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...

 

Rescuing the Children

I try to avoid political discussions on here and I do not intend for this blog to focus on politics, but I have something to say about JD Vance. I didn't really know who he was until recently. Then he started being mentioned as a possible VP contender and I decided to do some research.

This interview he did 7 years ago with Megan Kelly [LINK] is where I started. She begins the interview in a powerful way, going through a list of adverse childhood consequences that some kids suffer -- being hit, living with alcoholic or drug-addicted parents, being sworn at or humiliated by your parents- and he answers "yep" to every one of the things Megan mentions.

I know a little something about that.

Both of my children are adopted. Both were born to alcoholic mothers, and they lived with their mothers the first 6 years [my daughter] or 8 years [my son] of their lives. Both my kids have struggled with low self-esteem, anxiety, Depression, sleep issues, social awkwardness, stunted growth, and more. 

In 2004 when I adopted my daughter I tried to do as much research as possible into older kids in Russian orphanages. She was 12 then. She had been in the orphanage 6 years. I found out that when the kids aged out of the orphanages they were often denied housing and jobs because of the stigma of being in an orphanage. I learned they often turned to crime, and often had babies who then ended up in an orphanage, and worst of all -- they often didn't make it. One study I read said that most orphans never lived past 30 because they were either killed (a consequence of a criminal life) or they committed suicide.

Now, JD Vance didn't go to an orphanage. His story is similar, though. He was taken away from his drug-addicted mother and sent to live with her parents, his grandparents, and they provided him with love and stability. How lucky for him.

I see so many parallels with his story and the stories of my kids.

I adopted my daughter and brought her home when she was 13 years old. Many people told me I was crazy to adopt her, because she wouldn't do well in a family. Truthfully, we had some issues. I won't lie. However, I do not regret adopting her. Not at all.

My son came from a similar background, but he had spent 8 years with his birthmom and only 2 years in the orphanage. His right hand was amputated due to frostbite, after he was beaten unconscious by some boys when he was 5 years old. His much older brother committed suicide and that was even more traumatic because Michael adored his brother.

Children who are raised in homes that are unstable, who are neglected or abused, etc. -- they suffer because trauma actually changes their brains. This is a fact. They cannot be blamed for what happened to them, but they will live with the consequences for the rest of their lives. I adopted my children in hopes that by loving them and giving them a stable family life that they would have a chance at normal, successful lives. Both of my children are grown now, and both are doing well, but they have struggled with substance abuse issues in the past. They have had a lot to overcome, but none of it was their fault.

I love my kids and I am proud of them. They are not in jail. They aren't in mental institutions. They have stability, and love. In my book, those are wins.

JD Vance's journey began with terrible instability and trauma, but his beloved Mamaw instilled in him the idea that he must make good grades and work hard to make something of himself. She loved him and believed in him, and that love pulled him through. The military also helped him focus, and gave him a way to get a college degree, and then he could attend Yale law school. He also married a loving and supportive partner, also an attorney. So there were many blessings in his life but he also had to work very hard.

My son is a loving and kind man who works hard and has a natural kindness and magnetism.I hope and pray one day my son will find a loving and supportive partner.

JD Vance is shining a light on the plight of kids raised in unstable homes by drug-addicted parents, and his memoir Hillbilly Elegy shows how he made it out of poverty and made something of himself. I applaud him. He is the proof of how a loving parent [or grandparent] can transform a child. JD Vance could easily have ended up in a life of drugs, a life of crime, working some unfulfilling tedious job and struggling. Instead, he is a senator and he may one day be our Vice President, or even our President.

JD's life gives me hope -- not just for my kids, but for all kids in similarly sad childhoods, who are worth rescuing, and who can be transformed.

Mother Daughter Drama

I don't know why exactly but books with a lot of mother and daughter drama are not appealing to me. They appeal to a lot of women, and I understand that, because the relationship with your mom is a crucial one, and if it's not good you are always going to feel the lack.

I have been very lucky in my life, because my mother and I got along really  well about 95% of the time. She died in 2020. I was a caretaker for her for the last 7 years of her life. We talked about everything.

My mother, Elva Hasty Thompson, was a consummate storyteller and her stories were always really interesting and often funny. I encouraged her to write blogs in her final years, and after she died I compiled them into a sort of memoir, Singing to the Cows. She talked a lot about her childhood and about topics of interest to her, like cooking. When I re-read the book I hear her voice clearly, and it's like she is sitting in the room with me telling the story, which I cherish.

Not all mothers and daughters get along as well, unfortunately.

I had a friend growing up who was constantly fighting with her mother, and I couldn't understand why. I got along great with her mom, and she was always incredibly nice to me. I think she loved her daughter deeply, but she could not figure her out. When I found out the daughter had been diagnosed as bipolar it made perfect sense to me. I always felt sorry for both mother and daughter, and I felt like if they had just gotten some therapy things would have been much better. They were greatly suspicious of any sort of mental health treatment, and one of the hallmarks of being bipolar is a resistance to any sort of therapy.

I digressed. Your mother is your first teacher, your first friend, your confidante, and also your example of what it means to be a woman.

Most of us grow up either emulating our mother or wanting to be the total opposite of our mother. It's always a multi-layered, complex relationship.

I didn't realize until this morning that several of my books prominently feature mother/daughter relationships. Fascinating topic. Below I explain this in more detail.

 

The Garland BellesThis is my newest novel and it centers on the relationship between a mother and a daughter. When Hadley's mother Grace dies, Hadley learns a lot of starting things about her prim and proper mother's life, astonishing things. As a result, Hadley gradually gains a new acceptance of herself, and finds the strength to reassess and reorganize her own life, which looks idyllic on the surface but isn't at all, in reality.

I found when I was writing about Grace that I really liked her, and it was somewhat sad for me to write about the many mistakes she made in her life. She is a bright, dynamic character, who felt constrained by the social etiquette of her small southern hometown.

I don't want to give away the book's ending, but it was deeply satisfying to tie up the loose ends. My mother was a voracious reader and she would get really angry if a book didn't "end up right." There is something emotionally satisfying about resolving conflicts by the end of the book; in fact I think as humans we crave that.

 

Dancing in the WreckageMothers and daughters feature prominently in this novel about a group of characters who all learn new truths about their lives when a freewheeling and somewhat dangerous attorney dies, setting in motion a set of events that change many lives for the better -- eventually.

The main character, Amy, has an awkward and frustrating relationship with her mother because her mother refuses to tell Amy anything about her father, who was never present in her life. There is a distance there that causes Amy a lot of grief, but she is lucky because she has a very close relationship with her aunt who was very prominent in her childhood, in a positive way.

 

Ghosts in the Garden CityThis was my first novel and I started it with the idea that the entire plot would center around the revelations that occur when Leigh inherits an old suitcase that was her grandmother's, and sets out to solve a mystery. As I wrote it I began to realize that I really wanted to make it about Leigh's mother Peggy, too, because she's a very complex woman who tries to lead a very respectable, proper life, but is forced to confront some really awkward truths about herself as her daughter learns more and more about her grandmother.

 

Return to Marietta This book centers around a marriage, but there is a mother/daughter dynamic between the main character, Lillian, and her own mother, Victoria, who feels helpless and frustrated by the Great Depression and its effects on her daughter. Victoria stays awake all night cooking food for her daughter to take on the long car trip that is the centerpiece of the book.

Lillian is based on my grandmother, Wilma Butler Hasty, and Victoria is based on her mother Beulah Butler, a lady I never met but heard a lot about over the years. Below, my grandmother's family around 1921. My grandmother is on the far right, with the big hair. Granny is the older lady with glasses, seated.

 

If you like to read novels that explore the complicated relationships between mothers and daughters, check out these books.

#motherdaughternovels, #storiesofmothersanddaughters, #daughtersandmothers, #dramabetweenmothersanddaughters, #familydrama

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.

For Evil to Flourish

I flinch when I turn on the news now. I flinch and I feel myself grimacing as I watch people in Israel, and Gaza, and sometimes I get big tears in my eyes. Like others around the world, I am mesmerized by what I'm seeing on the television.

It seems like something out of a horror movie, incomprehensible.

"For evil to flourish it only requires good men to do nothing." - Simon Wiesenthal

Only once in my life have I ever witnessed someone seriously hurt by other human beings and it shocked me, and there was absolutely nothing I could do.

I made two trips to Kazakhstan to adopt my son in 2007. On the first trip I went to the orphanage every day for several weeks and visited Michael and got to know him, then there was the adoption hearing on April 3, then a wait of several more weeks before everything was legally finalized. I flew home during that time, so I could work and save my leave time for when Michael got home. When I returned in early May 2007, I took a flight to Frankfurt, then another flight to Astana.

I got off the plane in Astana and had to go to the customs line and show my passport so I could get into the country. I was standing at the end of the line and I heard a noise behind me and turned around. A very large Russian man was being led over to the customs area in handcuffs. Clearly, he was a prisoner. The small Asian men who were guarding him looked like elves escorting a gorilla. When the Russian man saw a way to run out of the airport -- we were near the doors -- he bolted, but he didn't get but a few feet away before the small Kazakh guards tackled him to the ground.

For several minutes, the guards savagely beat the big man, hitting and kicking him as he screamed HELP ME HELP ME, in Russian. I had studied Russian and learned those words. I stood there frozen in horror, unable to not look. Finally, the big man fell silent. The guards finally pulled away, and I saw a huge pool of blood spilling out from the Russian man's head. A stretcher was brought in and he was carried away. The pool of blood remained.

There is a vast difference between watching a movie -- or even a documentary -- and seeing someone beaten, and watching it in real life.

I had never seen something so terrible, and it shook me up very much. I don't know what the big Russian man had done, what crime he had committed, but I know how I felt watching that beating. I felt terrified, and horrified, and I have never forgotten what I saw. I will never forget what I witnessed.

I cannot watch very violent movies, even though I know the violence is not real. I flinch. I grimace. I usually pull out my phone and stare at the screen.

I tell this story because I feel utterly helpless regarding the situation in Israel and Gaza, and that worries me.

I don't ever want to feel nothing, in the face of human suffering. If we are insensitive to horror then we lose our humanity.

I am descended from mostly British and Irish ancestors [88%, according to 23andMe] and many of my ancient ancestors were the barbarians who brought down the Roman empire.

My Scottish ancestors [there were many] were/are fierce fighters.

I descend also from a Civil War sharpshooter. I am the granddaughter of a professional soldier and the sister of an Army major.

I am not a violent person but to protect my family, particularly my children, I would call upon the spirits of my fighting ancestors and ask them to help me protect those I love. I am talking about an extreme, and unlikely situation, though. I hope and pray I will never have to defend myself or my family.

What I cannot understand is WHY. We live in an amazing age of technology unsurpassed in human history, so why are we still savagely killing each other?

I condemn anyone who would kill another human being not for self-defense or protection of family, but simply for land, or a political ideology.

The older I get the more I believe that the power and energy of human love is the most powerful energy in the world. We have to somehow harness that power to defeat hate. Hate is the ultimate Evil, the direct opposite of Love.

If we focus love and healing energies to places like the Middle East and Ukraine, where Evil is winning, I think we can change things. What else can those of us who are old and/or powerless physically actually do?

I have started to pray constantly for Love to win. I leave the "how" of that up to God.

 

The Courage to Love

Control is a funny thing. The more we try to hang onto it, to maintain it, to bend it to our will, the more we learn the price of that way of living.

I have a very close friend and a family member who are highly intelligent, creative, fascinating guys. They are also alone, and that's what they say they want, but I don't think it is, not really.

My friend Andrew (not his real name) is gay. (That's only germane because I don't want to have to switch pronouns.) Brilliant, articulate, funny, handsome, fit -- he seems to have it all. Yet, he has only had one serious relationship in his life. Years ago he was living in Europe and he met a guy and fell in love. As a result, when the guy got a job here in the states, Andrew quit his job and moved back to the states to be with his boyfriend. They set up housekeeping together and Andrew didn't find a job right away. He found himself making dinner and waiting for his guy to get home every night, but that often didn't happen. Boyfriend saw no need to call and say he was going to be late, or eat out with friends, and that infuriated Andrew. After only a few weeks, he packed his things and moved back home to live (temporarily) with his parents. When he told me about it much later I asked why he didn't just get some counseling, try to work through the issues, and Andrew -- normally a very calm, rational person -- got really upset and yelled "I was NOT going to be treated like a housewife!"

Much later, I realized the issue was that for the first time in his adult life, Andrew was in a situation he couldn't control. He couldn't force his boyfriend to be more attentive and considerate. Andrew had gambled a lot, turned his life completely upside down, and his lover wasn't appropriately grateful. That was more than twenty-five years ago and Andrew hasn't had a serious relationship since then.

My relative's situation isn't too different. Let's call him Joe. At age 25, Joe was far from home, working a job in a town where he knew nobody, and met a young lady. She was smart and articulate and she grew up not far from where he did. They got married. For the first year things were fine. Then Joe started to notice peculiar things in his wife's behavior. She would go grocery shopping every day rather than making a list and going weekly. She would feed the cat out of a crystal bowl they got for a wedding present rather than buy a cat dish. Sometimes she would stay in her pajamas all day, staring at the TV, totally non-functional. Joe had decided when he married he would never get divorced, so he just tried to ignore her weird behavior, and "walk it off" which is what guys are taught to do about pain. They weren't successful at getting pregnant but Joe's wife refused to consider infertility treatments or adoption. Finally, after 15 years of marriage, she left. Joe had tried to get her to see a psychologist, or at least go to marital counseling with him, and she refused to even consider she might be bipolar or any other serious malady, so she walked out.

That was more than twenty years ago. Joe has had a number of serious relationships since then but he refuses to consider marrying again. He told me not long ago he was planning to spend the rest of his life living alone and die alone. Complicating matters is the fact that Joe is a heavy drinker and he refuses to get sober.

I love both these guys. They have been part of my life for years. Both are handsome, brilliant, personable, kind -- everything most people look for in a partner. Yet they are both alone.

I think they are actually very fearful of love, and I've tried to analyze that, see if there were something I could say or do to get them to stop being fearful and start taking the huge risk of loving someone.

“The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It’s our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows.” -- Brene Brown

Brene Brown teaches and lectures a lot about vulnerability. I have watched her TED talks several times and each time I come away with a better understanding of what it takes to really live an authentic life, to surrender control, and be brave enough to risk getting hurt.

I wish I could get Andrew and Joe to get some counseling, let a professional help them deal with the fear that is holding them back from finding a loving partner. I pray for them both, often. Being vulnerable is scary stuff. I get it. However, we are all getting older, and neither Andrew or Joe have anyone to look after them when they get old and sick -- which is inevitable, no matter how health conscious one is.

I can't spell out a neat conclusion here, but I want to point out that the "guy code" that says it's somehow unacceptable to seek professional help when you have a difficult problem, that code isn't absolute. However, it's actually quite brave to admit you can't control everything in life, and you're willing to take a risk on a relationship. Risking may mean losing, but it's the only way to [eventually] get the loving partner you seek.

I keep praying my guys will only day find their courage, and find someone to love. I love them both very much...

Check out my latest novel, The Wedding Conspiracy, on Amazon.

My Scary Weird Bucket List

There's a great movie called The Bucket List and before I saw that (years ago) I only had a vague idea of what a "bucket list" is, and although it's a terrific movie it didn't make me want to run out and write a bucket list.

Most bucket lists have things like "travel to Europe" or "skydive" or "meet the pope," etc. 

My bucket list is completely different. First of all, travel is not all it's cracked up to be. I cannot imagine anything that would entice me to sit on an airplane for hours, stuck in a big metal tube in the sky, in close proximity to a hundred strangers, exposed to their coughs and farts and sharing a tiny bathroom with all of them. BTDT when I went to Russia 4 times and Kazakhstan 2 times between 2003 and 2007. I am not scared to fly, but I hate flying because I hate crowds.

For the record, I hated crowds before Covid but I now utterly loathe crowds and I will never willingly expose myself to them. No game, concert, or church service will ever entice me to be around crowds.I am a homebody, and that's not uncommon for folks my age.

My son and I had a very late lunch yesterday at Honeybaked Ham and there were no other people in the store as customers, and just 2 guys behind the counter. It was lovely.

I will never willingly skydive. Somebody very big and strong, holding a gun, would be necessary before I would jump out of an airborne airplane and even then I would hesitate. I fear no diaper would save me from the dire consequences of that jump, because unlike lighter people my fat ass would plummet me straight to the ground long before the parachute would open. The mess would be terrible, unless I was dropped into the ocean.

No, my bucket list will likely have to wait for some scientific breakthroughs or a resurgence of elemental magic before it will ever be possible, any of it. It's below, in no particular order.

1) time travel to 1978 and leave a note for my high school self saying "give up all carbs forever and join a gym asap and workout every.single.day"

2) have a nice long lunch with Tom Hanks

3) move into my own house which has a screened-in back porch and sits on at least two acres

4) spend the day with all of my Thompson first cousins and their families, just eating and chilling out and visiting

5) spend the day with all of my Hasty first cousins and their families, just eating and chilling out and visiting

6) eat a big piece of chocolate cheesecake with no gastric consequences

7) spend a week at the beach, slightly off season like maybe in September, with my kids and my best friends, all in one big house with a pool

8) have a weekend visit with my only sibling, who hasn't visited me in years

9) time travel back to 1957, to just after my parents get married, and tell my parents to get some counseling

10) time travel back to 1970 so I can talk to my grandfather (Bob Hasty) and ask him to tell me about the scandal that cost him his major league baseball career. [I tried to write a book about it, a novel, Return to Marietta, but it didn't sell]

11) eat a nice long lunch with my favorite singer, Mary Chapin Carpenter

12) have some private lessons with the Dalai Llama on meditation and inner peace

13) write a bestselling novel

14) spend a few days in the mountains of East Tennessee during the Fall, with one of my friends and no crowds [this is the most farfetched of all my list items!]

15) travel across Canada, through the Canadian Rockies, by train

 

I just re-read my list and realized a lot of the items have to do with spending time with family and friends. I think at the end of my life that's what I will regret most, not spending more time with family and friends.

#weirdbucketlist, #postcovidbucketlist, #timetravelshouldbereal, #ihatecrowds, #canadianrockiesrock, #writinglifewoes, #regretsinlife, #timetravelisreal, #magicsolveseverything

 

Stopping a Child's Tantrum

Not long before she died my mother and I had a very illuminating talk and she reminded me of something she did when I was a small child that had lasting repercussions in my life. I was telling her about something I'd read about the best way to deal with a child who was having a meltdown, putting them into "time in" instead of "time out" and she listened very thoughtfully. "I did that with you," she remarked.

"What? I don't remember that." Then she reminded me of her tantrum strategy.

I was the baby of the entire family. All my Thompson cousins were 5-10 years older. All my Hasty cousins were 2-12 years older. Often I was the youngest child in the neighborhood.

When we lived at our wonderful old house on Heard Avenue in Augusta I was 1-5 years old. It's the first house I remember. It was built in the early 20th century and had a big front porch, with a swing. Sitting out there, watching the bees and butterflies in the flowers, was peaceful and lovely.

I always wanted to play with the bigger kids, play on an equal basis with them. My two best playmates were my brother Bruce, 2 1/2 years older than me, and my BFF and next door neighbor Joanne, about 18 months older. So often, though, I couldn't keep up with them intellectually or physically.

I would get frustrated and have screaming temper tantrums. I could throw quite a tantrum. I've always had a BIG voice, even as a little kid, not to mention a flare for the dramatic.

Mom developed a strategy born of desperation, I'm sure. She did what would now be called a "therapeutic hold" - a controversial technique but one that works.

When I launched into a tantrum, she would pick me up and go out to the front porch, getting me away from the older kids, and sit down on the porch swing. There, she would quietly hold me and swing, while rubbing my back. I can remember that very well.

I was a fighter. I always wanted to fight, and beat my enemies. [Good preparation for spending decades as a litigation paralegal, now that I think of it!] The older kids became "enemies" when they excluded me, intentionally or unintentionally. Bruce and Joanne loved me but I know at times they viewed me as a nuisance.

Anyway, when I threw a fit Mom got me away from the other kids and that was a blessing. I thought of her as a huge, strong person, and I was astonished to grow up and see she was petite [5'4] and not very strong, actually.

Once we were seated on the porch swing, I could not get down, off of her lap, until I went through several steps.

1. I had to un-clench my entire body and stop crying.
2. I had to get my breathing back to normal. Sometimes I had to endure Mom wiping off my face with a cold wet washcloth.
3. I had to listen to Mom telling me not to let the other kids bother me -- or her explanation of why the tantrum was the wrong response to whatever was bothering me.
4. I had to just sit quietly for at least 5 minutes, while Mom rocked. Sometimes we would sing, or she would sing to me.
5. I had to laugh. Mom made a sort of puppet with her hand, sticking her thumb between her index and middle finger, and did the funny voice of Thumb-bum. I had to listen to Thumb-bum tease me or say funny things until I laughed.
6. Finally, I had to promise to behave myself before I was allowed to get off her lap and go back to playing.

Now, I didn't know as a small child that my mother was unusual. I didn't know she had taken many classes in psychology, including child psychology. I didn't know that she found her two children endlessly fascinating and she studied how to help us to have as happy and stress-free a childhood as possible. I'm sure there was fierce protectiveness because she knew there would never be more children. She had wanted four kids but fibroid tumors in her ovaries made it really difficult for her to get pregnant and led to a hysterectomy when I was still small.

She was a brilliant person and I know at times she found it really difficult to be a stay at home mom, stuck in a house all day with two small children. Dad was very tight with money so there was little extra for fun activities. I feel very lucky that she was able to be at home with us, though. She essentially taught me how to calm myself down, and not let the bigger kids destroy my peace of mind.

To all you young parents out there, God Bless You. If you find yourself dealing with tantrums, try a loving "time in" plus therapeutic hold, and see how that works. It will eventually get better. If you're lucky, you might wind up with a child who can calm themselves down effectively even when you aren't with them.

#thebestwaytocalmachild, #dealingwithchildhoodtantrums, #therapeuticholds, #timeinforkids

Stories from The Past

My dad grew up in a tiny town near Augusta Georgia, Hephzibah. As a child, the word "Hephzibah" was always associated with my uncles and funny stories. The stories were simply part of my Thompson life, and I never realized how lucky I was to be related to three very smart, very funny, Southern men. My father Tony Thompson and my uncles Lewis and Bobby were what might be called "old school" today. 

I shared some memories of our family in a story published in Salvation South today, Cordelia's Giggle.

My uncles both served in World War II. Bobby was in the Navy. Lewis was in the Army and fought in the South Pacific. I was born years later. Both of the men I knew were tall, easygoing, affable, guys. It's hard to imagine them in a war, getting shot at or possibly shooting at someone else. Now my dad was a very different guy, a dynamo of energy. It wasn't hard to imagine him in a war because he loved all thing military and pushed my brother to go in the Army.

However, unlike his two brothers Dad was never in a war. I always assumed he was in the Korean War but when I was cleaning out my house to move a couple of years ago I found letters he wrote to his parents while in the Army and they were dated 1954, after Korea had ended.

Dad spent most of his mandatory military service running around Europe every time he got leave. He was stationed in Germany. The photo at left shows him and two friends on the French Riviera. The letters are hilarious, because he was so young [24] and from a tiny town, and he missed his parents a lot.

When I was a kid, I noticed that whenever Dad was with one or both of his brothers, the Hephzibah stories would often get told. Whiskey was often consumed during the telling.

The most memorable storytelling occasion happened in 1974, just after Christmas. My cousin Chris was visiting his father's family and Lewis and his family had been to Rome, Georgia to see his wife's family, and we all converged for an afternoon at an Atlanta hotel, for lunch. Below is one of the black & white photos made by my uncle Lewis that day.

I was 12 years old. All my cousins and my brother were older. It was the only time we were all together, unfortunately, because Chris lived in California and his visits were sporadic. At the time, Chris was working as a plumber or carpenter or something, but he later went on to an illustrious career as a TV and movie writer and producer. I don't know if he realized that he got a lot of his humor from the Thompson side. 

In the article I wrote about my grandmother Cordelia, I got a kick out of talking about the funny Hephzibah stories, but I wanted to also carefully explain that she raised three fine men.

Cordelia Henderson Thompson didn't have an easy life. She was an "old maid schoolteacher" about 31 years old when she met and married Grandaddy. In those days, if a woman wasn't married by age 25 she was an "old maid" and unlikely to ever marry, according to the social rules of that time. She was very smart, loved to read, and loved to make photos. Dad said she always carried her little "Brownie" camera everywhere, and because of that I have some wonderful old family photos like the one below, of Cordelia and her youngest son Tony, my dad.

She married my grandfather in 1923. He was not educated and he didn't have any money, but it was a true love match. They raised three sons during the Great Depression, watched two of them go to war, and died in the late 1950's. Thompson had been a professional soldier for many years and although he was a small man [about 5'7, 135 lbs.] he was fierce and he had a temper.

Cordelia was gentle. She was very ladylike, and proper. Although she married her opposite, she loved him very much. Mom said she used to talk about him all the time after he died, and her heartbreak was evident. They were married for 34 years, until his death from emphysema complications in 1957, a few months after my parents' marriage. 

Most of what I know about Cordelia I learned from my mother. She only knew her about 2 1/2 years but she grew to love Cordelia and happily named me after her, three years after Cordelia's death. My name, Dee, is a shortened version of her name.

Some people -- including my own cousins -- think I am really weird for finding my family so fascinating. I feel like I am lucky to be a product of two old Southern families, and stories of my ancestors fascinate me. I got that from Dad. He was always organizing family reunions, always on the hunt for old photos and memorabilia, and very reverent about family history and lore. There's nothing wrong with that.

I feel like all of us are products of the DNA of all our ancestors stretching back for generations. We may look back at them and think they lived such different lives  than we did but that's not entirely true. My grandparents lived through two World Wars and The Great Depression. Life was a lot harder in 1923 when all four of my grandparents got married, but they wanted the same things we want. Home and children were important. Faith was important. Good manners were very important. Stories were important. I am proud to be a product of all of my grandparents, the ones I knew (Bob Hasty and Wilma Butler Hasty) and the ones I didn't know, Thompson and Cordelia. I carry their genes in my body, but more importantly, I try to carry on family traditions and tell the stories, so the next generations will never forget them.

The Beauty of Vegetables

My son goes to the store for me most Fridays because he is off work and I am working. He has become a terrific shopper. The other day I asked him to pick up some tomatoes for us at Publix. I prefer the produce from a farm stand but when in a hurry we settle for Publix.

He brought home tomatoes that are deep red, all connected to a stem, and I found myself saying "Those tomatoes are beautiful!"

That phrase just popped out.

As soon as I said it I thought, that was Mom's expression. My mother regarded vegetables in a state of what she considered perfection with deep awe and reverence. She would exclaim over them the same way an art collector might get excited by seeing a painting he coveted, or the way a dancer might view another dancer's perfect pas de deux, or the way a mother might feel seeing her newborn baby for the first time.

Why?

I think it's in our blood, the love of the land and how it feeds us.

Mom's generation was only the second one off the farm. She was a teacher, then a SAHM. Her brothers were a college administrator and an automotive manager. My grandfather Hasty was raised on a farm, and his father expected him to farm, but Papa was given an opportunity to play professional baseball and he took it. However, when World War II came, Papa sought out a job where he managed farms in South Carolina, and some of Mom's earliest memories involve farm life. (Papa felt like his family would be safer on a farm way out in the country if America were to be invaded.)

In the memoir I compiled after Mom died, Singing to the Cows, there are many reminiscences about farm life:

The farm meant we lived in a pretty white frame house, with grass in the yard, and I think it was on a dirt road. We had a pretty front porch and a big screened porch out back. There were several other buildings, a huge barn, and a long tractor shed among them. There was a fence out back and sometimes an animal was brought in to eat the grass.

We had a huge barn with a fenced in lot. In fact, almost all the farm was fenced for the animals. We had three cows, two horses, and several mules. Sometimes we had little calves - I loved them. Daddy, Bobby, and Don each had a cow to milk. Don pretty much made a pet of any animal he dealt with.

In every home where we ever lived [we lived in 5 different houses when I was growing up] Mom and Dad got outside and planted flowers and vegetables, and spent a lot of time tending to everything. The yards were always barren and disappointing but by the time we left they would be transformed into lush and beautiful places. Dad would come home from working as a bank VP, put on old stained clothes, and go work in the yard, which was how he relaxed. Mom read a little magazine called Organic Gardening for years. As long as my grandmother was alive, I often heard Mom asking her advice about gardening. She always said Memaw could "winter" her outside plants and keep them going in cold weather, a skill she didn't teach Mom, for unknown reasons.

In her 50's and 60's Mom had stopped working in the yard due to arthritis but she was active in her garden club in Augusta, and kept getting re-elected to the presidency year after year because she was so excellent in that role. She always found great speakers.

My father grew up just down the road from a farm owned by his grandparents and run by his uncle Claude after his grandfather's death. As a teenager, he worked on the farm in the summers. He loved to grow tomatoes, green beans, lettuce, etc. He spent many hours hauling soil from the bank of the lake to make raised garden beds for Mom when they lived on the lake near Knoxville in the 1980's. That rich soil was fantastic for growing flowers and vegetables. Dad came from many generations of farmers too, although he and his brothers were all professional men. Each one married women who were terrific gardeners, which I think was not a coincidence!

I never had any interest in gardening until I became a mom. In fact, I was always puzzled by my parents' near obsession with growing things. When Mom and I bought our house together in 2005, though, I wanted my children to know the love of growing food and flowers. I felt compelled to garden. It was inexplicable to me at the time but now I think I understand it.

I adopted children with a deep love of fresh veggies and fruits. They spent their early years in Russia and Kazakhstan, where it was not possible to get fresh fruits and veggies in the winter. I never had to fuss at them about eating fruits and vegetables. In fact, I sometimes found them in the garden eating tomatoes, onions, and strawberries right there, and of course I didn't scold them.

For countless generations, my ancestors farmed. I think a love of gardening, the miracle of seeing a seed become a beautiful flower or a delicious vegetable or fruit, is part of my DNA. I live in an apartment now, and I miss growing things. I miss it so much I try not to even think about it. There is something magical about it. Creating your own nourishment feeds the soul as well as the body.

Below, me and Mom around 1985; my kids in the garden right after I adopted my son, and the painting was done by my uncle Lewis Thompson, of the Henderson farmhouse where his mother grew up.