One more year of high school to go!

Well, it's been a couple of years since I wrote a post. It is certainly not due to having too much peace and quiet in my life and, therefore, nothing to write about!

My daughter is now 18 and has been in tertiary education for almost a year. She will receive a diploma in a couple of weeks and received a scholarship halfway through her course for being the highest-ranking Humanities student at the college where she is studying. Her hard work and passion has earned her a place in 2nd year Architecture in 2016. Her father and I could not be more proud than we are.

Today she starts a summer job in a building company as an office junior and I wish for her every success as she deserves it.

She is still a teenager, however. She is learning to feel empathy and learning to control her emotions. She is learning to stand on her own two feet and take fledgling leaps closer and closer to the edge.

 *     *     *

My son has one more year of secondary schooling to go and things have been...eventful...since I last wrote.

He did go on to a new state school (a local high school with small numbers of students in a low-socio-economic area) and it was great for his self-esteem and education. He was accepted into their basketball specialist programme and developed a love of fitness and began body-building. He made wonderful new friends from all over the place who always have his back, so to speak, if there is an issue with bullying. He is still victimised on occasion for his choice of hair, clothes, etc but I don't think of it any more so much as 'bullying'; it's more like he's a target. But he is strong and he stands up for himself, even if it means physically-defending himself against assault.

He is back at the catholic school he started at and, whilst there are still major issues there on a monthly basis of some kind, he is better and better at dealing with them as they arise. His physique helps in this and his strong mental attitude. He also understands that he needs psychological strategies from a councellor in order to build his resilience and to circumnavigate possible trouble when it rears it head.

All these things have brought us closer together as a family, however. We are all there for each other even if the lessons are sometimes tough and hard to swallow.

*     *     *

Being part of a strong family is not anything to do with being perfect. We, as a family, have many problems we need to deal with on a daily basis (many of which get shoved under the carpet until ignoring them becomes impossible). We are here and that, to me any way, is what counts the most: we owe a lot of money and our finances are in disarray; I work way too hard and retreat from my responsibilities way too often; I let the kids get away with way too much they should have been picked up on years ago; and we bicker and carry on over the smallest things like the length of showers, who's got dibs on the one bathroom we own, and how my skills with handling the family's money really sucks the big one.

But we are here for each other and we love each other. And that is all I can see that truly counts.

My work IN PRINT!

I have had a little bit of my writing published in Mark Rawden's "I Am Mine" which is now available on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Am-Mine-Mark-E-Rawden/dp/0615560040/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362609955&sr=8-1&keywords=i+am+mine+mark+rawden


I Am Mine by Mark Rawden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed the research and synopses that went into each section of this extensive book about people's belief-systems and faith (or lack thereof) in a supernatural power. I loved the different and opposing voices and the shared humanity that came through in each chapter and each testimony. I found myself really identifying with some of the writers as well as rolling my eyes and chuckling at some people's totally wacky and far-our beliefs.

I found author Mark Rawden's sense of humour to be gentle, enjoyable and a really nice addition and link between each section. I truly couldn't put it down because I wanted to read what the next person had to say.

I would recommend this book for people who enjoy learning more about people's ideas of religion or lack of religion and their personal meanings and journeys behind their decisions.


View all my reviews

In my next post I will explain why I have not been on here in so long!

An interesting post-post - only 4 months late!

I don't have what I think of as 'regular readers'. There may be some out there but I don't know who they are. I have a few friends who read my blog but generally when I sit down to write, I write for myself and hope there are others who see the world as I do.

It's been four or more months since I posted last. This is a bit of a shame but I am not going to waste time feeling guilty - there were reasons. Probably not very good ones but sheer laziness and procrastination are still reasons.

I was for a time, more and more, home-schooling my son. For anyone who reads my blog knows, many of the posts are about his struggles to fit in and be accepted and mine to have the strength and wisdom to help him. It's been harder than usual as I am working most days and I had to leave him work to complete at home with his father (who was not working at the time but fixing up the house and being a stay-at-home parent).

He did most of the work I set some of the time and I tried to convince myself that he was doing more than the kids at school (he probably was because the Year 8s at his school do very little real, quantifiable work from what I can gather - and I am there every day as a teacher so I do see what goes on). But, it weighed heavily on my mind and my tofu-heart because I just didn't know what to try next.

If someone could just have said to me, "Look, he will be okay. Just trust yourself and your husband and you will see." I would have heaved a sigh of relief. But telling myself that day in and day out only worked temporarily. So this is how I was feeling and this is the dilemma I was carrying when a 'friend' of mine decided to tell me 'The Truth'.

*     *     *

When she casually dropped the word 'instigator' it registered in my brain as INSTIGATOR!  That's my brain and I have to deal with it. But that's what I heard in my mind. And the physiological reaction began. Whilst I did indeed have it out with her, I am physically made weak and fragile by confrontation - any type really. I don't mean to say that I cannot stand up for myself or that I am shy and vulnerable and can't be strong. Much of my strength lies in my patience and ability to bide my time in many ways; and I certainly am rather opinionated and reasonably forceful if I feel the situation necessitates it. And in things that don't matter too much I am calm and clear in my thinking and reacting - but there are triggers or buttons that, if pressed or pushed or even tinkered with, make me almost crazy with, not just anxiety, but cold sweats, stomach pains, raised heart-rate, nausea and even pressure to my skull as if my brain is swelling! I fall down fast into a well of despair and find myself unable to function properly for several days. The word 'instigator' did this to me.

A little word cannot have so much power except what I invest in it. Very true. But it's a word that also means nasty, bullying, calculating, unkind, hurtful, provocative, initiating and starter - as in 'firestarter'. And I felt the flames of those words -  those connotations - fiercely enough because the person saying them (in that one little word 'instigator') was speaking about my son.  And I know all mothers think their children are innocent and don't want to believe that their sons can be bullies too - but I know he is none of these things and I felt the burn of unfairness singe my heart. Am I overusing the metaphor? Not if you were standing in my shoes that day.  I had had enough.

When I asked her what she meant she said she was 'angry' at me for taking my son out of the private school that her boys still attend - the one she and her husband make them attend even though they would like to go somewhere different. I was struck dumb for several seconds. I said, "You're angry with me??! For doing what I think is right for my child? For taking him away from a situation that was not good for him?"

 "Yes," she said. "For sending him to a new school where I believe he is worse off that he was before."

"But that's my (and my husband's) choice! What has it got to do with you?"

"It has made it harder on us."

(WHAT?)

"Let me get this straight. You are angry for taking him out of the school because it makes it harder on you? Am I getting this right?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"Our boys want to leave too but we choose to send them back into hell every day of the week. They want to know why your son can leave and they can't."

(WOW.)

And then I understood. She wasn't mad at us for the sake of our son. I don't think she could particularly care less. She was inconvenienced by our choice and had probably had arguments with her husband over the situation and he stood his ground and she had to deal with it. So she took it out on me. She claimed, of course, to be worried about him. But I realised then, and I believe now, that this was not truly the case.

Obviously I told her that our decisions regarding the welfare of our son were nobody's business but our own and that being a friend did not give her license to give such advice unsolicited - nor was I going to accept it gracefully. I told her that I would not think of judging her and telling her my opinions about her child-rearing. Nobody walks in our shoes and I had better things to occupy my mind anyway than other people's problems.

As you can see, I am not over it yet. Her telling me that friendship meant being able to tell each other what we think only prompted the response in me that, no, indeed it's probably more a sign of friendship that we learn to keep quiet. Nothing destroys a friendship quicker than opening one's mouth without having first considered one's response and the real reasons for responding. She suggested then that I write a list of the all the things she is allowed to discuss with me so she knows. Sarcasm didn't help the situation and neither did her idea that I needed to go home and think about why I had reacted the way I did.

I knew exactly why.

My favourite author, Joyce Carol Oates, whose work is so prolific that I can’t keep up with reading all she has written, says in the voice of Judd Mulvaney “…I believe in uttering the truth, even if it hurts. Particularly if it hurts.”

And so do I. But I don’t mean about other people – their truth is theirs alone to utter. I mean about myself. In truth-telling there is strength and in pain there is strength. And who is to challenge my truths? They are mine, after all. They don’t belong to others, therefore they are unique. “The truth as you see it…?” asks Jerry Seinfeld ironically of George Constanza. Yes. As I see it.

What, for me, constitutes that truth (does the word need quotation marks? Post-modernist theorists would say it does)? My truth is a muddle of literary quotations, philosophical musings, moments of original insight (I am hopeful but realistic on this point), images like a photo album swirling through space and time, colours that have warmth and coolness and vibration, sensations and emotions that seem to be felt less in the brain than in the centre of my body like a pulsating, thinking, memorising organ. Science theorises that it is not just our brain matter that holds memory, but also our heart, liver and kidneys and other soft tissue – what about our skin? Our skin sees everything.

My skin sees (feels?) my fervent attitude to my life: my children, my loved-ones, my beliefs. My skin witnessed my birth and will witness my death. It will still exist, only in some other way, as it enters the ovens and is scattered in nature. You may ask why I have these thoughts – or even how I can offer up such searing truths. So many of us do not want to think about our own mortality and would rather never come across a passage which shines light on such a subject. But I don’t mind.

But for me it negates denial. It helps me re-double my efforts to see everything as good and right in its imperfection. It reminds me. My shadowed truths remind me of the light.

* * *

This past three weeks has seen intense emotions contrasted with moments of sleepy, dreamy, lazy peace. My son was able, finally after a term at school fraught with problems to do with power-plays between boys, to relax and be himself and not have to apologise for that. To be able to sleep in as long as he liked and eat when he wished and hang out with his mates. He has wonderful mates. But he also has enemies.

His enemies lurk in school life mainly. He is harassed every day – called a faggot, homo, cunt –and threatened with violence whenever he retaliates or stops ignoring the taunts and tells them quietly to fuck off. Just as I would do. Then they hit him and get their friends to mob him. He carries a knife on the weekends just in case, although this is something I am extremely nervous about. He carries his phone wherever he goes in case he needs help. The kids from school hang out around the township where we live and so he must remain ever vigilant. I worry about him a whole lot less on the weekends and holidays, however, than I do when he attends school. This is an irony that I cannot get over. I have worked in high schools all of my career and the students’ safety is expected to be top priority. I also believed it was and that I assisted in making it that way. Now I see it from a whole new perspective. Now I am not objective educator – I am parent. And my son is sometimes safe – more often not.

Every day we arrive at school and he tells me he loves me. Like a talisman it hangs between us. But my support is tenuous at best as I must let him go to the care of others. Others who don’t know him inside like I do; who just see the often surly, sleepy-eyed boy who needs to begin shaving very soon; who hides behind his hair and his swagger and his silver fleshy piercing; who hides a tofu-heart softer than mine – like Japanese silken tofu that melts as you touch it, that is more liquid than solid.

But we keep going. Day after day. And hope every morning that this will be the day when he comes homes smiling and looks forward to tomorrow. Today will see the turning point. The watershed.When everyone will recognise him as I do and want to celebrate it. I am a mix of naivety and experience; trust and realism. Overall I choose to see the good in every thing and every one. But it means getting up every day and starting over. Some days are harder than others but I am not alone.

Judd also says in We Were the Mulvaneys, “…this document isn’t a confession…but a family album. The kind my mom never kept, absolute truth-telling. The kind no one’s mom keeps…an album of memory and conjecture and yearning.”

Well I keep just such an album. And it is very likely “the great and only work of [my] life.”

Adultescence: an enabler's view

The newly-coined term for the period of a child's life when his or her parents continue to support and clean up after them, even after they have grown up, is 'adultescence'. 

My name is Tofu-Hearted Mother and I am an adultescent-enabler. But I'm on the twelve-step programme.

To be honest, I would deny that I am an enabler until I was blue in the face if you asked me in person.  I do not like to believe that I am anywhere near a 'helicopter parent', much less do I like to think of myself as a 'jet-powered turbo model' parent who can't stop interfering in her children's lives .  I would much rather see myself as 'nurturing' and 'supportive'; but then I read the following in the New Yorker and was a little embarrassed at how close to my circumstances it sounded!

"In the L.A. families observed, no child routinely performed household chores without being instructed to. Often, the kids had to be begged to attempt the simplest tasks; often, they still refused. In one fairly typical encounter, a father asked his eight-year-old son five times to please go take a bath or a shower. After the fifth plea went unheeded, the father picked the boy up and carried him into the bathroom. A few minutes later, the kid, still unwashed, wandered into another room to play a video game.

In another representative encounter, an eight-year-old girl sat down at the dining table. Finding that no silverware had been laid out for her, she demanded, “How am I supposed to eat?” Although the girl clearly knew where the silverware was kept, her father got up to get it for her." (Sound familiar?)

Now, I have to admit, some of those are a little too close for comfort.  I have been known to do more for my kids than, say, some of the parents of the kids I teach. Or friends of mine do for their kids.  But I want to be a good parent!  Is that so wrong?  Well, maybe it is. But it's all so confusing.  Am I a bad mother because I work hard to support my family physically, emotionally and financially?  Or would I be a better mother if I ignored them more, did little for them, stopped watching their sporting matches and spent more of the family money on my hair and nails?  Why is it all so difficult to believe in yourself as a parent? That I am being the very best parent I know how to be and I am reflectively and (I hope) intelligently putting that into action? But do I do too much?  And what is the reason that I sometimes clean up, do the dishes, fold the washing, take the kids to the bus stop in the car, and even help finish the homework?  When I know that I should be making them do it themselves? When I know I am enabling their laziness?  Well, at least I am not the only one who comes across the "it's easier to do it yourself" mantra of parenting:

"Not long ago, [...] my husband and I gave [the kids] a new job: unloading the grocery bags from the car. One evening when I came home from the store, it was raining. Carrying two or three bags, the youngest, Aaron, who is thirteen, tried to jump over a puddle. There was a loud crash. After I’d retrieved what food could be salvaged from a Molotov cocktail of broken glass and mango juice, I decided that Aaron needed another, more vigorous lesson in responsibility. Now, in addition to unloading groceries, he would also have the task of taking out the garbage. On one of his first forays, he neglected to close the lid on the pail tightly enough, and it attracted a bear. The next morning, as I was gathering up the used tissues, ant-filled raisin boxes, and slimy Saran Wrap scattered across the yard, I decided that I didn’t have time to let my kids help out around the house."

And it IS easier to do it yourself!  And I'm pretty sure that women from previous decades who didn't work outside the home had more energy to put into motivating and disciplining their children and checking up on the progress of the chore given.  There is so much frustration and annoyance in kids being kids that I do - I admit - give in and do it all myself.  It's easier and more peaceful for my frazzled brain.  It's not that my children won't do jobs or help around the house; it's just that they are normal teenagers and have to be told several times before they get up and do it.  And it's the shattering of the peace I hate.  As a school-teacher I work all day with reluctant teens and I am firm with my discipline.  When I get home I would rather the meditative physical job of doing the household chores myself than the messy and anxiety-producing nagging for someone else to take responsibility.

So I am an enabler of adultescence.  And whilst I may be somewhere on the scale between one and twelve of the programme, I am still 'off the wagon', so to speak.  If you look again, that's me running along behind, waving my arms and swearing, trying to catch up and finally make that leap on board with all the other good parents.


http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/07/02/120702crbo_books_kolbert?currentPage=1

"...you and I in all our ordinariness.."

"We are going to die" is an unusual first sentence for a favourite quote but, like the hapless Alvy Singer in Annie Hall, who says "I'm obsessed with uh, with death, I think. Big - big subject with me, yeah.", I too am quite taken with the theme.  Of course Woody Allen's Alvy goes on to say that he's 'pessimistic' about life and that life in general is divided up into two categories - "the horrible and the miserable".  I don't necessarily agree, but then I am a relatively lucky member of the human race, so I'm not sure my opinion counts as much as others.

"We are going to die..." is the first bit of one of my favourite quotes and I love it because it sounds depressing, but is deceptively so.  The quote goes on to read "..., and that makes us the lucky ones.  Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.  The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of the Sahara.  Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton.  We know this because the possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. (And here's my favourite part) In the teeth of these stupifying odds it is you and I, in all our ordinariness, that are here."

Well, I do not for one minute think that the author of those words is in any way 'ordinary' but he does, however, speak for me and for most of us.  Professor Richard Dawkins wrote this in his beautiful and influential work Unweaving the Rainbow  (the title of which alludes to a Keats poem) and I underlined this part straight away.  I drank it up, like Keat's hemlock, and let the words and sounds and images run down my throat until I was lulled by them.  I love them because they comfort me.  I don't like the inspirational quote nearly as much as the confronting one - the one that makes you stop and re-read it, and then re-read it again. "We are going to die" reads better to me than any Hallmark card.  It's the sort of thing I think about when I should be doing other things.

And I love 'ordinariness'.  I am ordinary in all my neuroses and rituals and idiosyncracies - and in my striving to be anything other than ordinary. 

My husband is ordinary in his habits and personality disorder (!) and his Germanic handling of all things do with life. 

My daughter is ordinary in her 15 year-old self-obsessed notions of the world and her helio-centric place in it; in her beautiful colt-slim legs, chocolate-brown eyes and over-straightened hair.

And my son wishes he were ordinary, and most of the time he is just that - in his anxieties about his place in the world, in his opinions, his compassions and his vulnerable tofu-boy-heart.  He is a little me walking around in a 13 year-old boy's body and even that, with its strange connotations, is still ordinary.

I love the fact that one day I am going to die.  And I mean this in just the way that Dawkins suggests it - I am one of the lucky ones.  I got to be born in the first place. I got to love and laugh and hurt and feel pain; I got to cry and adore and protect and sacrifice for. I got a chance at immortality through the genes that I will pass on and the lives I will, in tiny and probably insignificant ways, shape. And that, in itself, is enough to get me through the rough days.

Ode to a Dead Nightingale

Last week I didn't know if I was ever going to get work again, and hence get paid (my slightly paranoid state of mind leads me down this path every now and again); and this week I have more work than I could have wished for. I find myself, once again, juggling both my professional work as a teacher with my life-work as a mother. It's never an easy balance at the best of times. Here's how the last 24 hours has worked out for me.

I couldn't attend my mother's birthday dinner last week with my family as I was away for my daughter's netball carnival.  So I said to mum to bring my two gorgeous nieces over this Sunday (yesterday) to have lunch with us and extend her birthday celebrations.  Not only did the girls not attend with my mum and step-father, but there continues a strained relationship between my mum and my brother (and therefore me too) which was the catalyst for them not coming and for my sharp and steady rise in anxiety levels. Then, after shopping for and organising the three courses, including a birthday cake with fresh produce from our neighbour's garden, a storm blew across the city and all the power went out in our little town (and therefore my oven) and I was left with no lights, no heating and uncooked cake, rosemary potatoes, pumpkin frittata and buttermilk bread.

I shifted gear (I'm quite good in the actual crisis - it's just I fall into a heap after it's all over) and began making what I could on the stove-top (which is gas). I first and foremost took a massive gulp of wine, sent my family to open the presents in another room, and got started on mashed potatoes, Mexican casserole, steamed pumpkin and an endive salad.  I figured we'd have coffee and a Tim-Tam instead of cake.

So lunch worked quite well considering, but being an abnormally abnormal family (which is not intended to be a double negative implying normality), we didn't stay on the polite topics of football and the weather; we had an all out 'discussion' on the causes of both World Wars (my husband is German - "whatever you do, don't mention the war!"), plus the value of religion in the 21st century, and then (to round off) whether there is actually anything new being done in the world of fine art, and if so, what.

The electricity came on briefly and my cake got baked (orange and poppy seed with lashings of cream) and then went off again and is still not back on 27 hours later. I was happy to see the end of the family lunch yesterday (not an uncommon occurrence unfortunately) and, afterwards did the mass of dishes in tepid water and got out of the house as quickly as I could (leaving my daughter on her laptop running down the battery and my husband and son playing chess by candlelight) to go walking out in the wild and woolly weather to the local national park falls.

 I often wander there in wet weather and perch on the rocks under an umbrella and contemplate my life and the universe.  I also do my walking for exercise in this area, along the old railway line and heritage trail in the hills where we live. I find this place to be a natural retreat from the world and, like the Romantic poet Keats, my pains and sufferings are assuaged in the world of natural beauty. "Fade for away, dissolve, and quite forget/ What thou among the leave hast never known,/ The weariness the fever, and the fret".  I would even like my ashes to be one day scattered here.

Well before I get too carried away, let me tell you yesterday IT DIDN'T WORK. The fever and the fret remained and, by the time I dragged my wet and sorry arse back to the car, I was denouncing, not just Keats, but his whole bloody Romantic philosophy of loving nature for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else. I wanted to throttle his nightingale and smash his sodding Grecian urn into a thousand pieces.

It didn't get any better when I arrived home.  Still no power, house dark and cold and each kid wanting his/her eggs cooked (in the dark) in different ways - one scrambled and one fried fucking sunny-side up! And to top it off, I couldn't even read my book, Martin Amis' 1980s British classic "Money".We were all asleep by 9pm due to complete and utter boredom (yes, yes...a First-World problem if ever there was one) with no undies washed for the next day, no uniforms for the kids, and no hope in sight for a better day ahead.

I am Tofu-Hearted Mother (who feels like Rubbery-Favourless- Raw-Tofu-Mother at the moment) and this is my crappy story.