My grandfather is my hero. We pulled up to his house and he hopped up, suitcase in hand with his pinned baseball cap on head, ready to drive from St George, Ut to Disneyland! The pins on his hat are from countries he's traveled to, his shirt is the one I gave him for Christmas, it says, "shut the front door!" It has figurative and literal relevance... He not only tells the kids to shut the front door ( as did my own father all my life, calling from whatever room in the house he happened to be in). But he also would never actually say, "shut the front door! as a euphemism for the implied swear pleading someone to stop talking, thus the irony. When he received the shirt at Christmas, he told me "It doesn't quite fit my personality." And yet, he wears it every time I visit.
In a crowded and noisy Carl's Junior, in Primm, en route to St. George, we hear a barely detectable, "Mmmmm." (on going, in intervals, as though someone is really enjoying their food)
Char's innocent insights: "is there a cow in here?" And then in a projected voice:
"Whoever is saying mmmmmm raise your hand."
Charlotte's interpretation of a Disneyland ride: (A brilliant mixture of make-believe and horror)
Tinker bell tickles
You can only go in if you are a grandma
Fairies tickle your face
And you come out all dried up
Midnight (our Cat) looks like she has one side of her lip pulled up at times, Upon inspection there I find no injury or thorn. Stella: " that is her cowboy face, when she does that I say, "howdy partner." How come I didn't know about the cowboy face? Apparently the relationship Stella and Charlotte have with our animals goes a little further than my own.
Granddad : (after getting everyone's attention before we embark upon our journey to Disneyland) "Okay everybody, let's do a head count: 1,2,3,4,5,6.. Okay there are six of us, now I want you to check throughout the day and count how many there are of us. If there are seven that means there is one too many, then you will have to find out who that extra person is so we can get rid of him.."
Too mini pancakes
The drive home the girls played endlessly with stuffies and enjoyed every minute
of it. When we had two hours left of the drive Charlotte's response was, "Yes!!! Two more hours to play."
Bad mommy (bettie) pages:
I swung the pendulum from permissive to hostile mom bc I was too exhausted to stand my ground and then felt pushed to the edge when they refused to go to bed and threw fits over it
I said stupid things and made them sad
And I will explode if anyone recommends a parenting book, because I've read up, studied, researched for the majority of my life on classroom teaching and parenting, and could probably write my own effective child discipline and student management book with my background knowledge.
Exhaustion and emotional state, mix in financial stress, time deficit, and the unstable living arrangement of our broken family, and the background knowledge loses it's bang.
"Dysfunction, get it?, not functioning, we need to get to the roots of the problem, only they run meters deep and there are stones in the soil, and the word stone is a euphemism for boulder!!!!"
So I'm showing them how to be human
I give them my full presence on a daily basis which trumps housework
We process our thoughts and feelings about occurrences and interactions in regular debriefing of events as they occur, both positive and negative
I encourage them and we laugh together
They are my heart and soul and I tell them every time I see them
Still my moments of ineffective parenting pierce my soul and are intrinsic to being human
Mastery is not the absence of trial and turbulence, but our response to trial and turbulence
Relationships are reparable and failures, mistakes are life happening, it is the problem solving, conflict resolution, generosity of heart and ability to forgive that I aim to model consistently for my girls. Gratitude, service, and a general expansiveness that transcends us from the problematic "my life"
