Parenting: The young adult years, Take I

Daughter is home for reading week. Unlike the holiday break, this visit has no sense of frenzy. It is like the old days. Except. It's. Not.

I've always felt that I've been about one or two steps emotionally ahead of her. This is to say that yes, I'm an emotional misfit and most parents I've observed seem to have a lot more maturity than I've ever felt.

This feeling was driven home last night and in fact I am now suspicious that Daughter's emotional maturity is starting to catch up and even surpass mine. 

During last night's rather heavy dinner conversation I found myself unable to offer anything resembling answers to her questions. I hit the 'parenting wall'. I suggested that she try to nurture the type of relationship with her father in which she could ask him these same questions for I had no idea what to say.  All I could do was listen and then offer the physical support of a long hug that seemed to acknowledge my failure to provide adequate guidance as well as provide the soul soothing comfort of physical closeness that used to be so central to our relationship. Our physical need for one another seems to have been misplaced during her teen years, as is healthy and normal.

Daughter, at 18, is now an adult. And she is facing adult concerns. As a fellow adult that also is her mother I think the most mature thing for me to do is step back from my parenting pulpit and remind her that sometimes all we can do for our fellow man is offer a hug that reminds us that we are - fortunately - not alone facing life's trials and tribulations.

Inside, I am swirling with chaotic protective emotions that are screaming to protect her. Demanding me (and my inner annoying maternal perfectionist) to seek out answers that will better my vacant "I don't know what to say" responses from last night. I have to squelch the urge to email or text her father and make demands on him that will fall on dead ears (history is a brilliant teacher).

I was told recently by a wise man with more than four decades of parenting experience that conversations with my young adult child would start to get very interesting.  What I didn't realize when he said that was that the interesting bit was not necessarily just on the surface but would hit me in a place inside that until last night, I didn't know existed.

Shattered Family Ties

Daughter is home today after 22 days with Mother. September 1st is move in day at her university.  I have exactly one month left of her at home.

I continue to sift, sort, trash, recycle and gift the possessions in my house.

Yesterday I opened a package that Mother has yet to bring back with her to Newfoundland.  It was the below picture, in a frame.

I held the picture for a good few minutes.  This woman has been dead for nearly twenty years.  She is my aunt by marriage.  She married Mother's 3rd brother and they were the only extended family that we had in Canada and we spent a little bit of time with them throughout my childhood.  Sister and I were flower girls in their wedding.  They came to the big life events of good catholic households:  first communion, confirmation, wedding, etc.  This particular uncle was legendary in the family since he started smoking by eight years of age and started charging interest to his older siblings for loans at about the same time.  He is now a senior banker and has resided mostly in South and Latin American countries since shortly after his wife passed on, suddenly.  He quit smoking years ago and used to run marathons with XHusband.  I believe he still runs.

I thought about how I'd love to have known this woman, my aunt, throughout my adult life.  She passed away before I was comfortably esconced in adulthood - I was merely 25 years of age and living in a town about 2 hours from where she lived.  My memories of her are of a woman that had a fabulous sense of humour and a wry take on life.  I believe I would have enjoyed her immensely if I had been given the chance to live closer to her as I raised Daughter.

And then it hit me.  The loss of this woman was preceded by the loss of another woman that I was not given a chance to get to know, even in childhood.  The loss of my maternal grandmother.  I was shattered.  I was gripping the frame and choking back tears.  The loss of these two women left an enormous gap in my family structure and the subsequent decades of dysfunction - which show no sign of abatement - seemed to mirror their deaths.

My aunt, just before she died, suddenly, in 1992.

It struck me how the glue that holds families together seems to exist in the maternal bonds.

Mother was a young adult in a different country when her mother passed away.  A country that was extremely expensive to get to or from relative to the inexpensive costs of travel today.  My maternal grandfather did his best to keep the family relationships alive and together (with a healthy dose of solid dysfunction added) but after his death in 1996 the shreds of familial connections started to fray. At this point in my life I feel very little connection to the sixteen younger (living) maternal cousins and various and sundry second cousins that are still springing forth due to the fact that I am the eldest and the youngest cousins are still toddlers (I have two uncles that reproduced as seniors).  There are a couple of exceptions to this but living in a far away country makes it difficult to maintain any sort of intimacy.

Daughter, at seventeen, willingly chose to spend 22 days with Mother.  Would I have done the same at her age?  I was not given the choice since both grandmothers were dead at that point in my life. I do know though, that most of my entire life I have felt like a buoy that is not anchored.  Yesterday was the first inkling I had that the anchor I missed having was real and not just a product of years of reading self help books that described dysfunction in detail but rarely beyond the immediate family.  My maternal grandmother was an anchor that kept my maternal family afloat and her tragic loss before her family had grown left a gap that still reverbrates. And the loss of my aunt did the same - shattering the one meager extended family relationship I had on the new turf her, my uncle, and my parents chose as home.

And today, having found and named the lost anchor I feel I have actually sealed the cracks in my foundation. Mother is writing a memoir about her mother.  I eagerly await getting to know my lost anchor and feel enormous gratitude that Mother's anchoring presence is still in my life.

Darwin's Penetrative Force

"OMG, I allowed that man to orgasm in me. Without protection!  I wantonly willed it!"  My (68 yo) mother and I (45 yo) shared these thoughts together, yesterday on the phone.  We have both marvelled at the wonders of the biological clock over the years and at the choices we made when our own clocks were a buzzing.

"that man" is my XHusband (and "that man" for my mum is my Dad, her XHusband).

My mother, the slut (sarcasm alert), conceived me before an actual wedding date was set.  So my very being necessitated a hasty marriage to my Dad.  A marriage that was prompted by a cleverly planned emigration from Ireland (so no one was told of my conception).

This forced-marriage-emigration ploy by my parents was followed by a turbulent 15 year marriage.  An emigration to Canada (wtf? why not somewhere warm and kewl, like Australia or exotic like South Africa?).  All of which was finally sorted, for me, in my thirties (yup, it took me twenty years...longer than their feckin' marriage).

XHusband and I were married nearly 3 years when our first child was conceived (I was 26, he was 27 and this was the early 90s, so quaint).  The child that miscarried.  He impregnated me with Daughter a few months after that miscarriage but also started his dating life with his current wife.  I was very needy after that miscarriage.  I know he tried.  But he wasn't in it for the long haul and today, after 17+ yrs, I have to admit that I wasn't in it for the long haul for the right reasons either. BTW, it is only hindsight that allows me to admit this.

XHusband texted Daughter this week asking if she needed the money he had for her upcoming university gig.  He, a 46 yo grown man, texted his 17 yo daughter and asked her if he was allowed to use her university money for house renovations.  The house renovations that involve eliminating a bed in his house for her. A renovation that leaves her homeless if her other parent, moi, chose to do the same.

And today, all I can think of is:  A mother's instinct never fails.

Daughter needs protection from this imbecile I allowed to impregnate me.  And so, I will.  Continue to.


In whatever way I am able.  Just like my Mum has done for me.  


And I'm the first one to admit that I'm not perfect and I'm not enough.  But it's all we got.

Shamrock, still smiling after all those years.

Shamrock Hegarty  January 1999 - March 2012
Photo taken March 14, 2012

We met you at the Kitchener pound on St. Patrick's Day 1999.  Took you for a walk.  Or rather, you took us.  That never much changed.   Four year old Daughter begged.  I had been somewhat serious about the pound outing.  You were named before we left the parking lot after making the application to adopt you. That mandatory three day wait to adopt was exciting and terrifying.  I was expanding my circle of dependents, willingly. The small Canadian Hegarty clan of 2 humans (me, Daughter) and one cat (RIP Cadbury) was about to include a canine.

This past St. Patrick's Day, our fourteenth together, I wondered about the upcoming ultimate decision I was facing.  Because you did give us warning dear girl.  I thank-you for that.  We all knew it was getting close. And last week, after you had perked up again - perking up at this stage was measured by your ability to get up and down the steep old staircase in our house - I briefly thought back to the days when you could still hear me speak but you were showing clear signs of slowing down.  The days when I'd say, "It'd be mighty helpful if you just up and died on us one day so that I don't have to face the ultimate decision."

Of course, the ultimate decision is making the appointment.  The one with the needle.  The one with the public portrayal of tears, even if that public is the home visiting veterinarian.

You and I communicated well for 13 years.  I didn't always agree with you, nor you with me.  But I guess you agreed with me on the ultimate decision and conveniently died this weekend on our front porch.  The very same porch we sat on together for many an evening....you racing through your elder years while I meandered into middle age.  

I don't know how I'll cope with losing two dependents in one year...Daughter to University and you to the ultimate dogapalooza in the sky.  But I won't think about that now.  I'll think about your goofy smile, your crooked ears and your never ending supply of adoration for your clan.  And the formidable number of complete strangers that stopped me over the years to tell me how beautiful my dog was.  Perfect, even in death, you were.

We rise again.

Incredulous.  That is the look people would give me after I responded to their asking me if I was wearing my boyfriend's university jacket.  The jacket is black leather and has the University of Waterloo crest on the front and big white letters spelling out University of Waterloo on the back.  On one arm is 90 which signified the year I finished (and planned to...the choosing of this year for the sleeve was a bit dicey since that meant a commitment to finishing the program on time or looking foolish for the year/years that you hung around afterwards).  The other sleeve says HONS MATH.  The Honours Math thing makes me chuckle even now.  I picked this generic sleeve label since I switched programs within the Math Faculty about a dozen times before settling on the program that I actually completed which was an Honours Mathematic degree Operations Research major with a Computer Science minor.

I proudly wore that jacket and enjoyed the incredulity on people's faces when I would say, um, no it is not my boyfriend's jacket it is my own and why would you think otherwise?  These questions always came from people not on the University of Waterloo campus since I am happy to say that there were quite a few of us women sporting these jackets on campus in the late 80s.

Other than these first glimmerings of cultural bias against women (a woman studying math in university?  whoa) I lived in a cocoon throughout my youth.  My mother raised me on Michele Landsberg, Marlo Thomas and Our Bodies Ourselves and I believed that the hard work of early 20th century women had paved the way for equality for my mother and my own generation.   I neglected to listen to the stories my mother told of inequality because I felt she was just angry and perceiving sexism where basically it did not really exist.  I mean, even those questions about my jacket were kind of quaint in a redneck way, right?

It wasn't until I became a mother that I started to see how awry our world was.  Once I turned into a breeder the whole world got turned upside down for me.  I perceived everything differently.  And giving birth to a daughter made me recognize how connected all of us with wombs are.  The day I gave birth to my daughter I visualized the literal extending of the womb back behind me throughout my maternal ancestors.  Generations of women giving birth had led me to the birth of my own daughter.  I was connected to these women.  Permanently.

It was powerful imagery that remains with me almost over seventeen years later.  For the first time I had tapped into the strength of my feminine power and my blood memory was activated.  I could no longer think any sexist action was quaint or excusable.  Sexist against men or women but far too often it is directed against women.  Women with no voice.  Women with no choice.

As an exercise in hope during these darker regressive days for women I now invite you to play the below song while perusing the following hashtags on twitter (you don't need to belong to twitter to do this...that is the beauty of twitter).  While doing this I ask you to also think about the image of all of us descending from a womb and the chain of wombs behind you that allowed you to walk this planet right this very minute:  #IDidNotReport #MissRep #SlutWalk.  It is time to Rise Again.  Enough it enough.

Satisfactorily Single

Myself at Macchu Picchu:  Satisfyingly Single

How many middle aged people get to take off, with a couple of weeks notice, and go on an adventure?  

The look of envy I've witnessed in the telling of my adventure tale of the last few months is curious.  I think all of us retain a sense of the wonder we experienced as a child when many things were brand new to us.  I think also that we are conditioned, as a species, to move towards stability in order to best provide for the continuation of our species.  Nomadic societies are successful but you and I are not likely direct descendants of them.  Our current world is ensuring the complete extinction of any remaining nomadic societies although the final frontier (space) may create an entirely new society of space nomads in the future.

I've spent a lifetime caught up in the mating trap.  I have been heavily conditioned by both nature and nurture to believe that 'every old sock has an old shoe'.  And, if I just went fishing often enough, then I too would land my catch.  I could write a book on my dating adventures (first internet date was in 1996, yes, 1996).  I met one person for a coffee back in the late 1990s and he told me he just wanted to have a viewing of what a woman looked like that would put an ad up in a singles column.  After experiences like that you would think I would have given up but alas, the reproductive mating urge is strong so I soldiered on.

Not once in my quest did I ever stop to think that being single is a viable option.  A viable permanent option.  During periods of not actively searching I would be buoying myself up to launch yet another search for "Him".

A few years ago I came to the conclusion that perhaps I was just too wounded to be partnered and I accepted, if not embraced, that reality and ended the search.  A truism came to life shortly after that decision, I fell in love.  A marvelous love affair ensued and the ending revealed to me that yes, I may be wounded but no, I can overcome that if I wish to.  And a new decision was arrived at:  I am satisfactorily single.  I am not single because I am wounded (all of us have baggage, mine is mostly stowed away).  I am not single because I am damaged.  I am single because I cherish my independence.  I cherish my lack of commitment.  I am single because I am an explorer at heart and to change my marital status would involve relinquishing something more precious to me than even my daughter:  my independence.

I look at the frenzy surrounding The Official Day to celebrate coupledom and think bravo for you if you find fulfillment in a partnership.  I have also found fulfillment there, at times.   But the fulfillment I am experiencing as a single adventurer so greatly outweighs my former aspirations I wonder why as a society we are not offering up this choice to younger people right from the get go.  "Happily Ever After" can and should involve a solo option.

Whose reachin' out to capture a moment? Everyone knows it's Windy.

Sometimes a great big wind has to tear through the skies in order to clear away all the debris leftover from summer's death.  That happened last night.  There are only a handful of leaves remaining on both mature trees on my property.  The younger trees in my back yard are still holding on tight.

As a metaphor I have to say I find this most appropriate.

In my youth every grudge was nursed and stroked regularly and with diligence.  An early boyfriend liked to remind me (lovingly) of the chip on my shoulder and for many years after that relationship ended I pondered that.  In fact, during that time, I did not know the chip was so large I had to start to develop a chip on the other shoulder throughout my twenties in order to accommodate the growing pile of grievances that seemed to accumulate monthly.

At the dawn of my middle age I feel fortunate that the love of my friends and family (and therapy!) have acted like layers of spackling.  So while I do still have the chip it is considerably smaller and back to only one shoulder.

I realize today that I'm like the mature trees on my property.  The great wind of youth has passed through my life and I'm hanging on to a few of the leaves of despair.  I realize that these 'leaves' are there.  However, I also realize that they represent the last fragments of a younger self that was determined to logically resolve every emotional ache and wrongdoing ever inflicted upon me.

As someone with an extremely analytical mind this has been one of the greatest lessons learned in my life to date.  It is okay to be a thinker and to try and think your way through problems.  But knowing which problems to devote that energy to? That's true wisdom.

And on that note I leave you with a practical problem that my analytical mind (with the help of google) could not seem to solve.  Perhaps you could help a blogger out by answering the question posed in my picture?

This tree is in my backyard.
I have no idea what it is but the fall leaves are stunning.