Dear A - A letter to a childhood playmate

If it isn't clear, my mom loved kids. She loved helping kids. There were always other kids around - whether it was ones she was keeping out of a broken foster care system or ones she was tutoring or whatever else. Mom was only able to have one biological child before a miscarriage and then cancer robbed her of her ability to have more . . . but she mothered countless children over the course of her life. I played with all kinds of kids, from my own friends to abuse victims to those living in complete poverty. This post is about one of the children she tutored, from an affluent family. I can't even remember his last name, and I don't think I could say this to him even if I did find him again, so I'm writing it here.

Dear A, 

It has been two decades since you were coming to my house for tutoring. I liked it when you came over because after you got done with your lessons, we could play until your dad picked you up. Usually we would play in the backyard or the barn or my dad would take us up to the back field to run around. And we'd talk. We'd talk about normal kid stuff . . . but sometimes, you would say not so normal stuff. 

You would talk about how much you loved sex. You talked about how you wanted to make a sex club where everybody had sex. You talked about your penis a lot. You never did anything inappropriate towards me, and you never said anything inappropriate about me. And I just said 'okay, then I'll build a club for people who don't want that next door and you can come visit me because I don't want to do that, it's for grownups.' And then we'd draw pictures of our clubhouses. You would draw your sex club and I would draw my no-sex club. The few times I mentioned you at school, a couple kids would talk about how you tried to get them to have sex with you or went to your house and saw you naked in bed with somebody. 

You were no older than five or six.

I didn't understand back then. I just thought you were weird. I thought maybe you walked in on your parents or something and it got stuck in your head or you didn't know what it really was. I was a little older than you and I knew the mechanics of how babies were made and I didn't see why anyone would want that or care about it. 

 I didn't understand that you were a walking red flag for childhood sexual abuse. I didn't know. I was only about eight years old or so. And I'm sorry. As an adult I both understand that there was no way I could have known what was going on. Yet still, I've carried the guilt for years. It was weird. I should have said something to somebody. Even saying as simply as 'All he talks about is how much he loves sex' and my mom would have been all over that situation. I didn't, though. And I'm sorry. I don't know what happened to you after you did well in tutoring and didn't need to come over anymore. I know your family still lived local. I don't know who was abusing you, and I don't know if it ever stopped. I'm just so, so sorry. 

Wherever you are, I hope that you've found help in dealing with whatever it was that happened to you. I hope you're living a happy life, and I hope you break the cycle of abuse going forward. 

Denise

As parents, we try to help our children understand body boundaries and what is or isn't appropriate for other people to do to them. We warn them about inappropriate touching and people acting badly and when to tell an adult. Looking back on this situation, what it's taught me is that perhaps I shouldn't only be teaching my children what is okay and not okay for other people to do to them. Maybe I should also be teaching them to tell an adult when other children act in a way that means they might be abused. Something as simple as 'If you know somebody who talks about sex a lot or says that somebody is touching them, you need to tell me/a teacher/guidance counselor/adult, in case somebody is hurting them.' 

Kids might not express any signs of abuse in front of adults, but they might in front of other kids. "A" loved my mom, but obviously never let on around her that something was going on - and if I'd known better, I or any of the other kids who saw this behavior could have told our parents and maybe helped him not be subjected to years of sexual abuse at the hands of god knows who. None of us should feel bad as adults because we simply didn't know better, of course - even though I know I do. I just hope that wherever he is, he's found help.

Thoughts? Have you talked with your children (or will talk to future children) about signs of abuse in other children? What did you/will you say?

If you need assistance in dealing with sexual abuse in your family or in your past, contact the RAINN network: http://www.rainn.org/

On parties and stacking up to my mother

Yesterday was my daughter's 4th birthday party. About a month ago, I asked her what kind of party she wanted to have. She said she wanted a rainbow party with a rainbow cake. So I spent the last month trying to assemble this rainbow-themed shindig. I'm lucky enough that I already do design stuff with Photoshop, so I made the invitations myself, along with favor tags and a banner thingy and custom stickers and all this other stuff. We put together colorful treat bags and a rainbow assortment of bottles of bubbles. I made rainbow jello (not the layered kind - the cups I got were too small) and ordered the absolute must for a rainbow party - a rainbow cake. Bought tableware in rainbow colors, found rainbow napkins, rainbow straws, rainbow snacks, had rainbow sand for sand art bottles . . . rainbow sidewalk chalk . . . yeah. Rainbow everything.

Don't lie, you're just here to look at rainbow cake. Credit to baker at bottom of post. 

I invited my daughter's entire preschool camp class to the party, along with two of her cousins and a little boy she has playdates with from time to time. So, take all that stuff above and multiply it by 25 - because that's how many people were invited. Three people RSVP'd, five if you count her cousins who ended up not being able to come anyway. I was told, though, that people will just show up anyway, so I prepared for everyone as there was no real way to know. I should have only prepared for the RSVPs though, as only those three children ended up showing up. In the end, it doesn't really matter as the three children who showed were the ones that Claire really cared about, and they all had a lot of fun and got to do the little craft activities and were amazed by the cake and played in the splashy sprinkler thing at the park.

Now, if you think that this post is just going to be some sort of self-congratulating, look-at-me-I'm-Supermom post, I assure you, it's not. It's actually another post about my own mom. Maybe this is a parenting blog after all, only it's more about trying to relate to my mother as an adult when I only knew her as a child before she passed. It feels lately like I'm trying to figure out who I am as a parent in relation to both her and to my own life. I had no parenting role model when I became a mother; I've had to cut my own path through the jungle and figure everything out on my own without her - but I do still try to look to my memories of her for guidance - be it how to act or how NOT to act.

Today, I learned a valuable lesson: Mary Giffin I am not. 

My mom LOVED throwing parties. She threw parties for everything. Easter parties (egg hunts for dozens of kids) and Christmas parties and Thanksgiving dinners - and my birthday. Mom always invited all the family AND all the kids in my grade in school. She didn't think anybody should be excluded, so everyone was invited no matter what, and gifts were strictly verboten because she didn't want lower income students not being able to come just because they couldn't bring a gift. She'd spend a lot of time making activities by hand and cooking food and getting this huge event going. We weren't rich by any means, and I was raised by people who lived through the Depression, so Mom knew how to make a few bucks stretch a looonnnnngggg way when it came to party prep - and always did a stellar job of it. People I grew up with still talk about the parties I had as a kid that they remember and how much fun they had. (The most popular one was a 'mining party' where my folks brought back dozens of buckets of dirt from a gem mine in North Carolina after a vacation and then built mining troughs and little trays where all the kids could mine for gems and keep what they found. Pretty epic.)

Me, on the other hand - I'm a scatterbrained, disorganized mess most of the time. This party appeared fine to outside eyes, but to me, it didn't go off so well. We got there to set up late - and the parking lot was packed, aside from being blocked from moving forward by an H2 right in the middle of traffic because they had to have a conversation with someone RIGHT THEN. We rushed to get everything out (guests were already there at this point) and it looked sloppy. It was horribly hot - it is South Carolina in August, after all - so hot that the jello actually melted after being out for an hour. The kids seemed to like the sand art and bubbles and sidewalk chalk, and obviously didn't care that the tablecloths were flipping up in the wind and the banner fell down and the jello turned to liquid. Or that I put on too much eyeliner and couldn't get it off and looked like a streetwalker. Or that I was sweating like a hog and probably smelled about as delightful. Or that I didn't get the rainbow streamers up or set out the things to make necklaces and bracelets.

Rainbow of jello, pre-liquification.

I need to cut myself a little slack, I know. When I was a kid, it was me, my retired parents, and my uncle all living together. So that made three people who could work on party stuff or keep me out of the way - as opposed to our more typical situation where my husband works a regular full time job and I'm wrangling two kids - a highly needy baby and an extremely spirited now-4-year-old. I got everything done with either both of them in tow or while they were sleeping. I probably shouldn't expect to do as awesome as my mom did - or like anything you'll see on Pinterest. (Except the cake. DID YOU SEE THE CAKE?)

The stress wasn't really in having a BIG party, it was in trying to have this unique party like my mom would have had. And for being so trendy, a rainbow party - an AFFORDABLE rainbow party and not some thousand dollar Etsy-sponsored affair - is definitely stressful to put together. When I went into Party City I just stood in front of the Phineas & Ferb stuff going 'Why? Why couldn't she have just wanted a simple theme instead?' Then I had to move on because I think somebody caught me wistfully caressing a pair of Perry the Platypus binoculars.

So, when it comes to parties, I'm definitely not my mom. I'm glad I did this - especially because Claire told me it was 'best party ever.' I might have more parties in the future where I invite a ton of kids because I don't want anyone feeling left out, and I'll definitely keep my mom's rule - no gifts whatsoever, thankyouverymuch. That said, I'll be encouraging the kids to pick easy themes from now on. No more scouring the internet for a month trying to find a combo pack of rainbow tableware that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I don't care if it's not super unique, I want to be able to walk into one store and come out with everything - plates, cups, napkins, favors, whatever. I might come up with one neat craft activity each time, but nothing very complicated. I'm not staying up until 2 or 3 in the morning putting everything together and I'm not ever making jello to sit out in the Southern summer heat ever again.



One final thought: Whether you're going to something or not, don't be an asshole. RSVP, for the love of all that is good in the world.

Cake by Ramia's Creations of Goose Creek, SC: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ramias-Creations

More pictures:

Rainbow of tooth-rotting goodness

Party favors

Sand art setup

This is why I don't read inspirational blogs - Part 2

For part 1, click here. It's rambly and poorly written. This is what I really wanted to write about.

Mom and I, probably around 1988. She would be 73 in this photo and I'm 3. Obviously, I'm adopted.

So, the other problem with reading that blog in which the author lamented spending so much time volunteering for everything under the sun instead of hanging out with her own kids was that for a while, I flopped about the house thinking to myself, "I wish my mom would have spent more time with me instead of always being busy doing something/volunteering/crafting/party planning/getting involved in some cause or another. I wish my mom would have just played with me!"

And then it hit me.

It didn't bother me then. It didn't make me sad as a child, so why should it now?

I loved my mom and I thought she was the tits, man. You see that wild perm I have up there? That's not because she made me do it. It's because I wanted my hair to look like hers. She was really into politics (for better or for worse, that's another story) so I decided I wanted to be the first female president of the United States. She made art, I made art. She sewed and made jewelry, I did too - though they were feeble attempts as I was just a little kid. She baked, I "helped." Everything she did, I wanted to do.

No, Mom didn't play with me a whole lot. She was always busy and didn't have time for me sometimes. All these years later, when I found myself full of woe over this, I finally had to ask myself - did it really matter? Did it matter that she was a stern woman - though always happy to hug and say I love you - who kept incredibly busy and didn't spend time playing?

Or did it really matter that she gave all of herself to other people, and was constantly doing something for others or championing some cause, regardless of whether or not folks agreed with her?

Did it really matter that sometimes, she would wave me away while she was on the phone?

Or did it matter that she was trying to collect donations for a silent auction to raise money for my school?

Did it matter that she sent me off to play with my dad while she sewed?

Or did it matter that she put 40 hours into hand-sewing a gorgeous quilt, either to be raffled for charity or given to a friend - just because?

Did it matter that she was a fiery woman whose temper flared quickly and yelled at me?

Or did it matter that she was a true strong individual, full of passion and ready to fight against anything she perceived as unjust?

Did it matter that not all of her attention seemed focused on me?

Or did it matter that she was focused on making the world a better place for not only me, but all of my peers and all generations to come? Did it matter that she was making a difference in countless lives, not just mine?

To this day, people I grew up with remember the parties she threw, the things she made, the volunteer work she did . . . It wasn't just about me, nor should it have been. My mom touched countless lives through everything she did. Only as I get older do I realize how many happy memories are out there for other people because she did the things she did. That gives me more happiness than anything else could. My life was already wonderful because of her. I have no problem, looking back, at sharing her attention with the world. I know that she would have dropped everything if only I'd needed her to - but she raised me not to need that, and for that I'm also grateful.

In the end, though I was the center of her world, I learned the world did not revolve around me. I learned by watching how important it was to be passionate about your causes, how important it was to give without expecting anything in return (Mom never sold a single one of her pieces of jewelry or quilts. She only ever gave them away). She was really and truly selfless, and if I want to be half the woman she was, I need to take that lesson to heart. To sit here this far down the road feeling sorry for myself is entirely selfish, because if I went back and changed the way she was - who she was - I would have robbed so many other people of memories and gifts and charity and love. I would have robbed myself of my very first hero.

So thanks, Mom. Thanks for not having time sometimes. Thanks for not being playful. Thanks for just being you. I do parent a little differently, and I think a little differently . . . but the core values I learned by watching you - believe me, they took root and aren't going anywhere.


Mom died in January, 2003 at the age of 88. I was 17 and away at college. Our last conversation was an argument, but we still said I love you before we said goodbye for the last time.

Yeah, this is why I don't read inspirational blogs - part 1

Generally my recipe for happiness as a parent includes 'Don't read mommy blogs, don't read inspirational crap about how to improve your life, and definitely don't ever go on any parenting forum, ever.' It works really well. Except I forgot that for a while, and when I saw a blog link that looked like inspirational feel-good mom stuff, I took the bait. A couple weeks ago I read a blog that I shared a couple posts from. It was stuff I agreed with - that family should come first, that it's important not to ignore your kids to stay glued to screens (give me a break, one's napping and we'll get to the other one in a sec), that you need to cherish spending time with them, you know - general feel-good stuff that everybody can get behind.

The problem is, I forgot why I don't read stuff like that in the first place. For the past couple weeks I've been in a panic that I must not be spending enough time with my kids, or talking to my daughter enough, and that every. waking. second. needs to be spent bothering them or looking at them or talking to them or being up their butt one way or another, because someday I'm going to die and regret every single moment I didn't spend annoying my kids. That was seriously what, in the long term, I took away from reading that blog. Was it the blogger's intent? No way. Do I think she probably helped a lot of people regain focus in their lives? Sure! But for me, it was just a gigantic stress - at a time I'm currently dealing with excess anxiety (no real reason, just happens from time to time) it wasn't a good idea because I fixated on everything I don't do instead of the things I do. I spent all this time thinking about how I'm going to have a life full of regret because no matter what I do, it won't be Enough Time With The Kids.

Alternatively, if I didn't raise clingy brats, this is probably what our relationship would have turned into.

Yeah, that's all a load of bullshit, isn't it? I know better, and you know I know better. I don't know why it took hold like that. Probably because with a 5 month old in the house, it feels like time speeds by because so much happens so fast in that first year of life. I was definitely not in an emotional state to be told I'm going to just miss everything - because somebody who had a totally different experience than me and is ridden with guilt over it missed a lot.

So, now I have to tell myself, and re-learn the exact opposite of her point: It's okay to ignore the kids now and then. It's okay to get frustrated, to get angry, to get upset. It's part of the experience of life, part of being human. It's okay to be annoyed if Alan decides that teething is so awful he wants to party all night instead of sleeping so I can get some kid-free time. There's no reason to feel guilty about doing things for myself - including letting Claire watch a half hour of TV while her brother sleeps and I write this entry. She's not going to feel unimportant or neglected or ignored. If she comes over here and wants to talk to me, we can talk a little bit. If she has a question or something important to say, I can listen or - shock - ask her to wait just a minute til I can give her my full attention. To do anything else would be bad for her. I can't always drop everything just to talk - nobody can. That's not real life. Of course she's important, but what sort of kid would I raise if the world stopped every single time they wanted to be the center of attention? Kind of a little shit, I'd imagine.

I've always taken pride in the fact that I don't helicopter. I let Claire free-range at her weekly open play at the local community center (much to the disdain of other moms) without interfering in her interactions with other kids (unless she's making someone cry - well, cry a lot). I let her go about her own business at the park. I make sure she has time to herself every day to do what she wants, or think about stuff, or be left alone or even just watch TV without being bothered. Because of the SPD she's not always really into cuddling or being talked to or anything else. I can't frame my relationship with her the way most people can with their kids. I don't think she feels neglected, either - or unimportant. I don't think she'll grow up and remember the times I told her to wait or hold on or hush. I don't think making a phone call instead of talking to her is going to end her world. I think she'll remember the stuff we did do, the conversations we did have, and the little thing I was inspired to start doing after reading The Help - every night before bed, I tell her, "You are very smart. You are very pretty. You are very special." It sticks, and she loves the routine.

Anyway, I think that's what she'll remember. The good stuff. At least, mostly good stuff. Nobody has 100% good memories, everybody remembers getting in trouble or whatever, but it's mostly good here and that's what I think they'll remember.

Part 2 will be about the reflection this made me do on my relationship with my own mother.

So, I'm blogging now?

I'm not really a ~*~blogger~*~ so I'm not even sure how to go about STARTING a blog, but I assume I should write an entry wherein I attempt to justify creating yet another blog on the already navel-gazing-self-absorbed-blogger-filled internet. So this is it.

Probably the only people reading this right now are from my Facebook friends list. As you've all noticed, I get kinda . . . very . . . long-winded. I think maybe it would be to everyone's benefit that if instead of writing novels in Facebook statuses, I just put it all in a blog and people who like what I write can read it.

I intend to write about whatever the hell I want, so I'm not really in any blogger category. I guess people would probably call me a mommy blogger, but I don't think I'll only blather on about mom stuff. I might talk about politics, but I'm not a political blogger. I might go on strange tangents and sound like a jerk, and I'm not sure that's a category. So I guess I'm just a . . . Denise-blogger, and we'll leave it at that. I don't intend to update daily or weekly or whatever . . . just when I have stuff to get out that's longer than I assume people want to read in their news feeds.

For those who don't know me, or don't know me well, here's the basics of me:

As of this post, I'm 27 and live just outside of Charleston, South Carolina. I don't like it, but my husband has an awesome job here, so I'm trying to like it. It is very different from small-town Ohio where I grew up. Very different.

I have this husband-guy, David. He is seriously the tits, you guys. He is a big nerd. He is brilliant. He doesn't care much for most people and can win an argument even when he's wrong. He is also really awesome at the dad thing. I try to avoid derpy sayings like 'soulmate' but holy crap, this guy, he is the macaroni to my cheese and all that.

I have two children. Claire will be 4 on August 6th and Alan is 5 months, born January 4th of this year. They are really awesome. Alan is basically a little proto-person, so he hasn't developed into a full on individual yet - but so far, he is really sociable and happy. And a morning person. We aren't sure he's really ours. We may have stolen him. Claire loves superheroes, robots, space, animals, and being in the water. She has a great sense of humor and is smart as a whip. She has Sensory Processing Disorder - which I'll talk more about in other posts - and it is likely she'll get an official ADHD diagnosis in the coming years. Neither of these defines her, but it is a part of our lives.

The spawn of awesome.

I am a stay at home parent and I work from home. I hate acronyms, so I never call myself a 'SAHM' or a 'WAHM'. I have a relatively successful Etsy shop and might make some posts about it or about success on Etsy in general from time to time. Most of my stuff is Tolkien-themed.

I swear like a sailor and I intend on doing that here. Sorry if it offends you. I try to censor a bit on the facebooks, so here, I won't. This isn't meant to be a 'WHATEVA I DO WHAT I WANT LOL', just sort of a warning not to leave it open in case your kids might learn some new words courtesy of me.

I think that's it? Is that how you write a blog intro? AM I A BLOGGER NOW YOU GUYS?