Childhood

Did anyone have a perfect childhood? Were your parents normal? Is your life better or worse now that you are in charge?

Were you closer to Mother or Father?

Are you on friendly terms with your siblings?

Just curious.

alice wrote:

Did anyone have a perfect childhood?

Horrors! Who could survive that?

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Were your parents normal?

I don't believe in normal.

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Is your life better or worse now that you are in charge?

Better, but without the challenges they gave me, I wouldn't have become who I am.

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Were you closer to Mother or Father?

My father. Why do you think my mother had it in for me?

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Are you on friendly terms with your siblings?

I'm the only one left, so I don't communicate with them all that often. I talk to them sometimes but they rarely talk back.

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Just curious.

Just me.


Annie

MY mother said to my father recently: "Shelagh's a daddy's girl." Says it all, doesn't it?

I love your answers.

Funny Shelagh. My wife to this day calls Christine a Daddy's girl. I love it. She was and still is special to me. My youngest Caroline feels closer to me. At the same time, my only Son is a Mommie's boy. Don't see that changing.

As for who I was closest to, I think it was my father. I was a special child to my mother and therefore was given the name Abraham and my mother's maiden name, Firestone, as my middle name. Abraham Firestone March has been shortened over the years to Abe F. March and that is what is on my Passport. My father was a hunter and took me with him hunting at a very young age. He taught me to shoot a gun when I was six years of age. In later years when he was forbidden to eat certain foods or drink beer, we would go out together and have a beer and he could eat what he wanted without someone squealing on him. I also felt at liberty to smoke in his presence. My mother was a good mother. Very religious and she lived her religion. When I hear people today proclaim their religion, I have only to remember my mother to realize how phony they are.

I am who I am based on the combination of both parents. We would be considered poor with today's standards, yet we never were without food, clothing or a roof over our heads. We children all had chores and helped around the house. We dug and planted our garden and worked in the fields. We fed and took care of the farm animals. Today much of what we did as kids would be considered child labor. I worked during school summer vacation and part of the money I earned went to buy my school clothes. Our clothes often showed patches, but they were clean. Having patches on the knees of our ovealls (jeans) was embarrasing. Now having patches is a fad and considered "cool". How times have changed.
In looking back, I think I had a good childhood. I don't care to remember the lickings/spankings that I got. Even though I hated them they weren't harmful.

Guess I'm just old-fashioned. Getting old has much to do with it. I like antiques. I like to restore old things. The quality and hand workmanship is rare today. Machines have taken over much of the hand work. Machines have taken over much of the thinking process, i.e. calculators and PC's. The world has changed. I have adapted and changed in those areas that affect me, however I still cling to the things I value and that won't change.

Abe

Very interesting--Thanks!

My poem in Forever Families:

Forever Families

As the cycle of life evolves
To produce the next generation
Children become parents
Full of love and inspiration.

As mothers bond with sons
And fathers bond with daughters
Relationships are forged
From birth and at close quarters.

All families depend upon
The parent who provides
Care for the elderly
And the young child besides.

Within every family
Arguments arise that test
The mettle of everyone
Yet bring out the best.

Brotherly love and sibling rivalry
Are just two anomalies
That strengthen the will
To abide and remain forever families.

© Shelagh Watkins 2012

11/15/2012

When I was a small boy my Father took me everywhere, I was

his number one, he even kept me out of school for one year so

I could go to St. Barbara's Catholic school, but it never happened

he died the following year when I was 7 1/2 yrs old. As for my four

brothers and sister, we got along to a point, when we got older we

didn't see eye to eye. Do I now communicate with them, no because

their all deceased, I'm the only one left, I never dreamed that at this

age 64 in 30 years all my family would be gone.....

Cheers..Joe...

Shelagh,

Great poem and so true to life!

Joe,

Sorry you lost your Dad when you were so young.

Glad that you have good memories of him though.

11/15/2012

When I was 9 my mother re-married and my step-father was

the nicest man you ever wanted to meet, for him to marry a

woman with five small children ages 9 to 2 ( 5 in total) he was

a great man, Christmas always looked like Macy's Dept. Store, he

took us fishing and always telling stories about WW 2, he passed

away five years after my Mom...I miss him...

Cheers..Joe...

No such thing as a perfect childhood in my opinion. I was closer to my mother. My parents divorced when I was 10. Dad remarried when I was 11. Mom remarried when I was 35. As "adults" we all get along much better. Oh, and I don't have any siblings. I kind of made my own as I went along, I have few best friends who I love as siblings. My mother made sure I was never lonely - she adopted every one on my block Yeh, hers was "that house". Every neighborhood has one. I think she made a good impact on the lives of many of my friends. We were open minded and non-prejudiced, back before it was Ok to be so.

Joe,

Your mother chose well, by getting such a good step-father for you --probably why you are a Christmas fan now.



Glad you were close to your mother, Penny. It sounds like she was loads of fun!

I did not have a childhood. My poor mother had post partum depression which turned into a full blown psychosis after my birth.

She was hospitalized and given electirc shock treatments and finally underwent a transorbital lobotomy. Her intellect was spared, but her judgement was a notch or two off.

She understandably associated me with the trauma. She loved me, but did not like me. My dad adored me.

I have one living brother whom I have not seen since 1993.

My half brother died in 1985.

I like being grown up and am having my childhood now.

Aren't we a motley crew, though?

For sure!

Great poem, Shelagh. So much truth in it.

I had a good childhood, lots of great memories. I was closest to my Dad as noted in my short story tribute to him, MY HERO, MY DAD. He sacrificed his whole way of life so I could walk and never mentioned it, on the other hand my Mother threw it back in my face until the day she died.

http://www.djstephens.net/My-Hero--My-Dad.html

When I was a child I thought my friends had the perfect homes and lives. My life was good - I just never felt like I belonged anywhere so it tinged the good parts of childhood. I remember an aunt who told me that she worried about me because I behaved so well and was the "perfect child." I remember trying to be perfect so someone would keep me. By the time I was a teenager, I gave up perfection for adventure.

Don,

Your dad was wonderful, your mother not. I like your story about your dad.

DK,

You chose well.

Adventure is more fun than being perfect.

Like Dk, I never felt like I belonged anywhere, I thought that everyone who looked at me knew the terrible secret that I held inside. It was a dirty secret, I was threatened death if I told. I carried that secret most of my life.

It was not my fault, but in my child mind, I was different, defiled.

I have spoken of Ms Hart who paid attention to me, discovered that I was close to blind and wrote every lesson on paper so I could take it home and not read it off the blackboard. She bought me glasses so I could see.

In these 70 years, I am still not the same as other people. I will always be a little different. That I understand. Children need normalcy. They need to belong with all the other children their age. God bless the kind people.

Love

Betty

Betty,

You belong everywhere--you broke the cycle of abuse and that is outstanding:)

It would be interesting to know what kind of childhoods your parents endured that made them so unfit.

Don, the story about your Dad is special. Glad you shared it.
Betty DK, I think we all wanted to be loved and belong. Some of us never belonged even when we were told we did. It is more important to feel love than to hear it spoken.
I believe that we are strengthened by adversity. We also learn the difference between truth and fiction.

Dear Alice,

No matter how old the child gets, (in my case, 70) there is no way to understand or put reason to the way parents have been. They just were. It is always up to the child to move forward and negate the negative. I hope I have done that. It is not necessary for me to understand their disease. It is up to me to not pass it on to the next generation.

Love,

Betty

Betty Fasig wrote:

Dear Alice,

No matter how old the child gets, (in my case, 70) there is no way to understand or put reason to the way parents have been. They just were. It is always up to the child to move forward and negate the negative. I hope I have done that. It is not necessary for me to understand their disease. It is up to me to not pass it on to the next generation.

Love,

Betty

So perfectly said, Betty.

Sometimes the language that is used today to try and put such situations in perspective just falls short. It often borders on blaming the victim. A child who is abused is always a victim. It is never their fault, but when one is told to, "stop blaming, accept responsibility and move on, or that we need to forgive them, it can make our 70 year old inner children feel like they should have been able to change things, when they did not have that power.

There are levels of parental abuse, and I never experienced it to the degree that you did, but in all cases, I think, what we can do about what happened is to acknowledge it, put the responsibility where it belongs, and work at breaking the cycle. Awareness of the abuse and understanding that we did nothing to cause it can help us to give our children a -as you said - childhood. It may not be a perfect one, but we can know it is a da** site better than the one we got.

Annie

Well said all!