Jungle Diary: Cherry Blossoms, Discipline, Domestic Unrest
In Spite of Everything...
Just as I’m about to go to bed, Horus and Treva come down to the kitchen. They sit down at the table with a conspiratorial air, and Treva puts her arm around my neck—something’s up.
*
”Mother,” begins Horus. “We have a brilliant proposition for you.” (He waits a beat).
*
I look up from my laptop distractedly. "Mmmhm?
*
”We are going to write a scathing, salacious autobiographical expose of—get this—’The Dark Underbelly of Yolande Norris-Clark’s Christian Breeder Cult Family.’
*
I massage my temples. They think they’re hilarious.
*
“Seriously mum, this is the best idea ever,” says Treva, “It’s going to be a scandalous tell-all, revealing the most twisted parts of our traumatizing childhood. Like…the fact that you don’t let us play video games and you make us clean the car out and stuff.”
*
“Picture this,” says Horus in an eerily excellent imitation of a dulcet-toned-yet-commandeering documentary voice-over, “What really goes on on behind closed doors in the Clark household? Beyond the seemingly normal facade of domestic mediocrity she so brilliantly yet deviously portrays on social media, Yolande Norris-Clark’s children are subjected to regular church-going, a barrage of classical music, coercive and punitive gardening and yard-work expectations, and constant deviant anti-science rhetoric. Shockingly, even though her children are rarely ever sick at all, Norris-Clark nonetheless has no confidence in the very doctors her children don’t ever need to go to.”
*
”We have to do it,” says Treva. “It’ll make millions.”
*
I’m crying/laughing. They really might be on to something.
I've had a rough week. Questioning everything/why do I bother/full on self-pity/God, how dare you? The new-agers are blaming the eclipse, or is it a retrograde? One or the other. I suppose that’s God’s fault too.
*
After church. Late-March. It’s a gorgeous blue/gold/warm/cool day, dazzling with cellophane sun (which there seems to be a lot of, here in the midwest, despite all the dystopian doomsday talk). The babies are playing in the makeshift playground in the parking lot when several of our older kids come running over to inform us that they have already negotiated having a bunch of new friends over for an afternoon at our place. How many? Only four extra!
*
The wonderful S. kindly offers (again) to drive some of our now-expanded horde home, and once we arrive (huh—it’s a bit smelly), all twelve kids crash around like baby elephants for a while, giving our guests a tour of the house including the attic and the lookout (a door from the second-floor bedroom that leads to a railing-less platform which must have been, at one point, a deck) then snacks, a chess game here, a pillow-fight there, the usual.
*
After a while the cacophony becomes insufferable, so we shoo them outside to the back yard, then decide on a trip to the park just as Iggy discovers that the sewer pipes have backed up in the basement again (ah—that must be why the house has been vaguely redolent of poop! Glad we sorted that one out). Thankfully, the emergency plumbers come swiftly, right before the kids return from the park, and everyone helps to set the table and throw the pasta together.
*
During dinner, I experience a moment of bliss while watching from the kitchen foyer, the kids passionately debating the topic of religion and the spirit: how to handle spiritual disagreements with others who aren’t Orthodox, thoughts on the Qu’ran (which they handle very respectfully, I note, with, yes, some pride), and a spontaneous group analysis of Elder Paisios’s writing and its relevance to our contemporary world. The very fact that our teenagers are so engaged in life (and the life of the church, theology, philosophy) in this way—with so much ebullience and sincerity is, I think, perhaps unusual, among twelve-to-sixteen year olds these days. Glory to God. A nice contrast to the breakdowns from the week before, including the almost-fistfight that broke out in the car the other day between Cosmo and Felix, who, after a lifetime of amenability, has been a real jerk these days.) Harmony and counterpoint.
*
“So if I’m understanding the situation,” writes a visitor (spoiler—they’re not, but I’m sure they mean well) to my recent instagram post about love, faith, and the blessing of our children, “You are bragging about your children being completely out of touch with the outside world, you’re forcing your religious beliefs on your children and boasting about not believing in politics. Honestly, I’m happy you don’t vote.”
*
I recount this message to the kids on the way to school the next day, and everybody laughs heartily. Cosmo, though, is baffled and mildly outraged. “Wow. This person is seriously messed up. I mean, we have SO many friends all over the world, from all kinds of religions. The ignorance, amirite bro?”
*
”You are right, dear, yes, but once again, I am not your ‘bro.’”
*
“Yeah, yeah, Mum,” Cosmos replies, grinning his irresistibly rakish half-tooth smile then demurring, drawing his thumb and forefinger across his jawline in a theatrical gesture which the young people call a “mew,” or so I’m given to understand. This kid is a winner (may all you mothers believe that wholeheartedly about your children).
Are there really scores of women out there in the world who openly state and discuss in various clandestine chat-groups, the fact that they regret having their children and who even claim that they “don’t love” their kids? I’m quite sure I have never encountered any of these women, myself…but is this true? Or is this a figment of the internet’s veritable stupidity machines (AI)?
*
I suppose such mothers could be hiding among us in plain sight, empowered, finally, by the privileges of the web’s anonymity, to “speak their truth” to an enthusiastic audience of supporters and sister misopedists (yes, that is indeed a word—it means, as you might have guessed “a hater of children”) who are eager to stoke their bravery and stroke their egos, when in truth, they’re only ranting into the gaping abyss…(Yes, yes, as am I, dear reader, as am I). If I sound intolerant of this particular form of depravity, I suppose I am, a bit.
*
While I will always welcome all the bad mothers, the mad mothers, the sad mothers, and the mediocre mothers to my table (and if you’re an abusive mother, come on over too, I get you—we’ve all ventured in that direction, haven’t we? I’ve been doing 1:1 coaching with mothers for almost 20 years and I am, at this point, 100% sure that every mother on earth has, at some point, crossed a line, at least in word or intonation, if not something else). But to regret your child’s existence or to profess not to love them unrepentantly when love is so self-evidently a choice? I’ll admit, I struggle to empathize.
I can’t fathom not loving any of my children, nor have I met, in the wild, any of these supposedly real mothers who have failed (or, rather, chosen not) to love theirs (though of course we mothers fail in all sorts of other ways, constantly).
*
Mind you, the fact that I have always loved my kids (and I predict that I always will) certainly doesn’t mean I’ll always condone, approve of, or validate their behaviour if/when that behaviour deviates from what is right and true, to the extent that I am capable of discerning those lines and boundaries and my maternal responsibilities thereof, that is.
***
I wake up drenched in sweat, hysterical, shaking from my immersion in the vivid, lucid, life-like hellscape of the nightmare…(I know, I know—here I am falling into that trap of believing that my dreams are somehow less dull than anyone else’s but it’s my party, so here I go, shameless, as usual):
*
I’m on a journey—we all are, our whole family—is it a pilgrimage? An exile? A natural disaster? Can’t remember. For whatever reason though, we’re on an odyssey—a rugged one. I am resolved, resourceful, thinking ahead. I’m ok. I send Felix (12) forward on the path to run an errand, to pick something up from a house along the road—a necessary item, something important for our progress. Perhaps we are on horseback? This may be another time, another land. There are deep woods and dark trees. I have the babies with me, Lee is behind us—it’s a caravan, of sorts.
*
We proceed, and I see the house from a distance—a shack. But as I approach it, I note that something is amiss. Instead of my son, there is a man standing under the porch and I can tell immediately that he is an evil man--a bad man. He emerges from the shade of the stoop, leering, smiling horribly, and now I see that he is the devil.