Monster

My child came home tonight. He had an assignment to do.
"Mummy, you've got to help me," he said. I have to interview one
of my parents.

"What's it all about?" I wanted to know.

"What are the advantages and disadvantages of being an adult, a
parent, " he asked.

"Advantages? I said. The big advantage in being an adult is that
you make your own decisions. The disadvantage of being an adult
is you have to live with those decisions.

"That's too long," he said.
"O.K. There are no disadvantages to being an adult."

"Can I put down that you can drive?"
"No. Don't put that down. I hate driving."

I helped him out. I told him the things he wanted to hear. I
told him of the things I'd dreamed being an adult was all about.
I told him I much preferred being an adult. And I do. I prefer
it to the hell of my childhood. But sometimes I hate being a
parent. I suppose for me, that's what being an adult is. I
suppose that for many parents, that's what being an adult is.
They're supposed to be the happiest days in your life. My
mother told me that one. My mother beat the pulp out of me the
entire time I was growing up. Yet, she always said that the best
time in her life was when we were children. My mother had
nervous breakdowns one after another. Yet, she maintains that
the time we were growing up were the best times in her life.

The best times in my life were when my mother was having nervous
breakdowns. I loved those days. She locked herself up in her
room for months on end. My father was in his office, sewing up
split foreheads, removing germinated seeds from children's noses.
When my mother lay in her room for days on end, staring at the
ceiling, I could finally ride my bike past the despised telephone
poles; the boundaries we weren't allowed to cross. My mother had
painted the poles to match our house. I built huge bonfires on
the sidewalk. I bought penny candy from the store and savoured
it on my way back from school. I stole the Cheerios out of the
pantry and shared them with my cat and dog in the garden, a no
trespassing zone. My mother seeded the garden using a tongue
depressor. Once seeded, we weren't allowed to set foot in it,
even the treed part which seemed the perfect hideaway for
children.

I grew up wanting children, to love and cherish in a way I had
never known. I grew up wanting to be free to make my own
decisions and discovered that having children made me a slave.
Not only did it make me a slave, it revived the monster in me.
The monster my mother always told me I was, and the monster I
copied in my own mother.


Was I stupid. I married, had children, always fearing the
monster would one day creep out. Always fearing my husband would
find me out. No, no. You'll make a fine mother he would say.
Bull!

What I really wanted to tell my child when he asked me about the
advantages and disadvantages of being an adult, a parent?

Having to live with the fact that you've got children. That they
won't listen to you. Having to hear your mother tell you they're
turning out all wrong because you don't believe in god. Having
the teacher call you at the end of a meeting to talk to you about
your problem child. Taking a shower and screaming at the top of
your lungs because you don't know where to turn, because you
really want to beat the shit out of your child but you're smart
enough to know that he'll report you to the authorities if you
do. Having a good friend call you up and say, "I tried to get a
hold of you the other day because I didn't know where to turn and
I wanted to beat up my kid, and you confided in me about having
the same feelings.

How many adults have those same feelings? I read about Mrs.
Einstein, Albert's mother. Albert, they say, was a very
difficult child. So for that matter were Sigmund Freud, Florence
Nightingale and a bunch of other smarties. But Mrs. Einstein had
a lot of confidence in her child, she encouraged him, believed in
him, supported him. How I admire her. How I would like to talk
to her, be like her. Unfortunately, I'm not. I want to
humiliate my child because he does it to me all the time. And
because I had it done to me all the time as a child. I just hate
his guts a lot of the time. I hate him for turning me into a
hateful person. I hate him for making my life so difficult. I
want to send him to boarding school, partly as a punishment,
partly because I just don't know what to do with him anymore.
And I want him to know it's a punishment. Sometimes, I want to
tell him, I hate you kid! But the books say I have to tell him
it's the things he does I hate. Son, I hate it when you break
the tiles on our ceiling downstairs. I hate it when you come
home at 9:00 on a school night and I've spent all evening
worrying, running from one park to the other, all the while
worrying about what's happening to your other brothers at home
while I'm out looking for you. I hate it when you go into my
jewelry box and you borrow my best brooch and my best towels
without asking to play Sir Lancelot of the Lake and then, you
lose them both. I hate it when you show off and ride your bike
no hands and run your handle bars into the neighbour's new car.
I hate it when you go to school wearing a pin you made yourself
which says "I hate the principal". I hate it when you throw
rocks at the most vulgar kid on the block, the one who says "your
parents suck rhinoceros penises" and then tell our elderly
neighbour to mind his own business and eat shit beacause he's
tried to break up the fight. I hate it when you bring dozens of
stray cats back home. They shit all over the house. You don't
clean it, and then, you have a fit because I'm the cruel person
who throws them out. I hate the clothes you wear. You look like
a hobo and the teachers think you have a negligent mother. I
hate the fact you've ripped half the fence posts from our fence
and all the children in the neighbourhood think they can do the
same. Our house and yard look like a slum because you go through
the lanes, through the neighbours' garbage and bring home all
kinds of junk.

I know you're smart. And I also know you're always right and
that even if you're wrong, I'm the adult, who has to remain calm,
level-headed and settle issues in a mature way. But try as I
might, sometimes I just have to, just need to holler and scream,
and unfortunately, the things you do just happen to bring on
these onslaughts. Sometimes, I honestly wonder what life would
have been like if you hadn't been born.

And my mother said these are the best days of my life.

What are you supposed to do with those feelings? I sometimes
want to commit suicide. I sometimes want to turn my back on my
children and leave, far, far away. I want to go to a warm
country and feel beautiful. I want to make love and lose myself
to lust. I want to feel beautiful. And I know I'm not alone.


Unfortunately, I have my monster traits. Perhaps, I have even
passed them on to my children. How I hate to hear them scream!
How I hate to live in a house with screaming. I hear my son
scream to his youngest brother, I'm going to kill you! with such
rage, that one day, I wonder if he will. I wonder if I'm raising
psychotics and then tell myself, you can't even let those
feelings creep into your head because ... And I feel at a loss.
There is no going back to the time when they were small. I can't
change the past. I suppose I can learn from it though. I
sometimes think the best thing to do would be to leave. They
would do well without their crazy mother. And yet I stay, trying
harder to understand them, trying harder to forgive myself,
seeing this as transition, the road to a new birth, adolescence
for my son, adulthood for me. Goethe said: "treat people as if
they were who or what they want to be and you will help them
become what they are capable of becoming." It is a motto I
strive, often unsuccessfully, to live by. I believe in it
though, and I hope one day, my son and I will be two well-adjusted adults.


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