"Add some capers to the slow cooker, honey," I said to The Boy yesterday morning, since he was feeling helpful. "Add a tablespoon of capers."
"Okay!" he said, cheerfully, and then dumped the whole jar in.
"It looked like a tablespoon to me," he said, mournfully. But supper was still very good. Very caper-y. (And look at my new slow cooker! It’s GORGEOUS!)
The Boy took Friday off – he said he was sick although he really wasn’t, the fink – and he spent part of the day writing poems, since that’s the way we roll around here (maybe it’s all the capers). Here is his first poetic effort:
Thanksgiving, O Thanksgiving
The turkeys are good
The mashed potatoes are good
Everything on the table is good.
It’s Walt Whitman-esque, if Walt REALLY liked turkey dinners. He was talking mournfully about how there’s weeks – weeks! – until the next holiday dinner, which will be Halloween, apparently. I generally do a silly theme dinner – hot dog mummies with baked potato slice ghosts and that sort of thing – which the kids eat quickly while waiting for their dad to come home and take them trick-or-treating, as well as a themed school lunch, but they’ve never mentioned liking it one way or another. Which seems ungrateful, doesn’t it?
Ah, gratitude.
I remember exactly one grateful friend growing up, one person who was thankful for the effort that her parents were making – and her parents, in retrospect, weren’t doing a very good job. (Porn out in then open! Bills that went unpaid so the parents could buy booze! And there’s more, but it’s just depressing.) But their kids were really grateful, and for what I’m not quite certain. Everyone else seemed to pretty much regard their parents as their due, and their parent’s efforts by and large went unnoticed.
And this is how it should be, I think. Gratitude seems like a pretty adult emotion, this understanding that other people are doing more than they have to for you, the knowledge that you’re being given something you haven’t quite earned. And there’s also something sort of creepily sullen in the parental expectation of gratitude, the idea that I’m only making the stupid mummy pizza not so that my children will be delighted when they open their lunchbox, but instead to drill into their heads that I am a Good Mother. Oh, and also to impress their teachers.
What I want my kids to feel, instead, is the comforting certainty of routine, the knowledge that bedtime will always be preceded by baths and stories, the knowledge that Saturday morning is library time, the knowledge that they will open their lunches on Halloween to a ghoulish surprise. Later on, when they’re adults, maybe they’ll realize that the comforting rhythm of their childhood came through their parents’ efforts, but for now they can take their happy childhoods for granted, not knowing really that it will ever change.
This moved me so much:
“What I want my kids to feel, instead, is the comforting certainty of routine, the knowledge that bedtime will always be preceded by baths and stories, the knowledge that Saturday morning is library time, the knowledge that they will open their lunches on Halloween to a ghoulish surprise. Later on, when they’re adults, maybe they’ll realize that the comforting rhythm of their childhood came through their parents’ efforts, but for now they can take their happy childhoods for granted, not knowing really that it will ever change.”
Indeed, that is so beautifully put, and exactly what i hope to give my children. It’s what i had growing up and not a day goes by that i don’t appreciate what my mother gave us. i can close my eyes and remember every aspect of opening my front door from wherever i was coming home from, and smelling something delicious, warm hugs from mum, a crisp, fresh bed, cut apples before bedtime….the most important gifts in life.
Ah, this post is gorgeous. And also brings with it a bit of guilt as I have resorted to referring to my 16 year old as “The Ungrateful Twit”. But not in his presence. (At least not usually.)
You are a great mom for what you do. But even more importantly because your joy in doing it is not diminished by lack of recognition. I could learn from you, I think.
But the teenager, I stand by “The Ungrateful Twit” thing. He is sixteen after all.
Oh Beck, where were you when I was a young mom. I would have soaked up all this wonderful insight and wisdom that you write with such poetry!
Parenting is the ultimate pay-it-forward game, isn’t it?
at least the last word of the last 3 sentences “rhyme” (ooops its the same word?!) *laugh* He’s a genius!
“creepily sullen”. I’ll have to remember that the next time I expect gratitude. Being grown-up is not always as much fun as I thought it would be when I was younger.
Wow. That was loverly. Really, Beck, you hit the nail on the head with this one.
Hum, a very interesting perspective that I have to admit, I have never considered. Maybe even healthier than my own.
I suppose a person only knows to be grateful when he/she has had to do without? Or when they’ve had to do it on their own?
Later. Yes, I believe the gratitude will come later. And that it will all be well worth it, when they are semi-well adjusted humans.
I also reserve the right to thell them repeatedly that a person should be thankful for the things they receive and that some children have no shoes to wear or food to eat. Because guilts trips are my happy right as a mom.
I really love the last paragraph. I feel the same way.
LOVE that crock pot and LOL at capery. You are a great mom for all those special little touches and your children will look back and be thankful. 🙂
Sexy crockpot.
Do you know that I have never, ever cooked with capers? My kids are probably grateful, given their abhorrence of anything different. Oh, and you are entirely right. Expecting spontaneous gratitude is unrealistic. It will come later, if we do a good job now. I hope.
I love, love, love capers–and not everyone does.
And I love the crock pot, too.
Yes. Of course you are right. And yet I still find myself occasionally spouting, “This is how you behave after I…” all the lovely things I’ve done for them. Shameful, I know.
Oh boy. Twice in one week, you’ve told me EXACTLY what I needed to hear. Note to self: stop obsessing over whether the kids are taking things for granted or feeling the appropriate degree of gratitude!
One of the big surprises for me as my children have become verbal is their capacity for gratitude. Not the large-scale type you’re describing here, of course (and I agree that it’s probably a bad sign when children feel grateful for their parents’ care), but those sudden, totally sincere bursts of gratitude, like when I fix something or provide a special snack and Bub responds, unprompted, “Thanks, Mama!” It always takes me by surprise.
When they have children, then they will be grateful.
You enhance my mothering, thank you. I love that concept…wanting your children to have the ‘comforting certainty of routine’. Absolutely perfect.
I love your new slow cooker. Gorgeous!
You are so right! Gratitude is for adults. We want to teach thankfulness and consideration to our children, but at the same time, I think that the way it shows in a parent-child relationship is when they’re adults and we’re all friends.
We had a moment of gratitude, what would be the word meltdown? yesterday. After a day of what to us (Hubby and myself) seemed liked many lovely things for the girls all we seemed to get in exchange was complaints and grief. I guess we were waiting for the, “you are the best parents in the world” party and it never happened. That is parenthood folks, doing it because you want to (for the most part) not because of the thanks.
We had a moment of gratitude, what would be the word meltdown? yesterday. After a day of what to us (Hubby and myself) seemed liked many lovely things for the girls all we seemed to get in exchange was complaints and grief. I guess we were waiting for the, “you are the best parents in the world” party and it never happened. That is parenthood folks, doing it because you want to (for the most part) not because of the thanks.
I think the gratitude comes later, if at all. When we’re grown and see the effort for what it really is.
I had a wise friend tell me, (after listening to me whine and go on) that appreciation and gratitude could only come if I were to leave/be a horrific mother/etc …. so I am now content (mostly) to be a great mom, try my darnedest and forget to look for gratitude.
MY crockpot is olive green and brown … mostly from the seventies, yet somehow I luv it.
And the child “understanding” can be funny, when it happens. Our eight-year old neighbor boy recently commented, “Eli doesn’t listen very well. You must keep busy taking care of him.” 🙂
I loved this post. My mom always did special things on Halloween, Valentines Day, etc. I don’t think I ever expressed my gratitude to her, but I do make the effort for my own kids because I remember being the envy of all my friends for my mom’s little surprises.