Spoil the child

A long time ago I was young mother and divorced.

I worked full time and farmed my daughter out to the only, and most expensive child care centre in the city. Whilst she slept at night, I burned the midnight oil to gain further qualifications, to brighten our future prospects. With hindsight I should have burned the paper qualifications on the flame, but the young are fortunately short sighted. We would run through a check list in the morning of all the many things that we had to remember. Sometimes an important item failed to achieve ‘list status’ and was over looked. Later in the day when I received a phone call from the school or a note home, I would have to admit my error. It was a harsh lesson for both of us. If my employer had been more understanding, if public transport had been a little more efficient, I might have managed to deliver whatever it was that I had forgotten, but all to often she just had to do without. I would comfort myself with the knowledge that those mistakes would help both of us be less forgetful.

Even then, I find it hard to imagine an employer permitting an employee to take the afternoon off to go and deliver a forgotten tennis racket or hockey stick. Maybe it was a different era or a different culture or a different attitude towards children and their needs? Whatever it was, or is, such behaviour by a parent would be frowned upon. Ultimately there would be a price to pay, whether that be in the form of a lack of promotion or a dock in pay. When it comes to cost benefit analysis, a different era brings a different price tag.


Twenty years later, I appear to be even more forgetful, but I comfort myself with the knowledge that I now have four times as many things to remember. My son has a wide variety of preferred talismen, without which, he becomes immobile. These preferred things change from day to day and from week to week. A few weeks ago these things could broadly be categorized as sticks, long handled things such as toilet brushes, toilet plungers and walking canes. I consider it a considerable coup that he now accepts smaller versions, that still adhere to the general principle of ‘stick.’ The four inch plastic lance, is always clasped in his tight little sweaty palm. It keeps him safe at all times, except whilst he is in school, where different and more socially acceptable talismen are permitted. The fact that he accepts that different things are permitted in school as opposed to home, is also a tremendous coup because many autistic children have difficulty generalizing ‘rules’ from one situation to another.



Thus it is, because of the ‘generalizing’ issue, that we stumble. My son is to go to another child’s house for a play date. Horray! On delivery, he finds that he is without his talisman. Friend’s house is not home, nor is it school, it is a different place. Since friend’s house is more closely categorized as ‘home’ rather than ‘school,’ he is unable to enter the premises without the talisman. I dither at the impasse. We sit in the car, by the curb outside friend’s house. He refuses to exchange the comparative safety of the car for friend’s now familiar house. He boils are fever pitch at the unfairness of it all, wild and riled. His exchange system categories are mis-filed. I think. I need a strategy. When his screams change to whimpers, friend’s mum toils to come up with acceptable alternatives, but none of the bribes work. I dither. If he needs the lance to be safe when he’s in his very own home, surely his need is all the greater, in someone else’s home? I decide to negotiate with my 6 year old. I make a tentative suggestion. I almost whisper because I don’t want to rekindle the embers of his meltdown.

He steps out of the car and into the warm and waiting home of his pal. I fasten my safety belt to drive home. As I drive my mind fills with wicked little American words like 'enabler' and 'co-dependency' and 'nit wit.' I collect the lance and return within 20 minutes. He has waited 1200 seconds for his lance. 1200 of delayed gratification must be an all time record. May Mother Nature turn a blind eye to the fact that the planet is defiled for yet another unnecessary car trip.


Moral – if you plan to beat yourself up over your failures, spare the toilet brush and accept beguiled.

New post up on "alien," dedicated to my chum.

Wordy Wednesday - Security Blankets

She finds me in my closet dragging out old clothes, a couple of decades late.

A shoe box of old perfume bottles stands by the bin.

So many gifts. So many generous people. These generous people don’t know. They don’t know that there are only one or two perfumes that I can wear. There are several bottles of my mother’s favourite. Her choice of fragrance pervades everything about her.
On me, well, lets say the result deviates from the true scent. It’s a little graveyard of mismatches, a tribute to chemical imbalance.

“Whatcha doin Mom?”
“Oh just trying to slim things down a bit in here.”
“Huh?”


“Er… you know, get rid of some of these old things that I don’t wear any more.”
Her fingers stroke the velvet and water shot silk, flick the taffeta, and brush the lace and net. I fight with boxes of high heeled shoes with ridiculous pointy toes that a different woman has secluded in my cloister. “I love those sparkly bits,” says my Magpie. I look at my Green Eyed Goddess, “would you like them for dressing up?”


“It’s ‘dress up’ Mum.” My American daughter is quick to correct my English phraseology.
“Oh right.” She pulls at tassels and fringes, twists their little coils round soft plump fingers.
“Don’t you want them?”
“I just don’t have enough room to hang on to all these things.” Did I ever wear them? All those balls, cocktail parties and the whole glitterati of youth.
“How can you…….bear to lose them?” she asks with an air of incredulity usually reserved for discussions about chocolate.


“Well, we don’t live that kind of life…” I peter out and leave ‘any more’ unspoken. She looks at me with a blank expression because adult blanks don’t register.
“These are clothes I wore when I was young and went to lots of parties.”
“You still go to parties now!”
“Yes, but I’d look a bit funny going to Gymboree in this get up.” I don’t think the phrase ‘mutton dressed as lamb’ would help her comprehension, merely add to the disguise of facts that are sometimes hard to fathom.
“Why don’t you go to Princess parties any more?” Is there such a thing as Dowager Duchess shin digs?
“Well, things are more casual out here. People don’t wear formal clothes like we did…in the olden days.” Across the continent of time, culture and class.
“You could keep em?”
“Why?”


“So when I’m grown up, I could wear em? When I’m bigger?”
I look at her. I remember playing dress up in my mother’s wedding dress. I remember wondering why she didn’t keep it for my own wedding day? Why had it been rejected for inclusion in the Camphor wood chest, where all the treasures were protected? I also remember another garment, my Granny’s. Outmoded, opulent and irrelevant. Something made and worn, before the turn of the century, the last century.


I did wear it after she gave it to me. I haven’t worn it for probably twenty years. I am unlikely to ever wear it again. It’s still hiding at the back of the closet, undisturbed, because it’s one thing that operates below the radar. If your sense of smell is keen, you can just detect a waft of Camphor wood, hiding a hint of rose petals. It is disqualified from the contest. It doesn’t have to vie with competitors. It is safe and secure, lodged in a separate category. It has ceased to be an item of clothing, merely a talisman, my link to that Edwardian woman. Madam to most, Ethel Mary to many, Mary to less and Granny to only a few. Then, there were real ladies with pure skin draped in hand made lace. Old ladies with secrets, secrets that were shared with small children with incredulous expressions.


“Which one do you like best?” Her eyes widen as her hands retouch every item, a recount, a double check, a last chance. She slithers herself into a shawl and drapes the fringe over her face. She curls up like a prawn, enveloped and blanketed. “This one. I want this one.” She breathes deeply. She sighs. A smile creeps over “it smells of you.”