Sometimes you realise you've already said the important stuff and all that's left is to repeat it.
If you read this before, then saw it had disappeared, then see it again... don't be confused. I got embarrassed by my navel-gazing tone and took it down, then got an email from Kim about how she'd enjoyed it, and a comment from her on the post below asking where it had gone so I've decided to put it back up again. With reservations!
I've been thinking more about Kim's confession post below and Pea Soup's and about reading even more on Donkey Burger that Badger's been dealing with and how I always struggle to say/write the right thing, you know?
Here's me, with nothing more serious than the occasional domestic accident and an overloaded life brought about because I insisted on buying house in Sydney's ridiculously expensive real estate market, and meantime all these other wonderful women hang around being really funny and blogging like crazy and engaging in random acts of kindness...
I mean, what can you say when every now and then they let on to a situation that would have your own pathetic self locked in a fetal position from here to eternity?
As a mother whose biggest issue has been coping with the fact that her eldest is too smart and won't wear socks and two youngest happened to arrive together, it seems very introverted and shallow and dumb to dwell on the non-problem of avoiding sounding introverted, shallow and dumb to someone who really has qualified for the Parenting Big League.
And then I remembered that I'd kinda worked through this before and that some of the results of it were in this earlier post where I talked about how we came to be blogging together and how that post was a result of another very poignant posting here.
And so while I could blather on in that introverted, shallow, dumb way, really, the whole thing can be summed up in the final line from that earlier post.
Kim gives me hope in hope.
As does Pea Soup, and Badger, and all you other legendary mums out there.
I hope I would deal with the unfair and the unexpected as gracefully as you all have, but I really don't think I would.
But if I ever have to, at least I have some pretty amazing examples to model myself upon.
mtc
Bec
posted by Bec at 4/19/2006 01:54:00 pm
7 Comments:
Absolutely. Nothing more needs to be said.
Don't put me up there with Badge and Kim.
My guilt is that I DIDN'T cope with it, mild as it was for us, and I am horribly glad that it's passed and I can be an ok parent again. (See my comment on the post below so I don't rehash it all again).
Kim and all those who are parenting special needs kids (while holding down PAID JOBS, lobbying the govt, running households, writing a BLOG or THREE, and parenting other children in the mix as well) are my heroes.
Ok Suse - you're off the list and the parenting police will be around shortly with a big scarlet F for your front door ;-)
word verification is now testing me - there's a three pointed letter but is it a v joined to a w or a w joined to a v? My god, see how I crumble under pressure??
I agree - I have so much respect for all mother's, with added awe on top for mother's of special needs kids. It goes to show the power of love.
Aw! Dude, you do what you need to do, you know? Whether it's a kid who won't sleep, or one who poops in the bathtub (um, both of those are examples from real life) or one who's bored to death at school or one who's bipolar or has Asperger's or whatever. It's your kid, so you just ... try to keep them alive, pretty much. I'm not doing anything special over here.
And frankly, for me the special needs are about 1,000 times easier to deal with than the stupid typical kid stuff like trying to rip each other's heads off and pestering me for snacks all day long and OH GOD THE WHINING. I read stuff like that, that all the other kids are doing, and my kids are doing it too so it makes me feel better that they're doing something halfway normal for a change!
I know that Youngest picking us as parents was the luckiest day of our lives. We've had to learn to negotiate the smallest aspects of life, which makes the Class 5 Rapids seem less daunting. He has taught me patience, limitless love, and to view things from the side view. I hadn't looked that way before. And the parents of SN kids that we're meeting - they are some of the greatest parents around. We don't think of ourselves as cursed or that our lives suck. It's just the way it is. Some stuff is harder. But you see so much more of life by slowing down and viewing it differently.
I have never felt like I deserve any awards, or the Scarlet F. Just sneakin' along the highway of life, and it's pretty enjoyable. Sometimes the boys are in front of me, sometimes behind. But they are with me, and that's the blessing.
'no regrets' Bec, no regrets.
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