On paper, we’re what many would call a normal family. Mother, father, sister, brother – just like the Berenstain Bears. My parents are 25 years married and still in love. My brother and I are educated. Mom and Dad gave us the necessities, plus a lot of love and support.
Despite all that, my folks have had some disastrous parenting moments. And much to their dismay, I remember them vividly.
As a teenager I blamed my bad behaviour on their flaws. “I am a product of you,” I would say, pointing at my father, “plus you,” I would finish, pointing at my mother.
If I yell, it’s because you yell. If I act out, it’s because you act out. If I’m a brat, it’s your fault. My monologues always had the same conclusion: “You made me this way.”
I admit I was the kind of teen they had to struggle not to strangle. But I still trace a lot of my character flaws back to specific failed parenting moments.
One example: I’m a toddler sitting in a high chair in my parents’ kitchen in rural Nova Scotia. I have a mushroom haircut and large, round, blueberry eyes. My mother, who has an obsessive fear of accidental death, had just watched a television special about the danger of baby soothers.
My soother – which I called “googer” – was probably my favourite thing in the world at the time. But Mom decided googer was a choking hazard.
Some people wean children off baby attachments. My mother, seeing this as a matter of life and death, took a different approach. She took googer to the basement and chucked it into the wood furnace. She then retrieved the melting, charred object from the fire with a pair of barbecue tongs, walked upstairs to the kitchen and waved the deformed soother in front of my two-year-old face.
“No more googer!” she bellowed.
That’s my earliest childhood memory. The effect of this trauma? I developed an unhealthy attachment to things that belonged to me. I became a child who hated sharing. I shared with kids at school, but only because I had to. When it came to my brother and cousins, I held on to my toys – even hid them at times – so I wouldn’t have to let others play with them.
My mother, who considers the twin values of generosity and hospitality sacred, was ashamed to have raised such a child. She couldn’t understand how it happened. But I knew, and I told her: “You made me this way.”
Even as an adult, I still struggle with sharing. I want to share, but it makes me nervous. What if something gets torn? Broken? Or worse – burned? A friend put it this way: You like the idea of sharing, but you’re not good at it.
Let’s fast-forward a few years to see my father in action. I’m a preteen doing homework at the kitchen table. Dad is cooking something in a pan on the stove. The frying pan is an old one my parents had been meaning to replace. I can’t remember what my dad was cooking, but it stuck to the bottom of the pan.
He swore, dumped the contents of the pan into the garbage can, walked briskly out the back door, stomped to the edge of the patio and launched the frying pan across the backyard. It landed in a patch of trees.
