More Patience Please!

I can’t remember when I heard the line “I prayed to God for patience, and he answered me by giving me a son.”  But I have now come to fully appreciate the tragic humour in that statement. My son is about to turn the grand old age of 6. And its remarkable how much he already thinks he knows, and how often he thinks I’m wrong.  This would not be a problem if he kept those thoughts to himself, instead of arguing or attempting to negotiate his way through every request made of him. At the moment I can’t bear to think of what the teenage years will bring…

Parenting is clearly one of the most obvious opportunities to truly get to know your character flaws on many levels.  I now fully understand the parent curse of “just wait…one day you will have a kid who’s JUST LIKE YOU!” And I can also understand the glint in my father’s eye when he witnesses one of THOSE ‘battles of the wills’ between my son and me. 

Leading up to the birth of my son, I read a few of the top rated parenting books, attended a few lectures put on by experts, and thought…how tough can this be? All this knowledge and wonderful parenting goals of calmly reasoning with a child in a soothing tone, seemed pretty useful and logical, I’m teachable…I can do this…right? Funny but I don’t remember any of those books telling me that I had to put these wonderful parenting techniques into effect after the 3^rd night in a row of minimal sleep, with a kid that won’t or can’t sleep, or after a 6 hour car ride with multiple tantrums with toys and shoes thrown at your head, or the absolute refusal to swallow food after an hour at the dinner table.

I now readily admit that before I became a parent when I witnessed a child’s defiance in a grocery store followed by a parental meltdown, I used to pass judgement thinking that the parent needed to get a grip. Now when I see that happen I try to make compassionate eye contact with the embattled parent sending a telepathic message of “this is just a phase…hang in there…I get it!” I’m now sceptical of parents that suggest every day is paradise.

I remember sitting in on an excellent Barbara Coloroso seminar.  She is one of the gurus I actually like since she doesn’t sugar coat the parenting experience. Nor does she expect parenting perfection. Her news was encouraging…she said that a child that argues, pushes back, doesn’t always accept everything a parent requests, is a sign of a child that will have the strength to resist negative peer pressure as a teen. She suggests that this defiance as a child is actually a character asset in disguise! So there is hope after all.  

So what have I learned in the 6 short years of parenting? I can’t begin to sum it all up here, but I do know that this munchkin has an uncanny ability to evoke all kinds of emotions in me…some good, some fantastic and others that are…well…less than attractive.  Patience has never been my strong suit. As a kid I had no time for a model airplane with a billion pieces, and today I can get frustrated when it’s daylight savings time and I have to change the time on the clock in my car…you know the one…that has more steps than the launch sequence for the space shuttle?

So while I can sell the car or just put black tape over the clock, I can’t stop being a parent. So while my son, at 6, has a lot of growing to do, clearly at 47 I do as well.  I’m quite certain I will never be known to my friends as ‘Ghandi like’ with an abundance of patience…I am realistic. But there is definitely room for improvement, and there is usually a better way to do almost anything if I can slow it all down and let reason return. Of course maintaining a sense of humour never hurts.  

The other saving grace is that the dark days or moments are followed by days and moments of sheer joy. There is nothing like jumping off the diving board, hand in hand, for the first swim of the season. The morning snuggle in the easy chair while we both wake up, witnessing the first bike ride without training wheels, sitting in the school gymnasium for the end of school concert, and on it goes.   

And of course one day I too will get to pass on the parental curse. :-)   

Dreaming of Summer

I’m sitting now watching the sun set after the first real summer thunderstorm of the year. My 5 year old son wondering what all the fuss is about and why the TV had been turned off.  It’s easy to jump on the media band wagon and say “we never had storms like this back in the day…” but from my memory we had many storms, just like this, when I was growing up.  It’s a sure sign of summer!

I’ve always been a fan of summer though the experiences today are very different than when I was a kid.

Summer living in the country meant saying good bye to school friends for a few months.  In the 70’s when school ended my parents would pack us up, and we would move 20 miles north to the Haliburton Forest & Wildlife Reserve, where my Dad worked and my Mom ran the camp store.

We pretty much camped for the summer!  Here we had 100 square miles of park land with 50 lakes as a back yard. My Mom’s store meant a great selection of popsicles and ice cream bars as needed.  I took it for granted that I could spend summer days with my Dad, zipping down remote bush roads in a ’62 Willy’s jeep, no roof, no doors, no seat belts, windshield laid flat on the hood. 4 wheel drive as needed!  No electricity, no cell phones, no civilization for miles and miles. Lunch stops often meant pulling out the fishing rods, and reeling in some small mouth bass.  Deer, rabbit, partridge, fox & bear sightings were the norm. 

The manager of the Reserve was a seasoned pilot and had an ancient 2 seater float plane.  I was always at the ready when “Pat” would stop by the camp store to see if I was interested in flying into Bivouac,  Powderhorn or any one of 40 other lakes to check on a reported fire or to bring an emergency message to some campers.  How that old plane managed to take off from some of those tiny lakes is still a cause for wonder. But those flights have stayed with me for my entire life. There is nothing like the moments as the engine quiets just before the pontoons hit the water as we would land on Little Redstone Lake and coast back into the dock. Mission accomplished.

There are many great memories of this time.  Television was a rarity, the 6 o’clock news was a possibility if the temperamental TV cooperated and the antenna mounted on the roof hadn’t changed direction in the wind. As the picture faded again and Dad slapped the side of the TV and cursed it for the 3^rd time…it would be shut off…and instead we talked, as a family, about the day.  

The 7 o’clock ritual was to shut the store as quickly as possible, pile into and onto the pickup truck and do the 1 mile trek to Macdonald Lake for the nightly swim. Mom and Dad would ride in the cab. The kids (anyone who wanted to come)  and dogs riding in the back, often sitting on the tail gate. Today that would likely land a parent in jail!   Yet somehow we all survived!

I can’t begin to count the number of campfires we sat around for those years of my youth. Nor could I begin to count the hotdogs, corn and marshmallows roasted.  My parents were, and are, very social people and were part of the camper’s community. We spent many evenings throughout the reserve at various campsites and fires sharing stories. I wonder sometimes if we are losing this story telling culture with the push of Tv’s and internet into cottage country.  

Of course as a kid it didn’t seem all that great all the time, sometimes the sense of isolation became overwhelming. I was fortunate to have other kids who lived on site as well. And we became phenomenal friends. We remain friends today.  But I did miss my school friends that I rarely saw during those months, and friendships with the campers and cottagers kids were fleeting, lasting only as long as their parents vacation time.  And yes I missed watching television…even if at home we only had the 3 Canadian Channels, CBC CTV and on a good day Global.  This was my life from the end of June to Labour Day, throughout my youth.

Fast forward to 2014 and city living, city job, more cellphones in the house than people, satellite television, Nintendo in the basement, Ipad at the ready…what does summer mean now?

First signs of summer are marked by the first bike ride and the opening of the pool. It won’t be long until we make the first visit to the splashpad near Lake Ontario, and a day at Burlington beach is in the near future.  My son will have his own memories of summer, but I hope to give him a small taste of some of those great experiences I had as a kid. The 62 Willy’s Jeep is gone, as is Pat and his float plane. But we will have some campfires this summer with family and friends.  The stories of times gone by will be shared, and hotdogs and marshmallows will be roasted.  We will catch some fish and there will be great swims in spectacular northern Ontario lakes.  TV’s and phones will be forgotten at least briefly.  Welcome back summer…and stay a while, we’ve missed ya!