A while back, I posted one of my favorite quotes, from George MacDonald:
The business of the Universe is to make such a fool of you that you will know yourself for one, and so begin to be wise.
Life is just full of humbling experiences; I was reminded of another one recently, from back when my older girls were small. . .
Both of my 'big girls' were very much 'doll-playing' girls when they were little, and Molly and I were mildly indulgent of their fondness. We would buy them new doll clothes, and stuff like that, and it was just a lot of fun to watch them playing. We tried to draw a line at Barbies - the uber-buxom fashionista just wasn't the image we wanted to plant in our daughters' brains - but it was mostly futile; 'forbidden fruit is the sweetest', as the saying goes. Once they discovered that some of their friends had Barbies, they would just ask to play at their houses all the time.
Once, we were at the spring carnival that our parish school holds every spring, and there was a sale of several donated items. One of the men in the parish had donated some really nice hand-made wooden items, including a doll cradle that was the perfect size for our girls' favorite dolls, so we bought it, and the girls liked it, and had a lot of fun with it.
Over the course of many months of use, one of the 'rockers' on the cradle broke off. It didn't quite render the cradle unusable, but it was more of a hassle. So I, in my young-paternal earnestness, undertook to repair the broken rocker.
I should note, at this point, that I am mildly handy - I've built a few bookshelves from scratch, and a few other items, as well - but I sometimes lack confidence, and will stew over a project, sometimes for a considerable amount of time, while I try to figure out the best way to accomplish the goal. And this was one of those. The rocker had broken off in a way that was going to be tricky to re-attach it, and I thought about it for several days, before I finally decided that I would 'screw it and glue it'. And so, broken cradle in arms, I headed down into my basement workshop to do my Heroic-Dad thing.
Well, such things are never quite as simple to execute, as what they were in your mind when you first thought them up. I had an immediate problem of how to securely hold the cradle, so as to drill a hole for the screws, and how to hold the broken piece in place against the cradle body, so that the holes in the two pieces would be aligned. I jerry-rigged a kind of constraint, but it wasn't as 'secure' as it should have been, and when I started drilling the hole, it wound up being at a bit of an angle, rather than straight into the wood. So that, once I glued the broken piece in place, and started screwing the pieces together, the wood kind-of exploded, and rather than a not-quite-as-good-as-it-ought-to-be doll cradle, I had a completely unusable doll cradle, along with a small pile of splinters.
I was stunned. And frustrated. Really, really frustrated. It would be one thing, if it were an aberration for one of my projects to go catastrophically awry, but I'd had a few of them, in the preceding months, where my efforts at doing-it-myself so as to save a repair bill had resulted in an unrepairable mess, and even greater expense than the repair would have been. So, all of my frustration, mixed with anger at my own incompetency, just sort-of spontaneously erupted.
I stood there, staring at the mess, and just yelled, loudly and deliberately, "SHI-I-I-IT!"
And the next thing I heard, from behind me, sitting on the basement stairs, where she'd been quietly watching me work, was 2F (who was 2-3 years old at the time), saying, in all sweetness and innocence -
"Why say 'shit', Daddy?"
Ever feel like you just wanted to crawl between the cracks in the basement wall? I mean, here I was, looking for all the world like Heroic Dad, doing amazing, mysterious things to fix her doll cradle, and then, Huh - Why Say Shit, Daddy? Busting the cradle didn't make me feel nearly so bad as my sweet little daughter busting me for a non-deleted expletive. . .
Actually, Molly told me later (a wife with a Child Development degree can come in handy, sometimes) that 2F had no idea what the word was - she was only relating to the (all-too-apparent) emotion with which it was uttered. Daddy is upset about something; I wonder what he's so upset about? And so, she was only asking, in all innocence, why I was upset, so as to utter the excrementary expletive. The word itself was only a marker for 'Daddy is upset'. Which made me feel a little less like a jerk. A little.
It was still the least bit embarrassing, though. But, like most of my most embarrassing moments, it makes for a funny story, given sufficient passage of time. . .
Showing posts with label 2F. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2F. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Monday, December 1, 2008
Caught In Between
I was noticing recently, in the ‘Labels’ column in my sidebar, that I’ve got posts labeled for each of my kids. . . except one. I’ve briefly mentioned, from time to time, my second daughter, 2F; but I’ve never devoted a post to her and her life. Which is a shame, because, at least so far, her life has been the most substantial of any of our ‘older’ kids (if perhaps not quite so ‘interesting’ as the others. . .)
From the very beginning, 2F seemed to have come into the world with the mission of teaching Molly and me that:
(a) each of our kids was an individual in her own right,
(b) not all of our kids would be compliant ‘pleasers’ like 1F, and
(c) there were limits to how, uh, ‘forcefully’ we could coerce our kids into obedience.
For that, we have come to be grateful, but gratitude was not always our first instinct.
I suppose that it is inevitable that second children will be parented at least partly in comparison to their first-born siblings. And that tendency is perhaps intensified when the two children are of the same sex. As I’ve said, 1F was a very compliant child, the type who, when we said “Jump” would ask, “How high?” 2F was much more inclined to say, “Why should I?” And “Because I said so” was not always as convincing an answer as Molly and I might have thought it should be.
2F’s stubbornness, combined with Molly’s and mine, and our immaturity as young parents, made for some fairly monumental contests of will. With 1F, whenever she opposed her will to ours, we could fairly easily ‘turn up the heat’ to get her to comply. With 2F, it didn’t work that way, ever. I vividly recall one such contest, when 2F was two or three, that we ‘turned up the heat’ to a level I was already uncomfortable with, and the realization came to me that this toddler girl had us stymied – the next level of ‘heat’ would cross a line into the realms of ‘abuse’ that I was unwilling to cross, and might put us into a danger zone with the law, as well. It was a very disorienting experience, for sure.
And so it went for virtually all of 2F’s young childhood, until roughly 7th grade. Molly and I took to telling her that, if she continued on the path she was going, sooner or later, she wouldn’t be dealing with her parents, she’d be dealing with the police; and the police didn’t love her like we did. And the day came (inevitably?) that she found herself dealing with the police. It was a small enough matter, but it did confirm for her that, indeed, the police simply didn’t care what became of her. So I suppose Molly and I got some credibility out of that.
I don’t know if that experience had a major impact on her life or not, but it roughly coincided with a turning point in her life. Somewhere around 7th/8th grade, it was like she rolled over in bed, and said to herself, “the approach I’ve been taking isn’t working so well; maybe I’ll try it their way, and see if that goes any better.” And really, from that time on, she’s been our most solid, responsible kid.
2F was 16 when 3M started running away from home (and generally demonstrating to us that such willfulness as 2F had shown us in her childhood years had been, well, child’s play). And she was 17 when 1F took up with F-bomb. And for a few years after that, our family was just traumatized. And 2F, being between the two ‘troubled kids’, kinda got lost in the trauma.
She finished high school and went to college, and got a degree in Child Development (following in Molly’s footsteps). She has made us proud in so many ways – she recently returned from a year-and-a-half of mission work in Detroit, during which she lived in the middle of one of the poorest, nastiest ‘inner cities’ in America, and brought God’s love to the people there in a multitude of ways.
2F is an incredibly kind, sensitive young woman, and admirable in a multitude of ways. Just as people used to congratulate us for having raised 1F, nowadays they say similar things to us about 2F. And she finds that ‘role reversal’ the least bit ironic.
The thing is, her childhood has left its scars on her psyche. She was deeply wounded by the severity of our learning-on-the-job young parenting, and by the way she was constantly overshadowed by her ‘perfect’ older sister (and she knew all along, when Molly and I couldn’t bring ourselves to see, what a façade the ‘perfection’ was). Even as she has made us busting-our-buttons proud, she has struggled with her relationship with us. In the last few months, we’ve been able to start bringing some healing to our relationship. By God’s mercy.
I’ve said, from time to time, that life turns out to be more heart-breaking than we planned on. And there is something heart-breaking about our inability to appreciate 2F for who she was all along, to give her the love she needed on her own behalf, and where that’s brought us in the meantime, in terms of psychic wounds and painful relationships.
But God is merciful. He “restores to us the years the locust has eaten,” (ref. Joel 2:25) and “gives us a hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11). So, we can look forward to that. . .
From the very beginning, 2F seemed to have come into the world with the mission of teaching Molly and me that:
(a) each of our kids was an individual in her own right,
(b) not all of our kids would be compliant ‘pleasers’ like 1F, and
(c) there were limits to how, uh, ‘forcefully’ we could coerce our kids into obedience.
For that, we have come to be grateful, but gratitude was not always our first instinct.
I suppose that it is inevitable that second children will be parented at least partly in comparison to their first-born siblings. And that tendency is perhaps intensified when the two children are of the same sex. As I’ve said, 1F was a very compliant child, the type who, when we said “Jump” would ask, “How high?” 2F was much more inclined to say, “Why should I?” And “Because I said so” was not always as convincing an answer as Molly and I might have thought it should be.
2F’s stubbornness, combined with Molly’s and mine, and our immaturity as young parents, made for some fairly monumental contests of will. With 1F, whenever she opposed her will to ours, we could fairly easily ‘turn up the heat’ to get her to comply. With 2F, it didn’t work that way, ever. I vividly recall one such contest, when 2F was two or three, that we ‘turned up the heat’ to a level I was already uncomfortable with, and the realization came to me that this toddler girl had us stymied – the next level of ‘heat’ would cross a line into the realms of ‘abuse’ that I was unwilling to cross, and might put us into a danger zone with the law, as well. It was a very disorienting experience, for sure.
And so it went for virtually all of 2F’s young childhood, until roughly 7th grade. Molly and I took to telling her that, if she continued on the path she was going, sooner or later, she wouldn’t be dealing with her parents, she’d be dealing with the police; and the police didn’t love her like we did. And the day came (inevitably?) that she found herself dealing with the police. It was a small enough matter, but it did confirm for her that, indeed, the police simply didn’t care what became of her. So I suppose Molly and I got some credibility out of that.
I don’t know if that experience had a major impact on her life or not, but it roughly coincided with a turning point in her life. Somewhere around 7th/8th grade, it was like she rolled over in bed, and said to herself, “the approach I’ve been taking isn’t working so well; maybe I’ll try it their way, and see if that goes any better.” And really, from that time on, she’s been our most solid, responsible kid.
2F was 16 when 3M started running away from home (and generally demonstrating to us that such willfulness as 2F had shown us in her childhood years had been, well, child’s play). And she was 17 when 1F took up with F-bomb. And for a few years after that, our family was just traumatized. And 2F, being between the two ‘troubled kids’, kinda got lost in the trauma.
She finished high school and went to college, and got a degree in Child Development (following in Molly’s footsteps). She has made us proud in so many ways – she recently returned from a year-and-a-half of mission work in Detroit, during which she lived in the middle of one of the poorest, nastiest ‘inner cities’ in America, and brought God’s love to the people there in a multitude of ways.
2F is an incredibly kind, sensitive young woman, and admirable in a multitude of ways. Just as people used to congratulate us for having raised 1F, nowadays they say similar things to us about 2F. And she finds that ‘role reversal’ the least bit ironic.
The thing is, her childhood has left its scars on her psyche. She was deeply wounded by the severity of our learning-on-the-job young parenting, and by the way she was constantly overshadowed by her ‘perfect’ older sister (and she knew all along, when Molly and I couldn’t bring ourselves to see, what a façade the ‘perfection’ was). Even as she has made us busting-our-buttons proud, she has struggled with her relationship with us. In the last few months, we’ve been able to start bringing some healing to our relationship. By God’s mercy.
I’ve said, from time to time, that life turns out to be more heart-breaking than we planned on. And there is something heart-breaking about our inability to appreciate 2F for who she was all along, to give her the love she needed on her own behalf, and where that’s brought us in the meantime, in terms of psychic wounds and painful relationships.
But God is merciful. He “restores to us the years the locust has eaten,” (ref. Joel 2:25) and “gives us a hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11). So, we can look forward to that. . .
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
This Week On 'All My Children'
Things with us are actually in a relatively peaceful state, right at the moment. 1F is through with all the court haggling - her baby's adoption is final, and her relationship with the adoptive parents is working out pretty well. She's working, and this fall she's back in school, studying speech pathology. So her life is in as good a place as it's been in a long, long time. It’s a little hard being a 24-year-old college freshman – all her age-peers have long since graduated and gotten on with their lives – but that’s a pretty minor complaint, compared to where she’s been.
2F is still doing well – she’s one or two classes away from getting her initial ‘professional’ certification, which will allow her to make more of a real living for herself. She moved out of our basement ‘apartment’, and in with some single women from our Christian community. When she completes her certification, she’s giving serious thought to doing a year of voluntary missionary work.
Even with 3M, things aren't as bad as they've been. He's starting to see the fruit of the crap he's been throwing around for the last several years, and starting to think that he needs to take a different approach. He actually told Molly recently that he wants to start turning his life around. Of course, we're all in favor of that, and we want to encourage him to do that. But he's spent years forming bad habits that he's going to need to break if he really wants to turn his life around. It won't be easy, and we told him that. But at least the need is recognized, and the desire is there.
In other ways, he’s sort of floundering right at the moment. He can't seem to find a job, but he bought himself a beater van. But he's got no money to put gas in it, so he leaves it parked on the street in front of our house. . . . At any rate, he's only got a month or so to go before his life starts running according to somebody else's script for a while.
4M is back in school for his sophomore year in high school. His date with the magistrate in August went as well as it possibly could have – all the charges against him were dropped, since he’s got no prior record, he’s a good student, and an otherwise upstanding citizen. He’s got ‘points’ against him just sitting there, waiting for him to get a driver’s license, but he’s in no hurry for that right now (and neither are we, given what his insurance rates would likely be). He seems to have been chastened by the whole experience. That would be a good thing. We keep getting flashes of hot-headed defiance from him that we’d rather do without, but some (most?) of that falls under the heading of ‘teenaged male’.
The younger kids are pretty much status quo, at least per this previous post. Growing in wisdom and stature, and all that. But we’ll see what adventures they’ve got stored up for us, when the time comes. . .
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2F is still doing well – she’s one or two classes away from getting her initial ‘professional’ certification, which will allow her to make more of a real living for herself. She moved out of our basement ‘apartment’, and in with some single women from our Christian community. When she completes her certification, she’s giving serious thought to doing a year of voluntary missionary work.
Even with 3M, things aren't as bad as they've been. He's starting to see the fruit of the crap he's been throwing around for the last several years, and starting to think that he needs to take a different approach. He actually told Molly recently that he wants to start turning his life around. Of course, we're all in favor of that, and we want to encourage him to do that. But he's spent years forming bad habits that he's going to need to break if he really wants to turn his life around. It won't be easy, and we told him that. But at least the need is recognized, and the desire is there.
In other ways, he’s sort of floundering right at the moment. He can't seem to find a job, but he bought himself a beater van. But he's got no money to put gas in it, so he leaves it parked on the street in front of our house. . . . At any rate, he's only got a month or so to go before his life starts running according to somebody else's script for a while.
4M is back in school for his sophomore year in high school. His date with the magistrate in August went as well as it possibly could have – all the charges against him were dropped, since he’s got no prior record, he’s a good student, and an otherwise upstanding citizen. He’s got ‘points’ against him just sitting there, waiting for him to get a driver’s license, but he’s in no hurry for that right now (and neither are we, given what his insurance rates would likely be). He seems to have been chastened by the whole experience. That would be a good thing. We keep getting flashes of hot-headed defiance from him that we’d rather do without, but some (most?) of that falls under the heading of ‘teenaged male’.
The younger kids are pretty much status quo, at least per this previous post. Growing in wisdom and stature, and all that. But we’ll see what adventures they’ve got stored up for us, when the time comes. . .
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