let’s go to the video tape

I spent a portion of yesterday going through video tapes. Most were events in my children’s lives. I sat facinated by who they were then and who they are now.
Who they are now was a room and a corner away laughing and playing some video game together. It was a little strange to hear the grown up versions while at the same time the younger versions were on the tv in front of me.

In our rummaging and sorting we found video tapes and set them aside. If they’d been labeled we could’ve decided earlier but then I’d have missed out on such treats as a three hour long tape of a pinewood derby, compete with me saying “Chad settle down” every 5 minutes.  Looking at them now I see that he was just fine, it was me that needed to settle down and let him be a kid.

We have tapes of the zoo, tapes of t-ball, softball, and then baseball. Tapes of birthdays at Chucky Cheeses and holidays with various Aunts, Uncles, and Grandparents. Tapes of them losing wrestling matches, meets, and tourneys and more recent tapes of their wins. There are powder puff games where they put on cheerleader outfits and gamely cheered for the girls wearing football unis. Pre-prom night jitters, graduation day pride. Kindergarten graduation on the same tape as HS graduation. One of the few times I thought out the taping.

Someday they’ll inherit this box of old tapes, I only hope they have something to play them on. Maybe this summer I’ll pick up a couple old VCRs at garage sales and put them aside just in case. I know I’ll be looking for a slide projector because my folks have given me my childhood and it’s all in slide form.
I remember cringing when my parents would take roll after roll of photos on those deelightful disfunctional trips through the States. My kids cringed when I pulled out that bulky video camera and taped every birthday and Christmas and Pinewood Derby Day.

When you’re living the moment you don’t want to look back or think about looking back but someday those memories are nice to have. Whether it’s photos, video tapes, or the god-awful slide shows. We can’t remember every thing so a visual noogie is good to have. The tapes are put back now, no one but me was interested and I got bored pretty quickly. There’s too much going on now with my granddaughter and I don’t want to miss a second of it if I can help it. She, and her parents, will be moving on soon and until them you’ll find me hovering in the background taking pictures to go in a box and be dragged out again someday to look at and remember back when.

what’s your mental Kryptonite?

[gallery]everyone has some. Those things that hit you hard, rendering you emotionally helpless and curled up in a little ball on the floor of your mind.

I know mine, it’s being ignored. Being treated like I just don’t matter and I’ve gotten a good dose of it lately.

Sometimes it seems to come from every side and none of those force shields I put up keep it out. It isn’t loneliness, I don’t mind alone time, I actually like it. People are fun but I admit I also like my Tia time to read and relax, play some poker, write a little, and just follow my little patterns.

What gets to me is feeling invisible. Like I don’t matter anymore. Like I’m only kept around because of my uses but when something better comes along I’m put back on my shelf like an old shoe, not useful or important until the next time I’m needed. That’s what makes me going into a funk.

And that’s when I know it’s time to recharge and refresh myself. Usually it involves some bonding with Mother Nature or some form of a change to remind me that I am important, at least to myself.
This time it’s two new toys. Two new old toys is more correct. Two antique pinball machines I’ll restore and probably end up selling. But for now they’re a project, a goal. Something I know I can do even though I’ll get frustrated and curse once or twice. As I work on these new old toys of mine I’ll rebuild my confidence and relearn my importance. It will come from inside me and slowly I’ll feel better and stronger. The confidence won’t come from the people around me, my family and friends. It will come from me and that’s the only way it works. Others can lift us up and make us all full of joy with their praise and their back pats but those things fade quickly if we don’t feel pride in ourselves.
And that’s my kryptonite: lack of self confidence and self pride causing me to forget who I am and feel invisible to others.
Self confidence and self pride. Things we all say we have but I think most of us don’t have. Little fears and cracks that we hide from everyone else lest they think we’re less than we are. Things we all feel but rarely admit to.

The best way to grow past them is to start with a seed of confidence in one little thing and water it by noticing the things we do, the accomplishments and goals we meet. Then as we notice those things we become more sure of ourselves and no amount of ignoring or overlooking by others can break us down. No mental kryptonite can defeat us. My metal kryptonite won’t touch me as long as I do what I do best and remind myself daily that I make a difference and I have mattered, even when I don’t think anyone around me remembers it’s true. So in my garage sit two seeds that need tending to remind me that I am good at what I do and maybe what I do isn’t for everyone, it is for me and it is part of what makes me …me. Not invisible, very important, and no amount of kryptonite can take that strength away from me.

here come the brides

 

I’ve been thinking about marriage. Not because I plan to walk the aisle of doom any time soon, but because I am watching a marriage trifecta unfold in the lives around me.

One soon to be wed couple, one soon to divorce couple, and one married almost sixty eight years couple. The beginning, the middle, the end.

 

I’ve been married before. It didn’t take too well. I was all in but unfortunately my husband was all in too, just in someone else’s arms. I had a problem with that. 

But that was over twenty years ago and I like to think I’ve healed up nicely.

 

And I have. I’m still a big fan of marriage. I tear up as the bride and groom say “I do” and I am always sad to hear of a marriage on it’s last legs. I don’t think marriage is a necessity or a automatic ‘get out of hell free’ card. I think it’s an honor and a privilege to love someone so much that you want to pledge all you are to them for your forevers.

People say marriage is only a piece of paper and not important but I think it is. 

We have so little in life that’s really truly our’s. Our name, our word, our lives and to give someone your’s as a sign of your love is special. To pledge to wake up each day together and face what happens side by side and to end each day face to face is the best bond of all. It isn’t the ceremony that matters. Although some people need to have those ribbons and bells and $2,000 wedding cakes, others opt for a few words in Vegas before their favorite Elvis impersonator or a quiet beach at sunset surrounded by their family and friends. It isn’t what you wear or how many groom’s men and bride’s maids you have.

It’s making that vow to face life hand in hand and see each other through it all. That’s what’s important.

Next month I’ll watch two people, I once held as babies, commit to each other and I’ll cry. I’ll also lend my shoulder and my ears to two dear friends whose roads are now going to be separate after twenty years together and yes, I’ll cry then too. And then I’ll celebrate with an Aunt and Uncle as they savor the past sixty eight years of life they’ve shared. Big surprise.. I’ll cry.  

I’ll look through photo albums and see each step they took. I’ll meet their newest great grandchildren and even one great great grandchild. And I’ll think about the vows they took when they told each other they’d be there no matter what. It’s more than a piece of paper and a ceremony. It’s a giving of all you are and meaning it. It’s trying your hardest to make it work and being able to pull it off. It’s a beautiful thing when it works and I’d like to think most couples go into it with plans for forever. Not all make it and that’s sad but some make it all the way and that gives hope to those starting out.  It doesn’t matter how you make the promise, it only matters that you make it with the best of intentions. Maybe some don’t make it but many do and I think that’s pretty amazing. I hope the wedding I attend is one of the ones that lasts forever.

won’t you be my neighbor?

SANDY RUN, S.C. – Mary Sue Merchant died of  natural causes in her tightly locked house on 25 acres in this small community, with only a dog for company. Now her small town is reflecting on why no one noticed for 18 months

_________

 This isn’t the first time I’ve recently read stories like this. People not noticing neighbors.  People living side by side so caught up in their own lives that they don’t notice those who live around them. We pull up our driveway into our garages and the door comes down shutting out the world around us. We can find other countries, other worlds on our computers and television sets but we don’t know the first names of the people next door.

I know some say that’s a good thing because of the perverts and sickos among us but when we shut out our neighbors we shut out so much more.

I grew up in a house on a street in a neighborhood of people I knew. My parents let us outside alone in packs safe in the knowledge that the people who lived around us knew us too. Our street was like family each house another branch on the family tree. Mrs Rietano next door babysat us. My first babysitting job was for the family on the other side. My oldest son named for their little boy, a man now with boys of his own. We celebrated birthdays, had street picnics, mourned losses, and we children played outside year round. WE waved at each other when passing in cars and when someone was ill we pulled together to help out. One memorable winter the men n the street dug us out house by house after a particularly bad snow storm.

There were bad things about living on a close-knit street like I did. I could get in trouble at one end of the street and my folks would know about it by the time we’d all pedaled back home. Each house had a story. One family retired missionaries, another the large family of the local Police Chief, a childless (by choice) couple, an immigrant from Italy and her adult unmarried daughter. We had 6 Kodak families, two from Case-Hoyt, a widow with 8 children who always was first to help out anyone who needed anything. one always unemployed man who took his anger out on his wife and kids time after time even after one by one the other parents would call the police for help. We looked after the weak ones, cheered on the athletes, and helped each other put up and take down Christmas and Hanukkah decorations. Kids got to play outside after dark, parents felt safe knowing who was around us.

It sounds like a silly old fashioned life to live but there’s a security and happiness in knowing your neighbors. I know mine now, it’s second nature for me. I wave and say hello and send over baked goods to the nice elderly widower on the corner. I don’t want to be the person who one day is quoted in the paper saying “I hadn’t seen her in a while but I was so busy I just never noticed” My life is busy and yes, I pull up the driveway and into the garage and close the door shutting out the world around me but I always make sure to know the people around me because life is full of strangers already, I don’t want to live surrounded by strangers too.

a penny for my thoughts

 

in for a penny, in for a pound…. putting in my two cents… spend a penny, spend a pound…the penny drops

 

 

I miss pennies. Not that they’ve gone missing but because they don’t matter any more. Pretty soon pennies will be gone completely. Nothing costs a penny anymore and people just throw them away as if they don’t matter. The parking lots at grocery stores are littered with them, no one picks them up or makes a wish. We just step over them like they’re trash. If you save them, roll them up, and turn them in to your bank you get looked at funny. I know, I’ve tried. No one likes the sound of change jingle jangling in their pockets, it’s easier to carry a card to swipe through a scanner. It eliminates the need to count change or figure out sale’s tax. It’s quicker and quieter to avoid loose change. Machines still take quarters although they seem to prefer dollars.  And pennies have fallen by the wayside.

When I was growing up pennies mattered. My parents were afraid of debt. They’d grown up pinching pennies and they stressed it to us. I’d probably still be grounded if they’d seen me throw one out. We kids saved them up. In the summer we’d all walk up to the Mole’s and spend our money. He sold wonderful things like Coke in glass bottles for a quarter, comic books for fifty cents, and things like sour gum and snappers to scare and delight our friends with. He sold bait in a cooler right next to a freezer full of Popsicles, Fudgesicles, and Dreamsicles. He had coffee, maps, and other things our parents might send us up for but his biggest business, I would imagine, was his wall of penny candy. He had a stack of plastic cups and we would take one and fill it up with penny candies. Atomic fire balls, root-beer barrels, BB Bats ..I like the banana ones. Charm pops, candy rings and bracelets, bubble gum with comics wrapped around each piece. We could have caramels and lemon drops, licorice laces and peppermints. He sold Pixie sticks, sour balls, and those long strips of taffy in wax paper. As long as we had the pennies, he had the candy.

We’d each stand there and make our selections, these were important choices we knew how many pennies we had. And then we’d hand our cup to him to turn over and count out on the  big wooden shelf. He’d add them up one by one on his cash register and after we paid he’d put our bounty in a small white paper bag and we’d head back out into the sun to  make the walk back home. That candy could last the whole day, maybe two if we were patient. I never was though. My brother was and he’d deliberately eat the ones he knew I liked first so I wouldn’t beg anything off him at the end of the day.  

 

I can still buy those candies on line, but not for a penny or even a dime. I still have my comic books from the Mole’s and I still have some pennies but nothing costs a penny anymore, pennies just don’t matter. We throw them out or give them up, or like me save them in a big glass water bottle. Pretty soon they’ll go away and our grandchildren will be fascinated to hear they ever existed but I’ll have my memories of  penny candy and making that trek on a warm Sunday morning down to the Mole’s with my pennies in hand and back home again with my bagful of candies and even though the candy doesn’t leave a sweet taste in my mouth now, the memories are always going to be sweet in my mind.

discombobulated

 

 

that’s a fun word. sometimes I think my life’s a snow globe. Every time the haze clears and I can see clearly…someone (usually me) comes along and gives it a good shaking. As I pack to move and at the same time face an uncertainty and probable heart reshaking soon to come, discombobulated is a good word for me.

There are a few constants though.. my faith, my sons, the fact that no matter how much pain my day holds the next morning I awake with hope.. and a new blessing too. My granddaughter. I promised an update and here it is:

 

She is an amazing child. It’s a whole new kind of love and one I’m grateful to feel. That she adores me in return is a blessing as well. I get to spend a bit of time with her now, a couple days a week while her Dad’s at work and her Mom’s in class..

A bonus blessing because someday soon she and her parents will be moving off, setting their own family path and making their own family traditions but until then, I’ll take the time I get to spend with her. She’s made it past her first Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, and recently her Christening.

These milestones don’t mean much to her. If she can’t put it in her mouth she really has no use for anything. The rest of us consider every “first” a photo op. I can’t say I’m the guiltiest party, she has a Grandpa Tom who may eclipse me in the photo taking category. He and I joke about it every Monday morning when she comes to spend the day with me. He and I threaten to arm wrestle for the right to take her to our favorite local places like the science center and toy HOF. I have a feeling those outings will be shared because her parents aren’t willing to let us fight over them.

 

She’s a magical child with special powers. She nicens up Uncle Trevor, coaxes smiles out of him and makes him do things like use baby talk and buy stuffed animals. No matter how broken I feel, she heals me with a smile and a gurgle. She makes the little things seem big and the big things seem not so huge. She heals family wounds like the ones between her Father’s Father and her Great Uncle. She gives exes common ground and a reason to smile and laugh without past anger and resentments. She is amazing. Such a tiny little thing yet such a huge part of our lives.

 

This Grandma gig isn’t so bad, I can’t remember why I was dreading it. And I’m counting my blessing and my special times with her before it’s time for her life to go on and mine to branch off. She’s an amazing child, I can’t imagine the world without her and we so have a few more firsts to share…it’s almost Easter time after all and then Baby’s First Yankee’s game

I know my writing’s rusty, I’ve been away from it for a bit so it’ll take me some time to regain my footing. please bear with me.

blocks and brick walls

 

 I’ve been in a writing slump. My words dried up and I had no way to find them. It’s a terrible feeling to have no words, to not know how to start them again. Thanks to some new friends at blog-catalog I think I’m ready to try again. I have been afraid to sit here and try to write, afraid of failure, afraid of never getting my words back again.

 

 

 

I asked my new friends to give me advice and they gave me some good stuff to start from: looking at photos, reading something new, updating old blog entries, all good ideas. But one idea sparked my interest and made me think. I’m not sure he intended it to be a real idea but it got my hamster (named Brian) running a little.

 

Memories of childhood. Not the ones I’ve already written about, memories of my mother’s cooking. I’m not sure how my brother and I made it to adulthood. My mother did her best to take us out with just about every meal she served. Undercooked chicken that set everyone but me to the hospital while we were camping in Colorado.  Casseroles involving spinach, bleu cheese, and ham mixed with cream of mushroom soup. Meatloaf consisting of ground meat, oatmeal, and ketchup on top, JELLO concoctions, ex: one involving kidney beans… that made a hangover worse than it needed to be. My mother invented some doozies. Her meals were the stuff of neighborhood legend. Other children compared their mealtime experiences to see who got the best worst meal from my mother’s kitchen. I think my father started getting jealous because he took over in the summer.

The man could over or under grill anything. His crowning moment was when he grilled pork chops and served them as mostly char with no visible meat showing when you cut into it. That takes some kind of talent. 

I know the Fitzmorris boys enjoyed their weekends at the lake with us. My parents cooking was grist for conversation even up until a few years ago. I bet if I called Mr or Mrs Fitzy today we’d end up laughing over old stories of meals their boys survived.

 

When I was a child I was embarrassed by it all, now I’m older, wiser, and much more amused. The fact that they are in Florida and I’m in New York probably plays into it just a little too.  My sons suggested that forcing them to eat at Grandma’s was the equivalent of child abuse but I remind them that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger so they should thank me.  We laugh about it now, it’s part of our memories and now that we no longer sup on toxic waste (mixed with JELLO of course) it doesn’t seem so bad.  When I was thinking about this last night it made me get off my lazy tush and dig through a box I’d just packed. I have that JELLO cookbook and I’m thinking it might be fun to close my eyes and pick a page and scare my boys a little. I’m not sure why my brother and I survived our childhood but it sure is fun remembering how we did.

Diner dash

I’m a diner junkie. No chain restaurants for me. I don’t need fancy cappachino or specialty breads. I can live without sushi and quail egg omelettes. I’m an old fashioned mug of joe and two eggs over easy with sides of bacon and homefries for breakfast kind of girl. If the parking lot’s full of BMWs then I’ll pass right on by but if the parking lot’s full of semis and pick ups then I know the food has to be good.

Seat myself, not a problem. I’ll even fetch my own menu as I locate the best booth by the window. It has to be a booth, the kind of booth with naugahyde seats that leave a welt in the summer time when you go to stand up. God only knows what I’d find if I put my hand in the crack between back and bottom. I know I’m not brave enough to look. For some reason everything tastes better when I’m sitting in a booth at a diner.

My coffee’s delivered with a smile and a “need a minute honey?” which of course I do. I don’t mind being called “honey” or “sweety” by my waitress, I’m not sure why because I find it very annoying from other strangers but I know that she says it from  kindness and I’m okay with that.  She’s a nice lady, I’ve met her before. She knew I wanted my coffee and brought it without asking. She’s older than me, not so thin, and not so perfectly put together but she knows her stuff and I’m guessing she could do her job without even looking, she’s done it so long.

I scan through my menu. Cracked and peeling in the corners with a grease spotted list of specials paperclipped in.  Stuffed peppers, baked chicken and beef vegetable is soup-of-the day.

While I sip my coffee I look around to see what everyone else is having. The burgers look good but so does the stew and I wouldn’t even mind an openfaced roastbeef on white with a little extra gravy. But then she walks by with her tray held up high and I smell the unmistakable smell of mealoaf and know exactly what I’m going to have. Nothing fancy just old fashioned meatloaf and gravy. Food that won’t leave me hungry in an hour. Who needs a diet? Salads are for rabbits. I’ll have mashed potatos and gravy and maybe some corn to fool my brain into thinking it’s all good for me. Are onion rings veggies? I tend to think they are. Corn I can have at home, homemade onion rings are just what I need.

The important things covered, it’s time to settle in and look around. I glance at the pick ups in the parking lot, American made…mostly. A couple of dogs looking at their windshields wag their tails hopefully as our eyes meet then settle back down for their nap.

I look at the counter and watch as the stools fill up with men on their lunch breaks or just heading home from their shift at the plant. They nod at each other and talk about the weather and who got a ten point buck last fall. They discuss football and children and who just got laid off. Occasionally they see me watching and nod my way kindly. I’ve been here before but they don’t know my name so we just smile and nod.

There’s an old football team schedule on the wall, it’s been there awhile but it still hangs above the cash register along with photos and crayon drawings colored by children probably now all grown up with kids of their own.

The waitress brings me my food and it’s as good as expected. Nothing fancy, just good food. We eat quietly savoring it while it’s still hot. She comes by again, refills my coffee, asks me how it all was and if I think I might have room left for pie. I really don’t but I order some anyway because I’ve been watching it spin in lazy circles in the cooler. It’s almost a shame when it’s time to leave.

I like the world inside a diner. It’s a peaceful place. Just regular people, not a designer anything to be seen. A step back into time in a way. Good food, good people, good conversation. Regular people with regular problems living regular lives. Some of them born, raised, and some day going to die in the same area and not minding it one bit. I go for the food but leave with a comfortable feeling of home.  Big citys are nice for the glitz and the lights but when it’s dinner time give me an old fashioned small town restaurant with pick ups in the parking lot.

My name is Tia and I’m a diner junkie and I know I’ll be back there again soon and maybe next time I will have the stew….

I miss my dog

and it’s been bothering me quite a bit. I moved without her a couple months back knowing I’d never see her again. To see her would be cruel I think. Entering her world again just to leave a few hours later and leave her waiting by the door for me to return. A bit selfish too, I don’t think I could do it, too much pain for both of us.

I like to look back and think I did the noble thing, Leaving her in the home she knew with the yard she’d sniffed out daily for the eleven years we loved her. I miss her for all my complaining about her. She and I were close, we spent every day together and we knew each others faults. She was my friend. Some people don’t think of pets as parts of the family but I do.

 There were days she was my only friend. We walked the canal together when my heart was broken, we shared my bed on winter nights, We faced each morning out on the deck together.  It’s funny, I took it a little hard when my kids grew up and no longer needed me so much, I handled turning forty with as much grace as I could muster but saying goodbye to Puppy has me in a funk that grows every day. I miss that old beast. She was a part of me.

I’ve always had a pet. Usually a cat because my parents wouldn’t allow me a dog and when I was out on my own and the time came for me to get a dog I had two small children to leash, no time for a dog. I finally got one, Norm. Named after Norm on Cheers, Norm was a pure bred cocker spaniel. We loved Norm even though he had the ability to snore and fart at the same time. But he was stolen and by the time we healed the boys were too involved in baseball, Boy Scouts, soccer, and other boyish activities to get another dog.  It wouldn’t be fair. Cats can stay home alone but dogs need plenty of company.

 

Then Puppy came into our lives as a …puppy. Her real name was Ty, short for Tchaikovsky. She was a ball of fur and energy and when she wasn’t biting people she kind of grew on you. Ty turned into Puppy and she became one of us. Because I worked at home she and I formed a bond. She annoyed the snot out of me most of the time but no matter where I was or what I did she was right there with me. When I started doing furniture she’d lie there in the sun watching me work only disappearing under the deck when I pulled out the sanders. She wasn’t so fond of things like that. We’d chase frogs, blow frozen bubbles, and belly rubbing was a command not a treat.  It was hard to be mad at her, even when she  used the litter box as a buffet table or left me gifts of dead moles and mice in my slippers. 

She was a part of me and I miss her so much it hurts. But she’s an old girl and she can’t do wooden floors or be stuck inside a house because of a non fenced in yard. Her hips can’t do stairs and she is better off where she is. It was a touch choice but the best one.  I like to think she misses me too but not too much because I never want her sad. I know she’s fat and happy and spoiled rotten and I know she’ll enjoy her days chasing those damn squirrels on the fence.

Both Puppy and that stupid squirrel know she’ll never catch it but every day it waited for her and then ran the length of the fence back to the pine trees while she raced alongside and barked. One time she met it face to face under the bird feeder and I’m not sure who was more confused that old dog or that stupid squirrel. It was a Sam and Ralph moment and after that they’d say hello as the punched into a new day and the chasing was on. At the end of the day they went off to start again the next day. “Morning Sam” “Morning Ralph”

 

I’ve talked before about not being so sure there’s a heaven for us humans but I have no doubt there’s one for pets. A place where old dogs can chase squirrels and nip at people, where they can bark at mailmen and put dubious gifts in slippers for their pet humans to find. If there is a heaven for us humans I know Puppy and I will have a chance to walk the canal path and sit out on the deck and enjoy the sunrise.  I’d give anything to have the chance to sit outside in the winter and watch that crazy dog of mine jump and twist in the air trying to catch frozen bubbles and maybe play a game of fetch on a summer night, even though our games always turned into me throwing and fetching while she ran with me

and pretended she was playing too. I’ll miss sitting outside with her on Saturday mornings listening to the marching band practicing a town over. Even though there were miles between us and the school, we could hear it softly in the distance. We’d listen to the football games at the HS and college  in the Fall and at Christmas we’d lie on the floor and look at the Christmas tree lights while we waited for the boys to get home from wrestling practice.  

I am a lucky woman, I had a friend like Puppy and I’m blessed for having known her. I’m going to think she loves me too and every once in a while she thinks about me. And if God’s feeling kindly toward me as I end my days I really hope she and I get to meet up someday, me with my camera in my hand and her with her leash in her mouth waiting to walk the canals and spend some time together.

 

lessons learned

I don’t usually talk about news stories. But there’s one I’ve followed and it’s on my mind. Caylee Anthony was a little girl who one day went missing. I know that happens way to often in our world but she went missing and for thirty one days no one reported her gone. I’ll give a tiny bit of credit to her grandparents and uncle and say they may not have known she was truely gone but her mother knew and in the time this tiny life was missing, her mother went out, slept over at her boyfriend’s, got a tattoo, and broke a few laws along the way.  Why this one little girl caught my attention is simple, when she went missing and was finally reported missing, I was starting to count down to the birth of my granddaughter. So my heart broke for the grandparents. Them losing something that I didn’t even understand having yet.

But as I’ve followed this case it’s confused me. Made me ask some questions of myself.

Do I love my children enough to lie for them or do I love them so much that I wouldn’t?

I think it’s harder to love them so much you won’t cover for them or lie for them. 

It’s easy for me to sit here smug, looking into someone esle’s disfunction. I can pick apart the pieces of their lives and then tell them I would never or could never…

I don’t think the Anthonys set out to create a monster, I don’t think they understand now how it happened. But what they did do is forget the boundries between child and parent. They forgot that sometimes we have to let our children face what they’ve done and we have to do it from the begining. When you never hold your children responsible for their words and their actions and when you cover for them or clean up their messes time after time, you don’t teach them you love them or how to be adults.

When you do those things, you let them grow up thinking they can do whatever they want and they don’t understand how to think of  others, not even when “others” are a tiny two year old child.

I don’t think the Anthonys saw anything wrong with covering Casey’s early messes. I know there were a couple times I fought with myself over excusing away my son’s behaviors. And I lost a couple of those fights too. I said “he would never” or “the teacher must just not like him” but I knew that wasn’t it and I stopped myself fast. My boys may have been my little angels but they weren’t that angelic and I knew it. It’s so easy to make excuses, to blame something for your child’s faults. The other kids were bad influences, he forgot he had that gum in his hand. She wasn’t trying to be mean, they must’ve misunderstood.  Excuses are a dime a dozen and I had plenty of change to buy some but I had to make myself put that change away and let my children take the fall for what they’d done (or not done).

I wanted my sons to grow up and be men I’d want to know. To have them become people I’d want as neighbors.  That’s my advice to young parents like my son. Raise your children to be people you’d want as neighbors.  Tell them “no” and teach them early on to respect you and others. Punish them when they need it, hug them when they don’t know they need it. Don’t worry about being their best friend, that’s what their peers are for. Be a parent. Don’t be their overlord or their owner.

I’m not saying  the Anthonys could have altered what their daughter has done. Not my place to say that but they raised a child who never grew up. She never learned “no” and she never learned bounderies. She took what she wanted be it money from her best friend, her own grandparents, or her baby daughter’s piggy bank… she lied about who she was, what she did, and who she did it with. She hurt people on “whim” she made herself more important than anyone else and they let her. Time after time her behavior screamed out for help and they made excuses and covered for her. And now, they still lie for her. They lie to the police, to the FBI, to the media, to us, and to themselves. They give their child their version of love and in return she gives them disrepect and thinly veiled hatred. The child they thought they loved so much that they fixed all her mistakes, took away something else they loved.

 

Look how their story is ending, a dead grandchild, an incarcerated daughter, a lifetime of hell for them.  They may face charges themselves. They’ve lost their friends and their family. They’ve lost their self respect and the respect of everyone. They made this mess and they nuured what they thought was a flower but their flower turned out to be poison ivy and everything their daughter touched is now destroyed. They will never face another day without pain and tears and they will never know exactly why but I bet they l0ok back and realize the whole path could’ve veered differently had they only said “no” and meant it.

I have a granddaughter now. They do not. My son and I have discussed this case often and I must’ve done something right because he wants to be the kind of parent who raises his daughter right by saying no and not making excuses and I have no doubt that the child he and Katie raise will be the kind of person I’d like as a neighbor.

 

We can’t change what we see in the news. We can talk about it, like I do on IS. We can watch Nancy Grace or Geraldo although I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone watches Geraldo and  I’m not allowed to watch Nancy Grace because it makes me yell at the tv. We can gossip over these people at work or at play but unless we take their lessons to heart someday we’ll be reading about another case, another family, another trgedy. 

I’m a grandparent now, a role I take seriously. But I was a mother first and the hardest part of parenting is the part I’m glad I did.

If you haven’t read about Casey Anthony, please do. And if you’re the praying sort please offer up a prayer for her parents. They still don’t understand and when they do it will destroy them. They thought they loved their daughter so much that they covered for her, but they needed to love her enough to let her fall.