By letting go, it just might help to hold close those whom are dearest to you!
Spontaneity— def. “The state or quality of being spontaneous.” Control— def. “The situation of restraint.” Two words that are completely and utterly opposite in nature. I would have to admit that the old mom—the one I was or the one I am trying to shake—was the latter, always and forever the latter. Trying to control every stinkin’ situation that came or could come our way. To me, back then…maybe a teeny tiny bit even now…controlling and anticipating every nuance, nook and cranny meant that I could head off trouble; fights between the boys, accidents, trouble with school work, etc. You name it, I tried to control it. Heck, if I could have controlled the time the sun rose and set, I would have. But looking back, my controlling nature did nothing but make the household tense. Anticipating never really stopped anything from happening. Planning out every scenario never seemed to go the way I had imagined. The boys still fought. Accidents still happened. Things still occurred that hurt or stung or caused trouble in some way. Hindsight tells us then that controlling the outcomes, planning for each and every thing that may possibly happen only makes one weary and most definitely not happy or satisfied.
Then there’s spontaneity—which I have to admit is such a foreign concept to me. Doing something on impulse just hasn’t happened much in this 44 year old’s life. Things as small as a Sunday drive has to be mapped out for me otherwise it just feels like wandering. However, really…what is so wrong with wandering?…
I used to hate summer. You heard me. H.A.T.E. While most educators count down the days until the end of the school year, my dread grows the closer the end of June comes. No, no…I have no aversion to heat, (at least not the kind of heat we get here in upstate NY. Now Florida’s heat…blech!). No, no it isn’t that it is because it is skimpy clothes and bathing suit season. Although, never being svelte and swarthy has always made me keep a cover up on at the beach, and really I have never been one for shorts. However my intense dislike for summer really never was about any of that. It was all about the fact that for two and a half months, I’d be in charge of entertaining my children (All right…instead of judging, could I at least get props that I admit fully to feeling that way?)…
Mother’s Day has come and gone and I of course have been reflective. Yes. I have been thinking. I have been thinking about those mommies from Newtown. I have been thinking of mommies of those injured or killed in the Boston bombings. I have been thinking of moms who are no longer part of their children’s lives directly, but instead have been replaced by an addiction to drugs or alcohol or gambling. I have been thinking of the moms whose children are drowning in a world of mental illness with no life preserver in sight. I have been thinking of moms whose children are incarcerated, runaways, or just plain lost. I have been thinking about any mom who may be experiencing one or more of the nightmares we all have imagined or prayed wouldn’t happen to our beloved children. All weekend, I thought of them. How do they celebrate their roles as mothers? How do these moms keep moving forward when the worst tragedies have infiltrated the dreams that they had for their children and the futures they had imagined for their families?
Dear readers, we of course can look to our friend, Hindsight, to guide us and them—but not our own Hindsight—not if we are in the thick of it. No—we use the Hindsight of the moms who have gone through it and come out somehow into the light (does that ever completely happen? Perhaps it’s a dim light, but a light no less.) And since it is inevitable (it IS inevitable) that all of us at some point will hurt because our children are hurting, I think it is essential that we learn what to do from some of the masters moms who have learned to cope and even come to appreciate more their titles as mothers even though their children are troubled somehow.
The great Maya Angelou’s mother, Vivian Baxter, was a force to be reckoned with, and a stupendous example of how a mom might cope and continue to mother a child that has hit a bumpy road or even one filled with craters…
Let’s go back to Fisher Price amusement parks with Weebles that don’t fall down, to plastic farms where a cow moos when you open the barn door and to kick ball out in the middle of the road using the cracks in the street as bases.
“Ok daddy. Let’s go in my tent and you get to kill me.” These were the words uttered by my VERY sheltered three-year-old daughter just last night. I was shocked. Daddy was shocked. He immediately responded, “I will play with you Ila, but I won’t ever play ‘killing’. That just isn’t a nice thing to play.” To distract her, he pretended to see a dragon in the clouds and they went chasing off in that direction determined to introduce themselves. While that seem to be the end of it for Ila, it wasn’t for me. How on Earth did she come up with THAT one?
“There is no way to be a perfect mother, but a million ways to be a good one.” This quote by Jill Churchill has followed me around lately. I have seen it on TV, in print, on Pinterest, posted on Facebook and on Twitter. It has shown up so often lately that I get the distinct feeling that it is speaking right to me and until I relent and agree, it will continue to haunt my senses perhaps even show up say on the back of the box of my favorite cereal (All right, I know I am being dramatic.).
I was raised in a family where perfection was the way you were noticed, the way you felt loved, and therefore I have had my share of trouble personally learning that life is all about imperfection. Like those who raised me, I expected faultlessness in those I loved, in myself, in my friends, in the way my life looked to those on the outside. I expected any endeavor perfectly landed like a gymnast sticking a dismount off the beam. Anything that was not perfection was a sign of abject failure either by another, or by me and both were chastised as such. As you already have figured out, I am my biggest critic and enemy, but my tendency to control those around me so that my idea of “perfection” came true was an even greater foe.
It is the combination of this realization thanks to my friend, Hindsight, and the fact that realizing it doesn’t always convert to total transformation instantaneously, that has made it so that I have felt in many ways like a failure, “muy imperfecto” at my first go round at parenting. Whenever life’s imperfections took a hold of my two sons, my first thought was how could I have prevented this, or what did I do wrong while raising them (How very egocentric of me huh?)?
And while Hindsight has helped me to understand that there is a multitude of factors that go into the molding and shaping of any human being, I still find myself struggling with the idea of “what is right” for my daughter, Ila and “what would be wrong” for her, hence the irritation with Jill’s perky “million ways” quote. Really, Jill? Are there REALLY a million ways to be a good mom? ‘Cause from where I stand there are a million ways to screw it up.
The thing about this whole enlightenment by Hindsight is that although Hindsight tells me what not to do based on decisions made during two decades of parenting, knowing what NOT to do but not what TO do often leaves me feeling like a compass with no needle. No North Star. No tether rope to keep me on the mountain. No flashlight on the way to the campground latrine (Do you get me?). Perhaps one more…. No teeth on my saw… (Okay, I am done. Promise).
My point is that what I did as a parent for years and years and years is really all I knew, I guess just like all other parents. My parenting was modeled after the parenting that I received, and even though I vowed NEVER to be like “them,” those patterns, their ideals that only perfection was worthy of love still showed up and I wasn’t even aware of it. And although that type of parenting wasn’t optimum in anyway shape or form, I at least felt (erroneously) that I knew “what a perfect mom would do.” I do know now that some of the parenting that I choose to use was not even remotely near perfect, but I was buoyed by the “idea” that I knew what I was doing.
Now, without those mistaken ideas of what a “perfect parent” would do, I find myself searching, forever searching for what is right, what is wrong, what would be perfect in this situation or that? And I want that to stop. I want to believe Jill in that there isn’t just one perfect way but MILLIONS of ways to be a good mother. My beloved Dr. Speed Dial is forever reminding me that I won’t always know what is best, worst, perfect or not perfect for my child. She tells me that if a decision is made by a mom who puts the child’s needs front and center, then that is one way moms like us can be good ones. Yup, that’s one way, but according to Jill there are at least 999,999 other ways, and it got me thinking. I can’t be the only one who struggles with this image of being a good and perfect mom. I think that is the whole reason that Jill’s quote keeps showing up. We need to reassure ourselves that although perfection is not an option, we can still do a good job. We can strive to do our best for our children. We can still be a good mother. So, if there truly are a million ways to do that, I’d LOVE to hear from you about what you think should be added to the “good mothering” list. After all, there are 999,999 reasons to go.
Logan has lived in Glens Falls, NY all her life. By day, she is an educator with 20 years experience, a mom to Aidan and Gannan, her two teenage boys, a new mommy to a beautiful daughter, Ila, and wife to the love of her life, Jeffrey. By night, weekends and any spare time she can find, Logan writes. She loves memoir and also adores writing essays about the challenges of parenthood. This year she started a parenting blog called A Muddled Mother, an honest place where mothers aren’t afraid to speak of the complications and difficulties that we all inevitably experience. Logan has been published in various children’s and parenting magazines including Today’s Motherhood, Eye on Education, Faces, and Appleseed. Logan’s previous column for Hilltown Families, Snakes and Snails: Teenage Boys Talesran bi-monthly from June 2010-Feb. 2011, sharing stories of her first time around as a parent of two teenage boys. — Check out Hindsight Parenting: Raising Kids the Second Time Around every first and third Tuesday of the month.
I was a big ol’ chicken this week. I mean a shakin-in-my-boots-anxiety-ridden-big-ol’-BAWK-BAWK-chicken. Last column and the column before that, I had hinted that there were things going on at my daughter Ila’s current daycare/preschool that weren’t all that wonderful. Between the mean girl attitude, and the teachers’ lack of motivation to implement the suggestions given to them by Ila’s physical and occupational therapists, coupled with the unwelcoming disposition of the lead teacher who neither greeted nor even looked up when a parent walked into a room, we came to the rather terrifying decision that we’d have to change Ila’s school. I will tell you that just last week if I had to pen that previous line, I would get a panicky feeling right in my solar plexus.
We had already made the decision that she was not returning the following year. We picked out another preschool/daycare that had a reputation for academics and a child centered approach. Both the OT and the PT had encouraged us to check this school out as they both had experience being there to do therapy for other students. But we were determined to keep her in the school she had been in at least for the rest of the year. Moving Ila seemed to be cruel especially given the background she has had on loss and leaving. We thought it would be ‘best’ for her to keep her in the place that she was ‘used to’ and not uproot her and pull another set of people out from under her. I was sure, absolutely sure that her “fragile” self couldn’t handle it. But the more problems we experienced the harder it was to stick to the decision of keeping her there. And while I won’t go into the final straw, there was one…a big honkin’ straw, and it was completely and utterly apparent to us that we’d have to get her out of that toxic place as fast as we could.
From the moment I made that decision, I had massive anxiety. Hindsight kept reminding me that the feelings I was experiencing were paramount to those same feelings that I had when I wanted to spare my boys any discomfort and therefore would move heaven and earth to make sure they didn’t feel it. Hindsight also kept reminding me what the end result of that was; two children who find it absolutely excruciating when life doesn’t go exactly the way they want it to go. “When does life always follow the path you want it to?” Hindsight whispered. “Give her a chance to adapt to discomfort,” it urged. I knew. I always know that the whispers and elbows to my ribs that Hindsight gives are always the voice of reason. I knew I should listen, and so with shaky hands and that persistent anxiety ache in my solar plexus I pushed forward trying to find a new place for Ila to attend.
Luckily, the consummate preschool that we had decided on for the following year found room for our daughter and after a couple of visitations with mommy and daughter together, this past Monday, the day of doom, (at least in my head) came; the day that we’d have to drop Ila off “at that strange and new place with no one she knows.” Saturday and Sunday leading up to that day, I didn’t sleep. I tossed. I turned. I felt nauseous and turned to friends and my husband to soothe me. The anxiety took me over and I was convinced that I couldn’t possibly bear the moment in which I left Ila all alone at that new place. So I enlisted Ila’s daddy to be the culprit; the bad guy so to speak. HE could drop her off. HE could watch her whimper. He could peel her off his leg and run out of the classroom while she screamed for him not to leave her. I just simply couldn’t do it. And Hindsight chided, “Chicken. Coward. Don’t you have any faith in the strength of your daughter?” He had a point, but I pushed that thought aside and continued to wallow in anxiety until the fateful Monday arrived.
And so while I worked away in my classroom getting ready for the week ahead, my palms sweat and I waited for the fateful call that would inevitably come; that call that would have my husband’s voice on the other end shaky and sad that Ila was so distraught at being left at a new school. So when the phone rang, my gut did a giant roller coaster dip, but I put the phone to my ear and squeaked out, “How was she?” and braced for the horror story.
The line that was uttered by my husband could have very well been uttered by Hindsight itself. He said, “Logan, I think we need to have more faith in Ila and how strong she is. She was absolutely fine. She walked into the classroom, kissed me goodbye and walked off to play with the girls that were already in the class.” I was instantly relieved and ashamed. Hindsight was right…again. I needed to have faith and confidence in the strength that we have helped to foster in our daughter. I needed to listen to him when he reminded me that parenting with a sense of wisdom will then become the wisdom of the child, and here again was a perfect example of that.
Don’t get me wrong, I think that wanting to spare our children discomfort and trauma is an innate part of being a parent. However, I am finding out that the images of what may take place, of how they may feel, or of how they may react can be completely erroneous. Therefore, if we give in to that feeling of being the hero and saving them from the deep down dark of life, not only are we not equipping them for the ultimate continuing deep down darks of life, we miss out on some pretty amazing moments where we get to see our children being strong; stronger than we may think they are, and each time they are strong it will help us to let go a bit to the savior complex we have as parents and instead let our children build the muscles that they need to be strong humans for the rest of their lives.
Logan has lived in Glens Falls, NY all her life. By day, she is an educator with 20 years experience, a mom to Aidan and Gannan, her two teenage boys, a new mommy to a beautiful daughter, Ila, and wife to the love of her life, Jeffrey. By night, weekends and any spare time she can find, Logan writes. She loves memoir and also adores writing essays about the challenges of parenthood. This year she started a parenting blog called A Muddled Mother, an honest place where mothers aren’t afraid to speak of the complications and difficulties that we all inevitably experience. Logan has been published in various children’s and parenting magazines including Today’s Motherhood, Eye on Education, Faces, and Appleseed. Logan’s previous column for Hilltown Families, Snakes and Snails: Teenage Boys Talesran bi-monthly from June 2010-Feb. 2011, sharing stories of her first time around as a parent of two teenage boys. — Check out Hindsight Parenting: Raising Kids the Second Time Around every first and third Tuesday of the month.
To teach my daughter empathy, the ability to anticipate and understand the feelings of others, would ensure, I am certain, that my daughter, our daughters, would be able to build each other up—not tear each other down, would be able to support with the strength of positivity…
“Go home, Ila!” Those three words, said by a three year old no less to my sweet-natured, well behaved, lovely, and special daughter (all right, all right I may be a tad biased…) made me squeeze the life out of my steering wheel from rage as it was relayed to me by that beautiful girl of mine on the way home from a grocery store visit.
I have heard the horror stories and the numerous, in fact incessant, warning from moms of daughters about the epidemic of mean girls and how it would affect someone as passive and innocent as Ila. I have been told to get her ready for it; to ensure that she has developed a strong and battle proof sense of self so that when she is attacked (which is only a matter of time according to the moms in the trenches) it won’t affect her as deeply as it could. I have been told to empower her with the right to stand up for herself; teach her I statements that set clear boundaries. For instance, “I don’t like what you are saying to me!” Or, “I want you to leave me alone.” Or, “I will not be treated this way!” I have been told that building a solid foundation of love and open communication would make it so that my daughter would feel safe divulging hurtful information to us.
And so we have done all that. Hindsight has urged me to take the advice of these mothers-in-the-know and equip Ila with all that is necessary for her to combat this culture of bullying. And me, with my memories of the horrific bullying that my older son experienced…for years…without my knowledge…as well as my own esteem issues and lack of connection with parents who did nothing to help me feel like my feelings were safe with them, made it so that I fiercely vowed to raise a daughter who was prepared beyond a shadow of a doubt for anything that might make her feel less than.
But dear readers, I must confess that I thought I had more time. I thought that I had years to mold and shape this wonderful girl into someone who stood on sturdy metaphorical legs, years to be sure that she and her out of this world essence would stay that way. I thought I had more time. Read the rest of this entry »
When I meet up with those who are disinclined to do what is best for my child, it is probably time to find someone else to do that particular job, or time to find another group in which she can take part because there are many special people out there who are willing to do what right no matter what. And our special daughter deserves those special people in her special life because, after all, she’s so special …to us.
She’s just a girl. Not special. Not any different than any other toddler. She’s infatuated with Princess Sofia and Doc McStuffins. She has a stuffed lamb, Mi Mi, who she can’t be without. She adores her daddy and loves playing school because her mommy is a teacher. She’s a pint size philosopher who packs a punch with wise words that are seemingly beyond MY years. But she isn’t special. She’s just another child in a world of children.
But to us, her father and me, she is everything. She is quite extraordinary and yes…she is special; special in ways that are too numerous to ever recount in a single post let alone a single novel.
But she also has special needs. She needs help making her muscles strong; to get her core to fire, her left thigh to not fail her, her ankles to hold her steady. She needs help getting her fingers to work in a coordinated way so that pulling a sticker off a paper isn’t a monumental marathon-like task. She needs wait time so that her mind can map out a succession of movements. She has needs…special needs.
Over these last few years, I have been awestruck with the humans that we have encountered; professionals whose sole desire is to get her to develop to be her best self. On the way to stronger muscles and more coordinated fingers, they have taught her the satisfaction of persistence, the wonderful feeling of meeting goals, the necessity to pay attention and follow directions and the invaluable knowledge that a desire to work hard even if it is inconvenient or difficult is one of the most important characteristic one could possess. For these humans who have a constant presence in my daughter Ila’s life, I am more grateful than I could ever pen. Our daughter is special, as special to these helping humans as she is to us.
As with most toddlers, she belongs to many different types of groups. Each “group” has a leader. And while many are willing and able participants in our quest provide every opportunity for Ila’s brain to develop new pathways for movement and the processing of that movement, unfortunately, we have also come across humans, adults, who see our daughter’s special needs as a burden; “an extra thing to do.” Read the rest of this entry »
Let me introduce you to Jess. She is 12. She lives outside, loves the color purple and doesn’t want to go to school at all…
So Ila has a sister. Now stop calculating and clutching your chest. I am not and never will be pregnant again. The vasectomy and heart condition has ensured that (And honestly…phew.). And no, no there is no illegitimate child involved. Although, I am sure there are some who live to fuel the small town gossip mill who just read my first line and ran off to shout THAT type of story from the roof top of the very tall ivory tower that serves as the gossip mill’s sturdy structure and meeting place in my community. Nope…there is no sister, but there is.
That last line made no sense to you did it? Yet it makes perfect sense to me…and to Ila…who made her sister up. Yup. It’s an imaginary sister. Let me introduce you to Jess. She is 12. She has glasses which she no longer wears. She lives in our garden (We don’t have one and even if we did, it’s buried under two feet of snow.). She has dark hair, loves the color purple and doesn’t want to go to school at all. Somehow, although she is Ila’s sister, she has a completely different mother and father, but they don’t live in the garden with her. Jess has existed for my daughter for quite some time now. She’d show up sporadically. A mention here and there—but lately she has been a fixture in our house and in Ila’s imagination.
You see, even though “Jess” has been around for months, her constant presence showed up after Ila’s father and I had a particularly nasty blowout within ear shot of our daughter (If you knew how difficult it was for me to actually put those words down on paper, you would perhaps be less apt to judge me…maybe not.). But it happened. I am not proud of my behavior. My husband’s behavior was equally reprehensible and because I am UBER sensitive to NOT screwing up as much this time around as a mother, Jess’s appearance coinciding with the shameful argument has plagued me. I blamed myself (shocking!) for the creation of Jess and worried (me worry??) that my daughter was somehow damaged because of my behavior.
In fact, it may be my imagination, but it seemed that lately every time Ila’s father and I have just a normal conversation, Ila begins talking to “Jess” loudly as if to drown us out just in case the fighting takes place again. I could be wrong…maybe not. And true to my nature I have been pretty good at beating myself up about it all, sure that I had psychologically scarred my daughter for the rest of her life. And it is a rare mothering moment for me that I have no Hindsight whatsoever to fall back upon. Imaginary human beings living in my house never happened during the first 19 years of motherhood. I knew nothing about the phenomenon except for the fact that my little sister had an imaginary friend named “Big Friend” who we used to have to set a place for at the dinner table. But since my parents argued incessantly, that knowledge did nothing to quell my guilt.
So I did what any mother in this day and age does when needing information, I poured over everything the internet had ever published about imaginary humans (all right maybe not EVERYTHING. I may be exaggerating…just a tad…maybe not.) According to the doctors that write for BabyCenter.com, having imaginary friends or siblings or even animals is natural and normal for preschoolers. Studies actually show that kids with imaginary humans turn out to be more cooperative, creative, independent, and happy than those without.
This was good news, not only for Ila, but for her weary mother who thought that the presence of “Jess” was proof of my ineptitude. So what now? Well, I am off to play school with Ila…and Jess. Apparently it is Ila’s sister’s turn to be the teacher. I am eager to get started. I wonder what she’ll teach me today. She’s already taught me so much.
Logan has lived in Glens Falls, NY all her life. By day, she is an educator with 20 years experience, a mom to Aidan and Gannan, her two teenage boys, a new mommy to a beautiful daughter, Ila, and wife to the love of her life, Jeffrey. By night, weekends and any spare time she can find, Logan writes. She loves memoir and also adores writing essays about the challenges of parenthood. This year she started a parenting blog called A Muddled Mother, an honest place where mothers aren’t afraid to speak of the complications and difficulties that we all inevitably experience. Logan has been published in various children’s and parenting magazines including Today’s Motherhood, Eye on Education, Faces, and Appleseed. Logan’s previous column for Hilltown Families, Snakes and Snails: Teenage Boys Talesran bi-monthly from June 2010-Feb. 2011, sharing stories of her first time around as a parent of two teenage boys. — Check out Hindsight Parenting: Raising Kids the Second Time Around every first and third Tuesday of the month.
Leaving Stressors Outside the Front Door for the New Year!
Making New Year’s Resolutions? Share what you could change, improve, or make anew this year in honor or for the benefit of your children.
January; the month of promises to change, to improve, to start anew. We usually are gung-ho, walkin’ that treadmill, drinking those smoothies, foregoing those nasty cigarettes for…well…awhile. But let’s be honest, Hindsight tells us that we rarely CHANGE…I mean REALLY CHANGE. Pretty soon that treadmill is collecting laundry that hasn’t quite dried, those smoothies are impossible to drink because the blender is broken and what starts as just one cigarette while out with friends goes right back to a pack a day habit (Yes, my dear friend whom I love to pieces…I am talking about YOU and those blasted cigarettes. I want you to live a long life…so sue me!).
Since I have been in such a retrospective-what-can-I-learn-from-my-past attitude, I’ve been thinking. I know…that doesn’t surprise anyone. Can’t that girl EVER turn her brain off?? The answer to that question is of course, “NO!” And although sometimes that is a burden that I wish I didn’t carry, in this case I am glad that I was pondering the New Year.
All that ruminating and reminiscing made me realize that all my resolutions over my middle-aged life have been about ME—all about me. I know, I know—it is kind of what resolutions are for…to change, improve, and make YOURSELF anew. But this year, I was thinking that perhaps, just perhaps, if I made a resolution about the way I parent…a resolution that would be good for my children…that I may be more apt to stick to it, to do the work to really CHANGE what needs to be CHANGED in me when it comes to parenting. Having my children as motivation makes WANTING to change, to improve, to make anew seem a bit easier. After all, parents are wired to do right by their children.
Our friend, Hindsight has been really busy this season. He is working overtime reminding me of the mistakes I made over the many Christmases with my sons. He’s reminded me of the ridiculous pickles I had gotten myself into, and the misery irrationally placed upon me because of perceived have-to’s and should-do’s. And like the loyal friend that he is, he has taught me much this season, or I should say he has taught me much ABOUT the season; what it is and what it isn’t. He’s reminded me that Christmas means magic and love and togetherness. It means traditions and family and bustle and wishes, most of all wishes. I’d like to share the wisdom Hindsight has imparted to me over these past few weeks, and because he tells me that those Christmas wishes are an integral part of the season, I’ve decided to pass on his knowledge in the form of a wish list for you… Read the rest of this entry »
Hindsight. It isn’t just for parents who have raised children for 10-20 years. It really is a super power that ANYONE can have. Making friends with and becoming wise because of Hindsight can happen to each and every human who has ever made a mistake or has been dissatisfied with any aspect of their lives. John Reyes once said, “Over the last few years my education was not from books, it wasn’t from some fancy Ivy League School masters degree program; it came from my own personal experiences which were costly…but priceless in things I learned.” I am sure that Reyes, in this quote, was talking about my friend Hindsight. You see we have all experienced things were not proud of, not fond of, things we wish we could have done over. It is that EXPERIENCE that brings Hindsight to our front door. And if we are lucky enough to have the universe hand us a situation where we can choose differently, where we can be wiser, where we can look back upon what didn’t work and do things that will work instead, then we should consider ourselves very lucky. Very lucky indeed, because it is within these moments in which we gain a modicum of wisdom and, yes, maturity as well.
This is the sort of experience that I was faced with Tuesday night when my presence was summoned to a certain institution because choices made by a beloved son. He was in trouble, real trouble and as I quickly changed out of my pajamas and threw on a pair of sweats and a sweatshirt it dawned on me that I had no compass as far as how to act, what to do, what to say when I arrived and laid eyes upon him. Should I be supportive, emotional, firm, rejecting? How? How should one act towards her child when he’s acted without though, putting him and others at risk?
Dealing with Hindsight as much as I have, I recognized that familiar “no compass” feeling as a sign that somewhere deep in the recesses of my cavernous soul, I knew that I didn’t want to act in the way that I was “taught.” My upbringing was one in which you never brought shame upon your family. That making a consummate mistake would be enough for one to be cut off. Aunts, uncles, even a grandmother was held at bay and sometimes never seen because their choices and life styles were deemed not good enough or perhaps not worthy of familial fuzzies. Being at the stinging end of these rejections for immature and reputation damaging choices that I had made, I knew that hurt and damage that complete and utter rejection could cause. What’s more, the message that that rejection sent was one in which the reject felt that they were and would always be the sum total of those mistakes; nothing else, not flesh, not bone, not good deeds or intelligence, not talent, not human….just bad choices worthy of rejection. And as I drove towards the institution that I had been summoned to, I was sure, absolutely sure that I didn’t want to act like that. My son has troubles, makes poor choices, sometimes seems like he is drowning in anger and rage, but his sum total is much much more than this turbulent time. And yet, familial learning is so deeply entrenched that Hindsight may be able to help you know what you DON’T want to do, but it may not be able to help you with what you DO want to do.
So before I entered the building in which my son sat clearly troubled, clearly IN trouble, Hindsight reminded me that although HE may not know how I should act, someone that I had in my life was ALWAYS willing to help shape and mold me and give me a compass that always seemed to point me in the correct direction. So despite the late hour, I dialed her number, presented my dilemma and she, as usual, lovingly, patiently and firmly pulled me up by my bootstraps and gave me concrete directions on what my role as his mother needed to be. So I turned off the ignition, blew my nose and wiped my tear streaked face. I took a deep breath and walked up the ramp with Hindsight’s hand on the center of my back and my right hand firmly squeezed into my husband’s left hand. The automatic doors swooshed open, I was ushered into a room to find a crumbling son seated in a chair. Read the rest of this entry »
I am struggling dear readers. I am struggling. I have decisions to make. Hard ones. Life changing ones. The decisions I need to make are similar decisions to ones I had to make when my sons were little. And that damn Hindsight is dogging me. Being older and so-called wiser, having a friend named Hindsight, can just add pain to things that are already feeling excruciating. Sometimes, Hindsight is annoying, heart wrenching, maddening, especially when the decision is hard enough without his two cents butting in. Lately, I just want to shut him up.
I want to make my decisions without the wisdom that Hindsight brings. I want to be dumb, ignorant, and selfish and do the things that I want without any other voice entering the conversation. Heck, even IF I was without Hindsight, I am not even sure of which way to go with the decisions that I have to make. But WITH Hindsight chiming in day and night, night and day, I am just absolutely positively drowning in a thick miserable muck of indecision.
But Hindsight has taught me what happens when one makes a decision selfishly, without thought given to the other players in the drama. Hindsight has taught me that flinging myself into a situation because I so desperately want something different without a plan or without foresight always ends up in disaster. That pesky Hindsight keeps telling me over and over and over that I just might have to wallow in that quagmire of irresolution for a tiny bit, or maybe even a longer bit until things are clearer, until plans have been made, until the path is apparent.
Watching with a keen eye that I have developed since Hindsight has come into my life, I noticed that while I was standing on the outskirts of the petting farm, Ila AND her FATHER were giddy, purely giddy. And it was at that moment that I realized that she wasn’t just MY daughter, but Jeffrey’s daughter as well.
I once read a book where the mother was tired of the constant lack of respect doled out by her entire family. She felt invisible in many ways, and so one day she decided to test out the literalness of that invisibility. While at a beach with her family, she calmly put on her shoes, took her purse and walked across the street to an overgrown meadow with grass as tall as she. She stepped into the meadow and as she walked was literally swallowed up by the vegetation, walking through the muck and mire until she reached a place where she could hitch a ride and begin a new life.
Being swallowed up by tall grass until one completely disappears paints a beautiful picture and probably has been a fantasy of every mother now and then, but admittedly while the thought of walking away from all the “stuff” that comes with motherhood may possibly entice me now and then, a MEADOW was never an option as an escape route. I’ll admit it. I am not a gettin’ dirty kind of girl. (Okay…mind out of the gutter…this IS a family column!)
All I can picture when I think of that meadow is how my beloved heels would get stuck in the mud and the water stains my suede boots would endure. If I was to write a disappearance scene it would take place on a crowded city street in Soho or perhaps San Francisco in which I get swallowed up by the crowd until I ended up at a vacant flat in a swanky neighborhood where my new life would consist of a computer to write, a dog for company and a daily walk through my neighborhood to take in the sights and sounds of the city…complete anonymity. Complete bliss.
So where am I going with this? I mean this is the HINDSIGHT column right? Give me a sec, I’m getting there. The first time around with my sons, I expected that since I was a city type girl that of course my boys would be city slickers as well. How wrong I was. The first time I brought Aidan to NYC, he became so overwhelmed by the chaos and noise he threw up on the side of the Chrysler Building…not a good sign. But I kept on trying, year after year, dragging my unwilling boys to the city listening to them complain about the smells and the noise and fret over being caught in terrorist attack or held up by a drug dealer.
So when Ila’s neurologist and a very special friend who is a PT extraordinaire suggested that Ila learn to ride a horse to strengthen her core, I immediately dismissed the idea. After all, she was my daughter and…well…she would NEVER be comfortable on a farm, in a BARN with all the manure and the dirt floors and the hay and the smells, and the stray cats and…well…you get my point. Horseback riding would NEVER be a viable solution for MY little girl. Nope. No WAY. We just aren’t country-lovin girls. No way.
But then…but then…we went to our annual pilgrimage to the apple orchard. And ok….there is a petting “farm” with hay bales and goats, pigs, cows, chickens and turkeys. Hey ANYONE can stand the smell for a couple of hours in the name of Fall fun. But Hindsight began whispering when she ran towards the goats. It began yelling when the goats licked her hands over and over and giggles cascaded from her beautiful mouth. She flew towards the rabbits and the chickens squealing with joy. Watching with a keen eye that I have developed since Hindsight has come into my life, I noticed that while I was standing on the outskirts of the petting farm, Ila AND her FATHER were giddy, purely giddy. And it was at that moment that I realized that she wasn’t just MY daughter, but Jeffrey’s daughter as well. Read the rest of this entry »
So we have a kitten. Yes…these words I never thought I would utter ever…EVER in my lifetime. But, here I am saying them… “We have a kitten.” His name is Jete, short for Jeter, the only Yankee my daughter Ila knows. Naming a cat Jete should also give you an idea of who was behind the idea of getting the kitten…that would be daddy.
Here’s the thing; I am not really an animal person. I mean, we had two dogs. I loved them. Really I did. But truthfully, once they were gone I was ready, relieved even, to begin a life animal free. No food to buy. No mess to clean up. No smells. No hair. No guilt when you don’t have time to spend to spend with them.
But then we went to Ila’s first therapeutic riding lesson at a farm, in a barn full of horses…and cats— barn cats to be exact—she came to life. (Ok…she is always FULL of life) but she lit up from the inside surrounded by the entire myriad of animals; ponies, dogs, horses, fillies, and cats…barn cats to be exact.
My husband, Jeffrey is the same way around animals. Don’t even get me started on the squirrels he feeds on our deck that left a huge hole in our sliding glass deck screen door when they chewed threw it looking for food. He has always seemed to have some mystical quality that attracts animals no matter where we are. And so, as we sat in that chilly barn on a stoop marveling at our daughter riding a pony, out of no where this mangy, one eyed wild cat came and made himself comfortable right on Jeffrey’s lap (Ok, I made up the one-eyed mangy part…). Instantly, Ila was distracted. She wanted that cat on HER lap. She could think of nothing else and so reluctantly with shoulders sagged and a great deep sigh, Jeff shooed that cat off his lap (I did not make-up the sigh or sagged shoulders.). After the ride, Ila fed her pony and took off in search of the barn cat with her father close behind her squealing with joy (Ok…I made-up the squealing part.). No matter, my point is that between Jeffrey and the complete illumination of Ila at the riding lesson I began feeling a bit squeamish about being an animal free household.
Hindsight doesn’t always have to teach you lessons about things you did incorrectly as a parent. It can also teach you about things that you DID perfectly. As it helped me reminisce about those puppies and the joy they brought the boys, I began to realize that maybe I was being a bit selfish. There were times that those dogs brought out the best in those boys of mine. Although they weren’t much on the clean and care of them, it was the unconditional love they received from them that softened them and taught them empathy. When Rudy, our Australian Shepherd, sang Happy Birthday along with us, the giggles that emanated from those boys made me belly laugh right along with them. When Vixen, our lab, would set her chin on their knees as they sat on the couch, you couldn’t help but notice that the way they stroked her chin and silky ears that she brought out the best in them. The dogs were their friends, their companions and at times, the only ones who didn’t seem mad at or exasperated with them.
When they died, I mourned. I mourned more however for the way they made my children feel… I mourned when they died because of the empty hole they left in my children’s soul.
And so with Hindsight’s hand firmly on my back guiding my steps, we began our search for a kitten. A kitten that would light up Ila from the inside. A kitten that she could love. A kitten that would provide her comfort and unconditional love, and I am happy to report that…we have a kitten—a kitten named Jete.
Logan has lived in Glens Falls, NY all her life. By day, she is an educator with 20 years experience, a mom to Aidan and Gannan, her two teenage boys, a new mommy to a beautiful daughter, Ila, and wife to the love of her life, Jeffrey. By night, weekends and any spare time she can find, Logan writes. She loves memoir and also adores writing essays about the challenges of parenthood. This year she started a parenting blog called A Muddled Mother, an honest place where mothers aren’t afraid to speak of the complications and difficulties that we all inevitably experience. Logan has been published in various children’s and parenting magazines including Today’s Motherhood, Eye on Education, Faces, and Appleseed. Logan’s previous column for Hilltown Families, Snakes and Snails: Teenage Boys Talesran bi-monthly from June 2010-Feb. 2011, sharing stories of her first time around as a parent of two teenage boys. — Check out Hindsight Parenting: Raising Kids the Second Time Around every first and third Tuesday of the month.
The dreaded happened last night. A usually very easy-going-as-long-as-you-do-my-routine-I’ll-go-to-bed, Ila was not easy going at all. Last night, I heard the creaking of our hall floor at around 9pm, which meant that Ila, for the first time since being in her big girl bed, had ventured out of it at a forbidden hour. I immediately stepped out of my bedroom and using my sternest “mommy” voice I said, “Stop right there, miss. What do you think you are doing? It is WAYYY past your bed time. Turn around and go right back to bed.”
What happened next stunned me; that typically compliant daughter of mine didn’t turn around but instead a look of pain came across her face instantly and she began the heart piercing kind of cry where she is so upset that nothing comes out over her mouth. Do you know that kind of cry?? Her mouth kind of opened and her face contorted, tears streamed down her face and she kind of did this gaspy hiccup thing in which her chest moved up and down soundlessly as well.
I immediately regretted my mom tone and scooped her up. As I traveled down the hallway to my bedroom, Hindsight began to whisper that this may be one of those situations which I had failed miserably in my past parenting-a-toddler life. Instead of resisting its voice I listened intently to see if it could give me any guidance with my now sobbing daughter sitting on my lap in the rocking chair.
As usual, looking back on familiar situations spoke volumes to me and I recalled many many times where my sons were acting out of sorts or unlike themselves. As a young mom, I think I focused on the behavior trying to shut that down…to teach a lesson. “We don’t scream and throw a fit every morning before school.” “We don’t say that we hate another child.” “We don’t forget our homework at school every day!”
Focusing on the behavior however didn’t get me far and unfortunately I learned the hard way to realize that an out of the ordinary behavior is most certainly linked to something…in other words, if your child is acting out or being unpredictable somehow, there is something behind it. It is our jobs as mommies and daddies to find out what it is. Not that is not to say that kids just don’t want to go to bed at night—simple as that. But the severity of Ila’s reaction made the red flags go up.
So after rocking and soothing her, I spoke softly and said, “Can you use words and tell me why you got out of bed.” And, as she quite often does, she surprised me by nodding her head and clearly communicating that she was scared to go to school. (I must tell you here that I think that I am so used to things not going right on my parenting journey that I am caught off guard every time Ila does something in a way that seems reasonable. I know…so sad, and says volumes about my life as a mom the first time around, but I never tire of the satisfaction I feel when my daughter does something seemingly within the normal realms of reactions.)
She was scared to go to school, and really this is every parent’s nightmare isn’t it? At least in my world, that dreaded phrase sets off a litany of images, none of which are pleasant or show that my child’s feelings are erroneous. So, true to form, I immediately imagined the teachers spanking the children, yelling at Ila, not helping her open her lunch so that she feel like she’s starving during the day, not allowing her the comfort of her stuffed lamb at naptime…my thoughts ran the gamete.
However Hindsight reminded me to be calm, as losing my mind in front of my children had never paid off, and so I calmly asked why she was feeling scared. Once again, the communicative Ila clearly stated that she didn’t like the yelling. And once again, I had to reign in my tendency to want to go in to preschool guns a blazin’ taking no prisoners along the way. So the new calm inquisitive mother asked Ila to tell her about the yelling. She described a scene in which one of her friends hit another one of her friends and so the teacher yelled for the perpetrator to sit on the rug. I smiled and cooed and then gently tried to explain the best way that I could to a three year old that if a child is hurting another child then the adult in charge is going to use a voice that has a bit of scariness in it because she doesn’t want that child to do it again.
Somehow, Hindsight whispered to me to not dwell so much on this topic too long but instead remind her of what she loved about going there. So we sat there in the dark rocking and hugging and listing all of her friends’ names and the things she did with each that were an essential part of her day. And in no time, she was her happy self, ready for bed and to bound off to school the next day.
The countdown to my daughter Ila’s first dance class was a flurry of activity. There was of course the research it took to find the exact right creative movement class. Next we had to find the perfect ballet slippers, the tights, and the leotard. These coveted clothing items sat on the shelf in her room and she’d pat them each night before bed. Each afternoon, even though she knew the answer, she’d ask slyly if she could put on her leotard and slippers, but they remained on the shelf. I will admit that this day…a day of dancing…(DANCING!) was providing me with a giddiness that I hadn’t felt in a long while. I mean, I enjoyed baseball, football, basketball and track with my boys, but DANCING; THIS was in MY wheel house. And so perhaps my need for everything to be “perfect” was what caused me to grumble on the eve of her premiere that I had forgotten to get a cute little ballet skirt to go over those leotards and tights.
On the day of Ila’s first class I rushed home from work to put her in her “gear” so to speak and whisk her off to the studio. When I arrived home, her father surprised (both she and I) with a pink frilly ballet skirt that HE had purchased for her to wear saying, “My daughter needs to look like a perfect ballerina on her first day.” (Yes, you read that correctly. I, Logan Fisher, actually had an utterance heard and understood by a family member. Go ahead…write it on your calendar. I’ll wait until you get back…). As I slipped the hot pink skirt over her light pink leotard and tights she did look absolutely perfect.
Perfect…I have probably written that word at least four times in this particular column, and Hindsight has taught me that “perfection” was a very large part of mothering my two sons. As I mentioned in July 3rd’s column, growing up it became apparent VERY quickly that being first, best and the brightest was what made for happy parents, so I unknowingly brought that same attitude with me when it came to parenting. Looking back the boys activities were seen only as opportunities to shine and show off their athletic prowess, and if they weren’t the best or the brightest, I would vocally complain about the coach or the call or the equipment. Each batting moment, each football passed, each hoop attempt was a chance for perfection. And although a very few times perfection WOULD happen; a grand slam over the fence with a brand new Louisville Slugger bat, a first place ribbon in the school wide race, but more than often, as it is in life of course, perfection was the FARTHEST thing from what took place. Unfortunately, Hindsight reminds me of how many times I let the precious present slip by not living in the moment and instead waiting and watching for the “perfect” moment.
When Ila and I arrived at dance, I tried to quell that familiar feeling that rose in my chest; the anticipation of perfection, the fantasy of Ila pirouetting and rondele-ing circles around the other dancers in class. But it wasn’t just Hindsight that was tampering down pensive perfection, it was also of course the experiences we have had over the last few years with Ila’s movement disorder. I wasn’t sure what to expect from my darling daughter. I was actually worried that she wouldn’t be able to do the things that the other girls were doing, and WORSE realize that she wasn’t able to. So there I was two extremes; the mom who lives for those perfect moments and the mom who had watched her daughter experience many movement falters and meet them head on with a feisty fight. Which mom would win out? Only time would tell.
Dance class for Ila started slow. Even though it was an animal theme day (animals are Ila’s favorite), she was teary leaving my side and very reluctant to join the other dancers. Immediately the mother who had been experiencing Ila’s neurological movement problems right along with her wanted to step in and help her do the steps, but Hindsight reminded me that “helping her do the steps” would be the perfection mom as well. And so, I backed off, literally. At first Ila wanted me standing right next to her, but slowly, ever so slowly I began walking backwards toward back of the studio.
I watched as Ila slowly warmed to the process; Reaching her hand over her head prancing like a giraffe; Throwing her arms over her head ballerina style and tippy-toeing through a maze of stuffed animals. And then it happened. The dancers had to sit and one by one, or two by two while the dance instructor called the dancers up to the mirror. They were given a scarf and could imitate any animal they wanted. The moms in me battled. The worrier worried. The perfectionist hoped. But in the end…it didn’t matter. Hindsight didn’t have to whisper in my ear. The fretter put away her worry rocks. They weren’t needed. Why? Because my daughter’s incredible smile erased any reservations or fantasies. When it was her turn, that girl, that spit fire of a little human danced her socks off mimicking a lyric lovin’ leap frog. Even throwing in a stupendous spin towards the end, and OH how happy she was. And it was that moment that I realized the beauty in being present. Just watching the sheer elation that oozed from my little ballerina, I knew I was the luckiest mom alive. The luckiest because I knew something that perhaps some of those young moms hadn’t figured out yet. It isn’t so much the talented or perfect moment that is, but the happiness that your children experiences that is most important.
Logan has lived in Glens Falls, NY all her life. By day, she is an educator with 20 years experience, a mom to Aidan and Gannan, her two teenage boys, a new mommy to a beautiful daughter, Ila, and wife to the love of her life, Jeffrey. By night, weekends and any spare time she can find, Logan writes. She loves memoir and also adores writing essays about the challenges of parenthood. This year she started a parenting blog called A Muddled Mother, an honest place where mothers aren’t afraid to speak of the complications and difficulties that we all inevitably experience. Logan has been published in various children’s and parenting magazines including Today’s Motherhood, Eye on Education, Faces, and Appleseed. Logan’s previous column for Hilltown Families, Snakes and Snails: Teenage Boys Talesran bi-monthly from June 2010-Feb. 2011, sharing stories of her first time around as a parent of two teenage boys. — Check out Hindsight Parenting: Raising Kids the Second Time Around every first and third Tuesday of the month.
If you read this column often, you will know that my relationship with my teenage sons has been contentious and nearly nonexistent at times, especially lately. There are oodles of reasons for the tension and problems, all that have been ruminated upon ad nauseum here in my previous column,”Snakes and Snails: Teenage Boys Tales,” and in my blog, Muddled Mother.
So you, dear readers, will probably be just as surprised as I was when one night last week, both of my sons with whom I hadn’t had contact with for months showed up in my living room (with the lovely and beautiful and always welcome, girlfriend extraordinaire.). Now some moms in this circumstance might have faltered. They may have lectured about all that had happened during their absence. They may have turned them away immediately, or worse accepted them out of duty, but never really let go of the mistakes that their children had made. In reality they hold on to those mistakes that the parents somehow imagine harmed them and continually bringing it up during later disappointments and disagreements literally branding the children with past digressions over and over held onto in a parental tight fist. I actually know parents like these who just can’t resist constantly pointing out and reminding children of their past disappointments. It is as if the child is the sum total of those mistakes. It is as if they are nothing but those mistakes, and once those mistakes are made the love the parents feel for their children is somehow diminished.
There was a time that I would have done everything wrong if those boys walked into my home after months of hostility. In fact, I would have mimicked those parents that I described above. But I have had much time to use hindsight to instead prepare for that moment when we finally would all be together again. A moment that I was sure (just to stay sane) would happen sooner than later. And I wanted to do it right. The time I have had to reflect using my friend, Hindsight, helped me to change perspective. Instead of thinking about all the wrongs (or perceived wrongs) done to me, I thought about what it was that a child with parents like the ones described above truly wants and really needs. Read the rest of this entry »
Three years after the birth of my daughter, I am slowly getting it. The universe has its own plans for my life. That’s not to say that I don’t have ANY free choice, but there are things, occasions, moments, happenings, that I will have no control over. Hindsight has taught me that these universal whims are the very experiences that help us to grow and evolve and gather life’s wisdom. Rather than pushing against them, lamenting them, letting them depress us, we should learn to fling ourselves into the universal wind and let it carry us where it will. Where we land may be unfamiliar but I am positive it will be a better place than where we began.
My daughter turns 3 in two weeks. Three. That means that it has been three years and nine months since the surprise of my life happened. Since I stood in my miniscule bathroom with the new-fangled electronic EPT test in my hand that kept blinking the word “yes” over and over until the motion of that, coupled with my utter shock, made me feel dizzy and faint. I am sure that I have discussed in this column before that my reaction was less than enthusiastic.
Parenting my sons had been well just a crap shoot in many ways, and the waders I wore didn’t protect me at all from that raw sewage I sludged through daily trying to match that perfect mother in my head. The do-do seeped in deep; a constant reminder that I was nowhere near doing a great job. Now I know that there were MANY other factors that made my role difficult; absent grandparents, an ex hell bent on saying, doing, thinking and breathing the exact opposite of anything that I did, genetics, environment…on and on…and I guess that was EXACTLY what was going through my head that fateful day as I held that EPT….I did NOT want to go through the “on and on” again. Ever again. I had had enough.
But, today, as I write this column and Ila is sitting next to me watching Sid the Science Kid, I realize that like so many other times in my life, Captain Doomsday took over during that moment and thought of all of the BAD, HORRIBLE, TEDIOUS, ANNOYING, TIRING things that could POSSIBLY happen. Hindsight tells me that this thinking character, Captain Doomsday, came about as a sort of protection. Things were rough during my 30’s and I guess that allowing Captain D to take over my thoughts perhaps prepared me for what COULD be the worst. That way if it happened…I wouldn’t be caught by surprise. Not good. Not good at all. Ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Had I had the power of foresight on that day in the claustrophobic commode, I would have realized that at least up until now, Captain Doomsday was dead wrong. Dead. Wrong. Having Ila wasn’t an ending…she was a beginning. She wasn’t going to be part of the on and on…in fact she would be its undoing. And while I could pontificate about all of the ways that my life is different, that I am different because of one powerful little girl, that really isn’t the point of this column.
Hindsight is a skilled teacher and if you pay attention, it can have a powerful effect on your growth as a human being. In this case, comparing that day in the bathroom, my hands clenching the edge of the sink to steady me from the fear and anguish that gripped my soul allowing Captain Doomsday do his number on me…his scary voice screaming, “I can’t do this again” over and over—a broken record…to now, and zooming through all the occasions, events and moments in between, it is clear to me that the universe had specific reasons for Ila’s appearance on this earth, but I didn’t trust that…even in the face of universal signs…and there were SO many signs…I just couldn’t let go of (and here comes that word that ruled my thinking the first time around as a parent) I just couldn’t let go of “control”.
At one point during the pregnancy, me still sloshing through the mire of having another child, we were told that Ila may have a possibly life threatening heart condition. We were whisked off to a fancy schmancy hospital in NYC for a procedure, an aneuploidy fish test, that would analyze her DNA for every genetic disorder known to man. Hours before the test, as I often do, I stood in the shower and spoke to my dead grandmother, asking for guidance and peace and that whatever would be would be…her name was Ila Gauthier and I suppose that I still talk to her twenty some years after her death because she was my favorite person in the entire universe; the one human being that I am sure loved me unconditionally.
When I arrived to get the test, we walked into a ginormous hotel lobby-like waiting room with literally 50-100 pregnant women mulling around. I approached a check-in desk with 15 receptionists seated in a row typing away, talking to patients. I became overwhelmed with the crowd, with the impending pain I would go through during the procedure, with the fact that I may lose the only child my husband would ever have a chance to have, with the guilt that perhaps all my wishing may have caused this problem…and a woman’s voice pierced through my agony. I looked up and she waved me down to the end of the counter where her computer was situated. I walked slowly like one going to the electric chair. I leaned against the counter, head down, big plopping tears splashing on the lacquered top, and she spoke again in a soothing voice, “Aw hon. It is going to be ok.” Something about her voice caused me to look up right at her. She stared into my eyes…deeply…as if she once knew me and said again, “It is going to be ok.” At that very moment I looked down at her name tag so that I could thank her properly for her kindness and I lost my breath. Her name, the woman who insisted in a deep and soulful way that all would be fine, her name was Ilette Gauthier. Read the rest of this entry »
“No.” That one word starts it ALL doesn’t it? “No.” Such a simple word. Just two letters, but packs a punch especially when it comes from the mouth of an angelic toddler who, up to that point, had been sailing through her “two’s” with an ease that made this mom a tad complacent. Silly me…I thought we were home free. After all, my little girl will turn three in September. Terrible two’s? What terrible two’s?
Then again…there came that word… NO! A forceful blurt out of such a pretty mouth just seemed so out of place. Of course it brought the memories flooding back…those days when my sons began to assert their independence. Too bad I didn’t see it that way. Back then, I saw their refusals of my requests, their fits and tantrums, flailing on the floor of a grocery store when candy wasn’t purchased, stomps and stamps down the hall when it was bedtime…all of it…I saw as defiance. Yes, defiance, not a normal, natural growth spurt of independence. Nope! “No” was a defiance of ME the “authority”. How dare they??
I know. Go ahead roll your eyes. I am rolling mine too. I cringe sometimes when I visit those cobwebby memories. So young. Too young to be a mom in a lot of ways. So much to learn. Mothering in my early twenties came with a common point of view that comes along with this age group; a sort of self- centeredness that permeated everything. It was all about me, me, me—what I wanted to do. And well…those “no’s” uttered from my sons’ mouths got in the way of that, threatened an EASY existence. So quite often I reacted in that manner—not thinking about them—but instead how their behaviors were making MY life difficult. I was under the ridiculous idea that those sons of mine would do what I said to do because I was their mother, and worse, that a refusal of a request or an utterance of independence was to be squashed like a bug. Needless to say, these battles of wills continued over and over and they never panned out the way I was trying to get them to pan out… “You do what I say, when I say it, the way I say it and HOW I say it.” So says the despot dictator of the little brown house on Reservoir Dr.
Thankfully however I have been in Hindsight mode and therefore constantly on the lookout for these specific mistakes of motherhood that I can do differently. Handling “NO” and toddler tantrums I definitely wanted to do differently. But how? Read the rest of this entry »
What’s a parent to do when playing with dolls, tinker toys or just a simple game of hide-and-seek makes them cringe? (Photo credit: Sienna Wildfield)
I am not a player. No, no…I don’t mean the polyester-wearing-Victoria’s-Secret-peekin’-buttons-opened-to-my-navel player. No! Sheesh. I am NOT talking about THAT kind of player. I am talking about get-out-the-Fisher-Price-sit-down-on-th-rug-make-your-voice-high-for-the-girl-doll-and-a-low-voice-for-the-boy-doll kind of player. I am not kidding when I say that playing dolls or tea party or with a Dora kitchen gives me the anxiety of a bomb-squad member trying to keep an explosive from blowing up a town (okay that may be a WEE bit of an exaggeration, but…you get the idea.).
When my sons were younger, the five words I dreaded the most were “Will you play with me?” Ugh! How I’d cringe. I would twist. I would turn. I would grasp for any plausible idea that I could come up with for not succumbing to action figures or catch or hide and seek.
Being a single mom made this even more of a dilemma because quite often, I was the only on available to play with my sons, to teach them imagination (of which I had none.). What added to this problem, believe it or not, was my good old friend “Hindsight.” Not Hindsight in a parental way, but Hindsight from my childhood. You see, I came by this dread of playing naturally. Neither parent of mine really was the get down on the rug and play kind of people either. The problem that came from this realization is how I felt when it was ME who asked those five words, “Will you play with me?” It became quite clear very early on how absolutely uncomfortable those words made my mother and father, and, like most kids, I didn’t like it very much that I was making them feel that way, nor did I like the way their reluctance made me feel. And so…when my dear sons said those dreaded words Hindsight’s guilt seeped in deeply and tsked tsked me constantly. After all, I really should have known better and got myself to paste a smile on this face and play with the damn Fisher Price action figures. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t muster even the smallest enthusiasm for…well…play. Thank goodness that my boys’ step father came along when he did. He is really the greatest player (as in toys) in the universe…really just a big ol’ kid.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise that one of the first thoughts I had (after the shock wore off) when I found out I was pregnant with my daughter was “Ugh…she’s going to hit that toddler age and want me to play!” The anxiety set in immediately.
I am happy to say that this time around, the playing problem has been minimal at best for several reasons. First, my husband knows all too well my play avoidance and many long talks were had before Ila was born about the necessity for him to fill this role. Second, and most surprisingly, I don’t seem to mind to play as much as I did in my twenties. I still don’t like it mind you…but the analogy of the bomb diffuser could probably be taken down a few notches to maybe say a public speaker’s anxiety.
This summer, however, made the anxiety rise toward bomb diffuser again. My husband is working long hours and I am staying home with Ila. I have to admit that I was dreading the summer because of the “play dilemma” instead of embracing my time with her. But once again Hindsight stepped in to remind me of an important lesson that I had learned from my beloved, “Dr. Speed Dial.” My job as a parent was to provide for my children what it was that they need. So if Ila needed play and I wasn’t the one who could give that to her then it was my job to find a way to get her what she needed.
That solution came in the form of two angels named Kaitlin and Lauren. These “mommy’s helpers” are PLAYERS! The good kind. They sit on the floor. They make high voices and low voices when playing with dolls. They paint and color and skip and do chalk drawing on sidewalks. They take walks and play at playgrounds and sing. They aren’t afraid to be goofy and best of all (according to Ila) they know how to have tea parties because (and I quote) “Mommy you not too good at that.” Most importantly, they love Ila and Ila loves them. She gets to play and I get the warm satisfied feeling that I provided her with what she needed. That I can do, because after all this being a mom thing…it ain’t child’s play!
Logan has lived in Glens Falls, NY all her life. By day, she is an educator with 20 years experience, a mom to Aidan and Gannan, her two teenage boys, a new mommy to a beautiful daughter, Ila, and wife to the love of her life, Jeffrey. By night, weekends and any spare time she can find, Logan writes. She loves memoir and also adores writing essays about the challenges of parenthood. This year she started a parenting blog called A Muddled Mother, an honest place where mothers aren’t afraid to speak of the complications and difficulties that we all inevitably experience. Logan has been published in various children’s and parenting magazines including Today’s Motherhood, Eye on Education, Faces, and Appleseed. Logan’s previous column for Hilltown Families, Snakes and Snails: Teenage Boys Talesran bi-monthly from June 2010-Feb. 2011, sharing stories of her first time around as a parent of two teenage boys. — Check out Hindsight Parenting: Raising Kids the Second Time Around every first and third Tuesday of the month.
On the day we arrived at the Cape, we walked over a bluff to give my daughter her first look at the ocean. As it came into view, her blue eyes grew to the size of baseballs and an audible gasp breathlessly pushed one word out of that sweet mouth, “Wow!” she whispered.
I have always been a fantasizer. I am sure that there is not one human being who knows me who is shocked by that statement. If I analyzed my tendency to live outside of reality, I would have to tell you that it started as a child; a very young child. My fantasizing began as innocent conjuring; imagining situations which if true would earn me the elusive approval of my parents. Growing up, it was apparent very early on that succeeding in a public way like winning a contest or being the best at a sport or activity instantly got the attention of good ol’ mom and dad. Alas, during my childhood it was my perception that I came up short in many areas. I wasn’t the prettiest. I wasn’t the smartest. I most DEFINITELY wasn’t the most athletic, and because I was just sort of mediocre or imagined myself to be, it seemed I also came up short in the parental attention department. And so I began to fantasize; imagine situations where I was the best and the brightest, winning accolades, standing in the front of the line with the trophy in my hand. All of these childhood fantasies culminated with my mother and father fawning over me and my accomplishments and in my mind I basked in the glow of their adoration.
As I grew older, those fantasies began leaving the confines of my mind. Like feathers in a wind storm, I’d say them out loud, and all at once that innocent fantasy then became an out and out lie. For instance, I once told my parents that I had won a contest that was being held by a local author. He had visited my third grade class looking for stories written by children for his book. Even though my story hadn’t been chosen, the beaming pride and excitement that exuded from my mom and dad was like a drug. And so I continued the lie right up until the very second that we stood in line to get the book autographed by the author. This kind of situation played out over and over again during my childhood. I’d fantasize. I’d tell it as if it were truth in order to catch a moment of parental adoration. My parents would catch me in a lie and withdraw their affection more and more after each deceit. But the high of their approval was just too much and so the cycle continued.
Now at 43, (rather in my late twenties) I realized that I didn’t need to lie in order to feel okay about myself. That there were things that I was good at for real and perhaps, just perhaps, I wasn’t completely mediocre. With that realization, the need to lie disappeared, but the fantasizing curiously stayed a very fibrous part of me.
Now many of you, especially my writer friends, may not see fantasizing as a problem, but in my case it very often got in the way of real life; MY real life. You see, in order to escape the unpleasantries that often accompany adulthood, I’d fantasize hard about future things. These things were often linked to a large event like a party or a vacation or a gathering of some sort. The neuroses of these fantastical escapes would taint actual reality to the point where if the real event, vacation etc. didn’t turn out EXACTLY the way I fantasized it, then I was completely disappointed and couldn’t enjoy or even pay attention to the precious present, but instead spent all my time trying to figure out how to make the experience as perfect as the fantasy or pouting because it wasn’t at ALL like the image that I carried in my head. (I know. I know. I really am certifiable, but you have to admit, the craziness makes for good writing!)
Since this is the year (or decade) of learning from my very good friend, Hindsight, I decided to make a concerted effort to NOT fantasize about our family vacation to the Cape. Alright, I may have pictured myself reclining on a chaise lounge drink in hand listening to the sound of the roaring ocean, but it didn’t go any farther than that. Read the rest of this entry »
A high school acquaintance of mine recently contacted me. I knew from Facebook statuses and through our small town gossip grapevine (of which 1/1000 of what you hear is truth) that he’d recently gone through a divorce. He wondered if there was a blog like mine, Muddled Mother, for fathers who were… well… muddled as well. Specifically he was looking for advice on how to parent two children who would now be products of divorce. It was an interesting phenomenon that happened at the moment he asked the question. I had this steel-bending urgency to fill this man’s very open, intelligent and kind mind with ALL that I had learned the HARD WAY raising two boys as a divorced mom. It felt utterly essential that he know the what-not-to-do’s and what-to-do’s. As we continued “chatting” I plied him with sound bites, little tid bits that came from crystal clear hindsight; the most important advice I could give him. Throughout the conversation, the dad interjected things like, “That should be the topic of your next column.” Or “A blog post should deal with that.” And of course, it got me thinking. Since this column is supposed to be about parenting using the wisdom of hindsight, and since the most indelible lessons I have learned have to do parenting as a divorcee, I decided to write a list of Hindsight’s Golden Rules to follow when raising children as a divorced parent… Read the rest of this entry »
“When a woman makes the choice to marry, to have children; in one way her life begins but in another way it stops. You build a life of details. You become a mother, a wife and you stop and stay steady so that your children can move. And when they leave they take your life of details with them. And then you’re expected to move again only you don’t remember what moves you because no-one has asked in so long. Not even yourself. You never in your life think that love like this can happen to you.” (Photo credit: Sienna Wildfield)
“I am going to get married.” This simple sentence was uttered two nights ago while Ila and I were sitting together playing. When I say that this phrase was completely out of the blue (we were playing with a Fisher Price car driving it to and fro on a mat of a city. We were stopping at the store, at the park…and BOOM!!! Out of the blue…there it was…”I am going to get married,” uttered from my beautiful two and a half year old’s mouth.
I know that perhaps this next statement will put some off, perhaps even anger others, but that particular statement uttered by my daughter was highly unsettling to me. It actually caused me a great deal of anxiety. It isn’t that I am anti-marriage (per se). It’s just that I want that particular life’s ambition to be towards the BOTTOM of her to-do list. And well, surprise, surprise…it got me thinking. I couldn’t stop wondering where she got the idea from…where she had heard the words…how she made the decision that that was something that “girls” say. (And she may have not been doing ANY of that. She may have just been repeating something that she’d heard or saw somewhere…) But just in case, just in case…
I won’t lie to you, I felt an urgent need to begin to pontificate the virtues of living one’s life to the fullest-travel, WORLD travel, jobs, apartments, roommates, a string of broken hearts that would reach across the states and double back. I wanted to tell her that she doesn’t need a man to make her feel complete, that the world was so much more than that. I wanted to open up to well worn passages written in Eat, Pray, Love that I had memorized so that she too could drink in those vital words and let them fill her heart. I wanted to read to her Francesca’s lament to Robert in that brilliant novel, Bridges of Madison County. You know the one, “When a woman makes the choice to marry, to have children; in one way her life begins but in another way it stops. You build a life of details. You become a mother, a wife and you stop and stay steady so that your children can move. And when they leave they take your life of details with them. And then you’re expected to move again only you don’t remember what moves you because no-one has asked in so long. Not even yourself. You never in your life think that love like this can happen to you.” Uh uh uhhhh. Sing it girl. Sing it!
But then Hindsight crept in in its own sly way. “Get a hold of yourself,” it whispered. “For cripes sakes, she’s only two!” After reaching for a brown paper bag and breathing into it for quite some time, I decided to listen to my pal, Hindsight, to see if she had any wisdom, and it seems as usual, she did.
Telling vs. Guiding. Telling vs. Guiding. Keep those two words in mind dear readers. As I delved deeper into my memories of wanting the boys to do a specific thing or believe a certain value, telling them never got me very far. In fact, it usually got me the opposite. A very simple example of this would be wearing a winter jacket. Every morning before school the same fight would ensue. “Put on your jacket. It is cold out,” and like clockwork either Son1 or Son2 would refuse, roll their eyes, or just out and out say “No!” But say nothing and put on my own coat? Sit in the driveway for five minutes while the frosty windshield defrosted–me all nice and toasty while my coatless sons sat in the backseat shivering…YUP…THAT got them to wear their coats and I didn’t even have to say a word.
When my boys were younger a lack of funds didn’t stop me from taking them on vacations to Disney World or to the ocean. Why? If I reach deep into the bowels of my consciousness the word that keeps appearing when I ponder WHY I spent money that I didn’t have is GUILT. (Photo credit: Sienna Wildfield)
We are not in a position to obtain wants. Through circumstances beyond my control, a third of my single-income paycheck, each single-income paycheck, now goes to the triple-digit-income-home where my sons now reside. But this is not a column to lament about that. Times are hard. There are many families who have felt the strain and stress of a single-income household. (Of course they may not have had to ALSO deal with a stringent state child support formula and grapple with the lack of humanity of those who don’t need but take anyways just because they are entitled to take) but there are hardships all around. This is not a column about that. This is a column with which I use hindsight in order to learn from and to hopefully teach others to avoid the mistakes I made on my mom journey the first time around. And so I will do that by using my new and often repeated mantra, “What does this dilemma teach me?”
Fifteen years ago, I was in a similar situation. My sons’ father and I were in the process of divorcing, and I was left because of some horrific happenings that I won’t go into here having to pay all of the bills that were accrued during the marriage all by myself. There was no decree of child support for a very long time and even when there was, I found it impossible to make ends meet for my boys and I by paying bills with one income that were once paid by two. However, even the lack of funds didn’t stop me from taking the boys on vacations to Disney World, to the ocean. It didn’t stop me from purchasing them the newest and coolest toys that everyone had. It didn’t stop me from buying so many Christmas gifts it looked as if the Christmas tree had vomited presents. How did I do that you ask? Simple, my bills went without paying. WHY did I do that you ask? Well, that answer is much less simple and the analysis is one that is necessary if we are to learn from hindsight.
If I reach deep into the bowels of my consciousness the word that keeps appearing when I ponder WHY I spent money that I didn’t have is GUILT. I think I have probably discussed this concept several times but it is so important that it warrants repeating over and over and over. Parenting out of guilt is NEVER a proper way to raise children. It will cause deep rooted problems down the road even if it seems to soothe the immediate present.
Guilt. I felt so guilty that my children weren’t going on vacations, were missing out on newfangled toys, didn’t get to eat the cool junk food that the other kids brought for snacks, I couldn’t bear it. The fact that they were the products of divorce should NOT punish them. When I spent money that I shouldn’t really spend, at the time, I truly thought that I was putting my children first. But that isn’t true. It isn’t true at all.
What it ended up doing was creating a false sense of reality for my sons. They had a right to have it all. After all, I had given it to them their whole lives. And so, the bottom dropped out when my current husband was no longer working. I was much older and wiser and knew that it was honorable and my duty as a responsible adult to pay my bills. That didn’t leave much extra. This outraged my children, and why not, money seemed to appear out of nowhere their entire lives.
Now it is even tighter. I actually long for the days when I was eking it out month by month. Feeding my daughter and keeping the house that I ironically kept for the boys are now real challenges that I face daily. So my daughter (along with me) needs to learn that she, for awhile, until her dad finds a job, must go without. And although she is only two, I have decided that this dilemma will be the perfect opportunity for her to learn to live within her means and the importance of saving. For the last 6 months or so, she has been stuffing a piggy bank. If she does her “sponsibilities” each night or weekly or whenever she finds a stray penny or quarter, she runs right into her bedroom and drops it into the pig’s back slot. This small act makes her giddy. She has filled two banks and now is working on a froggy bank given to her by our own credit union. While grocery shopping, I talk out loud about how we have to stick to our budget. I compare prices, use coupons and explain gently why we can’t get that extra box of Mike and Ikes that she adores. This week when grocery shopping, I let her take a bit from one of those banks in order to choose one item that she purchases herself from money that she’s earned. I crowed like a rooster at how good she must feel saving money and being able to buy something special for herself. And I think she might be getting the hang of it. Just the other day, when we were placing her very full oversized purple piggy bank back on the shelf, she patted it and said, “This money is for Disney World where Mickey lives.” I felt a little wistful with a comment like that, and I have to admit that for a small moment the old me returned plotting a way to bring her to the “Happiest Place on Earth.” But then, as she often does, her next comment brought me back to a place of sanity—reality. “Someday.” She said without a hint of sadness. “Someday.”
Logan has lived in Glens Falls, NY all her life. By day, she is an educator with 20 years experience, a mom to Aidan and Gannan, her two teenage boys, a new mommy to a beautiful daughter, Ila, and wife to the love of her life, Jeffrey. By night, weekends and any spare time she can find, Logan writes. She loves memoir and also adores writing essays about the challenges of parenthood. This year she started a parenting blog called A Muddled Mother, an honest place where mothers aren’t afraid to speak of the complications and difficulties that we all inevitably experience. Logan has been published in various children’s and parenting magazines including Today’s Motherhood, Eye on Education, Faces, and Appleseed. Logan’s previous column for Hilltown Families, Snakes and Snails: Teenage Boys Talesran bi-monthly from June 2010-Feb. 2011, sharing stories of her first time around as a parent of two teenage boys. — Check out Hindsight Parenting: Raising Kids the Second Time Around every first and third Tuesday of the month.
We can’t be everywhere, and what about those situations where the rest of her class or the Birthday party is scarfing down cupcakes with butter crème frosting decorated with raspberries? (Photo credit: Sienna Wildfield)
“So your daughter has your gluten intolerance as well?” The nurse grimaced and her faced seemed to echo my sentiments exactly-grimace, grrr, darn-it-all and other choice words and phrases that I can’t share on this family site. A food allergy, speaking again from hindsight, is a pain in the you-know-what. Now, when we discovered certain lacy rashes that showed up on random places on Ila’s body, especially her hands, we knew that there had to be some food explanation since the timing of their appearances coincided exactly when we started solid food with her.
At first we thought that perhaps it was peanuts, and when it wasn’t that, we tried removing eggs from her diet since her father suffered from an egg allergy. Each time we removed a certain type of food, I hoped against all hope that the culprit was something that could easily be removed from her diet without it having a great effect on her life. After all, we had been through this before and I knew that a ginormous over arching umbrella like allergy was not easy to enforce or easy with which to wrangle a child into believing or liking.
When Son2 was 4 after a dinner of a Burger King Chicken sandwich, red Hi C and a large fry, he literally flipped his ever lovin’ mind in a way that reminded me of a cartoon gorilla escaping from his cage—metal bars bent, steaming coming from his nose and deep rumbling grunts coming from deep in his gullet. This behavior continued all night long and even though I was the parent, I felt as if I was being held hostage in my own home (Unfortunately not the last time this ever happened.). The next morning, sleep deprived and weepy, I visited our pediatrician Dr. Dapper sans Son2 and sobbed on a tiny bench in one of his check up offices. He patted my back saying matter of factly,”Let it out. Let it out.” Once I pulled myself together, my tear streaked face looked up and asked Dr. Dapper for advice. What he said was completely unexpected. “In order to see if his reaction was from the food he ate last night, I want you to go back to Burger King tonight and replicate the meal he had exactly. Let’s see if he acts the same way tonight.”
As it turns out he did react the same exact way and through a complicated process we discovered that Son2 was allergic to almost anything put in foods that wasn’t of the earth. That is right. You heard me. Dyes, preservatives, chemically processed anything (which is almost EVERYTHING on a grocery shelf) was off limits to Son2. Too much of that stuff and Son2 became that cartoon gargantuan gorilla trying to escape his cage. Fast food restaurants seemed to be the worst culprits and so we cut them out of our diet completely.
But as I said in the beginning of this column, knowing he had this problem and getting him to buy into it was two different things. As he got older, he indulged more and more in the forbidden ingredient prognosticating that everyone else can have it, that he should be able to have it too. The struggle to keep him chemical free became a downright battle in our house (Unfortunately, one that I lost most times.).
And I guess this is why I was so sad, anxious, and grumbly when we removed gluten from Ila’s diet and lo and behold the rashes disappeared. Of all things…of all things….gluten. I mean it is everywhere. If the moon is made of cheese, the Earth is made of gluten. Sheesh. She already begs for crackers and we have yet to find any gluten free that rival Goldfish Crackers. I can’t help but think about future problems like Birthday parties both in and out of school, snacks at friends’ houses and those quick trips to Mickey D’s after a soccer practice. I want to do it differently this time. I want to avoid the fights and the poor me attitude that sometimes comes along with depriving a child of something. I am smart enough this time to start the education part of it early. She is only two, but her dad and I have already explained that those sore hands come along with eating bread and crackers. (All right…it is a little simplified. But she is only TWO!) But it is the future that I still have no answers for. We can’t be everywhere, and what about those situations where the rest of her class or the Birthday party is scarfing down cupcakes with butter crème frosting decorated with raspberries?….(ok, I may digress…but I’ve been gluten free since June! Hold please while I dab away the drool.) Okay…
So, dear readers, what do you suggest? How does a mom go about preparing her daughter about her allergy in a way that doesn’t make her feel deprived but instead empowered? Need your help on this one and would LOVE to hear your thoughts!!
Logan has lived in Glens Falls, NY all her life. By day, she is an educator with 20 years experience, a mom to Aidan and Gannan, her two teenage boys, a new mommy to a beautiful daughter, Ila, and wife to the love of her life, Jeffrey. By night, weekends and any spare time she can find, Logan writes. She loves memoir and also adores writing essays about the challenges of parenthood. This year she started a parenting blog called A Muddled Mother, an honest place where mothers aren’t afraid to speak of the complications and difficulties that we all inevitably experience. Logan has been published in various children’s and parenting magazines including Today’s Motherhood, Eye on Education, Faces, and Appleseed. Logan’s previous column for Hilltown Families, Snakes and Snails: Teenage Boys Talesran bi-monthly from June 2010-Feb. 2011, sharing stories of her first time around as a parent of two teenage boys. — Check out Hindsight Parenting: Raising Kids the Second Time Around every first and third Tuesday of the month.
I’ll start small, first leaving her for a half an hour perhaps for a quick grocery store run. Then maybe I’ll even go out to dinner. Perhaps someday maybe I could even take in a movie after a dinner out. Who knows, maybe by the time she’s 8 or 9, she’ll be ready for summer camp! The question is will I be ready?
I am doing it again. I guess the admittance makes it different this time around, but it doesn’t help at all. I am doing it again. I am not sure what it is about me as a mother that makes it hard to leave my children with a babysitter. When the boys were growing up my excuse was that since they weren’t with me every other weekend, it’d be selfish of me to go out on the weekends that they were home. And…at the time, that was a good enough reason for me. However, it helped to contribute to the idea that mom would always be there for her sons no matter what; that mom was perhaps an appendage of their bodies, minds and souls and not a individual with other interests and hobbies and focuses in her life besides her children. But that pesky divorce guilt got me every time. Invitations to friends’ houses, movies, dinner out, parties, heck any invitation was met with a “no thank you,” or canceled last minute because I was overcome with guilt leaving those boys who already didn’t see their mother as much as kids in “married” families did.
However, I find myself getting that same ‘ol panicky feeling when it comes to leaving Ila as well. And just like before, I have a good reason (or so I think). You see I am worried about her perception of loving and leaving. In her short two years on this earth, that beautiful little girl has lost more than the average adult, and when I say “lost” I mean completely and utterly gone. Through no fault of hers, those that she has loved the most have completely disappeared seemingly never to be seen again. Her beloved brothers are gone, have been gone for several months, and since they’ve been absent so have their friends who had become like family to her. Very often, still, she’ll wander around the house opening doors and asking for them by name. We calmly state where they are and try to reassure her that she’ll see them again someday. When car doors slam outside of our house, her ears will perk up and she’ll gaze at the front door for just a while, and it makes my heart feel like it’s in a vice when she realizes that no one is coming through that door. But, sadly and predictably, because she’s so young, over time I have seen memories fade. She looks at that front door much less, and utters their names rarely. Although ideally, I’d love it if we could all be together, it seemed a blessing that her young age allows those mind snapshots of hers fade over time. We thought she was adjusting. That is until a few weeks ago…
I am afraid of the wind. I am not talking about that pesky kind of breeze that always seems to pop up when one is getting out of a pool or a dip in the lake. I am talking about howling, barreling, blow-me-down kind of wind. In the past, whenever we had a gale, whether connected to a storm or not, I would cower, I would cross my arms and hug myself tightly. I’d sigh loudly and ask my husband repeatedly to look outside to make sure that no tree branches had fallen (or worse) no trees were keeling over and heading towards our roof. Many times, during storms, I’d yell to the boys to get downstairs to the basement and stay far away from the windows. Huddled in the center of the room, ears perked for the crackling sound of pine trees splintering all over the neighborhood, I’d be in full on panic mode.
During these blustery moments, I wasn’t the only one participating in the frenzy fest. Nope. My boys would join me, mimicking the same emotions that dear old mama was displaying. And why not? I was the parent in these moments. I was supposed to be reassuring, the soothing voice of safety. But instead, I was too wrapped up in my own phobic feelings to recognize that I was creating in my children the very same neuroses by not concealing my anxiety. To this day (although neither would admit it) my children are not too fond of summer storms or blustery fall days, and the fault lies purely with their mom.
Unfortunately, my fear of wind wasn’t the only emotion I put on full display for my children to witness. I guess you could say I was a “wear your heart on your sleeve” kind of girl. But there were repercussion for being an emotional wreck in front of those boys. The worst I think was the fact that they didn’t trust my reactions to strife, and so they hid, shielded me from things that I just might “freak out” about. But there were many other effects as well. Since I wasn’t one who hid her frustrations, fears, anger, depression, those boys felt very entitled to express the same kinds of things…and they did it in a much more forceful manner. To put it simply, my neuroses turned into their neuroses. Knowing that…knowing full well that many of their fears, reactions and ways of looking at life came from my out loud living, I decided to try very hard to never place that burden on Ila.
I got my very first test of that this past week. Our beloved dog, Vixen, passed away this week, and oh how it hurt. Her kindness and unconditional love was a staple in this house of upheaval. The cavern of emptiness her absence left in the pit of my soul was unbearable. I wanted to curl up into a little ball and cry rivers of tears until my sorrow was drowned. But then I thought of Ila. In her short two years, she has experienced an inordinate amount of love loss. Without going into too much detail, familial staples have just disappeared, and in her little mind they’ve disappeared without explanation. And bless her soul, she’s adjusted each time, trying to wrap her developing mind around the deep and wounding feeling of missing someone…of missing lots of someones. And so, instead of wallowing in my own emotional pain, I decided to be a parent. Concerned that the dog’s disappearance would be another blow to her life’s view of loving and losing, I put on my stiffest upper lip and pretended for her that everything was ok in our little world on Reservoir Dr.
Has she asked about Vixen’s whereabouts? Yes, just today she looked at me and said, “Doggie?” and although I wanted to wrap my arms around her and ask if she missed her, although I wanted to cry and expose the throbbing chasm of heartache, I knew…hindsight reminded me…that my emotion would soon become hers. So instead, I smiled (yes perhaps it was a forlorn smile, but a smile no less) and I said to her, “Oh Ila, the dog went to heaven where she won’t be sick anymore. Isn’t that wonderful? No more boo boos for Vixy!”
“No more boo boos?” She said hopefully.
“No no more boo boos.” And for a moment I thought that I saw a gray cloud streak across that angelic face. But whatever it was, it passed as quickly as it came. She nodded her head as if she understood and then told me that she had to go potty. I laughed…a good and healing laugh, and as I took her hand to walk down the hall towards the bathroom, Ila laughed too.
Logan has lived in Glens Falls, NY all her life. By day, she is an educator with 20 years experience, a mom to Aidan and Gannan, her two teenage boys, a new mommy to a beautiful daughter, Ila, and wife to the love of her life, Jeffrey. By night, weekends and any spare time she can find, Logan writes. She loves memoir and also adores writing essays about the challenges of parenthood. This year she started a parenting blog called A Muddled Mother, an honest place where mothers aren’t afraid to speak of the complications and difficulties that we all inevitably experience. Logan has been published in various children’s and parenting magazines including Today’s Motherhood, Eye on Education, Faces, and Appleseed. Logan’s previous column for Hilltown Families, Snakes and Snails: Teenage Boys Talesran bi-monthly from June 2010-Feb. 2011, sharing stories of her first time around as a parent of two teenage boys. — Check out Hindsight Parenting: Raising Kids the Second Time Around every first and third Tuesday of the month.
“Hindsight’s 20/20.” You’ve heard of this popular phrase. How many of us—if we knew then what we know now– would do so many things differently as parents? It seems that our children sometimes have to suffer through parents who are winging it; newbie archers of sorts– learning as we go–flinging arrows in the air and rarely hitting a bull’s-eye. As problems occur, we ask professionals for advice, listen on the edges of our seats to Dr. Phil, and devour parenting books for answers. Still, we get things wrong–a lot, and our mistakes and mishaps only become more apparent the older our children get. How many parents wish they could have several hundred “do-overs” in order to use the wisdom we all inevitably gather after years of parenting? Alas chances for do-overs are almost impossibilities.
Did you notice I said, ‘almost’ back there? Yes, a do-over is ALMOST an impossibility. I say ‘almost’ because for reasons unknown some wacky universal plan allowed me a second chance after 17 years to do this mom thing again. Okay, okay so it isn’t a COMPLETE re-do. I mean my 15 year old and 18 year old sons didn’t magically “Benjamin Button-it” and turn into infants again. However the arrival of my daughter and a diagnosis of a life threatening heart condition two years ago afforded me a chance to look back upon and learn from my near two decades of parenting experiences (or I should say parenting blunders). After wandering through those cobwebby memories, some painful, some joyous, others embarrassing and downright shameful, I’ve resolved to use the wisdom gathered on my first go-round as mama in order to do a better job on my second go-round. On this leg of my mommy journey, hindsight will be my guide.
I am so excited about this new column because I am writing it as a “new” parent of a daughter who has the unique perspective of “been there, done that,” (having the infinite wisdom that is inevitably gathered while parenting for two decades.) Hopefully you will join me and be able to learn from my previous parenting highs and lows–just as I am–by sifting through the many stories I share of the mishaps, misjudgments and course corrections I made on my first try at being mom in order to gather needed advice in order to mother my daughter differently. I am hoping that my stories will help all parents tap into their innate parenting wisdom via my cautionary tales about situations that most parents need to navigate with their children. I can’t wait to share with you the wisdom gleaned from my parenting experience. Most of all, I am hoping that you all can relish in the fact that you are not the only ones who feel like they don’t know what they are doing when it comes to parenting. In this column my hindsight will allow me to reminisce about my muddled intentions and misguided decisions and will hopefully serve as valuable examples to help us all be the best parents we can be.
Logan has lived in Glens Falls, NY all her life. By day, she is an educator with 20 years experience, a mom to Aidan and Gannan, her two teenage boys, a new mommy to a beautiful daughter, Ila, and wife to the love of her life, Jeffrey. By night, weekends and any spare time she can find, Logan writes. She loves memoir and also adores writing essays about the challenges of parenthood. This year she started a parenting blog called A Muddled Mother, an honest place where mothers aren’t afraid to speak of the complications and difficulties that we all inevitably experience. Logan has been published in various children’s and parenting magazines including Today’s Motherhood, Eye on Education, Faces, and Appleseed. Logan’s previous column for Hilltown Families, Snakes and Snails: Teenage Boys Talesran bi-monthly from June 2010-Feb. 2011, sharing stories of her first time around as a parent of two teenage boys. — Check out Hindsight Parenting: Raising Kids the Second Time Around every first and third Tuesday of the month.
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I used to hate summer. You heard me. H.A.T.E. While most educators count down the days until the end of the school year, my dread grows the closer the end of June comes. No, no…I have no aversion to heat, (at least not the kind of heat we get here in upstate NY. Now Florida’s heat…blech!). No, no it isn’t that it is because it is skimpy clothes and bathing suit season. Although, never being svelte and swarthy has always made me keep a cover up on at the beach, and really I have never been one for shorts. However my intense dislike for summer really never was about any of that. It was all about the fact that for two and a half months, I’d be in charge of entertaining my children (All right…instead of judging, could I at least get props that I admit fully to feeling that way?)…
Logan Fisher
I was a big ol’ chicken this week. I mean a shakin-in-my-boots-anxiety-ridden-big-ol’-BAWK-BAWK-chicken. 
So we have a kitten. Yes…these words I never thought I would utter ever…EVER in my lifetime. But, here I am saying them… “We have a kitten.” His name is Jete, short for Jeter, the only Yankee my daughter Ila knows. Naming a cat Jete should also give you an idea of who was behind the idea of getting the kitten…that would be daddy.
The countdown to my daughter Ila’s first dance class was a flurry of activity. There was of course the research it took to find the exact right creative movement class. Next we had to find the perfect ballet slippers, the tights, and the leotard. These coveted clothing items sat on the shelf in her room and she’d pat them each night before bed. Each afternoon, even though she knew the answer, she’d ask slyly if she could put on her leotard and slippers, but they remained on the shelf. I will admit that this day…a day of dancing…(DANCING!) was providing me with a giddiness that I hadn’t felt in a long while. I mean, I enjoyed baseball, football, basketball and track with my boys, but DANCING; THIS was in MY wheel house. And so perhaps my need for everything to be “perfect” was what caused me to grumble on the eve of her premiere that I had forgotten to get a cute little ballet skirt to go over those leotards and tights.
I am afraid of the wind. I am not talking about that pesky kind of breeze that always seems to pop up when one is getting out of a pool or a dip in the lake. I am talking about howling, barreling, blow-me-down kind of wind. In the past, whenever we had a gale, whether connected to a storm or not, I would cower, I would cross my arms and hug myself tightly. I’d sigh loudly and ask my husband repeatedly to look outside to make sure that no tree branches had fallen (or worse) no trees were keeling over and heading towards our roof. Many times, during storms, I’d yell to the boys to get downstairs to the basement and stay far away from the windows. Huddled in the center of the room, ears perked for the crackling sound of pine trees splintering all over the neighborhood, I’d be in full on panic mode.
