The left over garlic butter accidentally made its way into the Anzac biscuits we were sharing with our South African guests that day. They loved them anyway and wanted the recipe emailed – but that wasn’t the main reason I remember that picnic.
The two women had come to Australia for a parenting conference we’d just been to on the Gold Coast and they’d come back to Perth for a few extra days. Both of them had clearly felt to come but were not sure why since they had access to the same materials at home. The reason came to them NOT during a session of the conference but while sitting poolside at the hotel where we were all staying… as they watched mothers and children splashing and playing and hugging and just BEING together.
As they were speaking I felt like I was waiting for the punch-line… not that it was a joke… but I definitely felt like I had missed the point. I was waiting for the penny to drop because what they were describing was NORMAL to my experience – but to them, it was not.
They went on to speak about their own culture… generations of children whose basic care had been handed over to their nannies… nannies who loved and hugged and cared, but generation after generation that didn’t share this connection with their own mothers – but with someone else instead. On the one hand yes, children were being loved, but on the other hand both parents and children were missing out on each other.
They went home with a mighty task and question of how to turn a culture around… how to help parents who’d never mostly seen another way of being, enter into the joyousness of this kind of bond.
I don’t know how they went about it… it must be ten years now since that picnic… but it has since made me take notice of the connectedness between parent and child… and sometimes the lack of it. Coz just being Aussie doesn’t mean there’s no issues. Just that generationally and culturally we’ve gone about parenting differently to what those two ladies were accustomed.
What they described was a cultural generational baton exchange, but to some degree or another every person that becomes a parent, also goes through some kind of generational baton exchange.
We mostly all go about an internal audit of the way we were raised. Things we want to repeat, things we want to do different. Most of our lists are weighted more heavily to one side or another but almost always, there will be pluses and minuses, And if not minuses – then just things we want to approach differently.
Early in the parenting journey we will usually start to look at our mothers or fathers and consider what she/he wasn’t… what she/he did… what she/he missed.
Perhaps a bit later when we’ve hit some tough times ourselves it begins to swing around a bit more to what they got right… what they did well… what obstacles they faced and what monster of their own that they were fighting.
Monsters don’t play fair.
And while mothers were sword fighting monsters on the main front… others better camouflaged, may have slipped in through the window – that she missed. But I’ve rarely met a mother who wasn’t swinging her sword the best she could. I’ve rarely met a mother who wasn’t trying to improve on what she’d had. I’ve rarely met a mother who didn’t lose sleep over what she’d NOT been able to accomplish.
Recently on a chat page I saw women railing against their mothers in law. About to become one (a MIL) at that time I found myself thinking – “don’t you girls realise that one day someone is going to be measuring YOU the same way you are measuring your mother in law?” Which of course brings me to my point… that each one of us measures what’s gone before us, will also in turn BE measured by the ones that come after us.
May we judge and live and forgive with the same grace that we in turn will hope for.