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TwitterThis Be The Verse
19 Jul 2011 4 Comments
Do you ever just wonder what the hell you’re doing, parenting children? I do, all the time. I mean, who are these little creatures who rely on me so utterly? How on earth do they think that I possibly know what the hell I’m doing? Because, really? I have no clue.
And I worry, all the time, that I’m fucking them up. I often think of this poem:
This Be The Verse, by Philip Larkin
They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another's throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don't have any kids yourself.
And they look up at me, with those trusting little faces, when I say “Put this ice pack on and it will feel better in the morning” or “Try it this way, darling, and it will work,”
or “Let’s cut your hair and then it won’t be such a tangled mess,” and they believe me. They trust me And that’s sort of incredible. Not sort of. It is. Incredible.
Who the hell thought I could handle this?
Am I the only parent who thinks this way? Because sometimes, this parenthood thing? Freaks me right the fuck out.
4 Comments (+add yours?)
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Jul 19, 2011 @ 14:07:12
I am routinely freaked out by the absolute trust Ally puts in me and how easily I can just make shit up for her to buy. Like Saturday, when I told her “it doesn’t get dark here until LATE, LATE, LATE. Not like at home” when she was freaking out about how I told her we would stay at her cousin’s until it was bedtime and the sun was still out when I wanted to leave. We were in VT. Ya, kid – the sun works differently up here in these, them parts.
Jul 19, 2011 @ 14:35:08
Oh hell yeah…
That sort of trust was one reason I never completed my teaching degree (primary/junior teaching). I helped teach a 1st grade class and got the feeling they’d jump off a bridge if I told them to. That freaked me out big time!
Jul 20, 2011 @ 22:05:28
Similar thoughts cross my mind constantly!
Jul 21, 2011 @ 22:11:15
Love, love the verse!
My 17 year old has gone through some heartbreaking shit and I often wonder what his life would have been like had be been born into a different family. I worry that I took bad parenting advice, that I followed a gut instinct when I should have done things “by the book”. Parenting be hard.