paternalism

Dropping Our Reins

| Flower Roberts

I am almost ready to cut myself loose. The staples are out. I am no longer using a walker nor trekking pole. After nineteen months of struggle, I am down to one bandaid on the part of the incision that is still smiling. I have tried to be still since the staples were removed three days ago. This cautious  pause is due to the fact my other incision on the right hip got infected last July causing swelling at the site and fever. I do not want to repeat this with my left hip.

Hip prosthetic and staples


I also fell down two days before the surgery in October and bent my left, lower leg back under my body. I think having a fake knee saved me from a break. I guess you have gathered that I am more gung ho than graceful. I make my family nervous. They are tired of the trauma, emergencies and care-giving.

I get that. I appreciate their concern. I am grateful for their help. But…

Help is the sunny side of control (Anne Lamott) Too much help leads to helplessness. I have written about this many times on my other site,

seizuremamaandrose.org

That blog is about my daughter’s thirty-plus-year struggle with epilepsy. We have spent decades fighting against fear and over-protection. I remember telling one of her elementary school teachers ” Do not hand her a handicap!” Every child deserves to be as strong and independent as he/she can possibly be.

So I have been raging against holding the reins tightly as far as Rose is concerned for decades. Now, I find myself insisting that my own reins be dropped.

It is super important that women learn to be in charge of their own well-being whether it be avoiding a dark stranger, surviving bad weather, recovering from unwise decisions, staying alert for an empty gas tank, deflecting stray sperm, controlling a medical condition or not stepping on a piece of cardboard. (twice!)

Men protecting their moms, wives and daughters from reality makes us ignorant and weak. We cannot be naive in this world. We must be savvy, smart and strong. If we fall down, let us get ourselves up or call 911…again. You, dear man, cannot hover 24/7.

Do not try to keep the women you love in a bubble of your own making, it will pop. The earlier, the better.

We all know it. Stand down.

FLOWER

The Heart of the Matter

| Flower Roberts

I’ve been trying to get down to the heart of the matter. It has taken months of digging through old letters and photographs. These artifacts are like portals to the past. I am facing things I locked away. I have seen who I was before I was corrected and realigned.

I have had to accept that our culture’s expectations for both men and women have been limiting to both genders. Needless burdens are carried and strengths are repressed. It has taken great effort for me to admit that things I thought were moral were actually cultural. As a mother of both a young man and a young woman, it is imperative that I get my vision unbiased.

I do not intend to shackle either of my children with roles from this dichotomous culture. The roles of women, especially, have been augmented by patriarical standards for generations. I intend to stop that in my family here and now.

Another epiphany peeked out this morning. I was not expecting the truth that showed itself. But I guess I knew the truth all along. That is why this rare argument with my precious father has never let me go. Not after forty years. I know he would understand. Maybe the second-hand apology and the delayed sharing were part of the plan to get me here at this point in time.

Sometimes traveling back to the past shows you things you did not see the first go-round. Those memories you thought were locked away forever, have been waiting for you to be ready to finally look them in the eye.

This part of the journey will be done slowly, quietly and methodically. I cannot miss the lessons this time around. My past has my full attention. Our future will be better because of it.

FLOW

Always untamed and unchained…until

THENs and NOWs

| Flower Roberts

I am tackling some hard questions as I lay out my plans for the three different storylines. I was kept awake last night by the imbalance of the three parts. I have drawn these out has three sets of circles. The working title for the book is TIME CIRCLE TRIO, but that will morph like many other parts.

The characters in the oldest story are long gone. The journals of the main character were burned, rightly so. I have hundreds of photos and artifacts from the life of the first pair, but only one photo and a sad newspaper clipping of the supporting man. This is so not fair and must be dealt with. He was a person, not a prop.

The second story involves two men who have passed on and a woman who has dementia. The catalyst for this tale was some things she said while she was already suffering from dementia, so they may not be true. There is no one alive to correct this. I do have many old letters so I do feel like I can get a good grasp on these characters. But there was no smoking gun, only the ramblings of an old woman struggling with confusion.

The latest story morphs on a regular basis. This is because there are THEN and NOW  factors that must be teased apart. The THEN was over forty years ago and the NOW involves a conversation over five years ago and a revelation about it last spring. This needs clarification.

The THEN was a beast to deal with at the time. Judgement was called into question at a point when many important choices needed to be made. Confidence was shattered and perspective was altered. This result seemed to snowball over the next year and beyond.

When the third NOW occurred there was grief and loss in every direction. The past was being frantically sifted through until it seemed to transform and expand to confuse what was real and of value. The NOW has no chance to be remedied or clarified due to death and memory loss. So this circle keeps getting bigger with no possibility for balance.

The one thread that links all three circles is faith in judgement. Does anyone have a right to make decisions for another adult? In these cases, do the parents have the right to make decisions for their young, adult daughters? And when they do(which they did), what are the extrinsic and intrinsic results? Maybe what looks from the outside to be the wrong choice is really the right choice from a different perspective?

In these three stories I have observed the THEN parts of these three young women and the NOW (results) decades later.  Their over-ruled hopes and dreams were still alive in these three as older women. That’s the gist of it. The prevented  mistakes they were not allowed to make were not mistakes to them.

Ouch!

From Solid to Fluid

| Flower Roberts

My isolation odyssey starts on April Fools Day. This is appropriate since the argument with my dad that changed everything involved my supposedly being made a fool of. This pivotal point in my past was based in love and misunderstanding. My dad was the best person I have ever known. He loved me unconditionally despite the fact that I was another daughter, not a son.

So my past has shifted from rock solid to fluid in the past year. The present swirls with political upheaval and I have let go of my expectations for my future. There is no solid ground to plant my feet on.
I am strangly at peace in my floating, sinking and flinking. It has been a bit freeing not being the pole that others dance around. I am no longer holding down a fort or holding up the sky.

My talisman

I credit this peace to my friend Sandra. We used to use the term adapt like it was our code word. I have felt her with me many times since her death. I brought her framed photo here to keep her in my mind as I swim through the next month or more in isolation to write and change my mind from solid to fluid.

Papyrus card I send to friends hit by waves.

My new talisman is a wave pendant on a necklace and a shirt with the Kanagawa wave on it to remind me that energy moves and change is constant.

Kanagawa wave T-shirt

I may blog through April or I may be silent. Just know I am doing my best to tell three stories of three women from three generations in my family who were prevented from following their heart’s desire for their “own good” and how that turned out for them.

Paternalism is a double-edged sword. Men may be able to make women do what they want them to do, but they cannot make them WANT to do what they want them to do.

FLOW is flowing.