Rescue Journal

sorry nicole..i was having a hot bath and pondering..i will call you after i write my ponderings down.

Carol  ·  Mar. 8, 2010

this has nothing to do with rescue or animals so feel free to skip this introspective aging reviewing of life thing.

i had lunch with one of my daughters...she has a diary of all the mean things i did when she was growing up. today she told me i once was mad at her and kicked her out of the family and said she could no longer watch any of my movies. ok..that is the young kids perspective..the adult perspective?..i haven't a clue cuz i can't remember anything even remotely close to any of that.

my other daughter once gave me a fridge magnet that said "it is easy to have a clear conscious when your memory is fuzzy"..and yes, we all know i have a fuzzy memory.


hmmm...so i asked lindsey today if i was a good parent? and she said yes i was..(like she is going to say, "no you sucked.")

anyway, so here i was sitting in a hot bath and pondering the past, trying to dissect the truth of who i was.
and i do remember somethings...

like i was woefully unprepared to be a parent. i was 18 years old when my first was born and 3000 miles away from my family. none of our friends had kids and i was never around kids when i was growing up (except for my god parents son's baby..once..who i accidently dropped on her head and never told anyone.)
i was in a marriage of mistake with a mother in law who i really believed, ( whether it was true or not) thought i was not good enough to be the wife of her son or the mother of her grand babies.

all three of my little ones were busy, noisy, hyperactive, accident prone horrors..one was with his little pack of kindergarten friends, putting hoses down neighbors fireplace flues and flooding their basements, one little preschool sweetheart was pooping on the nieghbors lawns, and the third who still a babe in arms, cried with colic all night long. all three slept in my bed every night and one of them always peed the bed at night too.

they survived young childhood, barely and so did i...and moved into their teens..one was growing pot in the closet, one was running away, all of them were smoking and driving me insane.

all through the motherhood thing, i felt so inadequate, so ill prepared to deal with what mothering meant. i tried to be suzy homemaker..i had a huge garden and grew tomatoes to make into tomatoe paste (like this was worth the effort and not spending 62 cents on tomato paste in a can) i collected windfall apples and hand picked grapes and home pasturized the juice that they drank...i was beyond stupid, i was totally insane. i had no idea who i was, and who i was trying to be was not even close to me.

no one told me it was ok not to be a perfect mom, no one told me that those innocent babes would grow up just fine with an incompetent mom. no one told me that i could just be who i was..inconsistent, not martha stewart, a child myself at times, make mistakes and still have my childrens love.

i wish someone had told me that..then i would not have tried so hard and in my anxiety as a not so good parent...sometimes messed things up.

Comments

Carol

no...that was a turtle that eric was teaching to fly the airplane..he never hurt a goldfish...and the turtle did actually survive his solo flight crash...i think he eventually died because eric kept feeding him all kinds of weird crap.

good luck with that exemption..i have my own diary about you kids somewhere (i just can't remember where i put it.)

Jenn

Oh but didn't ERIC put a goldfish in an toy airplane. We are all goldfish murders ... you who bought the fish where an enabler of this murder by baby. At two I believe any immoral or illegal act I committed is exempt from judgement ... actually can I change that to anything I did up until I was 17!

Carol

that was jenn...she was 2...she just killed the one...lindsey however when she was 3 fed NINE goldfish to blue moose (our big cat) he liked lindsey a lot! sadly, my baby girls were innocent goldfish slayers...this is why i am so zealous about rescue now.
and i take back what i said about girls being easier..i forgot about the goldfish murders.

Karen

I forget which one had just flushed the pet goldfish down the toilet the day I first met you??

Carol

we had eric tested at 4 years old..his IQ was just under 140....that child was pretty damn smart and his little inquisitive brain found all kinds of interesting things to investigate...the eric stories are endless. good luck, good thing you are having a girl..as small children, they are more likely to ask about things vs actually trying them out on their own...of course at teenagers, they just run with the ball too!

Angela

Should I be worried? Maybe someone should have said something before I was 5 months pregnant!! I can't believe Eric was flooding basements in Kindergarten!

Francesca Wilson

Hi Carole
Marie and I will be at Saints tomorrow (Wednesday) around 10:30 am. We will clean barns - as always looking forward to being here.
francesca

Lory

I was thinking along the same lines, Laura. No wonder Carol is patient with the bed buddies accidents - it stems from Mother Guilt! We all have it, Carol.

laura

True Carol didn't mention names for any deed but Jenn now I know why you like to hang out with the gang on your mom's bed on Saturdays....kindered spirits! lol

Jenn

Yes and now we have all quit smoking and (hopefully) torturing you!!! But now I am horrified that you have told hundreds of people that I was a bed wetter :)But I already know I don't have to be perfect so I forgive you.