Daily blog from lockdown. How long have I been doing these every day? A week? I’ve lost count. It’s been so helpful for me, given me a sense of purpose, even if that purpose is only processing my own thoughts and emotions.
I wrote a poem once about how your kids grow up and leave and have their own lives and how that is absolutely the way it’s supposed to be. Now that we are all having to isolate, these thoughts pop in again. I know, I see, how difficult some parents of young children are finding it, being with their kids 24/7. I know it wears their patience paper thin. I also know that child abuse of every kind is on the rise right now, and thinking those kinds of thoughts will break me if I linger too long.
The thing that helps me feel better when I cannot be around my children or grands, is knowing what good people they are. My kids (like myself, like all of us) are not perfect, but I can say that I am so proud of each of them. They each have their own issues to deal with and conquer, but they seem to be managing to do so with dignity and love for themselves and others. I surely hope so. I also know that as the mother of adult children, there is much I don’t know and don’t see.
But that’s the point I guess. We do the absolute best we’re capable of doing to raise children, and then hope they’re able to make it out in the world for themselves. We have to hope that they grow up to NOT need us quite as much as they did as children. Or perhaps the need morphs into something different.
When my kids were teens, I found myself changing into a person who no longer wanted to jump on them every second about every little thing, but someone who could be more understanding, be more of a friend. I’d seen so many teenagers begin to despise their parents and run in the other direction and I think I bent over backwards to see to it that this didn’t happen. (I left home at seventeen during my senior year in high school and lived with friends, then in an apartment with 5 or 6 other people.) It was a tough time and the closest I guess I ever came to being homeless.
My parents had rules I found to be archaic and overly strict and it brought out the rebel in me and I couldn’t take being there another moment. I thought I was so grown up inside, that I could handle myself. I believed it with all of my being. So I left.
At home I could’ve had food in my belly steadily and a roof and a bed always, but because we were so different in our worldviews, because of a lot of stuff, every fiber of my being needed OUT. So I got out.
My senior year I only had classes from 8 a.m. until 11 so I basically showed up most of the time and slid through my senior year with almost zero effort. (In my high school days I didn’t give 2 shits about education, didn’t try at all, didn’t feel challenged, and felt sure I would never go to college, so I slid through, still managing to make average or better grades.)
I don’t know how, but I did. I think I felt such a lack of challenge or interest by that time that boredom alone would’ve driven me out. But I promised my mother I would show up to class and get my HS diploma, and I did.
Having left home and family at such a young age, I think it fed my fear that I would lose my own children when they became teenagers. I judged them by my own experiences. We can do that, can’t we?
My kids (as kids do) eventually made their way out of the nest. And the thing is, trusting them, trusting in the adults that they have become, brings me great comfort. I know this is something that everyone doesn’t have the luxury of feeling/doing, I recognize that, and I’m grateful for it.
My birdies have flown the nest and normally I would get to see them occasionally but with the lockdown, well, it’s been harder. We don’t live all bunched up together like we once did. I am so grateful that, if we had to have a lockdown, we have the technology to video call or Skype or whatever. I’m so glad it’s not still the age of corded phones and huge long-distance bills and no video. Small blessings.
So, though I wish for the live hugging and visits that last for days, I can say that I love them, they love me. They’re good. I believe them to be good. To be okay. Yes, they’re struggling in some ways as we all are right now, but I feel like deep down, it’s okay, it will be okay for them. And I will take peace and comfort where I can find it today.
Here’s hoping you and yours are well and truly OKAY today–
Peace Out