Been Thinking...

     I've been thinking about parenting and kids.  I have wonderful boys.  I am so blessed.  It made me recently think back to when I was a child and how my father had treated me then and now.  I was the good child.  The child who wanted to please her parents...even as an adult. 
     I remember events as a child that hurt me still today.  I had bad asthma as a child and we didn't have central air and heat.  My parents told me they were buying me a window AC unit for my bedroom.  I was so excited that I would finally be able to breathe while in my room and trying to sleep at night.  My parents went out with my sister and I to look for an AC unit.  They found a used one and I remember thanking them all the way home.  Something I shouldn't have bothered doing.
     When we got home my father took the AC back to his room and installed it there.  I don't understand why he made me believe it was for me.  That hurt me so badly.  I remember all my mom could say was that she was sorry and couldn't do anything about it.  But it wasn't just my dad that did things that confound me today.  I question some things my mother did and said too, but she never has hurt me like my father has recently.  My mother was my best friend while she was alive.  But she was a selfish parent too.
     I was in the hospital when I was around 13 years old because of real bad chest congestion and asthma.  I was there for about a week.  The doctors told her not to smoke around me.  Once we were home my mother lit up in the living room.  I reminded her about what the doctor said and she told me that it was her house and for me to go outside. 
     As a parent now, I can't understand doing or saying the things my father and mother did.  It wasn't like that all the time with my mother.  But it was that one instance that I remember that hurts me bad to remember.  It's funny how ONE event can hurt your feelings so bad that it stays with you forever.  Maybe it has even made me a better parent today.  But I wish I could say the events with my father were one time...but he carried his selfishness and spitefulness into my adulthood.
     My husband and I took care of my father for several years after my mother died.  He paid a small portion of utilities and rent, 1/5th his share.  But we did not require him to pay for food.  He was obstinate and said mean things to me and my children.  He made fun of my kids, called them names, made fun of my weight, and when we asked him to move...it only got worse.
     I thought that having him move would be good for all of us.  My husband and I even looked for him an apartment close by to our house so that we could still spend time with him and have him over for dinner and movies.  That is what we had intended when sitting down and speaking to him about moving out.  We even offered to help him look and move.  Offered him no rent or utilities for the next month so that he could save money.  But he was so pissed that he blamed me and my hormones and said that this wouldn't be happening if I wasn't so hormonal.  He said to us that once he moved we would never see him again.
     It was at that point I told him to leave.  He, again, put a dagger in my heart.  And he continued over the past few years by attacking my husband.  My husband has done more for him than anyone has ever.  Some people have said that it was the way my father was raised that has caused him to behave the way he does.  But I don't believe that one bit.  The distance my father put between me and my sister as a child taught me to hold onto and love and hug my boys as much as I can.  It taught me to love them the way I wish I had been loved. 
     Saying that your a product of your childhood is only true in one sense...you choose how you will live and change if your childhood wasn't as good as it should have been.  You decide what kind of parent and person you will be.  And I have chosen to love my children.  I have chosen to put my children first and ahead of my own needs.  And I have chosen not be a racist or a bigot.   I will not lead in the footsteps of earlier generations of my family.  I have learned what not to do and how not to act.  I will use those past and current hurts to become a better person, wife and mother.