I believe sincerely in The Golden Rule - the idea that you should treat people the way that you want to be treated. I really do! It's so clear and common sense.
You know what the problem with it is? Other people do not want to be treated the way that I want to be treated.
For instance: a friend recently asked people who viewed her Facebook page to tell her about meaningful acts of service that they've received. Here's what I said: We were engaged for a year, which is ridiculous and stupid, and no one should ever do it. We also announced it immediately; also a mistake. We were being crushed under the weight of the (often loving, well intentioned) advice of our friends and family - "You MUST do this!" "You CAN'T do that!" "You WILL be getting those, WON'T you?" "You aren't going to wear THAT, are you?" We were told that I had to wear a loaner dress that I hated (I put my foot down and said NO), that we MUST get married in a church we'd never attended because their building was pretty and mine was plain, that a white dress would make my complexion look worse, that I shouldn't allow the brother in law with a catering business to do our food, that our color scheme was all wrong, and on and on and on. We seriously almost eloped.
My mom, knowing that I wanted nothing more than to make my own choices, said, "Just let me know what day to be there and what color to wear." It was the nicest thing anybody did for me all that year!!! Then, even though she can't stand crowds or entertaining, she let us get married in her back yard. She's the best.
I was really glad that my friend, and a couple of her family members, also my friends, "liked" the post. When I've told that story in the past, I haven't always gotten a positive response. I told one friend who was just aghast. "That's terrible! How could she do that to her own daughter?"
"No, no, it was fantastic! It was the best thing anyone did for me the whole year I was engaged!"
My friend was having none of it. "Well, it's nice that you've forgiven her, but she robbed you of all those mother/daughter moments you're supposed to have." I could not change her mind. She was convinced that it had been deeply painful, but that I was burying the hurt.
Had I wanted my mother to make endless shopping trips and compare colors and choose a menu, she would have done it. She did for my sister. But she wanted me to have what I wanted.
You know who I took shopping for my dress, the bridesmaid and flower girl dresses, the flowers? My husband. Do you know why? Because it was his wedding too, and because shopping with other people is deeply uncomfortable. I avoid it whenever I can. The last time I can remember shopping with a girlfriend (or sibling) was more than 25 years ago, when a buddy and I checked out the newest grocery store in town. She hated it, and I loved it.
My husband and I both saw the bridesmaid dresses at the same time. We were riding an escalator in a department store. I called his name to point them out at the exact moment he pointed and said, "Those are the ones!" We loved them. (We still do.)
Do you know what other people had to say about them? "Are you sure?" (We'd already bought 7 of them.) "Is the fabric appropriate for that time of year?" "Pink? Really?" "I'll bet the slender girls chose those, and the larger girls weren't too thrilled." "I had every attendant in a different color, so it would flatter their complexion.""So, you decided not to go with gowns?" "Did you ask the girls if they liked them before spending money on them?"
Even three decades later, it makes me want to scream. EVERY SINGLE WEDDING RELATED DECISION was accompanied by that kind of behavior. My mother came across as the island of sanity, in the midst of Meddlesome Mollies.
When my kids got married, I let them tell me what kind of involvement they wanted from me. I didn't shop for their dresses with them. I didn't "help" choose their color scheme, flowers, or theme. I let the one with strong opinions about clothes choose the dress that I wore. I got some say in buying food only because we were footing the food bill. I happen to think that's what a supportive parent does - lets the bride and groom call the shots. Carmen Miranda fruit hats? You bet. Barefoot? Absolutely - no shoe cost, no painful dress shoes.
I'm sure that somebody somewhere tells them how awful it was that I didn't give them "mother/daughter moments," and is amazed that they have forgiven me. I think that I did the right thing.
Lately, too, I've been thinking about this incident.
"On a message board for mothers, I recently read a very angry letter about a gift from a child's dad. Dad had been out of the picture for years and had recently resumed contact. Daughter was 5; he hadn't seen her since she was 2. For her birthday (or maybe it was Christmas), he bought her a sweater. Mom was outraged. "A SWEATER! Nothing for 3 years, then a sweater! I'm so angry I'm thinking of telling him he can't come over when he calls next!"
I'm aware that, since this involves custody issues and hard feelings, it's probably not about the actual sweater. It's probably about unpaid child support and court hearings. Still, the reaction seemed over the top.
I wrote back: "Men are notoriously bad at figuring out gift giving issues, especially when the gift is for a female." That "female" thing isn't exclusive, though. My father in law once gave his 15 year old son a Daniel Boone style fake coonskin cap. It would have been a great gift for a kid half that age. We have photos of my son delightedly wearing his through Frontierland at Disney World when he was 7. For a 15 year old, though, it was worse than no gift.
I offered my opinion that Sweater Dad was probably patting himself on the back. He was probably thinking, "It's practical, it's in her favorite color, she'll wear it every day." Unless told, I said, he would be unaware that anyone would look at that gift and think, "What is wrong with him?"
The mom who wrote the question didn't take issue with my answer, but others did. One woman wrote back that I (names are available on the site, and yes, she called me by name) was " a b***h." "Just because your husband is a loser doesn't mean that the rest of us have to put up with that s**t," she said.
Wow. I thought we were talking about a little girl's sweater." (More Misunderstandings)
Sometimes my kids baffle salespeople who are urging them to buy certain things for me - jewelry, makeup, candles, purses - when they say, "My mom's not into those." The thing is, they're right; but, that perplexes people.
A few years ago, my youngest daughter, who has a very minimal need for personal space, was told by a friend, "You're really in my space right now." Her immediate reaction? To say, "Oh, I'm sorry" - and wrap her arms around the friend, go cheek to cheek, and give them an extended hug.
"Honey! When someone says you're in their space, you don't fix that by getting closer!" She was totally baffled. Who doesn't want a hug?
Plenty of people, really, but that makes no sense to her.
I kind of chalked it up to age, and hoped she'd listen to me even if she didn't understand.
Then, recently, my husband and I were standing at a restaurant host/ess desk, waiting to be seated. We were the only ones there, yet my husband was literally right in my personal space. "You are so close you are literally touching me," I grumbled. (I have a need for a rather large amount of personal space.)
What did he do? "Oh, I'm sorry," wrapping his arms around me and kissing my cheek. I grumbled and squirmed. "Why are you so grumpy?" he wanted to know.
"Because I told you that you were too close, and you got closer!"
"I'm comforting my wife."
"It's not comforting if the reason she's stressed is that you're too close!"
This does not compute.
Everybody is comforted by different things. When there was a death in my friend's family, she did not understand her husband's reaction. "It's private, it's time to be with family, and he's phoning everyone that we know!" Yeah, I'm like her - in times of stress or grief, I need my universe to shrink. My husband needs to gather people around him; he'd be the one phoning everyone that he knows, their condolences buoying him. I might not want to speak to anybody, him included.
I once really, deeply offended my nephew's wife. She had a miscarriage; I've had more than one, and I remember what it felt like. I didn't want to talk to anyone, about anything. I barely spoke to my family, and that was it. I didn't want to leave the house, to have people tell me it'd be alright, and that they were thinking of me. It was too much to manage their feelings, on top of my own. So, I made my husband Gatekeeper, to turn people away until I could face the world, which was no more than a month. So, when our niece miscarried, I gave her space. "She does not need to have to deal with me," I thought.
When I phoned, after two weeks, she was livid. To her, my silence meant that I didn't care, that I hadn't thought of them at all, that their loss meant nothing. Horrified, I explained my thinking, and she forgave me, which was so sweet. Still, I feel the sting of having my good intentions hurt another person.
You hear talk about how hard "adulting" is. Forget "adulting" - I apparently have trouble "humaning."
Monday, February 26, 2018
Tuesday, February 6, 2018
My Parents' Anniversary
Today is my parents' 58th wedding anniversary. I'm thinking about them today.
I've previously written about the fact that my mom got married twice to her first husband. We recently discovered that she'd also married my dad twice.
("What is it with Mom and having two weddings?" my sister said.)
We've always known the date and place of my parents' wedding. We teased them about taking the wedding to the guests instead of the guests to the wedding, since they were married in the church my uncle and aunt attended. "That's not how you're supposed to do it," we'd say. "Yes, well, that's how we did it," Mom would say.
I figured that choice was a combination of not wanting a big fuss, but wanting a formal ceremony. Mom was very practical, and I can imagine Dad wanting a ceremony that rivaled the one with her first husband. Neither of my parents were members of any congregation, so they didn't have their own church to consider. So, the 90 minute drive each way made sense. (It still does.)
After my mom passed away (Dad's been gone for years), I found the certificate from their wedding. It is an ornate piece of parchment, with flowers and filigree and the writing hand done in calligraphy. It's tied by silk tassels, in a leather folder. Very showy, very fancy; it looks regal. It had all the information I was used to - date, place, my aunt and uncle as witnesses.
The problem was, on either my FamilySearch account or on my Ancestry.com account, the two geneological programs that I use, I could not find an online record of it. Neither could my sister. Oh, well, I thought. We know that it happened. New documents are being scanned or info uploaded every day; sooner or later, it'll be online. I don't need another record of it so badly that I needed to drive across four counties to get a copy.
But then, we came across another record online, a record showing that they got married more than a month after the first wedding, by a Justice of the Peace in another, closer, neighboring county. What was that about? Lots of people, myself and my husband included, have a civil ceremony first, and later, a religious ceremony. But why do it the other way round? And why so close together?
My parents are gone. My uncle and aunt are gone. I'm willing to bet that the minister (and Justice) are gone, even if he remembered them. Some of my cousins are gone; my oldest brother is nearing 70, and all of my children are grown. We're reaching the age at which we are the older generation. There's no one with first hand knowledge around to ask.
There are, however, stories and records from years gone by to help us extrapolate. There's the fact that many religions are very strict about how they will, and won't, perform ceremonies.
As nearly as we can figure, the minister from my uncle's church found out that my mother was divorced after he'd already performed the ceremony, and he then refused to file the paperwork with the state, so the marriage wasn't considered legal. "My mother couldn't have told the church that she'd been divorced when she married my dad. Otherwise, they wouldn't have let them get married in the church," one of my cousins told me. It used to be uncommon to find a church that would perform ceremonies for divorced folks.
So, my parents drove to the next town over in order to make it legal; but, they continued to celebrate the day they actually chose to be married, the day they first said vows. That's very typical of my parents. "This is my anniversary."
That makes sense. We celebrate the day of our first wedding. By the time of our second wedding, the religious ceremony, we'd been married for years, and had two children. That's a different day than the day we chose to get married.
I am a religious person; I stand behind the idea of religions acting in accordance with their beliefs. And yet this story tickles me. It amuses me. I stand behind my parents and their choice to celebrate their non-legal wedding day. Call it like you see it, Mom and Dad. Don't back down.
I come by my stubbornness honestly.
I've previously written about the fact that my mom got married twice to her first husband. We recently discovered that she'd also married my dad twice.
("What is it with Mom and having two weddings?" my sister said.)
We've always known the date and place of my parents' wedding. We teased them about taking the wedding to the guests instead of the guests to the wedding, since they were married in the church my uncle and aunt attended. "That's not how you're supposed to do it," we'd say. "Yes, well, that's how we did it," Mom would say.
I figured that choice was a combination of not wanting a big fuss, but wanting a formal ceremony. Mom was very practical, and I can imagine Dad wanting a ceremony that rivaled the one with her first husband. Neither of my parents were members of any congregation, so they didn't have their own church to consider. So, the 90 minute drive each way made sense. (It still does.)
After my mom passed away (Dad's been gone for years), I found the certificate from their wedding. It is an ornate piece of parchment, with flowers and filigree and the writing hand done in calligraphy. It's tied by silk tassels, in a leather folder. Very showy, very fancy; it looks regal. It had all the information I was used to - date, place, my aunt and uncle as witnesses.
The problem was, on either my FamilySearch account or on my Ancestry.com account, the two geneological programs that I use, I could not find an online record of it. Neither could my sister. Oh, well, I thought. We know that it happened. New documents are being scanned or info uploaded every day; sooner or later, it'll be online. I don't need another record of it so badly that I needed to drive across four counties to get a copy.
But then, we came across another record online, a record showing that they got married more than a month after the first wedding, by a Justice of the Peace in another, closer, neighboring county. What was that about? Lots of people, myself and my husband included, have a civil ceremony first, and later, a religious ceremony. But why do it the other way round? And why so close together?
My parents are gone. My uncle and aunt are gone. I'm willing to bet that the minister (and Justice) are gone, even if he remembered them. Some of my cousins are gone; my oldest brother is nearing 70, and all of my children are grown. We're reaching the age at which we are the older generation. There's no one with first hand knowledge around to ask.
There are, however, stories and records from years gone by to help us extrapolate. There's the fact that many religions are very strict about how they will, and won't, perform ceremonies.
As nearly as we can figure, the minister from my uncle's church found out that my mother was divorced after he'd already performed the ceremony, and he then refused to file the paperwork with the state, so the marriage wasn't considered legal. "My mother couldn't have told the church that she'd been divorced when she married my dad. Otherwise, they wouldn't have let them get married in the church," one of my cousins told me. It used to be uncommon to find a church that would perform ceremonies for divorced folks.
So, my parents drove to the next town over in order to make it legal; but, they continued to celebrate the day they actually chose to be married, the day they first said vows. That's very typical of my parents. "This is my anniversary."
That makes sense. We celebrate the day of our first wedding. By the time of our second wedding, the religious ceremony, we'd been married for years, and had two children. That's a different day than the day we chose to get married.
I am a religious person; I stand behind the idea of religions acting in accordance with their beliefs. And yet this story tickles me. It amuses me. I stand behind my parents and their choice to celebrate their non-legal wedding day. Call it like you see it, Mom and Dad. Don't back down.
I come by my stubbornness honestly.
Sunday, February 4, 2018
The Mouths of Babes
One of my dad's favorite stories from my childhood was not my favorite - not because it was embarrassing, but, well, because he got it wrong.
When I was 8, we took an epic road trip, including camping at Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. I loved pretty much everything about that trip - the places, the animals we saw, using the brand new camera that my brother gave me, the keychains that my mom let me buy in gift shops.
One day, we drove by the carcass of a roadkill coyote alongside the highway. "Oh, that's poor old Wile E." my dad said, referring to the Warner Brothers cartoon character.
"No, it's not!" I said, outraged. I was eight years old, after all, and I could not believe that my dad thought that I was too little to realize that a cartoon character was fictional. Did he really think that I couldn't tell the difference between a cartoon that walked on two legs and mail ordered ridiculous weapons and a real live, very familiar animal? Our dog was half coyote! As the youngest child, I was very sensitive to any reference to me being "too young" to understand something. I tried very hard to keep up with the big kids.
My dad misunderstood my outrage. "Oh, no, you're right. I'll bet Wile E. is too smart to get hit. He's just fine," my dad said, fairly bubbling with mirth. He went on to talk to my mom, as if I wasn't right there in the back seat, about how adorable it was that I worried about Wile E. being safe.
Even at 8 (and younger), I knew that it was useless to correct him. He wouldn't believe me, for one thing, and he'd be offended at being challenged. So I rolled my eyes and let him chuckle.
It was just my luck that he was so tickled by this story that he told it over and over. Great, I thought. Now his friends and my relatives think that I'm a baby, with no grasp on reality. Fantastic. Prepare to be patronized. (I hated being patronized.) I did mention how it annoyed me to my mother, but she confirmed, "It's best to just let him enjoy the story, accurate or not." He died when I was 22, still telling the story. He loved that story, thought it was so cute. I never did try to set the record straight.
So, as a child, I knew that misunderstanding isn't always on one side, parent or child.
As a parent, I sometimes wondered what people were thinking when my kids said something that sounded ridiculous, but I knew was true. Sometimes, people would argue, even if the kids got it right. For instance, when my kids would say, "Santa doesn't come to our house," people assumed that we didn't celebrate Christmas, or that we'd had a severe financial hardship, or that my kids didn't think they'd been "good enough" to get any presents. What they actually meant was that Santa brought their presents to the family party, usually at my aunt's house.
Another time my kid got it right, but it sounded loopy, was after a theater company picnic. To celebrate the end of the summer season, the company always had a family picnic at a nearby lake. It's about an hour's drive away, but most of that hour is straight up into the Sierras.
One year, on the way to the picnic, we came across our friend's Volkswagen stopped on the side of the highway with its engine compartment open. We stopped and talked to Kahele, the bug's owner, and she said that the car was acting like it was out of gas, but it had half a tank.
"I'll bet it's vapor locking," my husband said, describing what happens when part of the engine is so hot that the gas evaporates before it can be utilized. The car was weighted down with passengers and several large, full ice chests. The combination of the climb and the load left the car struggling. My husband took the largest chest out and put it in our van, then scooped handfuls of ice onto the engine. "Try it now," he said.
The bug roared to life, and we followed it the rest of the way to the lake. It had no more problems.
A couple of weeks later, we went to a pool party for the same theater company. My sister's kids were visiting, so they got to come along. As we pulled up and parked behind the Volkswagen, my kindergartner announced to her cousins, "That's Kahele's ladybug. It had too much weight in it, and Daddy fixed it with an ice cube."
Well, pretty close! It still sounded like gibberish, but aside from the amount of ice, it was pretty spot on.
My son got lots of extra sympathy as an injured toddler, due to his linguistics. He rolled out of his toddler bed and broke his collarbone, at an age when he described everything that happened in the past as being "yesterday." Wearing his little sling with pictures of Snoopy on it, whenever anyone asked when he hurt himself, he'd say, "Yesterday," and they'd say, "OOOOHHH!" and fuss over him.
Of course, every person remembers and processes things differently, but occasionally, the way my child(ren) remembered something rendered the event unrecognizable.
When my sister got married for the second time, my 8 and 9 year old daughters hoped that they'd get to be flower girls. They were disappointed that even the bride's own daughters weren't getting to be in the wedding party, because they weren't having any attendants.
My sister and her fiance wanted a small wedding, and decided, after months of weighing options, to do a quick ceremony with a justice of the peace, and dinner at a hotel on the coast to celebrate. No invitations, no new clothes, no fuss. We all got phone calls - "I know you won't be able to make it, but we're getting married on Wednesday." As in, the coming Wednesday; as in, less than a week.
If we were to drive straight there (as our other sister did), it would take seven and a half hours. My husband was working 12 hour shifts, 3 am to 3 pm; he couldn't take time off on short notice unless it was an emergency. If we were to drive, it would mean three days - a drive day, the wedding day, a drive day home - and we didn't want to take the girls out of school for that long. Flying on short notice was expensive, but if only I went, it was doable. My eight month old could fly for free if he sat on my lap. So, my mother and I decided to fly; she rarely took any time off from work, but a single day off to see her daughter get married was worth it.
Since I was a stay at home parent, I'd have to figure out child care for the older children. If I could have flown straight there, it would be about 90 minutes each way, but the airport near my sister is a small, rural airport, and there were no direct flights from home. We'd have to fly for an hour plus to a large airport, have a layover, then fly for another hour plus to the small airport, which was still about 30 minutes from my sister's house, where we'd meet before driving to the courthouse. The flight I found that would get me (and my mother and son) there on time left at 6 am; we'd have to be at the airport by 5. With my husband at work at 3, that left my kids alone, which was unacceptable. I couldn't imagine asking someone to get to my house by 4 so that I could leave at 4:30.
My inlaws lived nearby, so I asked my mother in law if she could take the girls overnight, then get them to school in the morning. She had a spare room with twin beds, and was about 15 minutes away from their school. She agreed to take the girls, asking us to get them to her house by dinner time, so that by bedtime they'd be ready to settle in. Since they got out of school at the same time my husband left work 15 miles away, instead of having them walk home to an empty house, she'd pick them up from school, and my husband would come and get them from her house. "It's probably be easier if they just all have dinner here again, instead of Danny having to go home and throw something together on short notice," she said. After getting home, he'd then stay up past his own bedtime in order to tuck them in at their normal bedtime. We thanked her profusely for making the trip possible, and bought tickets.
It was a long day for us - up at 4, at the airport by 5, and we didn't arrive back home until almost midnight. Still, my mother and I got to be with my sister on her wedding day, I got to take photos, and my children were safe while I was gone.
A couple of weeks later, I was saying something about how stressful it was that the photo processor temporarily lost my sister's wedding photos - this was the days of film, and if the film was lost, they were gone forever. My daughter exclaimed, "You never told us that Aunt Lynne got married!"
"Of course I did. Remember wanting to be a flower girl?"
"No, you told us she was going to get married! You never said it already happened!"
"You knew when it happened. That was why you guys spent the night at Grandma Donna's - so I could go to the wedding."
"You WENT?"
"Yes. You knew that. That's why you stayed overnight at Grandma Donna's."
"We've never stayed overnight at Grandma Donna's!"
What? It had only been two weeks - how could she have forgotten? I assumed that her sister would set her straight. But one of the things that amazes and puzzles me to this day was the ability of these girls who bickered constantly to also think in lock step. One was convinced of her own infallibility, and one was anxiety ridden, so it was a fairly common thing for the force of one personality to overwhelm the other, but I'd never seen it to this extent before. Her sister took up the complaint - "You never told us! We never stayed at Grandma Donna's!"
That's weird, I thought, but I waited it out, knowing that one of them should eventually recall the event, if only to one-up her sister. We - the baby and I - had been gone for two nights worth of dinners and bedtimes. Grandma Donna had dropped them off AND picked them up from school. It just seemed impossible that they'd forget almost two entire days, even if they'd forgotten WHY I was gone.
Instead, as time went on, they embellished their tale of woe. They started telling people that I had dropped them at school, driven to the airport, flown to the wedding, attended the wedding - and, somehow, also dinner - but flown back in time to pick them up from school as if I'd never gone anywhere. They were convinced that I'd then tried to keep this a secret, and that they'd only found out by accident. Both of them were deeply convinced of this exact scenario. "And she won't even admit that it happened!"
At first, it was merely irritating, but then I started to panic. I know that people often repress traumatic memories - had something deeply horrible occurred at their grandparents' house, so terrible that neither girl wanted to remember it? And how could I ask my inlaws without being accusatory and offending them? I freaked out a little bit.
My husband brought it up in a roundabout way with his mother. "The girls don't even remember staying overnight at your house." She laughed, assured him that children's memories are notoriously unreliable, and remembered that they'd had a great time with her.
I still worried a bit, but I had to chalk it up to my kids just preferring the more dramatic story, and feeding off of each other.
I think they were teens when I finally insisted that they stop telling their version of this story. "It looked silly when you were little, but it looks sillier now." Not only could their dad, both of their grandmothers (who didn't agree on much), their grandfather, and both of my my sisters and their families confirm my version of events, and I had ticket stubs with times on them, the mere math was impossible. The time we spent in the air was close to three hours. The layover was an hour and a half. Add that to the hour, each way, that we had to be at the airports before the flights, and we were already at 6 1/2 hours, and their school day was 6 hours long. The flights alone were impossible to do in the length of a school day, to say nothing of drive time, wedding time and dinner time.
The kids were both incredibly puzzled by this fact, when I laid out the timeline, again. (When they were younger, they were sure that I was just misrepresenting how long things took.) "I was sure that (me being gone during school hours only) was how it happened." "I don't remember it that way." And each sister's absolute certainty had been bolstered by their sibling's absolute certainty.
"I know you don't. But that's how it happened." Sometimes, I think that they never did really realize that they'd gotten it wrong; they just stopped complaining about it around their parents.
I think of moments like this sometimes when I'm online reading. I was recently reading an online discussion/argument among friends of mine and flat Earth proponents. One of the flat Earth arguments was, "Why do astronauts' accounts of what it's like to be in space differ from each other? Why do they describe the sky using different adjectives?" Are they kidding?
Think about any event - that Thanksgiving when Uncle Joe passed out in the potatoes, the birth of your children, or even last year's garden or last night's dinner. Do the people who were there describe it the same way? Do they always even remember it? How many times does the average person say, "That's not how it happened"?
In actuality, everyone having identical stories is usually a sign that they've all rehearsed what to say.
Really, considering differing opinions or accounts to be the sign of a huge conspiracy is just outrageous.
"But people who say (X) are so sincere and convinced! And they should know!" people say to me. I'm sure they are. And yet, they could be wrong.
I never confused a live coyote with a cartoon one.
When I was 8, we took an epic road trip, including camping at Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. I loved pretty much everything about that trip - the places, the animals we saw, using the brand new camera that my brother gave me, the keychains that my mom let me buy in gift shops.
One day, we drove by the carcass of a roadkill coyote alongside the highway. "Oh, that's poor old Wile E." my dad said, referring to the Warner Brothers cartoon character.
"No, it's not!" I said, outraged. I was eight years old, after all, and I could not believe that my dad thought that I was too little to realize that a cartoon character was fictional. Did he really think that I couldn't tell the difference between a cartoon that walked on two legs and mail ordered ridiculous weapons and a real live, very familiar animal? Our dog was half coyote! As the youngest child, I was very sensitive to any reference to me being "too young" to understand something. I tried very hard to keep up with the big kids.
My dad misunderstood my outrage. "Oh, no, you're right. I'll bet Wile E. is too smart to get hit. He's just fine," my dad said, fairly bubbling with mirth. He went on to talk to my mom, as if I wasn't right there in the back seat, about how adorable it was that I worried about Wile E. being safe.
Even at 8 (and younger), I knew that it was useless to correct him. He wouldn't believe me, for one thing, and he'd be offended at being challenged. So I rolled my eyes and let him chuckle.
It was just my luck that he was so tickled by this story that he told it over and over. Great, I thought. Now his friends and my relatives think that I'm a baby, with no grasp on reality. Fantastic. Prepare to be patronized. (I hated being patronized.) I did mention how it annoyed me to my mother, but she confirmed, "It's best to just let him enjoy the story, accurate or not." He died when I was 22, still telling the story. He loved that story, thought it was so cute. I never did try to set the record straight.
So, as a child, I knew that misunderstanding isn't always on one side, parent or child.
As a parent, I sometimes wondered what people were thinking when my kids said something that sounded ridiculous, but I knew was true. Sometimes, people would argue, even if the kids got it right. For instance, when my kids would say, "Santa doesn't come to our house," people assumed that we didn't celebrate Christmas, or that we'd had a severe financial hardship, or that my kids didn't think they'd been "good enough" to get any presents. What they actually meant was that Santa brought their presents to the family party, usually at my aunt's house.
Another time my kid got it right, but it sounded loopy, was after a theater company picnic. To celebrate the end of the summer season, the company always had a family picnic at a nearby lake. It's about an hour's drive away, but most of that hour is straight up into the Sierras.
One year, on the way to the picnic, we came across our friend's Volkswagen stopped on the side of the highway with its engine compartment open. We stopped and talked to Kahele, the bug's owner, and she said that the car was acting like it was out of gas, but it had half a tank.
"I'll bet it's vapor locking," my husband said, describing what happens when part of the engine is so hot that the gas evaporates before it can be utilized. The car was weighted down with passengers and several large, full ice chests. The combination of the climb and the load left the car struggling. My husband took the largest chest out and put it in our van, then scooped handfuls of ice onto the engine. "Try it now," he said.
The bug roared to life, and we followed it the rest of the way to the lake. It had no more problems.
A couple of weeks later, we went to a pool party for the same theater company. My sister's kids were visiting, so they got to come along. As we pulled up and parked behind the Volkswagen, my kindergartner announced to her cousins, "That's Kahele's ladybug. It had too much weight in it, and Daddy fixed it with an ice cube."
Well, pretty close! It still sounded like gibberish, but aside from the amount of ice, it was pretty spot on.
My son got lots of extra sympathy as an injured toddler, due to his linguistics. He rolled out of his toddler bed and broke his collarbone, at an age when he described everything that happened in the past as being "yesterday." Wearing his little sling with pictures of Snoopy on it, whenever anyone asked when he hurt himself, he'd say, "Yesterday," and they'd say, "OOOOHHH!" and fuss over him.
Of course, every person remembers and processes things differently, but occasionally, the way my child(ren) remembered something rendered the event unrecognizable.
When my sister got married for the second time, my 8 and 9 year old daughters hoped that they'd get to be flower girls. They were disappointed that even the bride's own daughters weren't getting to be in the wedding party, because they weren't having any attendants.
My sister and her fiance wanted a small wedding, and decided, after months of weighing options, to do a quick ceremony with a justice of the peace, and dinner at a hotel on the coast to celebrate. No invitations, no new clothes, no fuss. We all got phone calls - "I know you won't be able to make it, but we're getting married on Wednesday." As in, the coming Wednesday; as in, less than a week.
If we were to drive straight there (as our other sister did), it would take seven and a half hours. My husband was working 12 hour shifts, 3 am to 3 pm; he couldn't take time off on short notice unless it was an emergency. If we were to drive, it would mean three days - a drive day, the wedding day, a drive day home - and we didn't want to take the girls out of school for that long. Flying on short notice was expensive, but if only I went, it was doable. My eight month old could fly for free if he sat on my lap. So, my mother and I decided to fly; she rarely took any time off from work, but a single day off to see her daughter get married was worth it.
Since I was a stay at home parent, I'd have to figure out child care for the older children. If I could have flown straight there, it would be about 90 minutes each way, but the airport near my sister is a small, rural airport, and there were no direct flights from home. We'd have to fly for an hour plus to a large airport, have a layover, then fly for another hour plus to the small airport, which was still about 30 minutes from my sister's house, where we'd meet before driving to the courthouse. The flight I found that would get me (and my mother and son) there on time left at 6 am; we'd have to be at the airport by 5. With my husband at work at 3, that left my kids alone, which was unacceptable. I couldn't imagine asking someone to get to my house by 4 so that I could leave at 4:30.
My inlaws lived nearby, so I asked my mother in law if she could take the girls overnight, then get them to school in the morning. She had a spare room with twin beds, and was about 15 minutes away from their school. She agreed to take the girls, asking us to get them to her house by dinner time, so that by bedtime they'd be ready to settle in. Since they got out of school at the same time my husband left work 15 miles away, instead of having them walk home to an empty house, she'd pick them up from school, and my husband would come and get them from her house. "It's probably be easier if they just all have dinner here again, instead of Danny having to go home and throw something together on short notice," she said. After getting home, he'd then stay up past his own bedtime in order to tuck them in at their normal bedtime. We thanked her profusely for making the trip possible, and bought tickets.
It was a long day for us - up at 4, at the airport by 5, and we didn't arrive back home until almost midnight. Still, my mother and I got to be with my sister on her wedding day, I got to take photos, and my children were safe while I was gone.
A couple of weeks later, I was saying something about how stressful it was that the photo processor temporarily lost my sister's wedding photos - this was the days of film, and if the film was lost, they were gone forever. My daughter exclaimed, "You never told us that Aunt Lynne got married!"
"Of course I did. Remember wanting to be a flower girl?"
"No, you told us she was going to get married! You never said it already happened!"
"You knew when it happened. That was why you guys spent the night at Grandma Donna's - so I could go to the wedding."
"You WENT?"
"Yes. You knew that. That's why you stayed overnight at Grandma Donna's."
"We've never stayed overnight at Grandma Donna's!"
What? It had only been two weeks - how could she have forgotten? I assumed that her sister would set her straight. But one of the things that amazes and puzzles me to this day was the ability of these girls who bickered constantly to also think in lock step. One was convinced of her own infallibility, and one was anxiety ridden, so it was a fairly common thing for the force of one personality to overwhelm the other, but I'd never seen it to this extent before. Her sister took up the complaint - "You never told us! We never stayed at Grandma Donna's!"
That's weird, I thought, but I waited it out, knowing that one of them should eventually recall the event, if only to one-up her sister. We - the baby and I - had been gone for two nights worth of dinners and bedtimes. Grandma Donna had dropped them off AND picked them up from school. It just seemed impossible that they'd forget almost two entire days, even if they'd forgotten WHY I was gone.
Instead, as time went on, they embellished their tale of woe. They started telling people that I had dropped them at school, driven to the airport, flown to the wedding, attended the wedding - and, somehow, also dinner - but flown back in time to pick them up from school as if I'd never gone anywhere. They were convinced that I'd then tried to keep this a secret, and that they'd only found out by accident. Both of them were deeply convinced of this exact scenario. "And she won't even admit that it happened!"
At first, it was merely irritating, but then I started to panic. I know that people often repress traumatic memories - had something deeply horrible occurred at their grandparents' house, so terrible that neither girl wanted to remember it? And how could I ask my inlaws without being accusatory and offending them? I freaked out a little bit.
My husband brought it up in a roundabout way with his mother. "The girls don't even remember staying overnight at your house." She laughed, assured him that children's memories are notoriously unreliable, and remembered that they'd had a great time with her.
I still worried a bit, but I had to chalk it up to my kids just preferring the more dramatic story, and feeding off of each other.
I think they were teens when I finally insisted that they stop telling their version of this story. "It looked silly when you were little, but it looks sillier now." Not only could their dad, both of their grandmothers (who didn't agree on much), their grandfather, and both of my my sisters and their families confirm my version of events, and I had ticket stubs with times on them, the mere math was impossible. The time we spent in the air was close to three hours. The layover was an hour and a half. Add that to the hour, each way, that we had to be at the airports before the flights, and we were already at 6 1/2 hours, and their school day was 6 hours long. The flights alone were impossible to do in the length of a school day, to say nothing of drive time, wedding time and dinner time.
The kids were both incredibly puzzled by this fact, when I laid out the timeline, again. (When they were younger, they were sure that I was just misrepresenting how long things took.) "I was sure that (me being gone during school hours only) was how it happened." "I don't remember it that way." And each sister's absolute certainty had been bolstered by their sibling's absolute certainty.
"I know you don't. But that's how it happened." Sometimes, I think that they never did really realize that they'd gotten it wrong; they just stopped complaining about it around their parents.
I think of moments like this sometimes when I'm online reading. I was recently reading an online discussion/argument among friends of mine and flat Earth proponents. One of the flat Earth arguments was, "Why do astronauts' accounts of what it's like to be in space differ from each other? Why do they describe the sky using different adjectives?" Are they kidding?
Think about any event - that Thanksgiving when Uncle Joe passed out in the potatoes, the birth of your children, or even last year's garden or last night's dinner. Do the people who were there describe it the same way? Do they always even remember it? How many times does the average person say, "That's not how it happened"?
In actuality, everyone having identical stories is usually a sign that they've all rehearsed what to say.
Really, considering differing opinions or accounts to be the sign of a huge conspiracy is just outrageous.
"But people who say (X) are so sincere and convinced! And they should know!" people say to me. I'm sure they are. And yet, they could be wrong.
I never confused a live coyote with a cartoon one.
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