Today my oldest child, my only daughter, turned forty. Unlike prior years, I did not call and leave a message on her machine. I did not send her a card. I did not send her an email card.
In fact, she just crossed my mind a couple of times during the day. There was none of the usual sadness, depression, weepiness, etc.
I did wonder why, what had changed? I did ponder this ‘inner change’ off and on during the day. It could be a number of things:
I haven’t seen her in 3 years and 3 months now (other than the first xmas when I took her present to where she was working), but I’m used to going years with not only not seeing her, but not knowing where she was, or even if she were alive.
I have accepted the fact, that she makes her choices. She is not the person I raised her to be. That she, like so many others of her ‘generation’ blames me (her mother) for all that has gone wrong in her life, she is not capable of taking responsibility for her own actions.
She remains my daughter, and I love her. Happy Birthday Lisa...
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I also see in those younger than me that everything is someone else's fault. It's part of the self-esteem movement where the schools started giving prizes to everyone, not just the winners. They learned that they are perfect and therefore, someone else must be to blame when things go wrong.
ReplyDeleteOne of my former co-workers, when her boss complained something important had not been done, proved herself to be the queen of finger-pointing. It was not because she spent the day on the phone chatting with her friends and ignoring her work, it was MY fault, because I often asked if anyone needed help, and on that day I hadn't offered to take something off her hands. Or maybe it was my boss's fault, because he gave me a huge project of my own. But it certainly wasn't her fault for goofing off all day.
My mom and I have a standing joke, that I ought to sue her for child abuse because I WAS DEPRIVED! (1) we didn't have cable TV when I was a kid. (2) I didn't receive a red convertible when I turned 16. (3) she made me do chores!!!!!!! (4) can you believe it, they refused to take me to Disneyland when I was 5. All those things that kids today take for granted as automatic entitlements.
A couple years ago, I hired a live-in caregiver/housecleaner. She did nothing for two months except throw expensive convenience foods in my grocery cart for me to pay for. Her defense for why the house was a bigger mess when she was thrown out was that every time she cleaned, the place got messed up again. Well, isn't that normal? God forbid, I wasn't treating her like a houseguest, bringing her breakfast in bed, so she wasn't going to do anything till I treated her "right".
Got the same BS from an answering service operator. I called a couple times and she hung up on me each time. I finally got a friend to call, who relayed to me that the operator wasn't going to pass the message until I said "pretty please with sugar on top". She just couldn't understand why someone who'd come home to find a notice "your locks were changed, come to the office for a new key" would be so annoyed that the office was already closed and no staff around to get the keys. My friend finally performed the appropriate begging and groveling and buttering-up so that maintenance would let me in to my own apartment.