Free to be

Over the last several months, it’s become a lot easier for me to tell just about everyone who asks which school Fisher will be attending that I plan to homeschool him. If I’m asked more about it, I’ll get into detail about unschooling, and on a couple of occasions I have even been called on by a “devil’s advocate” to defend my position. The great thing is that the more opportunities I have to present my ideas and aspirations regarding Fisher’s unconventional education, the better I get at getting to the heart of my choice to unschool him. And the affirmation I feel afterwards fuels my determination to keep Fisher going in this nurturing and progressive route. Besides, I’ve always loved a good debate, especially when I am so passionate about the subjects (of both unschooling and my son).

I managed to finally “confess” my intentions regarding Fisher’s education to my parents a couple of months ago. Much to my surprise, my mother barely batted an eyelash, and even agreed with my reasons, throwing in her own ideas about why children’t shouldn’t be forced to fit a mold. My father’s only concern was – what else – that Fisher not miss out on opportunities to socialize. Of course, if that’s the only problem he has with my views, then there is no problem. I am still both amazed and pleased that my parents reacted with so little concern. There may, of course, be other reasons for this appearance of trust, such as other big decisions I have made in the past that didn’t look promising but turned out to be very right for me. Who knows, really, and what does it matter?

I do think, however, that perhaps finally letting my parents, who had an RESP set up for Fisher by his first birthday, in on my plans is what has made me feel confident to voice those plans to most other people who inquire. But I also enjoy sharing such a unique, and unfortunately underestimated, approach to learning with others who tend to follow the status quo. And though I have yet to find or create an in-person community that embraces similar life choices (for which my shyness is at least partially to blame), I imagine that as disbelief at the incompetence of schools begins to take hold of the masses, I’ll be sure to find bosom-unschooling-buddies before I know it.

Unconditional parenting

I’ve been meaning to post for a while now about a book I read a few months ago called, Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn. The basic view of the book is that all children should be treated with the kind of respect we show our peers, that their feelings are of equal value to ours, and that their behaviour is a result of what’s going on in their minds and shouldn’t be handled based merely on appearances. I have to say that I am a huge fan of the book, and believe it to be the best parenting book I’ve read so far.

Kohn also takes a few opportunities throughout the book to express his disapproval of the mainstream reward/punishment system most parents employ to control their children. He finds the approach to be manipulative in favour of what’s “easiest” for the parent, and that it is nothing more than bribery. More important, Kohn asserts, is that rewards and punishment are reactions to a child’s behaviour instead of the human being behind the behaviour, and if we as parents seek only to modify behaviour, the child in question will grow up to feel very insecure about his own worth. This deep-rooted self-doubt results from the repeated message that his thoughts and feelings are not valuable and trustworthy because they aren’t taken into consideration in the midst of meaningful interactions, and that only how happy he makes his parents through good and bad behaviour matters.  The child then constantly seeks the approval of others to feel any sense of “rightness” in himself, and because that kind of dependence on others’ opinions is futile, it cannot serve as a solid foundation for his sense of well-being and self-acceptance. Parents set the scene for this kind of conflicted identity by continually asserting our approval or disapproval of our children, often through the use of rewards and punishment. Even saying something as seemingly innocuous, according to Kohn, as, “good job,” to just about everything a kid does as well-intentioned encouragement through praise (which is a kind of reward), does little to serve our children in the long run. Isn’t it up to them, if they are to become self-trusting decision-makers, to decide if they accomplished a task to their satisfaction instead of to ours?  Continually praising children tells them that they haven’t succeeded unless we’ve said so, and then they come to look for and then need our approval for everything they do or else they think they’ve failed, paying little heed to what they themselves know to be true. I expect that most parents want their children to love themselves as they are, and to set expectations that they themselves want to meet because only then will they find any kind of satisfying success; we all know how doing something because someone else expects it of us not only makes the task more of a chore than a joy, it pretty much encourages failure and kills the meaningful outcome of the learning experience. Trusting a child to know what he wants to do (or learn) and how he wants to do it, free of the offensive, parental need to interfere in something that is beautiful and inspiring all on its own, is simply a healthy way of raising happy children.

I’ve agreed with Kohn on almost everything he writes about in this book, but I have to concede that it’s quite hard not let the popularly accepted ways of handling children’s behaviour creep into my everyday interaction with Fisher. Before I read the book I would occasionally bribe Fisher to do what I wanted him to do, and I felt something was a little “off” with this method though I couldn’t quite figure out why. After all, that was the way I had been raised, with reward for good deeds and punishment for bad behaviour. Hell, that’s the way our whole world runs these days. But these blindly-followed methods of controlling people simply do not work. Criminals are released back into society with little understanding of who they are or how they’ve hurt others, the penal system having only worsened the indignities they likely endured as children. And money, the ultimate “reward” for hard work and getting to the top, still makes miserable, insecure bastards of those who seek its excess. People have no respect for others, and even less for themselves, all because we haven’t the compassion to see that ever single person counts, that no one can be controlled, not even children. All of us were born free; born dependent, yes, because social dependence is essential to the success of humanity, but one can live spiritually free, physically dependent and still be happy. In fact, that is how children are happy; free to love and give and take and enjoy and learn, and dependent on us to keep them nourished in all manners as we earnestly defend their right to explore their place in the world. Let us all decide on the kinds of people and citizens and fathers and mothers and leaders we want our children to become, and not forget that every little step towards that ambition shapes their futures.

Talking about it

I’m a little ashamed to admit  it, but I’ve been rather shy about talking about my intention to home-educate Fisher with people I know or just meet. I realize that I’m worried about being discouraged in the face of my own slight uncertainty about taking on as huge a responsibility as educating my own kid. I’m also worried that I’m too radical in my opinions of modern schooling, even though I know this insecurity stems mostly from my own “follow the rules” kind of upbringing. And I can’t even imagine what my parents, who have already started an RESP for Fisher (which will come in handy if he chooses to go to university, and I hope he does), will have to say about yet another unexpected and unsubstantiated (in their minds) decision I’ve made about my life, and about Fisher’s.

But I have found bits of courage here and there, and when pressed about where I hope to send Fisher for school, I have been honest and told many people the truth about my plans for unschooling my son. And I am very happy and relieved to report that the support (after the awe has waned) for my choice has been quite overwhelmingly positive. I mean, we’re not living in the mid-20th century where the very idea of learning at home would have been far more foreign to mainstream, institution-fearing parents and leaders. And I’m fortunate enough to be taking part in an ever-expanding movement that is at the very least tolerated by my government and public school system.  So, as it turns out, I may not be so crazy after all, given the feedback I’ve gotten from the people with whom I discussed the issue.

Even friends who don’t have children have thought my decision to be wise. Even friends who are professional teachers (a group I’ve been especially hesitant to speak with about home-education because of their chosen career) have been very encouraging, acknowledging that the system they work in is far from ideal.

So today, after having discussed Fisher’s likely future course of self-education with another group of people, I decided that in order to infuse some confidence in my choices, I needed to talk about it with a lot less reserve and apprehension. I now know whom I can turn to when I’m unsure about my intention to unschool Fisher, but I also can gain confidence in myself by explaining my perspective to others. With practice I’ll also be able to find the best answers to the questions I’m asked, which will in turn re-affirm the feelings that brought me to this position in the first place.

So now I’m coming out of the unschooling closet, and I’m set to really put the wheels in motion for Fisher’s “unusual” education.

Delightfully puzzled

I have to take a moment here to boast about Fisher. He has been attracted to putting picture puzzles together lately, and is now able to put a 24-piece puzzle (usually intended for ages three and up) together without too much fuss. I’ll admit things weren’t when he first showed interest in puzzles. He wanted so badly to get the pieces together, jamming them into each other as best he could, and often breaking down in screaming-and-crying fits when the going got tough. He would often implore me to help him, and when things got really ugly I showed him how puzzles generally work. As he figured the process out through trial and error, I didn’t have to sit on the floor with him as much, and could call out advice such as, “turn the piece around until it fits,” or, “try a new piece,” when he got confused. Now he hardly experiences the frustration he felt before, and still keeps at it because he really enjoys putting these puzzles together.

The big motivator to his learning process is the actual interest he has in doing puzzles. Without that interest, he wouldn’t have come out the other end of that frustration period with as much skill as he now has. I’ve been trying, for instance, to get him to learn how to pedal a bicycle, but he hasn’t been too keen on learning this particular skill and is therefore resisting my attempts at teaching him anything about it. And there really is no point in pushing something that he clearly isn’t ready to learn yet. In fact, I might end up discouraging any appreciation for bike-riding he might come to have, and actually complicate and lengthen the learning process more than necessary.

And watching Fisher put together yet another puzzle this afternoon reminded me how illogical the learning mind appears to be to an outside observer. I mean, I can show Fisher how puzzles work and how I would put a puzzle together, but his way of accomplishing the same thing is naturally going to be unique to his particular pattern of reasoning and adapting. For example, I saw him pick up a piece and try to fit it somewhere, and when it didn’t fit, he dropped it and picked up another piece for another spot. And sometimes he would need to get one piece in the right place at one end of the puzzle before he could make sense of a completely separate piece at the other end. It was instructive to me to watch the seemingly random steps he took to get the right pieces in the right places, and yet he managed to accomplish what he wanted to in the time he needed to take. He was free from the pressures of “teaching” and of the clock, and that kind of freedom shouldn’t be a gift to a child; it should childhood protocol.

Witnessing my dad’s “supervision” of Fisher while he was putting a puzzle together yesterday drove this point home for me. My dad sat there pointing out the obvious, such as “no, that won’t fit there,” and “yeah, that’s the one,” with every move Fisher made. Talk about a display of the teacher’s ego! He was merely flexing his intellectual muscles (you know, showing a two-year-old how smart he himself is in being able to call out the right and wrong pieces of a 24-piece puzzle!), and didn’t once stop to consider how little, if anything, Fisher was getting from this experience. He didn’t stop to think that maybe Fisher needed to make the connections freely by and for himself without comments from the peanut gallery ignorantly pushing him to achieve some irrelevant goal. My dad was essentially telling Fisher, through his outwardly benign play-by-play commentary, that Fisher couldn’t be trusted to figure things out for himself. And THAT, my friends, is the biggest mistake that mainstream “teaching” makes, to the detriment of our children. Not trusting the pervasive talent and desire for understanding that children come into this world possessing is nothing short of a mortal sin against humankind in general, and our most vulnerable charges in particular.

More to that effect, I would be so bold as to declare that most teachers teach to make themselves feel useful because they don’t know how to be useful to their proteges. I would also argue that most don’t know the difference, though that doesn’t lessen the offence. School systems as a whole do little to encourage improvements on teaching approaches, which only aggravates an encumbered and often counter-productive practice.

So it’s up to us, we who love and obsess over and honour our little learners most of all, to decide what is the best way to serve our children. And I mean this proposition sincerely and with a spirit absolutely open to diversity; that as unique as learning patterns are to each human mind, so must our choices be with regard to educating the children in each of our families. What works for you may not work for me, but as long as we take a selfless and radical view toward modern education reform, and more importantly, simply choose to put the needs of our children above all else, progress is imminent. We must trust that our children innately know what they need, and trust ourselves enough, hand in guiding hand, to leave them to their own magnificent devices.

Mama and Papa, Part Deux

I’ve come to realize over the last few days that there is still have a lot of forgiveness I need to show myself over my own shortcomings. And I believe that this shortfall in self-forgiveness has been the biggest thing that has kept me from allowing Fisher to think and learn as freely as I would like.  The problem is that I try to reason many of my feelings away, admonishing myself for not wanting something “better” or different for myself and my family. But, I tell you, the mind never does win over matters concerning the heart. And when I finally trust that what I feel is indeed the right thing or way, and that I don’t need to justify to anyone why it is so, I’m more confident and open to allowing other good and right things to come into my life. Taking a deep breath and simply following the curves in the road make life so much simpler.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Since last August (about the time I last posted to this blog), Eric and I started trying for a second baby. I wouldn’t call it so much “trying” as removing obstacles, but there isn’t that much difference, so whatever. I figured it would be ideal to have a two and a half year age difference between our children, so we started the process expecting it to take a few months. It is now the beginning of March, about seven months later, and I haven’t gotten pregnant. I’m actually quite a bit surprised that nothing’s happened so far because Fisher was conceived on the second cycle of barrier-free sex. But I’m also a sleep-depravation survivor with a body that has changed a lot in the last three years. I’ve gotten older, wiser, happier, yes, but the older part is probably what’s choking things up a bit. And I think there’s one more huge thing that I’ve only recently been able to admit: I’m not actually ready for Round Two. I’ve been convincing myself over the last while that Fisher needs to have a sibling, that I’m home with him now so I might as well have another one as soon as I can, and that I want to be able to get the baby stage out of the way so that I can start thinking about what I’d like to do outside of my family life to, you know, make money. And in those moments when I couldn’t help but acknowledge my gut feeling, usually found in the relief I felt following the arrival of yet another period, I knew that there was more than biology at work here.  In fact, since last August a whole heckuva lot of things have been going on with us that would have put too much stress on an early pregnancy and an anticipated baby. For instance, we had bought a house by the end of that month, and had a close-call with the financing. By the middle of September, it had closed and we were in the midst of arranging contractors because the place was a disaster. After almost two stressful months of getting the house into move-in condition, we moved in. By the time we got settled, Christmas hit, which brought way more visiting than we’re used to as well as a driving test (which stressed me out so much that I actually had breakthrough bleeding the day after). And winter has given me cabin fever and too much time wandering around the mall. And now that we’re on the edge of Spring, I am a little overwhelmed as well as excited to get the rest of our renovations done. I don’t want to be inhaling dry wall dust and paint fumes while trying to nourish a life growing inside me. The front garden and back yard need years of work, and I have a lot to look forward to and work hard towards in that respect, which again won’t bode well for pregnancy or my state of mind if I feel I have to give up a much needed summer in the name of procreation.

All of the reasons for not getting pregnant I’ve just named seem really selfish, and perhaps they are. They are also very rational in nature, which is why those reasons are really only half the story. The truth is, the idea of caring for a newborn baby, however different it will be given that we now have experience, really turns me off at the moment. You would think that I would be pulling out all the newborn clothes, looking longingly at babies at the play centre, or doing everything I could health-wise to conceive. But I’m not doing any of those things because I simply don’t want to really even think about it. I adore Fisher and I want him to enjoy as much of his parents’ attention as possible until it becomes apparent that he doesn’t need us quite so much. But even more importantly,  I want enough time to essentially overcome the shock of Round One. It’s not that I am traumatized by the birth of Fisher, in fact far from it, it’s that I’m still adjusting and growing and replenishing myself in the face of the great love he brought to my life. My perspective has evolved so much that I want a bit more time to satisfy this need to become a bigger and deeper person, emotionally and creatively. And to be sure, there is also some more forgetting involved  because of the incredible responsibility of  caring for a new human being. Some mothers require much less time to move on to having their next child, but when I look at where I am, I’m really not there yet. In fact, these days I’ve been wondering if a second child is even in the cards for me (which is nothing short of stupefying given how long and how intensely I’ve wanted to have at least two children). But that last concern really is not relevant until a much more substantial amount of time has passed and I continue to feel the way I do now.

So all things considered, it seems I’ve reconciled myself to the strange but faithful acknowledgement that conceiving a second child is not my next project, as it were. My body has been following suit long before I knew what was what anyway. And as a result of my new outlook, I feel renewed patience both with myself and with life in general, as well as (funny enough) a raised interest in the babies I’ve come across. Eric is, as always, following my lead with this issue, though I can tell he still has to make up his mind on what he’d like us to do in the long run. We’re probably going to ride out the rest of this month (tee hee), and then get back on the ol’ birth control for the next while. And if I happen to get pregnant this month, all because I finally relaxed and said, “now is clearly not the time”, then all guts are off!!

Adding Fish into the mix

As I mentioned in a recent post, I’m reading a book called “The Continuum Concept” by Jean Liedloff. I’m still only in the middle of it because I find that the density of information requires that I take a lot of time to digest what I’ve read and consider the impact it has on my view of motherhood.

In Liedloff’s revelations about the need for continuum or attachment parenting, I decided about a month ago to bring Fisher into our bed to sleep alongside Eric and me. It wasn’t an easy decision when most popular advice suggests that babies have their own beds in their own rooms. But nothing is ever certain when it comes to raising a child, and after reading that part of the book that discussed not only the benefits, but the absolute necessity that a child be physically with his or her parents as much as possible, I relented. I now wish I could go back and honour the strong instinct I had had when Fisher was born to keep him in our bed at night, but hopefully trusting the instinct now, still as resonant with my gut as it was back then, is the next best thing.

So when we started with the “experiment”, Fisher got used to the idea very quickly and has not wanted to return to his crib once. The adjustment period, and the resulting lack of sleep, made me doubt myself and question the whole endeavour many times, and I wondered if I was acting the bored housewife looking to create complication for amusement’s sake. But I know myself better than to believe that I am such a person, and we’re all getting used to the new arrangement now. I’m also believing it more and more to be the right thing for us as well as for Fisher.

There have been noticeable changes in Fisher that I believe to be very much related to, if not a direct result of, our new sleeping arrangement. I had hoped that Fisher would feel more secure and therefore generally happier, and emotionally free to seek out all that interested him while opening up his potential for learning. And about a week into it, he suddenly changed, from a curious, happy-go-lucky child to a positively radiant, excited and energetic little boy. (Eric is more reluctant than I am to believe that sleeping in our bed has had such an effect on Fisher, but I of course am far more optimistic). His ability to learn and use language has made noticeable headway, and he makes much more physical contact with us than before. All of this progress may simply be a product of his age and ever-changing brain, and children tend to surprise us with how quickly they develop, but I do believe that sleeping in our bed has had a very positive effect on his emotional health and, therefore, on the new and more readily-made connections that are occurring in his body and mind.

The effects of Fisher sleeping with us has had some wonderful and unexpected outcomes for me as well. Within about a week or two, I noticed that I was able to communicate with Fisher a lot better, grasping without as much effort as before what it was he wanted at a given time, and reading his cues with much more confidence. I can tell usually tell now why he’s cranky, and can resolve it much more quickly. I’ve also become better at trusting him instead of trying to fit his needs into what I think is right. Even more amazing, I found that I could suddenly pick out the sound of his voice amongst the voices of other children, whereas I couldn’t quite do that before. It’s as though one day I could finally hear my child, a natural instinct that was suppressed in me until recently. The simple act of sharing a bed has attuned me to Fisher and vice versa, and we are operating on the same wave length. I finally feel like I’m not just mothering my son, but am connected to him in every which way, which is what I had hoped for and expected from the very beginning. All this time I had wondered why things just didn’t feel quite right between us, and my discomfort has finally found a resolution.

As for Eric and me, we’ve hit a few grumbly mornings from lack of sleep, but I feel closer to him much in the same way that I feel closer to Fisher. Even though we’ve always spent as much time together as possible, the family bond seems to have deepened and we’re much more sensitive to each other’s needs. And I have to say it again; I really didn’t expect these to see such overall positive effects from creating a “family bed”, especially for Eric and me.

I absolutely agree with Liedloff that sleeping alongside your child is the natural and necessary thing to do. After more than a month, I believe the decision to bring Fisher into our bed to be one of the wisest things I have ever done for him. I went with my gut, and despite serious doubts in the first couple of weeks, everything is just as it should be, and I am so much happier because of it.

The Unschool Bus

Over the past several months, Fisher has developed a very keen interest in machines. This past January, I couldn’t pull him away from watching a guy use a snowblower on the substantial driveway of one of our neighbour’s homes. And now he loves to watch trucks, buses, vans, tractors and even cars go by, and he likes to feel the wheels of vehicles whenever he gets a chance, figuring out how they work on his toys, already making engine sounds when he pushes his little cars along the floor. This interest comes straight from him; I have subjected him to all kinds of playthings, not just male-oriented toys. He still loves it when we read to him, and those sappy “Franklin” stories are among his favourite books, but he also likes to climb, pushing the threshold of his agility, and turning things over in his hands to see how they work.

My dad said that when he was a child, he would take things apart and try to put them back together. I think Fisher inherited this trait (as well as my dad’s ears!), and it’s fun watching the interest in his eyes as he figures something out. The best thing I can do right now is to let him take that interest as far as it will go because not only does it keep his attention, but it also builds up his thought processes and connections. And best of all, he’s getting really good at deciding where he should start to uncover the mechanisms behind machines.

Yesterday my sister and I took Fisher to a local mall for a bit of shopping. We passed these coin-operated rides, and Fisher enjoyed sitting in the car and pretending to drive. We didn’t have the right change to get it to actually move around, so when we took him out of it and promised to come back, he got really upset and tried for quite a while to escape our grasp and get back to the car ride. After some shopping, we made our way back to the rides with some Loonies in hand and eagerly put Fisher back in the car ride. We turned it on, but he was non-plussed by the experience. I then put him into the motor boat ride and slipped my coin in, and once we finally got it unstuck and moving, he didn’t seem to enjoy the time he spent there either. So with one more coin in my pocket, I tried to put him back in the car ride, and he would have none of it. He kept walking around it, turning the wheels and trying to figure out what was up with this completely unpredictable vehicle. I tried a couple more times to see if he wanted to ride the car again, and he simply refused. He wasn’t scared, he was just puzzled, and understandably so when you think about it. He likes to ride in the car and he likes to ride in his stroller most of the time. Both vehicles get him somewhere when he’s in them, with scenery to observe while he travels. The fake car bopped around (it was a jeep moving as though it were jostling through the jungle), but didn’t take him anywhere and didn’t make any normal car sounds or movements, leaving Fisher unamused and confused. This event reminded me of one important child-rearing tenet I take quite seriously: children, especially very young ones, are not easily fooled and we should never disrespect their innate sense of “rightness” by attempting to fool them. Eric has tried various times to trick Fisher into eating something that we felt was good for him, or just to eat something when he didn’t want to eat anything, and it has never worked. Not only that, but I myself felt the fool for thinking we could possible know what Fisher needs better than he himself does.

So, it seems that our unschooling experience with Fisher has finally and truly begun, now that he has shown real interest in something. And as hard as it is sometimes allowing him to lead the way when I have things like time constraints and my own interests to consider, I’ve already noticed a difference in my perspective. I mean honestly, I’m at home with Fisher and don’t feel I need to be cleaning the house every minute, so what else do I have to do but to raise this incredible child? Not a whole hell of a lot, I tell ya. I must admit that I still struggle a lot with my conditioned reaction of saying “no” when I feel the least bit of resistance to going along with Fisher’s needs/wishes, but I’m conscious of it and catch myself “in the act”, as it were. Often I’m saying “no” for really no good reason except that what he wants might be ever so slightly inconvenient (and usually it isn’t even that, I’m just saying “no” for apparently no reason at all), which is a remnant of my own upbringing. In the process of learning to become the mother I want to be for Fisher, I’m also a more forgiving of my own short-comings, which I want for him as well. With each day, we work at each other a little more, finding tiny paths to enlightenment as we grow in and out beyond our relationship.

Who am I, again?

I was watching a DVD with Eric last night, and during one of the previews a character says to her brother, “Maybe Dad didn’t abandon us, he just forgot who we were”. I laughed when I heard this statement, and immediately thought of my mother.

To say that my mother abandoned my sister and me is to exaggerate quite a bit. She never left us, per se, except when she went to work, and she kind of abandoned us only half way emotionally. I don’t want to be unfair to her, but to some degree my mother did forget us simply by keeping her thoughts constantly occupied with other things and rarely spending time with us just for the sake of enjoying our company. She left the house at 7am every weekday morning and came home at 6pm every evening when we were growing up, and shipped us off to language classes on Saturday mornings and church on Sunday mornings so that if she didn’t have time to spend teaching us something, at least she could allay her guilt a little by hoping that we were getting some good learning experiences somewhere else. Any time that we were all home together was used to clean the house (which was very difficult to get me to do), watching TV (maybe I should have put this one first), finding ways to amuse ourselves, or we would go on Sunday drives through the countryside because there’s nothing better than having two kids who can’t stand each other be confined in a car. We spent entirely too much time in a car growing up, and don’t even get me started on the drives across the country during summer vacation. And all of this would have been a little more tolerable had my mother not been so goddamn fake about everything. She spoke in an unnaturally high voice, always smiling and pretending that everything was just “great”. People with whom she associated outside the family thought she was the kindest, dearest, happiest person in the world, but I’m sure they must have felt that there was something off, that she wasn’t real. And in hindsight I see that most people didn’t really involve her in any meaningful interaction, and she was often hurt by people who basically felt uncomfortable with her phony niceness (though they didn’t know it) and didn’t respond to her the way she had expected when she was so nice to everyone.

But back to my childhood. My mother tried harder to be attentive with me, especially in the early years, than she did with my sister, and I can understand why, my being the first on the scene and all. But as the years went on, it seemed she could relate to me less and less, and given how unhappy she was with my father, how troubled she was with a past she couldn’t put to bed (though hardly talked about), and constantly worrying about every Tom, Dick and Harry’s opinion of her, it’s not surprising that the kids who came into her life quite late and only gave her more to worry about might be pushed aside for far more crucial concerns. Like housekeeping, like writing letters to relatives, and like falling asleep in front of the TV by 8pm. And like avoiding reality at all costs. She was incredibly tired by the end of the day, and it’s really no wonder why.

And you know, despite the tone of what I’m writing here, I don’t blame her anymore for what happened when I was her child. She kept her mind as busy as possible as a way of coping with the things she couldn’t deal with, and they were many. And the more the years piled on, the more there was to avoid as new issues came up and went unresolved, and the lurking pain deepened. I don’t think that what happened was okay, but since giving birth to Fisher especially, and as time has progressed since then, so has my sense of understanding and forgiveness.

Despite what she may have unwittingly expected from having a child, I wasn’t born to be my mother’s therapist, and while I take pity on her most of the time, I certainly don’t feel responsible anymore for the dysfunction that existed long before I did. My refusal to be put upon in that way is what has made only a superficial interaction possible between the two of us, and I still feel a lot of pain because of the strained relationship, since birth it seems, I’ve had with my her. But in slowly undoing my mother’s forgetting, I am remembering myself. And in remembering myself, I am assuring Fisher of a “present” mother who not only remembers who he is, but helps him remember, too.

Motherblogger!

I would like to take a moment to say that I detest the term “Mommy Blog”, which is used to label the kind of blog written by mothers about their children. To me it sounds condescending, in a “isn’t that cute, now she’s writing about her widdle kiddies!” kind of way. It’s almost as bad as the media-fueled “Mommy Wars”, a title which refers to the debate between mothers of the “working” and “stay-at-home” camps who find it necessary to prove the other side “misguided” in their choices. I think the latter is a satirical term that was dreamed up to mock a debate that many mothers take seriously, and like children who aren’t heard, the “Mommy Wars” designation only makes those who choose to participate that much more determined to fight the ‘good’ fight. Women prejudging each other; gee, now there’s something the world needs more of! Keep those presses running!

But back to the Mommy Blogs thing. I do write about my boy Fisher, and while I try to have a particular angle to my blog instead of just using it as a forum to vent about anything that comes to mind, I think this blog falls under the Mommy Blog label. What would be a better label? I’m still thinking about it.

And I read recently that there is some debate about how healthy and safe it is for the children of Mommy Bloggers, especially of those who reach a level of renown, to have their lives broadcast on the Internet. It’s like being the child of a celebrity, only stories of your upbringing are being openly shared with the world, often with accompanying photos. And what will be the fallout for those children of celebrity Mommy Bloggers, I wonder? I guess we can only wait and see, but I know that the bloggers in question don’t share all, or even most, of what goes on in their families’ lives, and if their children wished to no longer be discussed on the Internet, I’m hopeful that most of these mothers would stop doing so. But I have to say that while posting pictures of your child undoubtedly boosts ratings, and giving readers that “come have coffee in my living room” sense by giving away a lot of personal details helps keep that advertising money coming in, to me it’s not worth sacrificing your family’s privacy to pay the bills. Maybe I feel this way because I’m not looking to make money from this blog or to draw the entire world’s attention to my family (otherwise I would spend a lot more time posting regularly). Or maybe I’m just jealous of those mothers who have the confidence/megalomania/business savvy to say, “come look at me raising my kid, Stranger!”. Whatever the reason, I will never post pictures of Fisher (aside from the one in the header) on this blog because it’s really not important what the subject of my writing looks like. Unless you know him personally he’d be just another kid in a picture, and why degrade the special quality his image has for me by advertising that he is the kid I’m writing about, and who I’m writing about mostly for personal purposes. The only reason I post my thoughts on the Internet is in case there are a few like-minded/interested readers who would like to take a peek into my world and see how yet another person progresses through one particular aspect of her life. Communities are a good thing, even virtual ones, but it is possible to get too big and to lose sight of what we’re actually doing here, and that is to raise a child. I’ve always thought that my work should come second to Fisher’s interests, and blogging is no exception. And I want my writing to help you use your imagination, to think of Fisher as though he were your own child. By avoiding providing too many particularities (especially including his actual appearance), my words will mean that much more (or less, if my stories bear no relevance to your life).

I guess some of this argument stems from my distaste of seeing authors’ photos printed on the back covers of their published books. This may seem completely absurd, but seeing the face of the person who wrote the book brings up all kinds of judgments I naturally make about the person based on his or her appearance, and it kind of changes the content a little for me. It’s like falling in love with someone’s e-mails and then seeing his face for the first time on a dating service. You already have a picture in your head of what the person looks like, and you can’t help but be disappointed in varying degrees with the live person you then behold. I’m sure there are all kinds of arguments one can make about this stupid little point, but I can only say how I feel about it. So that’s why you won’t find a Flickr link on my blog, nor will it ever pay for my house. Too bad, really, but such is my take on the this topic.

Coming to terms

I got together yesterday afternoon with a friend of mine who has a three and a half month old baby girl. We’re trying to set it up so that we see each other every other week, which is a welcome experience because it’s taken this long for me to actually hang out with another mother, let alone make a regular thing of it. And I really like this particular woman because she is tough, likes to get things done, but has a softer side that she easily shares. And she’s honest about her feelings, which is the kind of positive influence I need in so-called “real life”.

Anyway, while Fisher was a bit of a challenge because he wanted to run around and explore everything wherever we went, I had a bit of a silly yet happy realization yesterday. As my friend and I talked about babies and children, and our lives as they are right now, and I spent a few moments watching over her baby while she went to get herself a coffee, my eyes going from a somewhat unfamiliar face to the chapped but beautiful face of the boy I know so intimately, I became aware that those women I see who are so obviously mothers and whose children are so obviously their children are just like me. Rather, I finally saw that I am just like them, one of them, with a child of my very own. Strange how spending time with another mother, where I could have a closer look at how she and I are the same, made me see that I have what I have wanted for as long as I can remember. I am a mother, and I don’t need for Fisher to call me “Mama” for it to be so. What is, is, and has been since the day he was conceived.

I live in a very small world of my own devising, and hadn’t seen it for what it was until recently. It was always me against the whole world. And I would look through the peep holes of my locked doors longing for what other people had, hoping that I would live the kind of life they did. And then, when the very thing I’ve wanted to happen for as long as I could remember actually happened, it took me almost 17 months to realize it. Talk about walking around in daze, trapped in a vortex of pessimistic, self-centred thought, feeding off assumptions based on two dimensions instead of three, being more fearful of actually interacting with people than of the bleak tales I told myself to justify my resignation from my communities.

This is not to say that I now side with many people’s unhealthy attachment to “stuff”, or with the obsession some women have with getting pregnant, for example, but sometimes I think I go too far the other way, not caring enough because it’s “safer” to be detached and judgmental. Which makes no sense at all, because that frame of mind can be just as painful as its opposite.

Jesus Christ, what a mess. But I’m feeling much better now.