All three kids watching Peter Pan. The youngest of the three is sixteen - I think the seriousness with which they are watching Disney (and the pirate hats and swords) is cute and I'm grateful they are so good they still love Disney.
Yes, good. As they try on personalities like suits of clothes, trying to see what fits and what doesn't (personalities I don't always like), I'm relieved to find that, at their core, these are Disney kids and we all know that Disney is all things Clean, Goodness and Light. It makes up for finding my husband and son giggling over Pimp My Ride and my daughter wanting to see Monday Night Raw.
My childhood was very Jerry Springer. The men did blue collar jobs all day while the wives, who were usually pregnant, sat at home and wondered how they ended up this way and yelled at the kids to behave; kids who, often as not, ran around the dusty front yard in their underpants. The men drank beer after work, went home, had dinner, beat or fucked the kids or wives and went to bed.
My parents were a little different in that they were both geniuses. My mother held herself above it all and looked down on all the other wives and their children (which did nothing to endear us to the rest of the kids in the circle) and she was right, to be honest. They made me and I was speed reading at six and had Alice in Wonderland memorized at seven and was supposed to prove how manly my father and thin my mother was. But it's hard to show off a kid who's in a wheelchair and hyperactive so they forgot how smart I was and their greatest aspiration for me became to hope that I didn't get pregnant too young. I didn't, but I spent years doing their nasty work for them (you don't need to abuse a kid who is beating the shit out of herself) with a series of bad guys.
Anyway, fast forward to my own kids. All things Jerry-Springerish terrify me, remind me of my past and how I hated myself and how right I felt they were to fuck or beat me and though I picked a man who was Springer material to the bone, though my marriage ended is a terribly Springer fashion and I did squander my smarts for a long time (just look at my grammar and punctuation), I was determined to raise my children in a way that they would never, ever be touched by any of that and would be free and able to go far beyond where I did. I got my shit together, fought like a dog to learn how to raise kids smart and clean and good (all I had was the example of beating and fucking my parents gave me), culled the bad people from my life, filled it with better ones, married the right man and raised my kids with love and self respect. They have never been alone or hurt and betrayed by me or my husband. When I creep into their rooms at night to make sure they are still breathing, they smile in their sleep, never knowing what it was like to be afraid of a shadow in the door way.
I don't feel like writing about it anymore - it hasn't been an easy road, I'm not a perfect parent, we yell as much as we hug, etc. But the point is, my kids are safe and clean and smart and loved and have futures beyond the dusty front yard of my childhood. Disney is clean and shining and everything not white trash that I have fought so hard to keep from touching my kids. I don't let my kids watch Jerry Springer, but I can live with knowing my oldest turns it on in her room when I'm not looking as long as they still put on their pirate hats and watch Peter Pan, you know?
