The Crab Chronicles

Pushing Children to Live Out Their Parents' Dreams

I am cursed with the ability to see things really TOO clearly sometimes. I understand both sides of issues, which means of course that I refuse to join either of the two main political parties in this country because I disagree with things in both parties. [Don't worry this isn't a political post.]

I saw a video early this morning that gave me pause, about a young fashion designer named Max. I've seen several of his videos. Check out his Instagram page, couture.to.the.max -- it's a revelation. Max's parents recognized when he was only 4 years old that he was passionate about fashion design and they encouraged him, giving him sewing lessons and really helping him by nurturing his talent. He is only 8 now but his fashion designs are mature and remarkable.

I applaud Max's parents!

Thank God Max was born in the 21st century.

I am 62 years old and I know this for a sad fact: if Max had been born to my parents in the 1960's his talent in fashion would NOT have been encouraged. My dad was a hunter and a fisherman and he would have been horrified to have a son into something as feminine as fashion. Mom would have tried to shield Max from being  bullied or discouraged but she likely would have failed. My brother was encouraged to be a hunter and to join the Army and he was taken on hunting trips starting at age 3. Before he started school he had his own rifle and knew how to shoot it, load it, and clean it.

I'm not saying doing those things is a bad thing, if a child truly has a passion for guns and hunting and the like. I have always wondered, however, how different things might have been if my dad hadn't pushed my brother into everything hyper masculine.

My brother loved to draw, and he liked music, and Mom started teaching him how to cook when he was still a kid. None of that was shared with Dad, although I'm not sure there was any real conspiracy to keep him from knowing. I think my brother just knew from a young age that if he wanted to be close to his father he had to go along with the program Dad wanted.

I don't like the term "toxic masculinity" but it's very accurate sometimes.

I was allowed to play with toy guns AND with dolls. I ran around playing with Hot Wheels and playing football in the street, and Dad didn't care. If anything, I had the opposite problem from my brother -- a mother and grandmother who pressured me to be demure and "ladylike" and to conform to their ideas of how a little girl should be, which I always resisted. [You can read more about that in my memoir, Talking Back: Stories from the Big Hair and Pantyhose Years, on Amazon.]

My brother went along with Dad's program for him and graduated from high school and went into the Army, then majored in Political Science in college, graduated and spent 10 years in the Army. He went to Iraq in 2008.

The sad thing is that my brother's real passions are food, cooking, and nutrition. His mother and grandmother were also passionately interested in those things as well, so he comes by it honestly. Sadly, I'm quite certain that if he had rejected the Army in favor of a career focused on food, in some way, Dad would not have been supportive.

Dad grew up during the World War II years and he had a passion for everything military. There's nothing wrong with that, but why did he demand that my brother fulfill his dreams, instead of encouraging him to nurture what he found interesting?

I think very traditional men like my dad were always worried that their sons not appear "weak" and anything traditionally categorized as feminine was perceived as weak. I think some dads still think that way, and what a shame for their sons.

My brother was a highly active child, very bright. He started talking at 6 months. At age 2, Mom taught him to read, to entertain him while she was pregnant with me and on bedrest.

His teachers had no idea how to handle him because he was always so bored. Dad wouldn't let him skip a grade or go to a Montessori school, and as a result my brother hated school.

So I admire Max's parents very much. Even if Max ultimately decides to do something other than fashion, his parents will likely be supportive, I'm sure. I'm so glad that attitudes about what is appropriate for little boys are changing. Denying any child the opportunity to pursue what they really enjoy and feel passionate about is not healthy. Forcing children to conform to gender stereotypes is not healthy. Giving children the unspoken idea that a parent's love is conditional upon them conforming to the parents' will is really not healthy.

My daughter once took an aptitude test, in high school, and it said she should be a truck driver. Everyone thought it was funny -- she was a petite, very feminine blonde -- but I told her if she wanted to try for that I'd support her fully.

When I was through with college and having trouble finding a job I told Dad I wanted to be a bartender. He had a fit. He yelled at me. I explained I could tend bar at night and write during the day. He still wouldn't hear of it. The discussion ended with me in tears. A few months later he agreed to pay all my expenses to go to paralegal school. Then he tried to push me into going to law school. He had once been given a scholarship to law school and turned it down -- so I was supposed to fulfill his lawyer dreams. I will always wonder what would have happened if I had become a bartender...

 

Teaching the Children Well

There are so many teachers in my family that I've felt, at times, that I should have followed that path. My mother was a teacher for several years before she had me and my brother. My grandmother Thompson was a teacher. Two of her three sons became teachers. My dad was a banker but he did some teaching in graduate school. I have two close friends who are teachers.

Teaching is one of the most important jobs in the world, if you think about it. If the kids aren't well-taught who will take over when it's time? I am not far from retirement ago, so this is something I ponder daily.

Sadly, I have come to the conclusion that most of our schools are not up to the job. Things need to radically change, but that is not going to happen quickly. Our educational system was designed to make obedient workers, I read recently. It rewards children who are good at sitting still and following directions. It was designed by Prussians, according to this source.

That makes perfect sense.

I was a good kid in school. I behaved myself. I made good grades.

I loved Art, Music, and History classes. I feel so fortunate we actually had Art and Music! I hated Math, and Science was only tolerable.

I was a "good " kid. I didn't bore easily. My brother was not so lucky. I think he might have had some ADHD because he found it very hard to sit still in class and pay attention. Nobody had ever heard of ADHD or ADD in the 1960's and 70's, unfortunately. My brother would have thrived in an unstructured program like Montessori but the tuition was out of reach for my parents.

More and more parents today and choosing to homeschool, and I totally understand that. I homeschooled my daughter for a year, with tutors, since I had to work full time. She was newly adopted and still learning English. It worked well, but then she wanted to go to high school and they agreed to admit her, even though she needed some extra help and an IEP due to some learning issues.

I wish I had been able to stay home and homeschool both my kids, but it just wasn't possible.

Kids like mine who suffered significant trauma often have a hard time in school. Before I adopted my kids they went through a lot. My kids both made good grades and did fine, but they had a Granny at home teaching them, and I got them the help they needed with English.

Even kids from loving and solid homes thrive when homeschooled. I have a cousin who homeschooled both his daughters. They did well. That was years ago, and I thought it was weird at the time but now I totally understand the reasoning behind it. He wanted them taught according to his values, and not exposed to biases, bullying, violence, etc.

I was bullied all through school, until high school. I wouldn't wish that on any child.

Here are a few more thoughts.

I also think children learn best when they learn at their own pace. Being forced to learn just to meet testing standards isn't the best idea, IMHO.

Recess is essential, and I am so thankful I grew up at a time when we got recess breaks daily, right through 8th grade.

I don't think kids should be given smartphones until high school.

I have a friend who adopted 5 children, all with varying degrees of learning issues. Though not a college grad, Cindy quit work and started homeschooling, and did an incredible job. One of her sons owns his own business. One is headed for medical school to be a doctor. You don't have to have a degree in teaching to homeschool your kids.

We need to encourage parents to think outside the box, when it comes to education.

Here endeth the lesson...

Best Friends Forever

When my mother died in 2020, I felt like a ship without a rudder, drifting aimlessly in the very choppy sea of life.

I had lost my dad young. I was 33. He was 65 and riddled with cancer. Seeing him in terrible pain, being unable to alleviate it, shook me. God was merciful, however, because my mother lived another 24 years, so I wasn’t fully orphaned until I was in my late 50’s. However, no matter how old one is, losing a mother is a primal pain, unlike any other kind of grief.

Yesterday, I was reminded of that pain, when my friend Debra texted me that her mother had passed away.

Lots of tears. I felt like I had lost my second mother.

For four years, from my infancy to kindergarten, my family lived in an old Victorian home in Augusta Georgia that my mother lovingly restored and my father referred to as “the money pit.”

Next door, a couple lived with their daughter, who was right between me and my brother in age. Mom and Dad became friends with Gwendolyn and Jack. Brother and I became friends with their daughter Debra. [Note: these are not their real names, to protect their privacy.]

Brother, Debra and I were the three fearless musketeers. Some of my happiest childhood memories center around those days. We were busy and active kids, always outside unless it was raining. We climbed the tall trees in the backyard, played in the sprinkler, and slid down the bannister of the grand staircase in the entrance hall.

One of my earliest memories is “going to ride” with Gwendolyn and Debra in Gwendolyn’s new Mustang, zipping around the streets of Augusta listening to the radio. Gwendolyn’s bouffant would be in a scarf, and she wore sporty sunglasses. I admired her beauty.

Debra always wore lovely little dresses and she was always polite and ladylike, unlike me. I was a Hot Mess. (You can learn more in my memoir, Talking Back: Stories from the Big Hair and Pantyhose Years)

Gwendolyn and Jack’s house, next door to ours, impressed me. It was elegant, kept immaculate by Rosa, a tiny housekeeper who didn’t put up with any nonsense. Debra had a lovely, dainty little girl’s beautifully decorated room that I admired. My room had an old chenille bedspread and linoleum on the floor -- but we spent a lot of time playing in there.

Unlike Gwendolyn’s elegant and sedate home, our house was noisy and messy. (Of course, we had a boy and a big mutt dog.) One memorable afternoon all of us kids cleaned out a large old cotton basket that normally held toys and took turns riding it down the stairs. Mom discovered us and was initially upset -- but when she saw that we weren’t getting hurt, she shrugged and just let us play.

The friendship was so close, Debra was like Mom and Dad’s third child. She often ate with us, spent the night, accompanied us on family outings. It worked both ways. We spent time at her house. Gwendolyn was my other mom. I obeyed her just as I obeyed my mother.

When Gwendolyn got divorced and sold her home I felt bad for her, and bad for Debra. I knew nothing about divorce, which was not as common back then. Gwendolyn seemed to come through it well, in my eyes, and my parents took her side although they remained cordial with Jack because they liked him, too.

One of my chief memories of Gwendolyn is her smiling and laughing. We made her laugh. Mom made her laugh. Their conversations were always frequently punctuated by laughter. There was a deep reserve of shared memories and stories.

After we moved to Tennessee, when I was 8 years old, we saw Gwendolyn at least once or twice a year when she and her second husband came to Knoxville to visit his daughter. I would often spend time with Debra at the daughter’s swanky home.

Sometimes our family went back to Augusta for visits with our relatives there, but we always made time to see Gwendolyn and Debra.

I spent a lot of time at Gwendolyn’s home where she lived with her second husband for more than 40 years. It was more familiar to me than any other home but my own. Debra and I loved to play dress up and traipse all over the house pretending to be fairies, carrying “wands” made of drinking straws with paper stars taped to the ends. We played the grand piano in the living room. We played games. One afternoon when we were teenagers and Gwendolyn was gone we made a cake and ate most of it ourselves. [photo below, me and Debra in our best 1970's fashions]

One of my favorite memories is a weekend when Mom and Dad and I met Gwendolyn and Debra in Atlanta for the weekend. We stayed at the new and impressive Omni Hotel, in the summer of 1977. (My brother wasn’t with us – he was in boot camp that summer.)

The hotel was in the same building as a mall with an ice-skating rink in the center. (It’s now the CNN Center) Debra and I were young teens and Mom and Gwendolyn let us walk all over the mall without parental supervision. We all had dinner at a French restaurant there in the building, and Debra and I were allowed to sit at a separate table from the grownups while we ate. I felt so mature. Debra ordered French Onion Soup, which I tasted and ended up ordering. (At that point I never ate onions so it was the first step in my developing a more mature palate.) It became one of my all-time favorite foods.

When I got to college, there were times when I really missed my mother and I couldn’t find her at home, (this was years before anyone had a cell phone) so I would call Gwendolyn. She would always patiently listen to my tales of angst and give me wise counsel. She also encouraged me as a writer.

Gwendolyn went to Northwestern and majored in Writing for the Radio. There was no television then, and radio was considered high-tech.

Gwendolyn was a schoolteacher and a scholar. She knew more about the bible than anyone I’ve ever known. Over the years I would sometimes call her to discuss something I’d learned in Sunday School and get her take on it. Gwendolyn approached the bible as a scholar, with great respect for its historical and cultural underpinnings. She taught Sunday School at First Baptist in Augusta for more than fifty years. After Gwendolyn’s husband passed away and she moved to assisted living she stopped teaching, but the popular class was named after her and still exists.

She didn’t just study the bible though. Gwendolyn lived it. I visited Gwendolyn in Augusta once after Debra had grown up and moved away with her husband. I watched, fascinated, as Gwendolyn made and professionally decorated a multi-tiered wedding cake for a young couple in her church who couldn’t afford to buy such a beautiful cake.

Gwendolyn was much more than simply a friend to Mom. She was like a sister. Debra was (and still is) like a sister to me. There are so many happy memories that involve Mom, Gwen and Debra. So much laughter.

 

When I heard Gwendolyn had passed away yesterday, I burst into tears, even though I was happy that she is free from pain, and undoubtedly with Jesus. It was a good death. Debra and her daughter were holding Gendolyn’s hands. She was with us for 95 years.

I believe when we die, our untethered souls enter a place of great wisdom and peace. We encounter all those we’ve loved, who are there to welcome us home. In the midst of my tears, there is one comforting thought today. Gwendolyn and my mother are reunited in heaven now. If I concentrate, I can hear them both laughing.

The Right to Know Who We Are

I have never wondered about my parentage. Every time I see a photo of myself I am reminded of the fact that I am the "spitting image" of my dad, what he would look like in female form, basically. According to 23andMe my mother and I are connected by 49.84% of our DNA.

When you get the testing done by Ancestry or 23andMe it includes a list of people who share your DNA. Increasingly, more and more people get tested, and many of them learn their parent who raised them had no biological connection to them. As you can imagine, that type of information shatters one's identity.

My friend Rob grew up and lived most of his life secure in the knowledge that he was his father's son. They shared the same name - Rob is a "Jr." However, when Rob did the DNA testing through Ancestry half of his relatives -- the ones on his father's side -- were missing. He wrote about that very upsetting event here. Rob was Donor Conceived.

Many people (millions) are learning, through Ancestry and 23andMe testing, that they are part of the DC (Donor Conceived) community, and the NPE (Non Parent Expected) community.

According to a survey done by the Pew Research Center in 2019: "About one-in-seven U.S. adults (15%) say they have ever used a mail-in DNA testing service from a company such as AncestryDNA or 23andMe, according to a new Pew Research Center survey... Roughly a quarter (27%) of those who say they have used mail-in DNA testing say they learned about close relatives they didn’t know about previously."

So how many people are now going through the painful process of finding out they have a previously unknown parent, like my friend Rob? Today, there are 341,567,135 people in the USA. If 15% have had the genetic testing done (that was the percentage in 2019) that's 51 million people. About 5% of those people will find out they are part of the NPE community.

That has led to a lot of people finding out that half of their medical history is missing. Millions of people are out there wondering about their parentage and their medical histories. My friend Rob was lucky, because one of his half siblings passed along the medical history of his biological father. Oftentimes, people who owe their existence to artificial insemination are not so lucky.

 

I was inspired to write this blog when I read this article this other day: AncestryDNA, 23andMe introduce you to new relatives. Now the nightmare: They won't offer medical history.

I am the parent of two adopted children, adopted from overseas, and my children have no idea about their medical history. They don't even know the names of their biological fathers. So we don't know if they have the genetic markers for cancer, Huntington's Disease, Parkinsons, or any other disease or medical condition. 

Knowing your medical history is very important. The right to know one's medical history can mean the difference between life and death.There are diseases which, if detected early, can be cured or at least managed. But if you don't know your history you don't even know if you have the genetic markers, and should be tested for them.

I have been a litigation paralegal since 1985 and I have seen a lot of frivolous litigation but there is one case I would love to see go to the Supreme Court. Imagine a man who finds out his father was a guy his mother had a brief affair with, and he wants to know the medical history of his biological father. He gets the genetic testing done and finds out the identity of the man. He asks the bio dad for a medical history. The bio dad, who is ashamed of his son born out of wedlock, refuses to hand over any medical history information. The son sues him. Bio dad continues to refuse to disclose anything. The case could make its way through lower courts and wind up making new law in the Supreme Court.

"A medical history is important, and no reasonable person will deny that. It can save someone's life," according to my friend Jack, a retired lawyer. I regret that Jack is long retired and can't take on a case. He gave me some valuable insights in a phone call recently.

One aspect of this is whether or not the right of privacy would outweigh the right to know. That would be important for the court to consider.

If you aren't familiar with how lawsuits work, here's the 411. It usually takes years to get a case through lower courts, to the level where it's going to be heard in the United States Supreme Court. When you take a case to the Supreme Court they decide whether or not to grant cert (hear the case) based on a number of factors. At the circuit court level there has to be disagreement about the law, for example.

I feel strongly that every person has the right to know who their biological parents are, and their medical history.

I would love to see an attorney take on this kind of case in real life, working for a real client, and take the case to the Supreme Court. I want the United States Supreme Court to make new law that says YES, we ALL have a right to know our medical history. That ruling would change lives. It would likely save lives. It would not be about money. It would be about JUSTICE.

Call me old-fashioned or naive. I don't care. I will always think justice is important.

#DNAtestingoutcomes, #medicalhistoryforthenpecommunity, #testcaseonmedicalhistory

Storytellers at a Dinner Party

The older I get the less I crave travel or seeing sights and the more I crave the company of interesting people, and/or my friends. Human interactions are far more fascinating to me than any natural or man-made big deal thing. I have no interest in going to the Grand Canyon, for instance, but I would love to listen to someone tell stories about it. My uncle Lewis Thompson took an extended rafting trip down the Colorado River and then wrote an account of his trip and to me that was enough, because I felt as though I had made the trip. He always wrote great stories about his travels, and he was a terrific storyteller in person, too.

I saw an interview with the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin where she was asked which three storytellers she would invite to a dinner party and she said Abe Lincoln, FDR [Franklin Roosevelt], and LBJ [Lyndon Johnson]. Excellent answer. I would love to be a fly on the wall at that dinner party!

It got me to thinking about storytellers -- admittedly a favorite topic of mine.

I have been richly blessed to come from two incredible storytellers, my mother and father.

Mom told stories liked she breathed air. They just came out of her naturally, and they always had a point and were often funny. She lived with me the last fifteen years of her life and told me a ton of stories. Many of her stories about her parents were used to make the characters vivid in my book Return to Marietta. Maybe that's why I love stories and anecdotes, because they certainly make it more fun and easier to write my novels. Her memoir, Singing to the Cows contains most of the stories she ever told and it's very entertaining.

My father was a terrific storyteller, too, and his stories were the most entertaining when he was around his brothers, telling stories about Hephzibah, their hometown. For more on those stories, check out my piece Cordelia's Giggle on Salvation South's website.

Back to the point of this blog. This sentence intrigued me:

You’re organizing a dinner party. Which three storytellers, dead or alive, do you invite?

I'm going to not say my parents, just because they are the obvious answers. Truthfully, I would give anything in the world just to be in their presence once again for an hour, because I still miss them both.

"My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call." - Pat Conroy

I would definitely invite Pat Conroy. I have read everything he ever wrote, because he was a masterful storyteller. He also loved to cook and I would fix seafood just for him, probably a shrimp dish I memorized years ago, plus fresh asparagus and some kind of pasta dish because he lived in Italy for years. I would make fresh pasta. For dessert, something simple like peach cobbler or pound cake, or maybe both.

"It really is possible to disagree with someone's politics without hating them. Grown-ups can do that." - Molly Ivins

It really is possible to disagree with someone's policies without hating them. Grown-ups can do that
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/molly-ivins-quotes

I would have to invite a journalist, and Molly Ivins was incredibly sharp and witty. I was really sad when she died. I didn't always agree with her politics but I had great respect for her. I would fix her a steak and baked potato, and whatever kind of alcoholic drink she preferred. I'd probably make a pecan pie for dessert.

"A lot of movie stars are not great actors; they're just very good-looking. And when they start to age and they don't have the looks any more, then it's over." - Michael Caine

Michael Caine would be my third dinner guest. He is 91 years old now, but he knows how to tell a witty and/or interesting story. I have seen him on the Graham Norton show telling stories and he is wonderful. He did an interview a few years back where he talked about being evacuated during World War II and living on a farm. For him, I would serve some fresh vegetables, perhaps Brussels sprouts -- and homemade blueberry muffins, which are one of my specialties.

I am quite sure it would be a rollicking good time, and I would record it and watch it over and over.

below, an occasion when my dad and uncles were telling stories to us in 1974

Love and War

Years ago I saw a movie with Sandra Bullock and Chris O'Donnell, In Love and War. I have always been fascinated by Ernest Hemingway and by World War I, plus I studied Italian for two years so it checked a lot of my boxes. It's an excellent movie. Bullock plays a serious character, and it's a real departure from her comedic roles. My opinion of her skills went up 1,000% when I saw that movie. It got me to thinking recently, about the two big themes we find in most of literature.

Love and War

The two things that fascinate most human beings are, quite simply, Love and War. Those subjects are prominent in many bestselling books.

The book Gone With the Wind proved this in 1936 when it was published and went on to become a huge bestseller. (Yes, I know it has a lot of racism, but I don't condemn writers who had no control over the world they were born into. Mitchell became far less racist later in her life when she observed the disparity between medical care available to black and white folks in Atlanta, and went on the personally fund many scholarships for black doctors at Morehouse School of Medicine, as you can read about here.)

Another favorite book of mine, The Winds of War by Herman Wouk, and its sequel, explore love and war from a male perspective. Excellent books.

In my own writing, I've written a lot about Love, but I've written very little about war. There are some chapters in my book Heart of My Own Heart that are set during the Civil War, but I didn't try to write battle scenes or say much about the war itself.

 

As women, we tend to be far more interested in the small wars that make up life for most of us -- wars with our parents, our boyfriends, lovers, husbands, children, etc. We have to fight personal wars for career advancement, for our right to be creative and nonconformist, for respect as intellectuals and caretakers, and more. We fight to get our children what they need, so they can have better childhoods than we had. We fight for respect if we choose to stay home and take care of our families and not work.

The truth is, most women are quiet warriors.

We have to learn how to get what we want and what we need in a world that so often judges us harshly if we are too beautiful or if we are not beautiful enough -- exactly why the Barbie movie resonates so strongly with so many people. We are supposed to not sacrifice femininity for aggressiveness. We are supposed to be perfect wives, mothers, sisters, friends, etc. and look perfect and work, and do it ALL. In a way, Scarlet O'Hara broke new ground because she is the first woman to express so many things no women expressed publicly in 1936.

In Gone With the Wind, Scarlet represents a strong, flawed female main character. She isn't beautiful -- it says so in the very first sentence of the book. She is manipulative and impulsive and immature, like most 16 year olds. Scarlet is 16 when the book opens. However, she grows up fast when the Civil War gets to Atlanta and she has to deliver a baby and try to get home. Then she takes on the task of trying to farm and make enough money to support herself and her family members. For the first time, readers were shown a world behind the scenes of war, where the fighting was very real, the stakes very high, and courage was displayed by those who had no choice but to be brave -- and yet the main character/hero wore skirts and wasn't "ladylike."

Women could identify with Scarlet because in 1936 women were still struggling to deal with the Great Depression and with trying to hold their families together. They had children to feed. They had to work, though most weren't raised to work away from home. The 19th century view of women was that we were fragile, delicate creatures. By 1936 those stereotypes had to be scrapped and we had to become tough and resilient, like Scarlet.

My grandmothers, Wilma Butler and Cordelia Henderson, came from well-to-do, socially prominent families. They were raised to get married and have children and nothing else. They both had to work hard to keep their families together during some very hard times in the 1930's. Cordelia helped her husband run a store, and then went back to teaching. Memaw [Wilma Butler Hasty] took all kinds of jobs to help support her family. The most compelling family story I heard about my Memaw driving alone to New York in 1933 to get her husband back inspired me to write Return to Marietta.

I don't write about war the way men write about war. Descriptions of battles where people are violently killed don't appeal to me. I much prefer to write about the little "wars" we all fight, as human beings. Women are fighters because we have to fight. I don't know any women who have been raised in the lap of luxury and had easy lives. Every woman I know has had to adapt and learn to fight, whether she wanted to or not.

I am proud to come from a long line of fighters, female warriors who retained their femininity and the respect of folks in their communities. We all live in a world of Love and War, and as God is my witness, I'll never back down from showing that in everything I write. There are all kinds of weapons used in all kinds of wars, and as women we are experts in fighting for ourselves and our families. God Bless us all.

Below left, Mom and me as a baby. Below right, the only photo I have of me and my mother and grandmother [Memaw] -- if you don't see it, click on the number.

#femaleempowerment, #girlpower, #womenwarriors, #strongwomen, #femalerolemodels, #scarletohara, #strongwomen

Love Your Changing Face

I just found myself looking in the bathroom mirror as I washed my hands and thinking, my eyes look green today. Then I immediately felt sad, because my mother used to say things like that to me. (FYI, my eyes are blue/green and sometimes they look blue, sometimes green, depending on the light and what I'm wearing -- see photo at right.)

Mom died in 2020, after 15 years of living with me and my children. Elva Hasty Thompson loved her children fiercely.

Nobody else in my life, even my own children, have ever studied my face the way Mom used to, on a daily basis. I guess it's understandable, since she created that face.

If she said "Did you get enough sleep last night?" that meant either I had dark circles under my eyes or I was being grumpy. (I now regret every time I was grumpy with her.)

If she said "You need some lipstick" that meant I looked tired and/or I was going somewhere. Like any lady who was young in the 1950's, my mother absolutely believed in the power of lipstick, not only to look more attractive but to brighten one's mood. 

My maternal grandmother, Memaw Hasty, never appeared at breakfast until she was fully dressed for the day, including full makeup, which meant lipstick, of course. I never once saw her without makeup until I was 14 and she had a massive stroke. Seeing her pale face and lips scared me profoundly.

I study my kids' faces, too, especially my son's face because he lives with me. (I rarely see my daughter, who lives in South Carolina.)

When my son is tired, or doesn't feel well, or is sad, grumpy, etc. I notice it. If he doesn't look chipper and happy I always wonder what I can do or say to brighten his mood. This is part of being a mama.

Sometimes people have made unkind remarks to me because my son is adopted and they think I am not his "real" mama. I assure you, I love my adopted kids as much as if they came from my body. Biology makes no difference when it comes to mama love.

I am not trying to make any profound points here with this little blog. Only this: study your kids' faces. Below is one of my favorite poems.

When You Are Old

by W. B. Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

 

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

 

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Dog Stories from My Life

Dogs have always been a part of my life, and I was sort of raised by dogs, if you want to know the truth. Before I was born, my parents got a puppy from the animal shelter and raised him, and he was my first pet, there for me until I was 7 years old. His name was Kaiser.

Dad always named our dogs after great military figures or famous people. All the dogs we had that came form the pound were given grand names: Kaiser Wilhelm, George S. Patton, Napoleon Bonaparte, Frederick the Great. In later years when Mom started buying Bassett Hounds they got less grand names like "Baby" and "Molly."

My grandfather [Mom's father] always named his pigs after English royalty; he was Scotch-Irish so that isn't surprising.

I digressed.

Kaiser was Mr. Personality, and he was part of the deal my parents made before marriage. Mom gave Dad an ultimatum, saying he should either propose and get lost. She wanted kids and dogs and he needed to understand, there would be no negotiation.

Their first "baby," Kaiser was so special that my mom wrote a story about him, years ago. This story appears in my memoir, Talking Back: Stories of the Big Hair and Pantyhose Years.

"He would let the children walk on him, pull his tail, chew him, bite him, hit him, take food out of his mouth - he put up with all of it, up to a point. When the children got to the stage where they could walk unaided, he would spank them with his paw when they got abusive. He never really hurt them, or bit or growled. But every now and again, I would hear one of the children yelling "Kaiser HIT ME!"

One day when Bruce was toddling, but less than a year old, Tony heard Kaiser in the next room making a noise like he was going to throw up. Tony ran in there, and Bruce had his entire arm down Kaiser's throat. Kaiser wasn't protesting, he just lay there quietly gagging. Kaiser was trying to eat a bite of dog food, and Bruce wanted it."

Whenever one of my parents put my brother or me in the baby carriage and walked outside with us, Kaiser would watch over us, and he was strict.

"One day when Bruce was an infant, Tony had him parked in the baby carriage outside. Our neighbor Jack Sneed had a big boxer, named Boots. Tony had gone into the middle of the yard for some reason, and left Bruce in his carriage over by the carport for a moment. Tony wasn't really concerned about Boots - he was a friendly dog, and Bruce was safe. Boots trotted over for a peek at the baby carriage.   Kaiser was nowhere in sight.

Kaiser saw Boots, and decided Boots was getting too close to his baby. Kaiser suddenly appeared, rounding the corner in a dead run, and blindsided Boots, knocking him straight up into the air. Boots got up, stared at Kaiser in amazement, then ran back to his house as fast as he could go. Kaiser went over to Tony and looked up at him as if to say, "I got that SOB, didn't I?" He then swaggered over to the baby carriage and sat by it protectively."

When Kaiser died after being hit by a car, we were all sad. It was the first time experiencing death, for me and my brother. We had a cat named BC who we adored, but we needed a dog, so Mom got another one from the pound, a mutt we named George S. Patton. George lived outside, in a very nice custom-made doghouse my grandfather built for him, and he was very nice but not really a cuddly dog. We always brought  him inside on cold nights but he wasn't happy about it, preferring to chase the birds and squirrels in our backyard.

[right, George with Mom, my brother and me on our boat, The Miss Dee]

George loved going to the lake with us. We had a tiny cabin on Douglas Lake in East Tennessee and we went up there every weekend in the summer. He rode in the boat, chased birds, and was good about sticking close to the house. There were no leash laws up there.

We would depart our suburban split-level house on Friday afternoons, the boat behind the old Chevy Impala, and me and Brother in the back seat with the dogs, Mom on the front seat with our cat BC in a large picnic basket. We always stopped at a little country store and bought snacks, and George always got an Almond Joy candy bar. [Vets didn't tell anyone not to give a dog chocolate, back then.]

We still had George when Fred came into our lives.

I was 12 years old and listened to a radio show every night. One night the DJ was giving away puppies! I asked Mom if we could have a puppy and she said "Ask your father." Dad was downstairs asleep on the couch. I asked him and he grunted, not opening his eyes. I told Mom he had said yes. Then I entered the contest. I won! Late that Friday night a man appeared at our front door. Mom and Brother were behind me when I opened the door and the man thrust his hand towards me, and in it was a tiny puppy that looked like a rat. We named him Fred. Mom said later the DJ's dog must have gotten pregnant and he didn't want the puppies so they were giveaways. 

[left, my brother in college, with Fred]

Fred was a great dog. He was big and furry and obviously had a lot of German Shepherd. He was very good tempered. One day at the lake, Dad was in our little jonboat and took a sharp turn to avoid a log, and fell out. Fred sat there regally for about 15 minutes until the boat ran out of gas going in circles.

Fred adored pizza, and when my parents lived on Melton Hill lake in the 1980's they were so far away from town that Dad had to go and pick up pizza. Fred was always given the crusts. It got to where Dad would walk in the door carrying the pizza box and Fred would walk over to the table, sit beside it, and drool a big puddle long before he got his first piece of pizza.

Once on Valentine's Day my father brought my mom a box of candy, a Whitman Sampler. The lid was not easy to remove. They left the box on the coffee table, and when they came back the entire box was gone. They found the box in the guest bathroom with all the chocolates - - and their wrappers -- missing. Fred ate the entire box except for two pieces! Mom called the vet, worried, but after a day or so of indigestion he was fine. He probably weighed 80 lbs. then.

We had a lot of Bassetts over the years too, but they deserve their own blog.

I miss our last one, Lola, who passed away a couple of months ago. Life is so much richer with dogs. They are the personification of Love.

#dogstories, #funnystoriesaboutdogs, #talkingbackstories, #thedogwhoeatscandy, #thedogbabysitter

Hit DELETE on the Shame Button

I'm working on a new book [more will be revealed in the near future] and I've been thinking a lot lately about the toxic repercussions of shame. It's kind of an old-fashioned word that you don't hear much any more, but I wish it would disappear. 

Unfortunately, though, shame and its aftereffects are with us still, and they don't serve anyone well. (My friend Rob Wilson wrote a great column about it for Psychology Today and you can read it here.)

When I was a kid, shame was alive and well. I knew that sometimes my dad was ashamed that he grew up poor, and he pushed himself to his physical and emotional limits to provide a nice home for his family. I knew that my mom was sometimes ashamed of being chubby, and she put a lot of pressure on herself to lose weight. (I have felt that exact same shame for most of my life.)

I can remember as a kid hearing from my parents and teachers, "You should be ashamed of yourself!" [usually not directed at me, thank goodness].

The roots of shaming someone go back to the bible.

In Genesis, 3:10, we see Adam's shame after eating the apple: “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

We are taught as Christians that the only real way to get beyond shame is to accept Jesus and live a Godly life. I don't want to get into a theological discussion, but I am not sure that will really wipe out shame. I think the lingering effects of shame are very difficult to counteract.

When I was a child it was considered very shameful to have a child outside of wedlock. There were homes all over America for young pregnant girls to enter and give birth, then they were told to relinquish their babies for adoption and pretend they never got pregnant. Most adoptions were closed. It wasn't really the best solution, in most cases, because most of the young girls spent years feeling shame and regret and longing to know something of the children they had given up. Oftentimes the adopted children were prevented from finding their birth parents because of the toxic legacy of shame. Many adopted children, even though raised well in loving homes, felt as adults they should feel ashamed of how they came to exist.

I've watched a show many times called Long Lost Family, and it's mostly about adopted children and birthmoms trying to find each other. I always grab a box of kleenex before watching an episode because they always make me cry. God Bless the show, though, for trying to bring people together, and heal everyone.

I've often felt ashamed of the fact that I am not as pretty as my mother, or as smart as either of my parents. I've felt ashamed of being fat. I've felt ashamed that I couldn't give my children a father, or even  a stable father figure. Recently, I've done a lot of looking back over my life and trying to see patterns and behaviors and ways I could have done things differently. I'm not sure it has been good for me to do that... I've found a lot of comfort and healing in watching the Ted Talks [on YouTube] of Brene Brown. She is an academic who has studied shame and vulnerability for years and her insights are powerful. I leave you with some of her wise words:

"Shame derives its power from being unspeakable."

"If we're going to find our way back to each other [men and women] we have to understand and know empathy, because empathy's the antidote to shame. If you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in a petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can't survive."

"When we find the courage to share our experiences and the compassion to hear others tell their stories, we force shame out of hiding, and end the silence."

 

Check out my latest book: Talking Back: Stories from the Big Hair and Pantyhose Years.

Letting Kids Explore

A video popped up in my Facebook feed this morning showing some young parents giving their three children permission to do whatever they wanted for one hour, every day. The parents explained how they decided to not supervise the kids for one hour a day. ONE HOUR a day. Now these were not babies or toddlers. The youngest looked to be about 5?

I had to laugh because my parents didn’t supervise me or my brother ever, unless it was to tell us to clean our rooms or do some household chore. Even then, we did it 98% on our own, knowing they would review our efforts when we were through. I was told things like “vacuum the stairs” and “clean the bathtub” and “load the dishwasher” when I was 8 years old. Nobody supervised but I knew if I did a bad job I would get yelled at and/or punished so I figured it out!

The young parents [both teachers, fyi] were amazed by how much their kids liked learning stuff on their own. Well, DUH.

Kids LIKE to explore the world. Why don’t parents give them the chance to do that nowadays?!?

Before I was ten years old I knew a lot of things, for instance:

• The taste of dirt
• How to catch and clean a fish [for frying, which involved beheading, scooping out the guts, and scaling it, which Dad taught me when I was 5 years old]
• What it felt like to climb a tree
• How to run really fast because I was barefoot and it was 100 degrees outside and I wanted to get into the grocery store
• The sensation of a caterpillar crawling on my arm
• How to water ski, alone, wearing just a ski belt [a thick rubbery belt that fastened at the waist and was far more comfortable that a jacket or vest]
• How to swim out of an undertow in the ocean
• How to make my own toast, scrambled eggs, soup, etc. – and we had no microwave
• How to comfortably and happily sleep in bed with my cat and/or the dog
• The terrifying wrath of Mom and Dad if I spoke to them disrespectfully, or bothered people in public by being too loud
• How to put braids or ponytails in my own hair
• The pain of scraping my knee to bloody bits because I fell off my bike
• The agony of a bad sunburn [though, to be fair, Mom always put Sea & Ski on us; we just didn’t always reapply it when we should have]
• How to paint a wall, put down vinyl tile, hammer in a nail or screw in a screw – Dad believed in teaching me the same stuff he taught my brother
• How to sew on a button
• how to iron my own clothes
• How to address, stamp, and mail a letter [when we moved away from my BFF I was 8 years old and we started writing to each other and kept corresponding for many years]
• How to plant and weed a garden, and pick the produce

Now, my parents supervised my learning of most of these things, but then we were free to do as we pleased.

Like most of the moms we knew, my mother didn't work outside the home -- but she worked her tail off inside it.

After my older brother and I got home from school and had a snack, we always chatted with her for a few minutes [which she insisted on] and then we were free to do as we liked until dinner. We knew we were supposed to do our homework, on our own, and not bother Mom unless we didn’t understand something. We knew after dinner we had to do the dishes. We knew if we went to a friend’s house to play that we had to tell Mom where we were going and be home before dark. How we got there was our business. We either walked or rode our bikes.

In the summer, Mom was not the Activities Director. We felt really lucky if she agreed to drive us to the swimming pool or pick us up from the pool. If she gave us money to buy a Coke or Sprite we felt very blessed. Most of the time we were told to drink out of the water fountain.

We had enough sense not to play in traffic, bring home snakes, destroy the furniture, etc. Punishment was unpleasant, far more than a simple “time out.” (Mom quit spanking when I was 8, but Dad never quit. I didn’t spank my kids because I didn’t want them to feel powerless and humiliated, which is how I always felt after a spanking.)

My own parenting experience was a bit different because I adopted a 13-year-old and a ten-year-old. My kids were not supervised every waking hour, though. Most of their free time was spent doing what they wanted to do. I didn’t allow them to just stare at the TV or computer screen for hours. They played a lot – inside and out. They had the same rule about not leaving the yard without parental permission.

Parents today face different challenges, of course. Too much screen time, for instance. My mother worried about me watching too much TV. When not in school I usually spent the early mornings watching The Andy Griffeth Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, etc. We only had 2 channels. When the reruns ended around mid-morning and the soaps and game shows took over, Mom turned off the TV and told me to go play. I didn’t argue about it.

Were there mishaps? Of course. I liked to eat Styrofoam. My brother liked to eat dirt. I once played in mud all afternoon and my clothes had to be thrown away. We fell out of trees sometimes and got the wind knocked out of us. My brother stepped on a nail once and had to go to the ER and get stitched up, and a tetanus shot. He threw a spear at me once and hit me between the eyes, giving me a concussion and blindness for a couple of days.

We often played so hard we destroyed our clothes and shoes. Stuff around the house got scratched up or broken. We were normal!

The world in 2024 is a far more complex place. I understand that all too well. I just think parents should not hover over the kids ALL the time. Give them a chance to explore and understand the world. Let them get dirty. Nothing is a better teacher than experience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check out my latest novel, Talking Back: Stories from the Big Hair and Pantyhose Years