Vicissitudes of Parenting

As I look back at our child-rearing I can’t help but feel that we lacked understanding and empathy at times for our three daughters. Perhaps it was just the press of other activities, such as household tasks or the attention given to work at Shell, but too often I think we didn’t sense what was turning over in those little minds. Since Muriel was the first I think she was the most disadvantages in this respect — sje passed through all the stages of infancy, childhood and teenage years first and it was new to Jean and me as well as to her, so we suffered from obtuseness of outlook and perception.

I look back on a few incidents and I just sort of melt inside now at what she faced from us and circumstance. Once with Muriel during the time was was being toilet trained I was sitting alongside her as she say on the potty. She was not producing (with Muriel’s holding capacity at the time this was not surprising) and my function I guess was to impress on her what we wanter her to do. In response to my psychological pressure on her she finally came out with “I can’t” in sort of a plaintive voice that I can still hear and which cut me to the quick then, and the memory of it still does. This little being, not being able to satisfy her demanding patent, giving voice to her desperation.

Then there was the time when Muriel was going to go on some sort of skiing outing with a church group at Epworth. We had arranged to rent what seemed the appropriate attire, which include ski pants etc., but also included these big clunky ski boots. She had these one, and I think we should have sensed that, while they might have been the right thing for skiing they weren’t the footwear for this outing. She had no basis for assessing the situation and her parents had unthinkingly placed her in a position where she was awkward and out of context at best. I don’t recall how the situation finally developed, but looking back I just feel that we didn’t consider adequately what she was facing. Then and now, I just wanted to put my arms around her in an encompassing embrace and ask her forbearance for what had been done to her.

There were happy times and incidents of course — playing endless games of Parcheesi or other board games, reading and re-reading the favorite stories, seeing them playing in the sandbox on the patio or on the swing or glider set, going to the playground down in Oakland and watching them slide down the corkscrew slide endlessly.