When I was just a few months old, I was catapulted from my bassinet, through a rear smashed window of our family sedan, out onto the road.
It was 1971.
My father was driving and I’m not entirely sure how or why this happened, but the car rolled more than once and off I flew.
I landed on the road and although I can’t remember it, my brother once told me he remembers being in the front seat of the car, upside down, secured by a seat belt, whilst I lay on the road. Screaming.
He said that he saw me, tongue hanging out, lungs belting out, wah wah wah.
Apparently I was uninjured, though some decisions I have made throughout my life, may suggest I suffered some type of head trauma.
I know, it’s no laughing matter.
Perhaps I may have caused myself further or more damage on the day that I fell out of a tree, scrapping myself on branches along the way to my descent toward the ground.
Thud.
Or, maybe it was on the day that I broke my wrist whilst dancing on the front nature strip. I was spinning and spinning myself into an imaginary tumbleweed, until I became so dizzy that I had no hope of standing erect.
I fell onto the road and broke my wrist.
It was fortunate that I wasn’t run over by a car.
My wrist bone was no doubt already weak, due to the previous time I’d broken it whilst roller skating.
My mother saw me fall that day and thought that I had just hurt myself slightly. When I skated over toward her, she inspected my wrist and said, “You’ll be fine. Get back out there.”
I completed one very meek lap of the rink, with bent wrist weighing heavily, before returning to her.
She took me to hospital and an x-ray confirmed that she was a bad mother and I wasn’t a drama queen. That time.
There was a day once, when I was riding a friends bike, aged about seven, and we were racing down a steep hill. The bike I was managing, decided to manage me with a tricky episode of speed wobbles. Finally, after a short fight, the bike won and the handlebars spun themselves into a complete three sixty degree turn, whilst flinging me up into the air, before nose diving onto the bitumen road. I continued to slide down the steep hill, dragging the bike behind me at a considerate pace. The stupid bike (it wasn’t mine) had managed to entangle itself into my foot, which was trapped within the wheel spokes.
Of course, I was wearing minimal seven year old girly summer clothes.
It was 1978.
My body was grazed along the entire front of me.
I felt like a burn victim.
My friend, raced into her house and returned faster, with her older sister and mother trailing behind her.
In the sanctuary of their house, at the bottom of the hill, I was told to lay down and relax. The older sister then proceeded to slap margarine onto my skin.
She rubbed that margarine into my skin like lotion for the dehydrated.
It hurt.
I screamed.
And I’ve never been a fan of it on my sandwiches since.
On the day of the accident and margarine medicine, my mother – a nurse – (ahem, missed diagnosis of my broken arm at the rollerskating rink!) tore shreds from the older sister. Apparently, she was a nurse in training. My mother taught her a few lessons that day.
I’m not sure how my mother coped when I sped through the old deserted butter factory and down the ramp beside the road, on my roller skates, when I was eleven and lacking fear.
Nor how she managed to carry on with normality whilst I took my daily climb, to the highest branches of the trees at our country property, when I was younger than eight.
I am especially amazed at her ability to have avoided a nervous breakdown when I first started partying all night and didn’t come home until dawn.
Nor her lack of strength when I got my drivers license, aged eighteen.
I can’t imagine how trusting she decided to be when I started dating seriously and discovered how beautiful sex could be.
And especially how relieved she must’ve been when I walked away from car accidents with boys when I was sweet sixteen.
My mother is and was an amazing mama.
She has always given me enough trust and respect to follow my own road. The roads which are full of bitumen and careless abandon. The ones which bend and lead right back to where they started. The ones which go on forever, into places unknown. And she has waited right where I’ve left her. At other times she has run ahead of me. Somehow, she found the right balance as a mother. Never too over protective, never too tolerant. She has been the perfect mother. For me.
I try to find that same balance with my own children and although some of our parenting patterns are very similar (it’s in the genes), I have – like every other mother, had to find what works best with each individual child.
They’re all different.
When my first born son was only two years old and I was a single mother shopping on a Thursday, I thought I knew everything about being a mother.
He was a near perfect child. He rarely had tantrums nor was difficult to deal with.
I claimed full rights to the education behind his beautiful manners and pleasant personality.
One day, he threw himself on the floor of a local shopping centre and showed me his best tantrum. I was genuinely amazed, because he was displaying behaviour that I’d not seen in him before.
He kicked his little feet and pounded his clenched fists into the cold and probably grotty floor of the shopping centre.
I turned to look at him and I gave him my best perplexed expression ever. I said to him, “If you’re going to behave like that, I’m leaving.”
I began to leave, whilst hoping my ultimatum would work.
He showed genuine shock that I would walk away and soon stood up and chased after me.
I thought I had it all sorted that day and thereafter.
I believed I knew how to parent children.
I will be honest in stating that I remember seeing mothers with children having tantrums or being brats and I would judge them and assume it was the mothers fault.
That kid is walking all over you.
Nine years later, I was blessed with another near perfectly behaved little boy. I dragged him along to solicitor meetings and shopping centres and doctors appointments without any stress at all. He played nicely and like his older brother, picked up the toys in the waiting room before we left. He sat happily in his pram or walked beside me without becoming lost.
Two years later, we had another little boy, and as he grew older, I learned more than a few lessons myself.
He is spirited.
If there has been any one thing that he shouldn’t have done in life, he has done it. Nothing massively dramatic that points to a psychopathic future, really just innocent childish things. Annoying things. Embarrassing things. Messy things. Like, depositing everything and anything we own, over the fence and into the neighbours back yard. The neighbour decided to start collecting it all in milk crates (they looked stolen) and gave it all back to us.
“Keep the crates.”
He has ripped clothes and towels and sheets from the washing line, thus I secretly dubbed him Bluey – like a blue heeler. No, of course I’ve never called him that to his face nor in hearing space though it pops into my head whenever he is destructive. He reminds me of the little blue heeler pups we had when I was a little girl. They ripped my favourite doll. Broke things. Made a mess.
He has painted his bedroom walls in his own poo. He only did this once or twice when he was a toddler. But he did it. This experience particularly horrified me and I immediately dry wretched whilst thinking that perhaps my son had some type of mental disorder. I wondered how a human would want to do that.
I googled it and wished I hadn’t.
But, after some safe reading, I found out I wasn’t alone.
There was a day when he found the hidden keys for the garage roller door, embarked upon a three wheeled pink tricycle without a seat and rode out onto the busy road, across into the parkland and away down the walking track. Head back, giggling madly and having the time of his life. He was two years old.
I chased him down the road that day, with one baby on my hip, no shoes on, I may have been sans bra too and I definitely had no ability to call after him because I’d just had my thyroid removed in the week before that. I had no option but to catch him. I did. Of course, he made me laugh, like he always does and I was thankful for his safety. I also found a better hiding place for the keys.
Another day, he encouraged his sister to join him and I found them both at the park. Naked.
That was a low day.
I tumbled them into the car with smacked bottoms and stern words whilst having visions of it all appearing on a television affairs program later that night.
MOTHER ABANDONS CHILDREN. KIDS FOUND NAKED AND UNCARED FOR AT LOCAL PARK.
I watched him like a hawk for years after that.
He’s quick.
He is agile and sporty and well witted and hilarious. He has the devils glint in his eye and I love it.
We encourage his individuality and run him like a Labrador daily. He needs the exercise. That works best with him.
His acts have rivaled great magicians. I have literally turned my back for less than five minutes and he has created something he considers to be magic I’m sure.
He has managed to find an over sized cardboard box (hidden) in the garage, jam packed with powder paints. I’m not blaming my husband but it was on the first occasion when I’d left him home alone (seen the move?) with all of the children for longer than half an hour. I drove in the driveway to find three wet rainbow streaked children. Ah, the indigo children. I always knew they were special.
He said, that he’d found them in the garage and that it was hilarious to see them standing there all lined up in a row full of guilt. Three little powder monkeys. Dusted from head to toe. He hosed them off but of course once the water hit the powder it made a never ending supply of water paint.
We bought jumbo sized rolls of butchers paper after that day.
Best to encourage artistic merit.
With four children, I would expect plenty more drama’s and accidents, though we’ve been very lucky so far. Perhaps I used all of that quota as a little girl myself? I could only hope.
There have been the usual falls and cuts and a couple of ambulance trips to hospital. Once, with my first born son when he fell from a climbing pyramid at the local park, aged three. He fell with a thud to the ground and couldn’t move. I immediately thought about wheel chairs and forgot about my own back jarring accidents as a younger me and I called the ambulance and ee-aw-ee-aw’d all the way to the hospital with my son wearing a neck brace and me wearing guilt, fear and a new found appreciation for praying.
He soon got bored and pulled at the neck brace and said, “I’m bored, when can we go home?”
That was the same year that he fell over and stabbed himself in the roof of his mouth with a broken plastic whistle and bled like something horrific.
It healed well overnight.
We’ve had items shoved into ears and noses. In my first born sons case, it was a piece of cereal (nutri grain) wedged deep up in into his nasal passage. He hadn’t yet learned to blow his nose, so it took some coercing to bring it out.
There was something in an ear once. I think it was pop corn. Un-popped.
Anyway, they’re all surviving and thriving and some days I look at my husband and think, we’re pretty amazing. Those children are amazing.
And then I look to the sky and think, thank you.
I know the toughest years are ahead of us when our children are driving and dating and happily losing (or finding) themselves in whichever party they choose.
There will be sadness and heartbreak in their lives and all I can do is be there. Love, listen, care.
One important thing I’ve learned about parents and children is that we are all on our own journey’s. Despite which family we’re born into or where we grew up, we all have our own roads to travel. Individually. And whether you call it karma or kismet or gods master plan or just choices, there will be upheaval and challenging forks in the road. Emotionally and physically.
I remember I had a new appreciation for my mother, when I was aged around thirty years old. I really started seeing her not just as my mother, but as a woman. I respected her needs. I valued her journey in the world and where she’d been and what she’d had to travel through. It took me a long while to differentiate between the two. Mother versus another woman in the world. I hope my children grasp that reality much younger than I did. For my own sake. And theirs.
Every being has lessons to learn and destinations to get to.
It’s tempting to shield our children from certain realities and keep them wrapped in a safe cocoon forever. It’s also essential to remember to teach them to fly.
Alone. Though of course, you’ll never be too far should they need you.
Let them grow up and wander along the roads of their life (not naked on a pink tricycle with no seat nor adult supervision) and believe in them. And yourself.
You taught them everything they know. And some of it, they are born with.
It’s their life and it’s going to be a magnificent one – bumps and all.
I wish you and yours the very best.
I hope those roads are travelled safely but not without adventure.
Adventure is a must.
motherstuff 