Having been raised by a psychopath (more about that later), I had no internalized model of decent parenting. Except how not to do things. As clarification, a narcissist lacks empathy and a psychopath lacks both empathy and a conscience. A narcissist can hurt others in a frantic attempt to fill the emptiness inside. A psychopath hurts others for the fun of it. While the terms used to be interchangeable, psychology now tends to distinguish between sociopaths, who are created out of a tempest of childhood trauma, and psychopaths, who are born that way. All three types of people have public and private faces, and most people outside of the family experience them as particularly charming.
My playing the serf to my mother’s LordandLady would serve to take her rage down a notch, a role I perfected and unfortunately took with me into my married with children life. As in the French toast. My kids really liked French toast, so on Friday nights before those crack of dawn soccer games, I’d make a pile of French toast that could just be slid into the toaster the next morning. I’d do the same thing with waffles. Did I forget about the frozen ones in a box? At this point, I can’t remember.
It was a lovely spring afternoon when I went into labor with my 4th baby, and I knew things were going to happen fast. However, before we left the house, I went upstairs and laid out outfits for the other three kids on their dressers. I remember how cute they looked when they came to visit me in the hospital. They don’t.
At one point I added up all the school lunches I had made by the time all four graduated from high school. It was close to 10,000. And that’s on the light side, as I left out family picnics and my lunches for work. It would take someone like Aeschylus to put into words how I detest packing lunches. But I did it because either the schools had no cafeteria, or the food was “gross”. For awhile on Sundays, I’d set out piles of bread, cold cuts, tuna, and peanut butter, and make all 20 sandwiches for the week in one fell swoop. Then I didn’t have to think about it for a week. Alas, some of them had to be frozen, and as it turns out, defrosted sandwiches are also “gross”. Was there some sort of return on my investment of 10,000 sandwiches? Nope.
Last but not least, I thought about the viruses. Endless, relentless, ruthless viruses. With so many people to share the bugs, for years at least one person in the house was sick for 8 months out of 12. Nary a holiday passed unaccompanied by coughing or vomiting. Before online shopping, I’d drag my sorry ass through the mall because I was addicted to the sight of their faces on Christmas morning. Even though I knew that someone would probably barf on their presents. All those gazillion nights up with sick children, generally sick myself too. All those mountains of tissues, gallons of snot. Four barf buckets, chosen with each child’s favorite color in mind, hung from their bedposts. But the buckets, or the bathroom, were rarely used, with children preferring to throw up on the sheets, blankets, furniture, my head. We just missed the chicken pox vaccine, but when the first one got chicken pox, I was sure the other three would succumb together in short order. Not so – they fell like dominoes, one after another, each waiting the full 21 day incubation period. The process took 4 months.
Naturally I now wonder why didn’t I buy a better TV, take up curling – anything -instead of having so many kids. It’s not like I had any objection to birth control, in fact, I think denying myself or anyone else access to birth control is Machiavellian at best. In fact, for a long time my plan was to not have children at all, which I still consider a sustainable choice. What happened was I took a chance with one child, and just got hooked. Other than things like I mention above, I still haven’t discovered any sort of person, activity, or situation that produces as much consistent delight as a child. Or that so often challenges and inspires me to be a better person.
So don’t make sacrifices for your children in order to be appreciated. Or thanked. It doesn’t work that way. If you get a reward, it’s in the doing, and, eventually, in the kind of people they become. And perhaps in watching them parent their own children.
On the other hand, don’t be a doormat. Your children will of course take their cue from you and treat you like one. Make liberal use of frozen waffles and Lunchables.