Luky
IT IS FOR ME A SOBERING THOUGHT THAT I WOULD PROBABLY NEVER HAVE WRITTEN ARTICLES BUT FOR A FIT OF TEMPER I GOT INTO FIFTY YEARS AGO.
There was an article in a local newspaper by a lady who wrote about taking her little daughter to Mass, and how she deplored the actions of parents who were always punishing their children for not sitting still in church.
I'd just come back from Mass, hot and bothered after a bout of fisticuffs with my children, and yearning for the obligation of Mass attendance to be lifted from mothers of small children when I read this article.
I sat behind my typewriter and tossed off what I thought about taking children to Mass and bringing them up generally. I've always been the first to admit that my attempts at child rearing have been a hit or miss affair, and that any success I may ever experience in this line will be attributable only to the grace of the Great Eraser of parental mistakes.
I didn't really think my article would be accepted, but I felt as if a load had been removed from my chest and I could breathe again.
Then shortly afterwards I came back from the hairdressers to find a postal messenger in front of my flat door.
I signed my name in his book and tore open the telegram, fearful lest it might contain bad news.
If a person exists who claims life has no excitement to offer, he should try to write something and have it accepted.
It had begun to drizzle and I dragged my children to my neighbour Maria.
"Won't you look after my children?" I gabbled. "You see, I wrote this article, and they accepted it . . ." but she was looking at me uncomprehendingly. Then she smiled.
"You happy Lucinha, me happy also. I look your childrens . . . ah cara Linda!" and she cuddled the baby till he squealed with laughter.
I ran for my bicycle and tore off to the post office in the driving rain, and although it was goodbye to my new set I didn't care a jot.
I still had bouts of fisticuffs in church with later additions to the family and a further episode was a case in point.
They were very naughty and impossible and near the end I took them out, gave them a talking to and made them sit outside, where they sat very demurely since they knew they'd gone too far.
I went back into church and bought a little blue book at the repository. I think it's called Mother's Manual.
It's a beautiful book, and if only someone had given it to me fifteen years earlier I might have been top of the pops by then.
As it was, I had to rely on it to aid me in retrieving some of the mistakes I have made hitherto.
It contains beautiful prayers for a handicapped child, a child who is a priest or religious, a child that has passed away - even those of us who have had miscarriages can find consolation in that prayer - a child who is studying, for good companions, for a control of one's temper . . . in fact when I read that bit I felt even more as though this book had been written for me alone.
There is only one thing wrong with that book, though.
It should be called Father and Mother's Manual.
Catherine Nicolette
I don't believe a word of it. I was always an angel as a child . . .
Mother's Manual available from Amazon;
https://www.amazon.com/Mothers-Manual-Francis-Coomes/dp/1929198183
Father's Manual available from Amazon;
https://www.amazon.com/Fathers-Manual-Coomes/dp/1929198205
With thanks to amazon.com
Luky
I THINK THE ONLY WAY TO ATTAIN A REASONABLE STATE OF HAPPINESS IN THIS VALLEY OF TEARS IS TO BE CONTENTED WITH ONE'S LOT.
You may not be the most beautiful, famous, wealthy or accomplished person in the world.
You may not be regarded with any degree of awe by those who live around you.
But if you love your husband, your children, the dog, the cat, your home and your furniture, the sun will shine for you every day.
I always find great contentment in my lot, and that annoys the moaning Minnies of my acquaintances.
"Don't be so sanctimonious", they say. "It turns us off."
What I feel like replying, but don't, is simply:"Well, if I had a jaundiced outlook like yours, I wouldn't find life worth the living."
Green-eyed monster
Envy is a great disturber of inner peace. It's not a vice I have very great trouble with.
Only once did I experience a tremendous attack of it.
One of my friends was building a house. She had subcontracted, and for nearly a year she was busy.
The house was worth every bit of the effort it had cost her.
It gleamed like a jewel - the carpets, the curtains, the kitchen, everything was lovely.
I walked from room to room, my mouth open with admiration. Suddenly we came upon a hole in the wall.
"What's that for?" I asked.
My friend giggled. "It's for a safe for my diamonds."
At that moment I felt an indescribable pang of envy. What a dreadful, horrible emotion jealousy is.
I couldn't stand the thought of my friend's having that beautiful home as well as the diamonds.
Odd, isn't it, since I'm not all that keen on jewellery.
Came out with it
I felt that the only way to rid myself of that suffocating emotion was to vent it.
"I could die from jealousy right now", I said quietly to my friend.
She could tell that I meant it.
"Don't be silly", she laughed. "I haven't really got diamonds. I was only pulling your leg."
"That's not the point", I argued. "If you had diamonds they'd belong to you, so why should I feel bad about it? Forgive me for begrudging you your good fortune."
That was the end of my spiteful jealousy, I'm glad to say.
Pitiable
I sometimes feel others might be envious of me, and that always amazes me, because if I were anybody by myself, I certainly wouldn't envy me with my bagful of problems.
And it's not as though I own diamonds. Yet remembering that horrible sensation only too well, I pity anyone beset by jealousy.
My eldest daughter seems to have inherited my inner contentment. A conversation she had when she was nineteen went something like this:
"Gosh, Whittle", a fellow employee remarked, "I can't understand your staying with your parents when you could be free from such authority in your own accommodation.
"You share your bedroom with your sisters, you have to obey your father, you give him sixty rands a month while you'd only pay forty-five here . . . I simply don't understand you."
Nothing to do
"I like it at home", my daughter shrugged. "When I spent a few months at the hostel I nearly died of boredom.
In our house there are people messing, arguing and building in every room of the house.
"There's a radio on in one room, the TV in the other, and we have a garden with a dog and a cat if the noise inside gets too much.
"My father lets me use his car any time I want to go somewhere. He paid for the car and still pays for the petrol, repairs, third party and licence.
"I don't buy toothpaste, soap, shampoo, shoe polish. I'm saving for an oversease trip next hear. If I stayed at the hostel I'd never be able to afford that.
"We're going on holiday soon. I just get into the car with my clobber, my dad sees to the rest. I'd be a fool to move from home."
Pop-up refuge
"But good heavens, don't you every fight with your parents?"
"Well, sometimes they fight with me, but then I submerge until they get over it, and I've found they regain their tempers as quickly as they lose them."
Good for my daughter, I say. I certainly didn't possess that outlook when I was her age, neither did my husband.
But we both found that though you may have freedom, when you're on your own, you also have a lot of responsibility you don't carry while living with your parents.
Never lonely
Before my younger sister's marriage, she was often asked why she stayed with my mother instead of moving out on her own.
"Why should my mom be lonely in a flat at one end of Johannesburg, and I be lonely in another?" she replied.
"I pay the rent, my mom pays for the food. I buy the materials, she makes the clothes. We're happy."
It makes sense, and it all boils down to inner contentment.
The best way to find happiness is, to be satisfied with the ordinary, everyday things you don't read about in magazines, but which are the yeast of life's dough.
Catherine Nicolette
Those were the days. How well I had it made. I moved out of home at age twenty-one to follow the ministry and Charity path.
I look back to the days at home with fondness.
I've had a wonderful life, met wonderful people and seen magnificent countries.
But there was something uniquely special about Casa Whittle with parents, kids, neighbourhood scallywags, dogs and cats chasing in and out of the rooms until nightfall eventually bought peace and quiet; and one or two snores.
If I had the opportunity to get the financial benefits I then enjoyed for sixty rand I'd snatch the contract out of the offerer's hand so fast they wouldn't see the ink drying on the signature before they received it back . . .
Luky
ONE OF MY COLLEAGUES HAD A PETER DE VRIES QUOTATION ON HER PINBOARD WHICH ALWAYS GAVE ME FOOD FOR THOUGHT.
It read; "Which of us it mature enough to have children before the children themselves arrive?
The value of marriage is not that adults conceive children but that children turn children into adults."
Every parent of more than one child at times experiences that sense of wonderment.
How can these children all look different, be different, while they had the same parents, background, home, school and were taken to the same church?
Some children are born mature. One minute you are changing their nappies.
The next day they are taking burdens off your shoulders. My youngest child is like that.
She gives a lot of love. When you explain where she has erred, she tries to make amends.
Although my husband and I were aged 27 and 20 when our eldest child was born, we were 43 and 36 when the youngest came along, so she has always had elderly parents.
If this fact ever embarrassed her, she never betrayed it.
She is particularly fond of me because - she says - I provided her with comfortable lodging for nine months.
She says I'm not fat, just well-built. She says my wrinkles don't betray my age but the laughter lines left by a great sense of humour.
I get a lot of comfort from my lastborn.
One time I asked her middle sister to tape a movie for me on M-net.
"Mom", she said, "I saw it and I know you. You won't like it. There are parts in it you'd consider vulgar."
"Right," I said. I hate vulgarity in books and on TV. I feel sometimes one is vulgar because it slips out and you can't take your words back.
But to be vulgar, obscene or blasphemous in print or on screen is to my mind being so on purpose and an act of insolence against the Creator who gave us our writing or acting talents to use for good.
That night I came home. My youngest said: "You'll be glad to hear I taped that movie for you and I censored all the rude parts."
"But it's you I don't want to see the rude parts," I objected.
"I didn't," she explained. "Each time they got that certain look on their faces, I blanked out for a couple of minutes.
What was left I'm sure you'll enjoy. And when they seemed to be saying something rude, I turned the sound off."
So who's educating whom? It seems you don't have to be an adult to be loaded with common sense.
Catherine Nicolette
Censorship. Ah, what a fine concept. I grew up in the generation that was still somewhat sheltered [as Dad put it] from the full blast of the world.
That meant that when I was four and walking with Dad past a pub he placed his hand over my eyes as we looked in at the door.
I caught a glimpse of the fresco on the wall he was attempting to shield my sight from.
To this day I am still somewhat bemused by the painting of a scantily clad young lady with horns and a tail.
Mary Whitehouse
Mary Whitehouse was the watchword of my parents' generation. She was either admired or vilified.
In Casa Whittle, Dad was all for Mary Whitehouse. And Mom said, what was good enough for Mary Whitehouse was good enough for her.
So we [the pre-TV generation] had our radio rationed to Squad Cars on Wednesdays I think it was; and Taxi on Saturdays.
On Sundays we could listen to the Silver Hour, or holy music as we called it.
We were slightly bitter about this, because all the kids in our classes used to talk learnedly about other radio shows. Of which we knew nothing.
Not that we were going to let them know it.
Television advent
Then came the advent of television. The cables were laid, Dad bought a TV out of the box, and we awaited the breathless day.
Our first television show, and we wanted to be hooked. We pleaded to be hooked.
We intended to be hooked. But no go.
We were allowed one wholesome show a week.
We were always allowed to watch David Attenborough's documentaries. I'll never forget his luminous show on Borneo.
If I'm right they had bats in caves. And he stood on cave floors littered with guano. But I digress.
Cliffhanger
When Dallas came along I remember the girls at school told me there was a cliffhanger scene.
The Whittle children must have been the only ones who did not scramble home to see what happened.
On the Monday afterwards, I remember my class excitedly chattering about the denouement.
"So what did you think, Nikki? Did you ever guess it was her?"
"I never had an idea", I answered quite truthfully. To be honest, I still don't. . .
Once a week
To ensure we stuck to the once a week rule [after we had done all our homework, fulfilled all our chores and generally been good children] Dad had locked the television away in an upstairs cupboard and took the key to work with him.
Our plan to sneak peak at a television show was foiled.
Unfettered childhood
The idea - as Dad and Mom patiently explained to our openly rebellious faces - was to allow us to live an unfettered childhood.
Free, carefree, and out in the fresh air. And to allow us to develop our own original thoughts and personality without outside influences.
We didn't want free, carefree or unfettered. We didn't want originality. We wanted to be in front of the box, watching and enjoying.
Cautious reading matter
Added to the list, was the fact that in the local cafes certain magazines had to be carefully covered, and then wrapped in a dust jacket.
And placed on the top shelf of the local supermarket where no kids could accidentally get their hands on them.
So we feasted on reading the Archie comics, the Beano, and on religious comic series.
All children's eye-level stuff in the local cafe where the Greek owner used to let us sit at a table in the corner, sip cooldrinks and read to our heart's content for no charge.
Thank you, Mr Pitsilides RIP. We will never forget your kindness.
Social butterfly
The fact that we never had television led us to enjoy very busy work and social lives.
We had to develop social skills in sheer self-defence or out of boredom.
I have a great network of friends that I am always trying to keep up with.
I just don't have time for television. Which brings me to my point.
Recently I was in the vicinity of a television. While I was waiting, I watched the screen. I was amazed to witness semi nudity, wandering hands and strong language in a daytime show.
All of which made me very thoughtful. Perhaps Dad and Mary Whitehouse had given me a gift by giving me blissful years of unworried childhood.
It seems I am not alone.
Apparently the luminous Julie Walters agrees with campaigner Whitehouse's fights against on-screen obscenity . . . [1]
[1] Mary Whitehouse was right to try to clean up TV after all, says Julie Walters: Actress praises strait-laced campaigner and her fight against on-screen obscenity, Alleged News
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2861552/Mary-Whitehouse-right-try-clean-TV-says-Julie-Walters-Actress-praises-straight-laced-campaigner-fight-against-screen-obscenity.html
With thanks to dailymail.co.uk
Catherine Nicolette
There is no doubt that my generation was exposed to the mantra of 'you can have it all'.
In my fifties now, I look back and see a lot that I did not see in my younger days.
The message of 'you can have it all' and 'you need to work, because that is where you will find your freedom' were familiar to me.
Tied to work
In the past few decades I have seen situations that may apparently reflect results of the movement for individual self-expression and freedom.
A young woman stood at work and anguished, wept. She had not seen her recently born baby for many hours, and had been unable to feed her baby.
She had a painful bosom leaking much-needed milk, a work schedule that would stretch out for some hours yet.
She wept out her distress at not being home with her baby, able to feed on demand.
She wept because she missed her little girl, and because she did not know how her daughter was faring in her absence.
She wept because she was exhausted, still recovering post-delivery, and had to work for some hours still.
At the end of her tears, the women in her vicinity sympathized as they, too, had experienced the same predicament.
Physical relationship without responsibility
Many men no longer appear to regard dating as a time of courtship to get to know one another with an eye to a permanent relationship.
Instead dating appears for many to mean instant physical relationship 'with no strings attached'. One young girl, pregnant after giving her heart and body to the man she loved, rang to tell him her news.
The answer she got was apparently 'you know what to do'. Thereafter, the secretary was directed not to accept any more of her calls.
This young woman, loving and caring, was thus faced with carrying on with her pregnancy alone while studying in college.
The man she loved had let her down, and, when the gift of the child he had given her had become apparent, discarded both her and his child.
'You know what to do' has led many a grieving young mother to consider termination out of fear and lack of support.
It is challenging to be a single parent - not least because the child needs round the clock care, as well as an income.
Trying to parent, alone, as well as bring home the income - it's not easy.
Single tears
Moms who have accepted the child or children who do not have a supportive father, overnight become wedded to their work and home responsibilities.
While the mom is at work, young children can often run slightly wild.
Parenting skills slip when you are alone, tired, and don't know if you are going to make the month's bills.
The single mom who has no one to cuddle her when she's lonely, or to bring in money to pay the bills while she cares for the children, can find this situation a difficult road indeed.
The true 'having it all'
Within the last number of years I met with a group of people who have never given way on this issue.
The men are the main breadwinners. Sometimes the wives go to a part time job - but not during the child rearing years.
The grandparents traditionally do not go to a nursing home facility, but are cared for within the family.
If nursing is needed, the family members undergo training by the local hospital to equip them with the skills they need to nurse their relatives at home.
Becoming engaged is a big deal. Both families have to meet up and discuss whether their offspring are indeed a good match, and whether their families are compatible.
The young men have to have completed their educational qualifications before thinking of marriage.
The young women likewise.
No dating is allowed at all, until they have finished their studies. Then, and only then, may they date - with the grandparents along as chaperones.
Engagements are celebrated with a massive party - the entire village community attending to wish the couple, and bringing gifts for the intended marriage.
Newly married couples are given a village house by their families as their dowry.
This means that the couple start their married life in a settled home, with all the accoutrements for a well equipped house and kitchen.
The rate of divorce? Nil.
The amount of freedom the individual woman has? She has to wear modest clothing. She can't go to the store without telling her husband where she is going.
Often he will tell her she can't go unaccompanied - and takes her there. Sometimes holding her hand quietly along the way.
She travels safely. She returns safely.
The women and girls wash the clothes. The men and boys dig the gardens.
The women nurture the children. The men discipline and accompany the older boys.
The girls are taught to cook and clean and sew. The boys are taught to fix the car and carry heavy items.
The end result? Happiness.
This all made me very thoughtful. The village lifestyle is the same one I lived in as a young child, just before the revolution of independence and intimacy freedom swept through my generation.
At that time, no child in my class had divorced parents. So every child knew, at the end of the day, they would be going home to a settled background.
This had a stabilizing effect on us.
My vote?
It is essential that women have an excellent education, and the chance to use it.
It is also true, as I have been told by a very wise guru, that everything has its price.
If you love someone and marry them, you give up the individual freedom you once had.
But you gain love and a companion for life.
If you choose to parent your child at home while your partner works, you lose the extra income that makes life easier and small luxuries affordable.
But you bring up a balanced and happy child, who can tolerate self-discipline because of the parenting at home.
If you choose to have an intimate relationship as a man with a woman and she becomes pregnant, you lose your bachelor independence.
But you gain a true companion's love for life, and a beautiful child that has half your genes.
You become a father.
If you choose to place your feet on the ministerial path because of the call from God you experienced, sometimes a family of your own is not part of God's Plan.
But you gain a bigger family - the family of God - and the joy of the privilege of ministry.
So; I believe that in order to 'have it all' - as the wise guru told me; you have to give something up . . .
Maturity means the ability to accept that everything in life has its price.
What made me think of this? An article I found thought-provoking, at the following link; [1]
[1] How the book that sold women the myth of 'having it all' was dreamt up by a MAN: 50 years on, a savagely ironic revelation about the Cosmo editor's book that sparked a sexual and social revolution; Alleged News
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3550973/How-book-sold-women-myth-having-dreamt-man-50-years-savagely-ironic-revelation-Cosmo-editor-s-book-sparked-sexual-social-revolution.html
With thanks to dailymail.co.uk
