That Was Then This Is Now Perfect Parenting In The Eye Of Beholder
When I was young, in the dark ages of Ike and Mamie, there were strict laws of etiquette that obedient, sweet children like the Duncan children, if they didn’t want to go to their bedrooms for the rest of their natural lives, had to observe.
We had to stand up the instant an elder stepped foot in the room. When you’re 10, an elder person is anyone old enough to be out of high school and young enough to be under 100.
And we held the door open for everyone. Really old people and semi-old people. Feeling exactly like the Statue of Liberty without the tiara, I let everyone in. In fact, my childhood consisted of standing up, opening doors, brushing my teeth three times a day, and playing a little tennis in the summer.
Going away to college, I left my bra on the train along with childhood responsibilities and went in search of high adventure in the wilds of Salem, Oregon - as far away from home as I could get at the time. It was the ‘60s, and the obedient Duncan child became a vegetarian Zen Buddhist wearing a sorority pin and stridently throwing her feminism around at the drop of a “ma’am” or “girl.” During this period, I learned to swear profusely and enjoy it immensely.
And I stood up when elders entered the room in a new way. Barefooted and cross-legged in my “good” tie-dyed outfit, I lectured my elders about their eating habits - “nothing with a face on it, please” - music - “Bob Dylan is so like cool” - politics - “I’ve become a registered Democrat.” At nineteen, I knew everything and what I didn’t know, I faked.
My parents were tiresome and so uneducated in everything except sending cash. Mom worried about the family background of the stray men I brought home, quizzing them gently about their draft status and plans for the future. Dad hid behind television, newspapers, and locked bathroom doors as I explained how women really felt about orgasm to a man who turned off the lights to undress in front of our dog.
I was always doing the door thing then. When a man opened a door for me, he was headed for a major conflict. Like Vietnam, it started slowly.
“Why, thank you for holding the door open. You thought I was too weak and frail to do it myself?” “Well, no. I just thought….”
“Just thought what? You male chauvinist pig, you. Do you think about women at all? I bet you want us all barefoot and pregnant, serving you dinner every night the minute you walk in the door.”
“Hey, lady…I just opened the door ‘cause you had all those books in your hand. I didn’t mean anything by it. Honest.”
“Lady! You called me ‘lady’?” And so it would go until I would pause to catch my breath, and he would zip quickly through the break in my speech to freedom.
There were battles to be fought each and every day with the public in general and my family in particular. I was changing the world one victim at a time. While I was fighting and demonstrating and kicking and screaming, I got married to a wonderfully sensitive, but thoroughly inappropriate man that my family did not like. (As my Uncle Alex said at the wedding, “Aye, he’s a black Irishman from the coast lands. They’re a wild lot, lassie.”) Again, I had declared my independence from my strictly Scottish Presbyterian family and married a black-haired Irishman. If he had been Catholic, he would have been perfect revenge.
Two years later, Pat and I had a baby girl. We intended to raise her free of our parents - except when we wanted to go to the movies. Pat rushed out of the hospital to buy her a baseball mitt, and I gave her a tiny necklace of lovebeads. They looked suspiciously like pearls.
As the years progressed, we were perfect parents, teaching her to be colorblind and self-reliant.
We taught her not to eat meat, asked her continually what job she was going to do when she grew up, and started her playing soccer almost before she could walk. Surprisingly, I found myself demanding she stand up and hold doors open.
This child knew how to change a tire, use a screwdriver, and cook my very favorite lentil surprise casserole. Her non-leather cowboy boots always complemented her animal rights T-shirt. And we had frank talks about sex whether she wanted to or not.
Smugly, I paraded my work of art in front of my mom and dad. Jill was the product of good parenting, and I was the product of…Well, I didn’t have to finish my thought.
At 16, Jill got her driver’s license and immediately drove to McDonald’s for her first hamburger. At eighteen, she announced she was not accepting her sports scholarship and would be heading to Seattle to “find her true self.” At twenty, she began wearing a tasteful pair of pearls as well as several earrings in one ear.
Then she became 21. She sat me down on her birthday for a nice “talk.” Three hours later, she had straightened me out about my speech - “No one says ‘cool’ anymore, Mom” - my dress - “I can take you to The Gap so you can buy some real clothes” - and her childhood - “I was the only person in the third grade who didn’t bring bologna sandwiches. Do you know how awful that was?”
My perfectly-raised child was commenting negatively on me and her perfect childhood. I didn’t know the anguish I had inflicted on her. She made it clear I didn’t know how to walk or talk or raise children. Fortunately, she was a registered Democrat, or we would have had nothing in common.
She even gave me lectures about giving men lectures about opening doors for me. “Oh, Mom, we don’t care about that anymore. We want the same money.”
I bet my parents smile every time my daughter and I sit down for one of our “little talks”….
MEMO: Leslie A. Duncan is a free-lancer based in Whitefish, Mont.