Seems I hit a nerve. My
mommy sent me one of those “Don’t you remember living life as a child of
yesteryear, clad in all scrappiness afforded to a real childhood? You know, when life was, uh… Real?” This was delivered to my e-mail inbox
probably after she read my post about our child-entertainment-centric
culture. This is worthy of a commentary
on THE VAN.
So, when I was pregnant with my third child, it was decided that
we purchase a van so as to have the access and easy carpool possibilities it
affords. This is much in line with the
way things get decided from the eastern side of my family: the oldest sister (and oldest sibling in the
family) decides something, and the kids’ dad, follows suit knowing that said
older sister has researched the choice exhaustively. Why double up efforts when the work has
already been done? Besides, his mother
has always had this birth-order-personality-assignment- obsession: the first
child is essentially the, uh, precedent-setter, and everyone falls in
line.
Of course, that didn’t happen in my family of origin. It may have started that way. My older brother is pretty dominant, but
somehow my mother managed to raise three kids with Type A personalities. This is probably the reason we don’t live too
close to each other. It’s not a lack of
love. It’s essential to our survival as
individuals and in life.
Which brings me back to my mom’s good job at raising us.
The birth of three young children can correct an adult child’s parenting
perception rather sharply. Before
children and soon thereafter, I thought that I was the ultimate fixer and
nurturer and source of love for my children.
But, after going through losing my dream my job, three pregnancies (and
c-sections) within the span of three years, the death of my father, Luke’s
heart and other comparatively minor surgeries, committing myself to rote
domesticity and parental perfection, and not writing a word, I found myself
depleted, with a back injury and stomach pain that woke me up in the middle of
the night to vomiting and other less than exquisite reactions to stress and
post-pregnancy food sensitivities I had yet to discover (but soon would).
My all-powerful concept of motherhood was put to shame by the
reality that I’m really just a messenger, and if I don’t allow my kids to live
and let them be without trying to fix
everything for them, we both suffer. Me,
short term. Them, long term. This does not mean that I am not a fierce
advocate, a loving mother, a devoted ear, a chameleon in response and as a
springboard to three alarmingly divergent personalities and equally different
needs, a short-order cook, an event planner…
You know the list, because most of you do the same thing.
I did realize the value of a childhood sans constant
entertainment when we were considering the van though. Memories of the brave trips between La
Canada, California to Lake Tahoe in the Suburban or wood-paneled wagon,
informed my decision to purchase the van without the DVD player. Why?
Because, should I have had a DVD player in the Suburban or Cadillac of
my childhood transport, I would not have memorized the landscape of the Mojave
Desert or been fascinated by lava rock and the porous grit I can still feel on
the tips of the fingers to my imagination.
Pumice has got nothing on it.
Red Rock Canyon. Lone
Pine. Buffalo Bill’s Barbeque spot. Beating the crap out of each other in the
back seat while my mom drove ten hours, one hand on the wheel and the other
swatting blindly in the direction of the bench-style back seat, her eyes on the
two-lane road. (Let’s all take a moment
of silence to remember that there was a time when car seats did not exist.) She made these trips, over and over again, so
that she could visit her own parents and take us on a vacation, even though she
was a single parent and was always scraping to give us a good life. There were so many of these trips, that they
were cemented in my memory as was the music that carried my imagination while
the desert then forested landscape flitted by my window to what was entirely
real.
That is what she gave me.
A good life that came with skinned knees and dirty nails and good
schools and teaching me the resourcefulness I’d discover after falling flat on
my face, and skinning my knees and getting up to push off my Big Wheel again,
and slipping and skinning my knees twice more, before I decided to address the
slippery seat differently…
Relative to the above, that may or may not make sense. But, I’ll make sense of that for you later.
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