Struggling through with joy... |
kind of.
Struggling through with joy... |
Last night my husband put on a Jimi Hendrix album while he cleaned the kitchen. It was a strange soundtrack for chasing down my 1 ½ year old daughter to wrestle her into her pajamas. I hadn’t listened to Jimi Hendrix for many years. It took me right back to laying in my room, listening to Castles Made of Sand, rewinding it, and listening again.
When I was a sophomore in high school my brother made me a mix tape with psychedelic music from the sixties, including Jimi Hendrix. I listened to it all the time, especially when I’d been up to no good. As I hid behind the bed from my unwilling daughter, hoping to trick her into a game of pajama-enhanced peek a boo, I recalled the hours listening to Jimi during my misspent youth. I shudder to think of my daughter’s someday-shenanigans. The stakes are much higher now, it seems. I don’t even know what will be available to my kids when they hit high school. Now there are opioids and crystal meth. Pot is legal in the state where I live, and there is a bill in the legislature to legalize psilocybin, otherwise known as magic mushrooms. I’m not sure where I stand with legalized drugs, aside from the fact that it doesn’t happen and won’t be happening under our roof, legal or not. At least I hope not. Being wild is fun. That’s the main issue I struggle with when I think about how I’ll talk to my kids about drinking and drugs. It’s fun for a little while. I lived it up when I was making loads of bad choices as a teenager. I also experienced a lot of misery brought on by that fun, and I caused a fair amount, too. I’m hopeful my kids will be more like their father, who is measured and responsible, was that way even as a rebellious teenager and college student. I survived, of course. I’m a boring middle-aged mom and I truly, deeply love it. Most of my friends survived intact, too, but a few did not. They’ve struggled with addiction since those early days of wildness. They never transitioned, as I have, from whiskey to Sleepytime tea as the perfect nightcap, and I don’t know what the difference is between me and them. It certainly took me too long to grow out of my own wildness. Jimi Hendrix was somehow calming to my own little wild thing, and I was able to get her zipped into her pink cupcake footie pajamas without tears. My husband wiped down the counters and turned off the kitchen light as my son emerged from the bathroom brushing his teeth. The album ended and we settled into our bedtime routine of books, cuddles, songs and sleep. These are all the building blocks of a stable family life, all the things my own parents did that probably saved me from losing myself entirely in my Jimi Hendrix-listening phase. I am grateful to them in a way I can never truly express, except through my own children. I will try, fail, and try again to love with the same depth and compassion I experienced growing up, waiting with open arms for all the times my children need me, just as my parents did for me, not knowing how they saved me from myself.
1 Comment
3/7/2018 08:59:48 pm
I liked how you talked how the music connected you to the sense of love, compassion, and stability your parents gave you. How how the way to thank them is by passing that on to your children. That's so powerful. I think that is a huge Thank you. For them to see that in your family. In your kids.
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