those beloved relatives my mother promised we'd reunite with? Dead. Bob since 2007 and Helen Jean since March of this year. The Arabian horse farm long gone, the horses dead. But the fireflies are still there . . . for now. Their numbers are reported to be dwindling, though.

You want to hear something shamefully pathetic? For as pessimistic and down as this entry sounds, I am, sadly, brimming with hope. It's scary, how hopeful I am. Why scary? Because the more hopeful I am, the more devastating the fall. Good thing I bounce.