parenting

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Island Blog – And in they come

Flipsake, And it is a flip. There was one family until there wasn’t. Can I supply a mattress, space for a mum, what’s in the fridge, shall I bring milk? This is, and always has been, my family. We led this, me and their dad. We loved spontaneous even though it thoroughly irritated us at times. It was the mover, the wild blood in our veins. They say you find your own people, if you’re looking, and both of us obviously were. I wonder about the effect on our kids, not kids anymore, but parents. However, the spontaneous grasp on moments, probably learned from us, moments which could become slicedice and not always throwing a six – up here, out here in the wild west, even as they always brought a new something. New somethings were our thing. I never knew what would happen next as the mama of this loony troupe, nor even before they all arrived, thankfully not altogether. I had a bit of time to rest in the in-between.

The days spiral. I just watch. The big quad scoots by, way too many small kids aboard, laughter lifting into the wind, spinning out. Walkers pause to look at the colouring of crazy fun and smile. The boats push into the tidal flow, all aboard hooting mid sea-loch, spinning the bow into the stern, throwing the wee dog into a paws up. He knows the crazy and holds tight. I remember this, had forgot in the ordinary of my family gone, widowhood days. There is no moan here, only wistful. Was I there enough, working as I was? They ran free, my children, over miles of safety and wild. Their childhood was feral, inventive, but was it ok for them? Ach, I’ll never know.

I’ve watched them out there with their daughters, challenging tides, heading out into the Atlantic, bringing home a catch, salty, soaked, grinning, lifting, so happy. They, the last of the blast, leave tomorrow early. They will leave an energy in their wake, a reminder. Of what? Of what we begun, me and their dad, their grandad, the what we never knew would work.

But still they come.

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Island Blog – Family, time and A.I.

They barrelled in, the girls, all grown up now, or so they think. I remember barrelling in with just that belief, even though I was always dodging the parental thumb. They’re like butterflies, the really colourful ones, dipping and diving, fluttering, spinning bright sparkles around the room, any room, so vulnerable. I smile a big welcome, ask questions because these girls now think they are adults, autonomous, certain. They have opinions, strong ones, a surety that I have definitely lost over time. For now, they know the world. It’s round, and contained in space within a gravitational pull, but they’re not, with their piecings and tattoos and that certainty that the world is just waiting for them to cause a wow. A really big Wow. One is heading into performing arts, another to the science of human geography, another to animal whispering (it’s not called that, but she is definitely a student thereof, already). And there are more plans for futures. Forgive my forgetting. All these teens are alight like fireworks, grasping life, opportunities, fighting for space within the inevitable confines of peer judgement and parental disappointment. What the parents wanted and hoped for, even planned for, was not what this teen had even imagined. No, Dad. No, Mum. Teens can say that these days.

I am, at first, momentarily surprised at how short I am. They were babies, toddlers, kindergarten deposits, when…….a few months ago, weren’t they? Now they are tall, strong girls, all made up perfectly, in lycra, toned and svelte, excited, fit, adventurous, wild, aware. I don’t mind being short btw. It works, for a granny. They look after me, help me unscrew a wine bottle or a jar of pesto, open the door for me. I am loved and I can feel it. Actually, the surprise thing continues. My quad shoots by loaded with girls, all squealing. I know they have walked into the wild Atlantic from Calgary beach, swung on tree limbs, investigated deer tracks, not a moment of boredom. And they are doing all this right here. Although I may only see them in quad passing, I know they are here, and it thinks me about moments, which is really all we have. Although I am alone on the island, I am not alone at all. Family may not live here anymore, but they come back and those explosions of the familiar are welcome, so welcome. Even when they are here, they have their own agenda, their own plans, of course they do. Even their parents, my kids, move to a different beat from the one of their childhood.

I get this glimpse and then they are gone again, but I have watched every given moment, listened to hopes, dreams, plans. I have watched faces alight with hope and faith. II have given over my kitchen for cake-baking, have watched my quad roar by way too fast, loaded up with girls. And I think this……

Go girls. Make a difference. Be canny, aware, safe and, oh, another thing….Artificial Intelligence can never be human.

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Island Blog – If This Life

I love audio books. While I sew or cook or fanny about, I listen to those who know a deal more than I. If I run water for washing dishes or flip the electric kettle on to boil I must needs whack up the volume or hold my phone to my ear, but you could never say I am not committed. Is that a double negative…….?

My books could be scientific, factual or fictional fairyness. I love love both. This began during covid and isolation even before himself left the planet. I love to read an actual book and do so at night, pre sleep, but the thing about an audio book, if I like the reader voice, is that my brain absorbs it in a different way. I couldn’t tell you in what way different, but I am aware that the information I can take in from a very factual book is something I could never cope with as an eye reader.

So and thus, I can listen to some tricky stuff on audible. In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Gabor Mate. Why Love Matters, Sue Gerhardt. Eish I could never read than stuff in a book, stuff I want to hear because even at my age, I am curious and keen to understand and to learn. The former book is on addictions stemming from childhood abuse or neglect. The latter on the effect of parenting on children and its subsequent manifestations. Yes, I know, tough, and most of us won’t go there because we can’t face the guilt, but what I am discovering is not what I feared. We do the best we can, clueless like every new parents are, as they always have been and always will be. I have felt sharp heart bites and warm yesses. I have remembered being present yet absent (aka distracted with guests, husband etc) and that hurts, but I hope I gave the warmth and love and attention to my children at the times they most needed that from me. We mothers are so quick to take the blame, the blood red tsunami of it, upon ourselves. I know this.

With my own mother and many of her generation, there was no desire to look back over the child rearing years. What happened happened. What was done or said was done or said, belonging only in the past and the past is dead as a dodo. My own generation initiated a change in that thinking, deciding to do things differently because we knew we were damaged by a Victorian-ish upbringing to some degree or another, and wanted our own children to feel more obviously loved. Although that old nonsense of ‘this will hurt but it’s for your own good’ still came into my head when some sort of retribution for a crime committed was required, I remember thinking long and hard about a kinder way of getting the same message across. I wasn’t always so clever. Kids drive you bonkers and always at times when your own chips are down. I lashed out in anger at times and the regret and shame consumed me. I learned to say I Am Sorry, something my parents never said. Keeping that regret and shame quiet is very damaging to the self, to both selves in fact.

Listening to these audio books and more besides is not doing me any harm at all. When I relate to something the writer says, something either painful in recollection or uplifting and empathetic, I have the choice to take any action required. The intelligence, backed up by scientific research on children (and I was one once) helps me to smile at myself as a faulty mother. It also kinds me towards my own self as a little girl who believed in fairies and happiness and who was astonished and hurt to discover that her own mother was also faulty and broken. I now know why but I didn’t back then. She, who never got from her own mother the love she needed, did not have the benefit of information available to me and to future mothers and fathers. Knowing this as I do now, affords me the chance to empathise with her, to understand why she was who she was and to love and appreciate her backwards.

It does take courage and the willingness to be vulnerable to read or listen to such information, but if this life is the only one I get, then I want to get to the end of it knowing I have understood myself to a high degree, to have made amends wherever I could and to have learned that we are all broken humans with a huge capacity for loving and understanding others and ourselves. And it is never too late to learn something new.