The big reveal
05 January 2011 03:25 PM Categories: Childhood hangover | The kid
How much should we tell our children about our own childhoods? I don’t mean the happy stories, the toys and TV shows, the long afternoons in the sun. I’m talking about the bad ones, the dark side of their grandparents, the shouts and thwacks and the nights we went to bed without any dinner.
The Nana my son knows is a patient and kind 60-year-old. This was not the mother I grew up with. It usually works this way, thank goodness. Grandparents do not often revisit their parenting crimes on their grandchildren. The stakes are lower. The grandparents are older. They’ve let go a bit.
Still. I have the stories. When I tell them, I do it with as little anger as possible, though sometimes they come out in a you-have-no-idea-how-lucky-you-are-kid mode and afterwards I feel cheap, like I’ve used my history the wrong way. Not surprisingly, given my dinner table memories, these conversations come up most often at mealtimes, treacherous territory for me. You are unhappy with the food I prepare: well, when I was a kid, mealtimes were horrible. First we lived with a guy who made me stand at the table. Later I had a stepfather who berated me or simply refused to talk until I left the table. Then Kevin came along and my mother stopped eating with me altogether, left me food on a plate while she went down the street to his house. We’re not even getting into the spinach soufflés, the bitter mugs of hot carob, the flattened, honey-sweetened cookies, the sugarless world my mother left behind when Kevin appeared. No, we’re not talking about food. We’re talking about family and how children learn to feel comfortable in the world.
Two nights ago, after we had successfully and calmly pushed through a dinner of whiny petulance, the boy and I started talking about fights. For him, fights are an ugly thing, to be avoided. Sure. I understand this, especially because fights with angry grownups can be frightening to the little guy. But, as I explained, fights are often necessary and there are ways of fighting that are more productive than others. People have disagreements. We get angry because we are human, because we can’t always get what we want, but if we learn to fight productively, we . . . get what we need? Well, not exactly. But there are definitely ways to disagree that are more functional than others.
At some point in this discussion, I got teary, because I remembered the childhood fights with my mother. They were frightening. Nasty. My mother threw food, glasses, a honey jar. I threw things back. We were cruel. There were no apologies when things calmed down. I’m glad not to remember too many specific details about those fights, so long ago, though I remember their later incarnations, the bad years when I was in Ohio and my mother was under great stress. Our phone conversations (always when I was at work) were so nasty that I would have to go to the ladies room afterwards to press away the tears and splash water on my face. It took me years (and a patient husband) to learn how to fight calmly, to try and trace my anger back to the source and understand that my point of view wasn’t the only one, that I didn't have to rip into someone when I was angry.
I told the kid about some of those early days, about how scary Nana was, because I can’t imagine hiding it. I wanted him to know parts of my story, in addition to explaining why I occasionally lose it, why the old ways return to me, though they return less and less. We talked about how Nana is a different person now. The woman he sees in pictures, with the long, straight seventies hair and bellbottoms, or in those wedding photos where she and my dad, nineteen and eighteen, look like embryonic versions of themselves, doesn’t exist anymore.
As he gets older, I’ll have to deal with the other stuff, too, the more complex issues of my later childhood. I recently found myself thinking that I didn’t matter as a parent, that whether I was here or someplace else would make no difference to him. The source of this thought is unclear. He and his dad have a wonderful, playful relationship that I am not totally a part of, but I understand that. What really struck me as I analyzed the thought was that at some point both of my parents must have been operating under the (unacknowledged) assumption that they did not matter to me.
They were wrong.
The idea that I would think the same thing about my own importance to my son was frightening, for what it says about my current state of mind and for what it would make me capable of. Clearly I have more to work out, for his sake and for mine.
So I'll keep on writing, put "find a new therapist" on my to-do list, and remind myself that I am important, in small and big ways, in my son's life. I'll keep on telling him the truth about my life, when it seems appropriate, while letting him know that people change and grow, that nothing is static.
I've been a writing fiend. Why? I don't know. I can't help myself. If you are still reading this blog, thank you. If you've been reading for a long time, then some of this may be familiar, a return to deep themes.
The Nana my son knows is a patient and kind 60-year-old. This was not the mother I grew up with. It usually works this way, thank goodness. Grandparents do not often revisit their parenting crimes on their grandchildren. The stakes are lower. The grandparents are older. They’ve let go a bit.
Still. I have the stories. When I tell them, I do it with as little anger as possible, though sometimes they come out in a you-have-no-idea-how-lucky-you-are-kid mode and afterwards I feel cheap, like I’ve used my history the wrong way. Not surprisingly, given my dinner table memories, these conversations come up most often at mealtimes, treacherous territory for me. You are unhappy with the food I prepare: well, when I was a kid, mealtimes were horrible. First we lived with a guy who made me stand at the table. Later I had a stepfather who berated me or simply refused to talk until I left the table. Then Kevin came along and my mother stopped eating with me altogether, left me food on a plate while she went down the street to his house. We’re not even getting into the spinach soufflés, the bitter mugs of hot carob, the flattened, honey-sweetened cookies, the sugarless world my mother left behind when Kevin appeared. No, we’re not talking about food. We’re talking about family and how children learn to feel comfortable in the world.
Two nights ago, after we had successfully and calmly pushed through a dinner of whiny petulance, the boy and I started talking about fights. For him, fights are an ugly thing, to be avoided. Sure. I understand this, especially because fights with angry grownups can be frightening to the little guy. But, as I explained, fights are often necessary and there are ways of fighting that are more productive than others. People have disagreements. We get angry because we are human, because we can’t always get what we want, but if we learn to fight productively, we . . . get what we need? Well, not exactly. But there are definitely ways to disagree that are more functional than others.
At some point in this discussion, I got teary, because I remembered the childhood fights with my mother. They were frightening. Nasty. My mother threw food, glasses, a honey jar. I threw things back. We were cruel. There were no apologies when things calmed down. I’m glad not to remember too many specific details about those fights, so long ago, though I remember their later incarnations, the bad years when I was in Ohio and my mother was under great stress. Our phone conversations (always when I was at work) were so nasty that I would have to go to the ladies room afterwards to press away the tears and splash water on my face. It took me years (and a patient husband) to learn how to fight calmly, to try and trace my anger back to the source and understand that my point of view wasn’t the only one, that I didn't have to rip into someone when I was angry.
I told the kid about some of those early days, about how scary Nana was, because I can’t imagine hiding it. I wanted him to know parts of my story, in addition to explaining why I occasionally lose it, why the old ways return to me, though they return less and less. We talked about how Nana is a different person now. The woman he sees in pictures, with the long, straight seventies hair and bellbottoms, or in those wedding photos where she and my dad, nineteen and eighteen, look like embryonic versions of themselves, doesn’t exist anymore.
As he gets older, I’ll have to deal with the other stuff, too, the more complex issues of my later childhood. I recently found myself thinking that I didn’t matter as a parent, that whether I was here or someplace else would make no difference to him. The source of this thought is unclear. He and his dad have a wonderful, playful relationship that I am not totally a part of, but I understand that. What really struck me as I analyzed the thought was that at some point both of my parents must have been operating under the (unacknowledged) assumption that they did not matter to me.
They were wrong.
The idea that I would think the same thing about my own importance to my son was frightening, for what it says about my current state of mind and for what it would make me capable of. Clearly I have more to work out, for his sake and for mine.
So I'll keep on writing, put "find a new therapist" on my to-do list, and remind myself that I am important, in small and big ways, in my son's life. I'll keep on telling him the truth about my life, when it seems appropriate, while letting him know that people change and grow, that nothing is static.
I've been a writing fiend. Why? I don't know. I can't help myself. If you are still reading this blog, thank you. If you've been reading for a long time, then some of this may be familiar, a return to deep themes.
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