First of all, I would like to reassure my mother, who reads my blog posts, and my father, who I'm not sure even remembers that I have a blog, that this is in no way meant to criticize them for the things they have done. (I would also like to reassure my mother that the reason I write evil parents in fairy-tales has nothing to do with the way she treated me; it's just that I find the idea infinitely explorable: your parents, people you love and nurture and trust, become the ones who betray you. It has fascinating psychological effects on the characters as I write them, and it has nothing to do with how I was raised.)
I want to talk about how parents, in general, are fantastic.
First of all, they made you. I mean, first they had sexy fun times and stuff and they probably were not thinking about you at all, from what I know about sex. They were probably thinking a lot about each other and how much they loved each other. But out of the love they had for each other came you: exactly half your dad and exactly half your mom, a unique arrangement of the billions of traits imprinted upon the chromosomes of your parents. (I guess your dad had more say in what gender you were, because fun fact the default setting for reproduction in humans is female and it's your dad's sex chromosomes that decide whether you stay a girl or grow things and turn into a boy. Hurrah for Biology 101.)
Second of all, your mother gave birth to you. We're going to disregard the dads for a moment here, because their contribution to your existence, practically speaking, is over. Your mother gave birth to you, and you were a ten-to-fifteen-centimeter-wide blob being pushed out of a ten-centimeter hole and there were probably some ripped-up muscles down there and a lot of nasty fluids coming out and if the gentlemen cannot imagine it, then imagine soaking thirty-six sponges in water, putting them in several grocery bags and carrying them around for nine months, and then all of a sudden SPLOOSH all of the water comes out. On your pants, nonetheless. And then imagine that the water is dyed bright red. You now have a very basic understanding of what childbirth is like- but imagine that you're getting kicked in your sensitive spot for ten minutes without cessation. Pain + mess = childbirth. Okay? Okay, good.
Next, we invite the dads back into the picture to inform you that your parents raised you. They taught you how to eat solid food and how to walk and how to use the toilet instead of soiling yourself and how to read. Your dad or your mom got a job, maybe several jobs, so that they could bring home money every two weeks which would stretch out to feed them, you, and any siblings you might have had at the time. One of your parents might have stayed home to take care of you. They might have put you in day care so that they could work and afford to take care of you. Regardless, they made sacrifices for your continued existence, and they also had to deal with you crying and spitting up and soiling yourself. If that's not love, I don't know what is.
They sent you to school not because they hated you and wanted you to be miserable, but because they wanted you to learn and to get an education. At school, you figured out what things you liked and what things you didn't. You figured out how to make friends and how to shut up and listen to people even when you didn't want to. You figured out that sometimes, other people are stupid and sometimes, you're the stupid one. You figured out that sometimes people are mean and sometimes, you're the mean one. You figured out that while most adults don't actually hate you, they have little toleration for you screwing around. Your teachers were not your parents, and while they might have loved you and hoped that you would go on and do great things in life, they weren't going to occasionally let you get away with the dumb things you did at home. Your parents would let you get away with things, for a while.
Your parents dealt with you getting into the realms of pre-pubescence and actual pubescence. If you're a girl, you found out that your chest was growing funny and sometimes there was weird stuff on your underwear and you panicked and ran to your mother, convinced you were dying, and they reassured you that while it might have felt like dying, it was actually growing up. If you're a boy, your parents sat you down one day and explained that you really needed to used deodorant EVERY DAY so that you wouldn't walk into your classroom and freak everyone out. Whatever gender you were, your parents probably sat you down and told you how babies were made, how you were made, and how it's a really bad idea to try and replicate the act before you get to a certain age or are married because you could get sick or pregnant and you didn't want those things to happen to you.
Your parents dealt with you and your hormones. If you don't think that that's a big deal, then think again. The fun part about hormones is that they manifest themselves by your emotions, and often they can affect other people, too. (Story time: my mother used to play the piano for the junior high choir, when my sister and I were in it, and she often said that it felt so hormonal because junior high schoolers were dealing with all of the hormones and things and even though she was in her forties she said it felt like she was back in middle school again, which was a bad place for her to be.) They dealt with your mood swings, your PMS, your zits, your awkward arousals, your screaming that you hated them when they told you to go to bed and cool off. They dealt with your sullenness, your slamming of doors, your stomping and exasperated eye-rolling. They listened when you begrudgingly asked them for advice, and they sighed and sat there in silence when you leaped up and shouted that that was NOT the advice you wanted to hear.
You became a teenager, and while some things got easier others got a lot worse. The acne was terrible. Girls convinced their mothers to let them stay home from school partially because the cramps felt like someone had kicked them in the stomach but also because many of the other girls at school were catty and mean and they wanted one blessed day to not have to deal with that. There was drama with your friends, which distanced you from your parents. There were fights and breakups, new friends and makeups, boys who you thought maybe might date you but never asked, girls who laughed in your face when you asked them if they wanted to go out for ice cream after school. You learned to drive, but then you had a curfew. You had allowance, but it was limited. You might have gotten a job, but it ate up your free time.
At some point your parents started asking you gentle questions about "what you wanted to do with your life." You started thinking about it, figured out what you thought you loved, and asked them about it. They might have sighed and said, "I hope you have plans for a career with that," or they might have sighed and said, "Thank God you'll be able to support us in our old age." If they were really good parents, they probably said, "Bravo, you figured out what you love! Now start filling out applications and writing essays." But those kind of parents are rare and far between, and if they didn't say things like that, then they wanted you to think about all the consequences of getting into what you wanted to get into, so that you wouldn't graduate from college and come home and get a job at McDonald's and live in their basement for forty years. They wanted you to think about whether the kind of thing you liked would leave you with time to fall in love and find someone the way they found each other and have kids, or whether you would become a high-powered executive robot. Even if their questions hurt, I promise you it was because they had been through things in the past that made them realize that some things mattered more than money, and other things were not nearly as good as being financially secure. They wanted you to learn from their mistakes, instead of making them again.
And then you probably started college. If you moved out, then it was "FREEEEEEEDOOOOOOOM!!!!" until you had a pile of laundry as high as your waist and a sink full of dirty dishes with passive-aggressive notes from roommates taped above the sink and mold in your shower because of the hair clogging the drains- and then you realized that you missed your family, because they did this stuff for you and you never even said thank you, you ungrateful little scamp.
And then you went home for Thanksgiving or Christmas and you burst into tears and handed your parents a suitcase full of dirty clothes and said, "Will you please wash them?" And your parents, who had missed you as much and possibly more than you had missed them, said, "Okay." And then they said, "We made your favorite meal, do you want some?" And you fell on it like a piranha on a steak because you had been living on Ramen and PB&J for the past three months.
And you, like me, might be at the point in your life where you don't know what will happen next- but through all of this, your parents will love you anyway. They will send you boxes and they will tell you to try new things. They will hug you and tell you that it's okay to not know. They will listen to you cry and they will understand your reluctance to move on with your life, because college is actually pretty fun.
And if you get married, then they will be there to pick up as much of the cost as they can afford, and they will help you out in whatever ways they can. And they will be there when you have children, and they will be there if someone you love gets cancer or goes to rehab or dies, and they will help you by advising you on how to raise your children, and they will spoil your children rotten.
And you might read this and roll your eyes, but seriously, listen: You have every right to be angry at them if they do something to hurt you. But if they're honestly trying to help you, if they have good intentions- then you shut up and deal with it, because your annoyance at their well-meant behavior is completely irrational. They love you and they are trying to help you. They could have left you on the doorstep of an orphanage and left you for dead, but they didn't. They let you live. Assuming that they were decent people, then no matter how mad you might be at them, you owe them EVERYTHING. You have the right to be ungrateful, but the mature thing to do is to keep silent about it. You have no right to be rude. Rudeness is something that you should outgrow with adolescence. You can be as mad as you want as long as you keep it to yourself. Don't ridicule them. Don't say horrible things to them when they mean well. You can tell them to mind their own business, as long as you say it in private and say it politely. But you do not, ever, tell them off in public. You don't do that with anyone, let alone your parents. It is mature, it is common sense. If you ever want them to take you seriously and treat you like an adult, then you need to start acting like one. If something they have said or done has really offended you (not just embarrassed you or made you feel guilty for being a bad person) then you talk to them in private, with cool words, without screaming. Screaming is for babies. Talking is for adults.
This is something I get mad about because I hear about and personally know people who get mad at their parents. For some of them, it's okay because their parents are in fact terrible people. And in fact, everyone gets mad at their parents. But it is never okay to tell them off in public. It is never okay to be rude in public. It is never okay to invite others to ridicule them. And if you're doing those kinds of things, you need to rethink your life and your choices and your behaviors, because until you know how to act like an adult, your parents aren't going to treat you like one. So be grateful for whoever your parents are- by blood, or by love, those who raised you with love deserve the respect you owe them.
