Stuff I could blame my parents for but don't

As adult children I suppose many people like to blame every bad thing in life on how they were raised.  When I think it over, I've met many adults who do just that.  "I had a bad marriage, I should have been raised better."  Or:  "I was spanked as a kid, that was just wrong."   Maybe all those things are true, but as adults, I just think we need to take responsibility for our own bad deeds in life, not blame our parents.  

I had a bad marriage and when I divorced, I realized that being the youngest kid, I was never really taught to take care of myself.  I was sheltered and being a girl, my parents felt the need to really shelter me.  Youngest kid, a girl, well a double whammy for me.  I grew up in a time when the thing to do, as a girl, was to find a husband.  My parents were thoroughly convinced that women needed a husband to get along in adult life.  So much so that it almost became a : "Any port in a storm" situation.  It wasn't just my parents it was a societal mentality.  I would love to tell you that in 2014 all that's changed, but from what I've observed, it isn't always so.  We are still bombarded in the media with what we should wear, how nice we should look, be pretty, be skinny and the list just goes on and on.  For what?  Well to catch a man, of course.  You can deny it all you like, but it's there, every TV ad, every magazine ad and on the Internet.  Sorry girls, but it's true.  It was so bad that not only me, but all my high school girl friends thought they too needed to be married, or else you were just nothing.  The big fear was maybe being single past age 30 and you'd be showing the world that nobody wanted you.  Why do you think romance stories are still so popular today?


My ex is a bad man, I realize most women say this, but it's probably true in their case too.  The way he acted, even in front of my parents, they should have advised me to dump him or at the very least, rethink marriage to this loser.  They never did, but instead, would cut him up verbally to me.  

I had wanted to go to college, but back then, being old school, they never knew about financial aid, so they simply told me they could never afford it.  I got no advice from my adviser in high school either other than: "Well you probably won't have a long career anyway since you girls always seem to get married and have a family and a husband to take care of you."   Sounds silly?  Well by the looks of women's pay out there, apparently society's attitude about that hasn't changed much even now.

Could I blame my parents that I finally got divorced, had to care for two young boys for a long time on my own and I finally did go to college, but not until I was 40 and it was a struggle?  Yes, I could blame them for not shoving me out the door more as I was growing up.  But they did what they knew just as we do now as parents, often times.

My parents never talked to any of us kids about sex or the opposite sex.  I was told: "Just stay away from boys who want certain things."  Seriously?  That is good sex advice?  Of course not.  My parents grew up in simpler times, more sheltered times and my mom found a good man, but I suppose they were hoping I'd 'luck out.'   A sad way to run one's life.  Toss the dice and hope you come out a winner.

I might have made better choices in a husband had I been given some kind of useful advice.  But, alas, I ended up divorced and figuring things out on my own.  It was a struggle, but maybe it made me a better person by figuring it out alone, I don't know.

I hope parents these days are enlightening their kids, especially daughters, about caring for themselves first and foremost.  The list is large, the things we could blame our parents for.

 By the way, I was spanked as a kid and I abhor violence and I turned out okay in spite of the spankings.

Another Memorial Day finds us

Memorial Day finds us, another year older

Memorial Day finds us no less bolder

"A war to end all wars" once said

Why, since then, are so many more dead?

Do you want to really end wars?

Are you messing with our heads?

It's been: A war on British for freedom

A war on Indians for more land

A war in the South to end slavery

A World, both I and II to end aggression

Soldiers keep marching in succession

A war to end communism

Now a war to end terror

Somehow since 'to end all wars' there's occurred an error

This Memorial Day, the war skies are no fairer

People in America have no decent jobs

Around the world, people form protest mobs

Another soldier dies, another mother sobs

We talk about love

We know more about hate

Some young soldier, for prom, just wants a date

We love our kids, so we say

Yet we pack them off to war to die

Same old lies, just another day

To die for what?

For Coke and Pepsi to get a foothold?

It's no reason to die, if I might be so bold

Sending kids to their deaths

We knew we always could

Do we ever ask if we should?

Wars are a rich person's game

Different day, the lies remain the same

Stop that war, we think someone should

But would you stop a war if you could?

The military: Go to war, my Son, or Daughter, you should

They will pay you badly, morn your death, sadly

On Memorial Day, we honor with our lips

Yet another war plan, corporations pull from their hips

I long so to hear from those who "should go"

"This new war?  No thanks.  This time I will skip"

Memorial Day finds us another year older

When it comes to war, still no less bolder

I hope you find something better to do than become a soldier

Families and holidays

Holidays for most of us either mean getting together with family members or they mean being lonely and not seeing family.

Families are a strange animal, having a life of their own pretty much.  We never quite know what direction they (family members) will take.

Like, well, family members who 'friend' you on Facebook, never really talk to you and kind of just sit in the background.  Why?  I assure you I haven't a clue.  Why friend people if you have no intention of really communicating?

How about real life?  After all real life can be stranger than fiction.  You can live around the corner from your kids and never see them.  Why do kids sometimes only adopt their in-laws and pretend their biological families don't exist?  This, I find, happens very often.

My present husband finds his children (one child anyway) blames him for leaving the state she lives in and blames him for not hanging around to take abuse from his ex.  For the most art, children see through cloudy lenses, believing the parent they live with and like to hold grudges until it hurts and is unhealthy against a parent they perceive as bad.  They have to blame someone.  Adult kids often aren't interested in what really happened and would rather fabricate the scenario on their own.

We cannot crawl into their minds and switch off the misinformation.  I am amazed at how many adult kids think they never make mistakes and when they do find out they made plenty, especially when their own kids grow up, they find out the hard way what their own parents experienced.

Some parents think indulging their own kids with material items will make their kids love them.  Not so.  For is a child has not been given the gift of self-esteem from a mother or a father, they usually will grab the first person who shows them attention because they had felt worthless.  That first person is not always good for them. But how can they be expected to know this when they have not dated enough people to compare them to?  So just because an adult kid looks good on the outside, it may be a different story on the inside.

We all make mistakes as parents.  Sometimes we will pay for them for a long, long time.  But being a young, scared parent does not make one an ogre, only in their kids' minds maybe.  


If you are an adult child, remember your parents will not live forever.  When they are gone, it's too late to make amends.

Disrespect for the elderly in our society

A hawk just swooped down in our yard the other day.  It grabbed a small dove and was gone in a flash.  At first it bothered me but I do realize even hawks have to eat.  I understand the survival of the fittest in nature.  But when it comes to human beings, I always hope for a more civilized approach.   

When I worked at a nursing home in Indiana, the elderly loved to have bird feeders outside their windows, those who were fortunate to even have a window.  Something hard to do when there are two people sharing one room and only one window.  One day the owner of the nursing home and the Administrator, told us at our morning meeting that residents could no longer have bird feeders in the courtyard.  Now this was a courtyard that no one ever sat in, it simply had grass and some gravel, nothing more.  When I got my Social Work curiosity up, I asked them why.

"Well, a hawk came into the yard yesterday, killed a bird and our maintenance staff had to clean up a dead bird."  According to the Administrator.  I felt that was no real reason, so maintenance had to clean it up, they get paid to do so.

The answer to that was: "Well it probably upset the residents to see a bird killed."   Really?  Most of our elderly lived on farms for a good share of their lives, they would hardly let a dead bird ruin their day.  

This was just blatant disrespect for the people paying the nursing home bills.  Unless residents out and out complained about a dead bird, they needed to leave well enough alone.  What the residents did complain about, was maintenance taking down the bird feeders. 

 Why do otherwise intelligent people try to second guess the elderly? They are adults, have been adults for many, many years, yet they get treated as small children with no voices.  

If you have loved ones in traditional nursing homes, when you see this kind of stupid stunt, you need to voice an opinion and a complaint on behalf of your loved one, immediately.  Never, never forget who pays their bills and salaries, making nursing homes a billion dollar industry.  Those figures are astronomical.  

I sincerely hope my adult children never act so disrespectfully to seniors in the community.  I hope I raised them better than that.  

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