I just deleted a post
Jun 30, 2008 Friends
It wasn’t quite a rant — more like a frustrated cry to the blogging heavens. I channeled Brett and he would have told me to delete it so I did. I’m still frustrated but am not sure if I’m being helpful or passive aggressive so erred on the side of not putting things down to live on in internet infamy.
Bleah.
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Stating the obvious: It’s Thursday
Jun 19, 2008 Friends
But around here Thursday means go-go-go. Thursday is the day that makes me love my freelance lifestye. Thursday is the day where Brett is thrilled not to have a “real” job. Thursday is park day and evening with friends day and the day my kids hang with the community that’s known them almost as long as we have.
Ahh, Thursdays!!!
But Thursdays are also stressful because there’s work to do first and snacks to pack and a dinner to plan on the run. And it makes for a late night, which can make Fridays a bit of a bear but is it worth it? Yes, indeed it is.
I had a rant to write but a good night’s sleep and Thursday put me in too good a mood to really get down and crank on the world. Maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up less happy but for today? THURSDAY! And off we go!
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Back in the saddle
Jun 13, 2008 Friends
I’m back on-site today. Usually I don’t go in this much but there’s a serious push to finish the project and I am nothing if not a pleasure to work with — flexible, reasonable and cheerful about putting on work clothes to come in and do another bang-up job for my clients. (Note to possible future employers.)
Last night was our regular Thursday get-together only it was at my house and I was severely lacking forks. This woke me in the middle of the night when I went, “Oh god, why did I not find a way to get more forks?” But these people — they have all of these kids and I forget that kids need forks, too.
Turns out we women-folk all have the same mothers so we discussed that and traded mom stories. Abby has the best perspective and I’ve decided to defer to her in all things boundary related. She says she’s just had the most therapy but I don’t know; I’ve had a lot of therapy, too, and I’m not as smart as she is. And I have some years on her so you’d think I’d be more together by now.
There’s something else I’m trying to work on now, which is divorcing my actions from the hoped-for results. In other words, I’m trying to do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do instead of because I’m hoping it will make this other thing happen. It sounds so simple but I catch myself always thinking, “How can I put this in a way that will make them want to help? If I share it now instead of later, will it make them do it the way I want them to?”
Next up: Ceasing to hold people responsible for not being psychic and not acting the way I expected/hoped for/wanted. I feel like it’s awfully easy for me to store up a lot of little hurts over unintentional lapses. (And I sure hope that the forkless few at the gathering last night will be able to extend the same courtesy to me. Sorry, Joe, with the wee crab fork that I didn’t even know was a crab fork but thought it was just a fork that Madison decided would be hers because it’s baby-sized!)
I was avoiding a situation for a long time because I wanted a good outcome but avoiding was making things worse. Turns out that even when I made myself take action that the outcome wasn’t so good but at least it was — I think — what it had to be. I don’t know. But I’m trying to let go of any residual hurt and see the situation for what it is instead of what I wanted it to be.
Ahh well.
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Tags: abby, client, Friends, kids, Kristen, LLL, on-site, potluck
Being a bystander
May 19, 2008 Friends
When I was about thirteen the little girl who lived across the street told my mother that her parents were abusing her. She was about eleven and had grown up in foster care so it is true that at some point in her life she’d experienced horrific abuse and neglect. What was not true was that she was experiencing it when she asked my mom for help. My mother knew that her story – that she was only allowed to eat the food scraped into the garbage disposal – was probably not true but my mother called child protective services anyway. First she invited the neighbor girl to spend the night and then she called CPS. When the report turned out to be unwarranted, she apologized to the family but said she hoped they understood why she called. She wasn’t taking any chances, my mom explained, because no one called when she was a child and so the abuse continued.
Our chances of being saved from dire straits through the intervention of another person go down as more people become involved. That’s the lesson of Kitty Genovese. Instead of making a call to CPS, most of us would ask a friend first. “What should I do?”
My mom was brave to take in the neighbor girl and make the call. She also didn’t have any friends in the neighborhood to consult with first — no one to give advice or make her doubt herself. It’s ironic that if my mother had had more support that she might not have acted. The act (reaching out to protect a child) is morally separate from the results (an embarrassed and loving family forced to defend themselves to the state). But if she’d had more friends to talk to, they might have focused on the imagined results and talked my mom out of acting. I don’t know. I can’t ever know.
It’s less clear if there is no one saying, “Help me.” It’s hard to know what to do when you can see that there is something not quite right but there is a lot of noise in the way distorting the situation. I keep talking to people who know about as much as I do and who are just as conflicted and we all keep talking ourselves in and out of action. We keep looking for an opening because we don’t want to press. We keep, reluctantly, hoping for a crisis so that we know, yes, the situation demands our intervention.
Mostly we talk because talking almost feels like action. Analyzing every little thing seems a little bit like figuring out what to do next. Only it’s not and instead it feels like we are more mired than ever in doing nothing.
I’m frustrated. And sad. And angry at myself.
Maybe I’m too hung up on results. I want the outcome to be a certain way (where help is accepted, where the truth comes out, where change is made) and I know from past experience with this situation that I’m likely going to be as frustrated after as I am now. I also know that the situation is murky and that it could be argued that our concerned take on things is more about our values than about any moral truth. We all know we intervene if a child is eating out of the garbage disposal. What if there is no child and no garbage disposal?
Argh.
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Tags: child abuse, friendships, frustrated, my mom
I keep wanting to go back
May 15, 2008 Friends, Parenting
…to my last post and add “and the three things I do wrong” but I’m resisting the urge. I do lots wrong — oh so many things! And the road always leads back to my inconsistency. Pretty much everything I do wrong I do wrong because I either forget why I was doing it or forget I meant to.
That’s all I’m going to say for now because I’m going to the park to play with other fabulous moms who do some stuff wrong, too.
(Other parents are the most important thing to my entire parenting career not to mention my sanity. If you don’t have your people in your life yet, gift yourself some. A like-minded peer group is a wonderful, wonderful thing.)