Happy anniversary to us! No adorable pictures because our first born babies aren’t awake yet to help me undo whatever muck-up I did to our scanner the last time I used it. The kids these days say, “Pics or it didn’t happen!” but I know for sure these last 15 years did happen. They happened and they rocked so hard! So hard that my body and soul are pretty much ruined. But we both still have our sense of humor! Good damn thing. The next 15 years are going to be even more rockin’, in part because our kids can wipe their own butts now and we can sit around and reminisce about butt-wiping and pretend that we miss those days. And then we can laugh and laugh because, while those days are lovely to think about, we both know that those were some deep trenches we were in and we’re lucky we got out alive. I’m glad to share those memories with you. I’m glad to have this family we created together. I’m glad the five of us can sit on the couch and watch Conan together. I’m glad you’re my best friend. I’m glad I’m the mother of most of your children. I’m just plain glad to have you in my life as my husband and father of most of my children.

The next 15 years are going to fly by, I know. And there will be brand-new trenches as we watch our kids navigate adulthood and we’ll mournfully wish, for their sake, that they were babies again. For now, though, I know how lucky we are to be in this moment right here. We have the best of everything in this little family.

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I know this interview really has nothing to do with me, but I just want to tell you I thought it would be a great opportunity and lots of fun, but I was extremely nervous and actually wanted to back out a million times. The only reason I did it was so I could be an example to my kids. I am not one of those parents who has concrete goals for her children. All I want is for them to know themselves (so much good in life comes from just that one thing) and I want them to do things that challenge them. So I told them how scared I was and I told them I didn’t want to do it because I was so nervous, but that I was going to do it anyway because I knew it would be fun if I could just get past it. In the days leading up to the interview, the kids gave me encouragement and tips on chatting up celebrities. Lena suggested that I ask Katie and Kathryn what they like to do in their spare time. She said, “Celebrities like it when you ask about their real life instead of just their work,” which is a tip she learned when she met her very favorite voice actor at an anime conference a couple of months ago. I didn’t have a chance to ask that, but maybe next time.
P.S. Mom, my bit starts at about 17:50-something.

There was one particular conference conversation that devolved into defensiveness on both sides and I’ve been thinking about that for days now. For the sake of brevity, let’s just say that it boiled down to one person saying, “I’d like my child to take his dirty oatmeal bowl to the kitchen instead of leaving it in the living room,” and the other side saying, “But that’s your need, not his so if it’s important to you, you take it to the kitchen.” What does that have to do with unschooling, you ask? Don’t ask. Just go with it. Don’t worry about it unless you are an unschooler. And if you are, join a yahoo group and ask them. It will be fun, I promise. Anyway…

One thing led to another and there was shouting. It wasn’t pretty. I can’t speak for the other people, but I know that my defensiveness can be attributed to my own baggage. Those two sentences up there are rife with subtext, depending on the baggage each listener carries. When some people hear, “That’s your need, you can take care of it,” they interpret that as, “The precious baby children never, ever, ever have to help clean up anything. Ever! And you’re a big fat meanie for telling them to.” As a recovering doormat, I have all kinds of that baggage for sure. When I hear that, I imagine scenarios in which I am called upon to do everything all the time with no option for anyone else in the family to pitch in. I look even more haggard than usual in those imaginary scenes. You guys, I can’t afford to look more haggard. For real.

On the flip side, when somebody in the audience at an unschooling conference says, “I think my child can clean up after himself,” some people interpret that as, “I think it’s okay if I scream at my child in order to get him to clean up his stupid crap that’s spread from one end of the house to the other.” I have maybe a carry-on size piece of that baggage, too. I imagine all sorts of scenarios with a shrew-like parent barking orders and belittling the kid. In those scenarios, I’m the wide-eyed little kid and I was a super cute little kid so those imaginary scenes are especially heartbreaking.

I know for sure that my sizable baggage collection and my knee-jerk defensiveness really don’t allow me to see the middle ground that might be there in both of those instances.

Maya (6) gave me a perfect example to show me where our middle ground is. She wanted some hot chocolate and she wanted to drink it in the living room. I said, “Sure, just bring your mug to the kitchen when you’re done.” A half hour later Maya was off doing something else in the kitchen and I walked through the living room on my way to the kitchen and I saw the half-empty hot chocolate mug on the coffee table. Here is where the middle ground came in. I had a choice. I could call Maya back out to the living room and say, “Young lady, I thought I told you to take care of this mug,” or I could just take it with me on my way out to the kitchen and not say anything. I did the latter and when she saw me bringing her mug to the kitchen she said, “Oops! I forgot!” and I said, “No big whoop, I was coming out here anyway,” with a smile and we both moved on because it’s not a big deal if my kid forgets to take her mug to the kitchen when she’s done with it. If I had been in the living room with her when she got up to go to the kitchen, I might have breezily said, “Grab your mug, Sweetie,” and she would have done it without a second thought. No big deal.

The situation playing out in just that way is what I strive for. Cleaning up is not a big deal. I didn’t take it as a personal attack that she didn’t pick up her mug. It had nothing to do with me. I didn’t need to shame her for forgetting and it’s not just because of her age. I don’t want to emotionally manipulate any of the members of my family in order to get them to do something for me. I don’t want to withhold affection until they do whatever I ask them to do. I also don’t want to just never ask them to do something like take care of their mug because it’s no big deal. It’s a big picture thing, not a nit-picking, point by point, make sure the scales are always balanced kind of thing.

I asked her to take it to the kitchen, knowing she would likely forget just like I sometimes forget my own mug because I get distracted by something. No big deal. Why did I say something, knowing she would likely forget about it? The same reason I say, “That’s a flower,” to a baby who can’t say “flower.” It’s part of the language of our family and it’s a skill that will be picked up and used and then put away and not used from time to time. Because cleaning up is no big deal and forgetting to clean up is also no big deal. This is not setting her up for failure, because I don’t consider forgetting to take care of a mug a  failure. We don’t treat it that way, so it’s not.

And now a fun thing from Maya. “The jaguar is stalking the hot dog.”

She likes to cut out pictures and make them do stuff together. This is what it looks like when she’s done:

And later I say, “Pick up the pictures that you want to save because I’m putting the scraps in the recyclables,” and she sorts them out and I scoop up the scraps and then she plays with the pictures again and it’s no big deal.

Dos, a beer, a Mexican beer

Ray, the guy who buys me beer

Me, the guy Ray buys beer for

Far, a long way to the bar

So, I think I’ll have a beer

La, A la-la-lots of beer

Tea, No thanks, I’ll have a beer

Or something like that. I’m not clear on the details, but it’s much more entertaining (and, frankly, it makes more sense) than that other song. Until you hear your 10 year old singing it. To be fair, I didn’t set out to teach them the song. When Maya asked about “Do-Re-Mi,” we were in the car and after singing that, I giggled. I said to Bryan, “Remember that beer song?” and then we both giggled and Lena (I think it was Lena, though it could have been Liberty. It’s hard to keep these things straight. It was a 10-year-old girl hollering from the backseat) asked, “How does the beer song go, Mummy?” And, at first, I said, “Well, Precious, beer songs are only for those 21 and older. I’ll not sully  your soul by singing it. Merely hearing the song might make you want to drink a-la-la-lots of beer.”* To which Lena (or Liberty) replied, “Oh, thank you, Mummy. Thank you for always keeping me pure.”

But then I sang it anyway because it’s funny.

This is my Feckless Friday post. You know you want to play along.

*What do you mean “that doesn’t sound like something you’d say”? You don’t know me!**

**Fine, none of that ever happened. I just sang it right away. FINE!

Dear Doormats and Doormat Users,

Let Jon Gosselin’s story be a lesson to you: The way your relationship works right now will not last forever. Doormat, someday you will realize that you are a fully-formed person with your very own thoughts, needs, opinions, likes, and dislikes, and if your mate is used to wiping her feet on you, she will have a hard time with this realization and, if you don’t both go to therapy, you (the brand-new fully-formed person) will back down from communicating your brand-new needs and act out in unhealthy ways. Even if your opinions are wrong, it’s ok to have them. For example, say you’re a 32-year-old man and you have the opinion that diamond earrings in both ears looks good. That would be a wrong opinion, but go ahead and rock those earrings, no matter what. They’re not hurting anybody and your wife could just do everyone a favor and not tell you you look stupid constantly because, guess what, they are your stupid earrings and it’s your stupid head. And maybe you would have grown out of it by the time you were, oh, around 22 if you had the wherewithal to have your own opinions about earrings back then instead of just changing yourself all up in order to fit the “love” of your life’s ideas of what’s good and what’s not.

And Doormat Users, when your Doormat comes to you and starts having these opinions and whatever, just shut the ef up ok? If you’re having a super hard time with all of the human-like behavior that your Doormat is suddenly exhibiting, you best get your butt to therapy.

And Doormat, if your User is having a hard time with your human-like behavior and you feel like throwing your hands in the air in disgust and just shutting down again and acting out in childish ways, you best get your butt to therapy. Because, guess what, I know you think you’re in love with your rebound girl and everything, but you’re not. Anyone would seem awesome after what you were dealing with before, but if your marriage is can’t be saved, what you really need is time alone. Figure out who you really are. Maybe you don’t even think diamond earrings in both ears is a great idea, but your brand-new awesome “love” of your life does and it feels good to do what she wants you to do right now because, well, it feels sooooo good and she’s not shrieking at you in the Wal-Mart. But that’s still pretty Doormatty behavior, and we all know where that will lead. It might take 15 years, but it will lead to the same place. Let’s take some time and learn some lessons, shall we? Just because your marriage is over, doesn’t mean you’re done with therapy.

Sincerely,

Abby Aldrich
Daughter of a Doormat and Doormat User
Model of Qualities of Both for More Than 30 Years
Advocate for Change
Advocate for Acceptance of Change
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I’m only slightly embarrassed to admit that Bryan and I watched Jon Gosselin’s interview with Chris Cumo on ABC. We recorded it. And we watched it. On purpose. I’m not interested in the whole he said/she said thing. I’m not interested in his current relationship(s), I’m not interested in how he feels about Kate now or how he felt back then. I wanted to know if he’s been to therapy. I wanted to know if he realizes how he got to the point where he is now. He said he’s been to therapy, but Kate hasn’t, which I totally believe. But I don’t get the feeling that he understands how his personality also contributed to this. Sure, Kate’s a shrew, but there’s a reason she chose somebody like Jon. If Jon had been an actual person, maybe they never would have been together. But he wasn’t. He was clay in Kate’s hands and he “loved” her so he changed for her. And what we’re seeing now? That’s what always happens in these types of situations.

And, of course, I must bring it all back around to parenting. Lena and Liberty are naturally nice and lovely and they’ll do whatever you say and it’s very easy to take advantage of them. We have had to fight really hard to teach them to stand up for themselves even against us. They’re 10 now, and they’re getting better at it. But, in our society, we seem to value niceness above all else and that’s not right. Look where niceness got Jon Gosselin. When my kids and I are standing in line at the grocery store and they’re reading the headlines, I use Jon as an example to Lena and Liberty. I tell them that this is all happening because he didn’t know himself and he didn’t love himself enough to actually be himself in the beginning of his relationship with Kate. No relationship is worth just being a shell of a person.

Now, Maya seems more split down the middle of Jon and Kate, depending on lots of things. If she were a little bit older, I might use Kate as an example and tell her that this is all happening because of the Jon thing, but also because Kate doesn’t understand the value of being in a relationship with somebody who is more than a shell. I don’t know. I think it’s easier to teach a young Kate to lay off than it is to teach a young Jon to stand up for himself. A touch of, “Kid, you better chill because your friend said ‘no’ and no means no,” is easier to teach than, “It’s ok to say no, if you want to say no. If so-and-so is sad because you said no, that’s ok. It’s ok if they’re sad, you are not responsible for their feelings. You’ll be sad if you say yes when you really want to say no. Don’t your feelings count? If your friend is a true friend, they’ll be sad but they’ll see that it’s ok for you to not do it and you can still be friends. If they don’t understand that, then it’s not worth sacrificing your comfort for theirs. And maybe they won’t understand at first, but they’ll eventually understand, blah, blah, blah.” Ugh, that’s a lot of words and, actually, there are more words that go to that speech that we’ve been using for the past 6 or so years over and over and in a million different situations, but if it means they learn to not be a Jon Gosselin, then I’ll keep repeating it.

P.S. Jon, you can use my above speech on Cara from time to time. That kid is heading for Ultimate Doormat status and it really breaks my heart when you talk about how much she loves sports. Maybe she does, but maybe she’s also learned that that’s what you love and you are her very first love and she sees how your eyes light up when you talk about how she loves sports and how good she is at everything. And she sees you roll your eyes when you talk about how Mady is just the opposite. Just think about it. You never know. I’m just sayin’.

P.P.S. Mady sees your eyes light up when you talk about Cara’s interests, and she sees you roll your eyes when you talk about hers. I’m just sayin’.

I don’t like to do the stupid notifying and I guarantee the school district doesn’t like to have to read and respond to all of the notifications. It takes time and money and I’m strapped for time and money and I know the poor saps at the office of Pupil Outreach or whatever are strapped for time and money, too. I know they are because it’s on the news all the time. Lame.

We’re supposed notify within 2 weeks of the start of the school year and I have forgotten about it until late August every single year until this year. Well, technically, I haven’t even notified yet, but the assessments are done. They’ve been done since May. I’ve just been procrastinating on the bit about writing the how-I-plan-to-teach-5th-and-1st-grade stuff. I don’t like to do that. I suddenly get very Ron Paul and I’m all “They’s my babies and I’ll do what I wants with ‘em!” Which, of course, is the stereotype that they’re trying to combat by making us do this kind of junk. This year, I just want to write, “I’m fixin’ ta let the young ‘uns lookit the internit and I’ll haul ‘em to the liberry every once in a while, too, iff’n they finish they chores on time,” and see what happens.

The thing is, we can say we’re going to do anything. ANYTHING. And then we don’t have to prove that we did any of it. See why it’s a silly system? I think the kids might have learned more in Michigan when I wasn’t bitter and didn’t have an unnatural urge to not do what I said I was going to do on the notification. So there, Laws! I think I get this attitude from Maya. My children have all taught me wonderful, precious things like how to love and be loved and how to annoy and be annoyed and whatnot. Maya (and maybe South Park) has taught me all about disdain for authority. Last night, she asked me to read the “How to Go Green-and make every day Earth Day!” tips out of the back of one of her lib’ral learnin’ books. After I rattled off the list of 7 tips she said, “Well, they’re not the boss of us.” And I said, “You’re right, honey, nobody’s the boss of us. Let’s go light some garbage on fire!” She wrapped her little arms around my neck and said, “I love you, Mommy.” Truly a precious moment.

(Cue mature motherly voice) I will notify today (or maybe by the end of the month, we’ll see), but the notification will be incomplete because true learning True Learning happens in those moments like I had with Maya last night. We can’t possibly plan those organic “teachable moments” which will stay with a child throughout her lifetime. So suck it, Ohio, because you’re not the boss of me.

This picture is a pretty good indicator of how Maya is all the time. Her mouth never closes and she’s always moving or posing. If she were my firstborn, I would have ruined that by now. She’s one of those self-motivated learners that I used to dream about before I had actual kids and only ever had dream kids. If Maya were my firstborn I would have taken her conventional, easily measurable learning style and I would have made it my thing and she would probably be having migraines at the sight of pencils by now. It happens. But it’s easy to just let the third child be. The first child (or set of children, as the case may be) does all the hard work, teaching us what’s really important and how everything all comes out in the wash. Nice of them. Maya can thank Lena and Liberty. They really had to work hard to show me everything will always be ok.

Lena and Liberty are unconventional learners and I used to panic about silly things at least quarterly until about 2 years ago. When it’s not easy for me (and The Entire World) to point to progress and measure “success” with grades and honor rolls, it’s hard to relax. At first. We have all of this hope (and fear) and all of this expectation (and fear). Academics can be measured, so it’s easy to feel like they’re the most important thing. But by the time the 3rd kid is here, we understand that these things all come out in the wash for the unschooly as well as for the schooly. It’s the kid’s life that’s the important thing. And we understand that she doesn’t need us to drive her and guide her as if her future depends on it because her future doesn’t actually depend on it. She has her own drive and we’re just there to supply the stuff for her that goes along with her particular brand of drive. Her future really only depends on knowing who she is and what she wants and knowing how to get it. Really. Besides, even the super-smartest child eventually turns into an average kid when all the other kids’ learning starts coming out in the wash so what’s the point of getting their identity all wrapped up in being the smartest when most everybody catches up eventually? Then they have to be all anorexic or drunk or something in order to stand out and that’s no fun for anybody. Nobody wants a drunk 7 year old on their hands. Then you’re in a pickle. Especially if the 7 year old was an early reader or math genius, then they really know about proof and alcohol content and stuff. Then where does all that learning get them? In the gutter! And then on a reality show with Dr. Drew or something. So sad.

I like to write. I find it healing and I find it extra healing when I have an audience who says in words or just by reading my posts, “You’re not alone.” I find it super extra healing when someone in the audience says, “Your writing has helped me.” I don’t write about secrets. In fact, I haven’t written about things that aren’t well-known to friends, family, and even acquaintances. There isn’t anyone who knew my family who doesn’t know our struggles.

Is it selfish to be so concerned with my mental health that I would put my family’s pain on my blog? Perhaps. But my mental health is so important to me because it directly affects my children and my husband. My kids are my favorite people. My husband is my best friend. I owe it to them to deal with my life in the best way I know how. If my mental health is poor, my children have a poor life and my marriage sucks. If my mental health is good, my children have a good life and my marriage is good. It’s a simple equation.

I use sarcasm and humor to make light of the tough parts of my life, but everybody knows that right behind humor, there’s pain. I make light of the issues I’ve had with  my parents and my grandmother in order to bring them to light so I won’t be stuck in the darkness of emotional paralysis and denial. It’s denial that makes it impossible to heal. It’s denial that causes our health problems. It’s denial that causes us to repeat these cycles. We all love our children and it’s a basic biological desire to want them to have a better life than we had. I’ve had a better life than both of my parents and I know that the experiences I complain about don’t even scratch the surface of what they had to deal with. Where my mom and dad had practically insurmountable mountains to climb, I only have a few small hills. Still, they’re my hills and sometimes they’re steep. I walk those hills and I get blisters and sometimes it feels like my canteen is empty and my tongue is swollen with thirst and the pain is too much and I want to stop. I will always struggle with the habits that come along with experience and DNA. But awareness is the best tool I have.  Awareness of my failings, both inherited and learned, can only serve to bring about healing. Awareness is my Blister-Block and the fresh cool water that fills my canteen. Of course there will be issues that I’m not aware of, brand-new mistakes that my children will have to deal with. Of course. And then they’ll work it out on their own blogs or on a talk show or in a magazine or a book and it will all be fine because they won’t be in denial and they won’t repeat my mistakes when they have their own kids.

My parents know that it’s sometimes hard to be their daughter. They don’t deny that, but they also have a sense of humor. They have a sense of understanding. They know how important it is to make sense of my story in my own way so I can give my kids a better story. They’re not going to disown me. They might cringe at some of the things I write, but they’re not going to throw a  fit and demand that I take this pain and tuck it away so we can watch in horror as it oozes out of me in destructive ways when I’m parenting or when I’m trying to be a decent wife.

I now have the distinct honor of being the first of my generation to be disowned by a small minority of my mother’s generation because of things I wrote on my blog. I’ve totally been dooced, family style. I honestly thought the “You’re out of the family!” rhetoric would have been buried with my grandmother, but that shit don’t die unless you kill it and you can’t kill it if you act like it’s not there, which brings me to my oft-repeated bottom line: It helps me to write about it. And what helps me,  helps my kids and helps my marriage. And that, my friends, is priceless.

Yes, we’re going to Chesaning on Thursday for my grandmother’s “funeral.” We’ll be there for less than 24 hours, but we’ll be able to see my mom (she moved to West Virginia to be with my brother for a while so we didn’t see her during our last visit) and my old brother and his young family. (FYI, these are 2 of my brother’s sons reviewing Transformers: Energon at Kids Know Stuff). How could we resist a chance to squeeze those cheeks? We can’t.

So, I know you can’t tell it by that obituary link up there, but my grandmother had 8 kids and around 20 grandchildren and 14? great-grandchildren. And she leaves a legacy of verbal and physical abuse from which even my generation is still trying to recover (well, maybe you can tell that part from the teeny obit). My mom (and probably all of her siblings) did better than Grandma, and I hope my generation is improving on the last, and I hope the next generation does better still. Her death is strange for me. Only a few of her kids and even less of her grandkids were still visiting her on a regular basis. The rest of us giving up in favor of keeping our own mental health intact.

When I was around 19-22 or so, I visited her endlessly hoping for insight and change. And probably approval. That was the height of my Christianity and I felt Jesus would give me the strength and Jesus could help me love her and in turn help her love me. Even Jesus’ blood isn’t that magical.

I can’t tell you how many times I witnessed her tell my mother in scary seriousness that she wished my mom and every one of her “goddamn kids” were never born. I can’t tell you how many times I visited her only to leave feeling like my soul had been sucked into a black hole, beaten and torn apart, and then spat out in pieces with a smirk.  One very brief minute everything was lovely and the next hundred years of minutes she was tearing me or somebody I loved apart with a verbal attack that would continue even as I walked out the door in tears. I’m sure there was some kind of mental imbalance, but it’s hard to feel sorry. There are so many specific examples I’d like to share, but they’re all mean. I don’t have a single good memory of her except that she smelled of peppermint gum, and the fact that she was a school bus driver who would take her bus load of kids to the A&W on the last day of school for a special treat.

I rode her bus briefly in elementary school and I was in on one of the end-of-the-year A&W trips. Even at such a young age, I had a really hard time reconciling this woman who I knew to be completely mean, with this woman who was so loving to strangers.  As an adult, I would point to the beloved-bus-driver argument as the seed of hope that was the impetus for my many visits with her.  Anyway, I thought her death wouldn’t affect me at all, but it has of course. Just the fact that she had all of this family and managed to alienate and/or terrify the lot of us. It’s too much to go into right now, I’m afraid. Suffice it to say that I was going to create a post around this picture, taken when I was out of the house for 2 measly hours:

The post was going to be all “Jesus H. Christ, I was with her all day and she had to sleep with our wedding picture because I left for 2 hours in the evening! Come on! The neediness is exhausting.” And now I look at that picture and cry because I know I don’t meet her needs. I know I don’t try hard enough. And I have my doubts as to whether I have it in me to do better.

If my grandma took my sarcasm with her to the grave, I’m going to be pissed.