I love my own company; many writers do.
I said to someone recently that I felt it was a learned skill and it is, because there were times when I couldn’t stand to be by
myself. Those were the times when I dumped myself on my poor mother or sister.
There was a difficult period in my life when I would pick my 4 year old up from
school and trail my whole tribe around to my sister’s house most days of the
week. With four children under 4 it wasn’t a happy time and I’m still amazed my
very forthright sister didn’t say anything about my constant visits at the
worst time of day for someone with two children of her own. Any mother understands
the misery of the 4pm demon. As the clock ticks round it’s the golden hour for
grizzling, fights, tantrums and unreasonable behaviour as tired little bodies
look for sustenance and relief from busy days packed full of activity. With
adult children now leading wonderful lives of their own I’m still left with the
4pm legacy and find myself cringing as it arrives, imbued with a sense of
grumpiness which seems to come from nowhere.
I was a loner at school but not by choice. It was
just easier. In a school where most people carried knives by the age of 13 and
knew how to use them, it was safer to have nobody around me to mask the threat or
join in. At university I had good friends but they came and went with the
advent of unsuitable boyfriends and only one remains in my middle age.
Life tries to teach us to be content in our own
company but we resist, plugging the gap with anything we can to avoid its lessons. We’re
fools. We crave five minutes peace and then waste it, worrying, complaining, seeking
busyness or other people and crying we’re bored. Fools.
I tried to teach my children to be content with themselves
and respect time as something to be valued and not killed, but only their imprint
on the world will tell if I succeeded. I encouraged them to seek time alone and
when they were lonely, tried to help them embrace it. When isolated as very
young children in busy playgrounds, I sent them to catch fairies and hunt
unicorns, feeding imaginations which had the power to create company and fill
empty voids with better than this world has to offer. I knew they’d need that
skill many times over. And they will.
I still remember those empty months after
childbirth when my husband went to work and left me alone with my eldest daughter. She
couldn’t talk back and tell me what was wrong, her crying filling me with a
sense of inadequacy and desperation and I craved company, finding it less
painful when someone else was there. I walked miles pushing her pram, finding
something cathartic about being outside in the fresh air. But I was still alone.
Emigration put me back there, only this time my
husband was at work and my children at school. The 4pm demon brought children
off a busy bus nursing different agonies; isolation, friendlessness; loneliness
and dissatisfaction. I had to learn to be alone and not waste my life wishing
the hours away, knowing one day I might beg for those hours back.
I prayed, painted, studied and wrote. I learned to
be alone and found a deep security there inside my faith and myself.
I met a wise lady once who had ten children. While
we sat drinking tea and chatting she called to one of her children and patted
the seat next to her. The child left her play and ran over, sitting next to her
mother, popping her thumb into her mouth and just sitting quietly there. She
didn’t demand any more attention than the soft hand on her shoulder and she
made no sound. After a few minutes my friend praised her daughter, kissed her
cheek and released her to play again. When I asked what she’d done, she said, “I
need my children to come when I ask and do it without question because one day
it might be important. I want them to sit without entertainment and feel secure
in themselves as though it’s normal and my hand on their shoulder reassures
them I’m there today. One day my hand won't be there and they'll need to remember that being alone is still ok. Later my daughter will tell me some deep thought she had
in those few moments of peace and it may be profound or it might be random; but
it will be her thought and not something shouted in her face by friends,
siblings, TV or media. When I pat the seat my children know to be quiet and I
can take them to church, restaurants and friends’ houses without worrying
boredom will make them naughty.”
My friend was interrupted in her explanation by
another of her children who sneaked onto her knee and whispered in her ear, “Can
it be me next, Mummy?”
I wasn’t sure about her methods and pondered a
little while she cuddled her son and fixed his Lego toy. She turned a wise face
towards me as he skipped off happily and said something I’ve never forgotten. “I
teach my children to be alone and satisfied because my lessons begin in love
but the world conducts hers with unkindness, humiliation and fear.”
It strikes me that children today don’t know how
to be alone, truly alone without the blare of the TV or the constant thrum of
beat music. Computer games and online strangers fill the void and they don’t
know what it is to stand in a crowded room with only their own selves for
company and feel secure. The 4pm demon has morphed from a creature demanding
sustenance and comfort to a raging monster needing constant entertainment. If
they’re unlucky, our children will be dragged kicking and screaming into
situations which call for self-assurance and a sense of confidence and find
their strength in the pit of despair and the palm of misery. Those will be
painful times of loneliness, rejection, friendlessness and poverty. Each of
those things has the power to drag a vulnerable person down undesirable paths in
order to dodge the pain of looking in the mirror and seeing only their own face
staring back at them blank eyed and frightened.
Parents - teach your children to be alone,
comfortable in their own skin and able to find peace.
Do it before the gravel road of life cuts their
feet and makes them bleed on their journey towards peace and self-assurance.
Do it with a kiss and a hand on their shoulder
before the world does it with a knife in their back and a blow to their confidence.
#parenting #loneliness #raisingkids
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