dead horse

One summer day when my daughter was 4(?) years old, we visited a canyon in Utah. It's a deep rugged canyon with impressive views, not unlike the better known Grand Canyon farther south. Along the rim there was a walk that was bounded by a stone wall about one foot tall. On the far side of that wall the zig-zag edge of the canyon dropped steeply away for over 1000 feet. In the center of the overlook point was a raised wooden observation deck, not much different than the sort of large deck you see tacked onto so many suburban homes. My friend directed her three children there and told them this was a dangerous place and that they could only view the canyon from the deck. I thought that was silly. The deck was not very tall and quite removed from the canyon's rim. I did not want to cause any great tension between my friend and I, or her children and mine, but I hadn't driven cross-country to this beautiful place just to view it from the distance of a paranoid's safety spot. And so, my daughter and I began to walk the perimeter sidewalk. That's when the trouble began.

My daughter wanted to walk on top of the wall so she could see down into the canyon better. Given her shorter height, I thought her request reasonable, and so I helped her climb up. I took her hand and we resumed walking. True to form, this was not good enough. She quickly decided that she wanted to walk on the bit of land on the far side of the wall, at the canyon's very edge. I said, "No". And that's when her fire and determination began to blossom. It was like waving the red flag in front of a bull.

I wasn't truly fearful that she'd fall off the edge and die but it was certainly a possibility. My main reason for saying "no" was that I am into obeying rules. And the wall, to me, seemed to imply a rule - "do your walking on the the sidewalk". I mean, good grief! What the hell was her problem??? She was getting to do and experience far more than the other children, why couldn't that be enough??? Of all the visitors there, NO one else was over the wall.

She became angry and very determined. At first she thought she could talk me into it, and so her pleading escalated as did my explanations and refusals. Eventually she realized that I was remaining firm. And that's when she physically committed to defying me. Quickly it became a situation in which if I let go of her hand, anything was possible, including a plung over the edge to her death. I swear I am not exaggerating. I believed that in her fury she might push off of me and blindly lunge out onto the ragged gravely edge, and slip or trip. If she was calm, her walking that edge would likely not have caused me fear, but we were far beyond any possibility of that now. I pulled her off the wall and began walking toward the parking lot. She yelled and thrashed wildly the whole way. It was highly embarrassing. She even bit a hole in my t-shirt. I solidly held onto her arm and continued to embrace her at the car until she had cried it out.

When my friend joined us, she suggested that I perhaps could have "modeled" better. She was suggesting that I had caused or inflammed the situation, that I should have remained a model of calm and quiet, and that my daughter would have followed suit. I was deeply hurt. I felt victimized by my daugther's personality and criticized by my friend. To this day I still do not believe that there was anything I could have done differently to avoid the confrontation. Well, other than allow her to completely have her way. Oh but then we must play the "what if" game. What if I had let her walk on the outside? What if there'd been an accident? Wouldn't I have then been accused of being negligent?

Although I still resent my friend's suggestion in that circumstance, I do appreciate exposure to the idea of modeling. And I guess you could say the concept imprinted strongly on my mind as a result of the situation's emotionality. All these years later it still pops up for me especially when I am pressured as in a no-win situation. I am aware that it is not simply about figuring out what's right or what will work here, but also what is the optimal behavior to model. For better or worse, it adds a sort of a "who's watching" overlayer.

There are quite a few young people in my life, in their late teens and early 20s. What am I modeling for them? Is what I do and how I live impressing them? Am I the poster child for living a lie? a tired slack middle aged woman? Or am I boldly balancing an emerging eternal me with the present incarnation? I and everyone around me knows that I am changing, slowly but surely. And I think, my movement is in a healthier direction. I often wonder what the kids are taking away from the changes they are seeing in me.

In the past few years I've learned alot, struggled with my own personality and come to understand much about the dynamics that shaped me and my relationships. One thing is clear. I have a tendancy to take responsibility for things outside my control, to bust ass trying to prevent inevitable train-wrecks, often ignoring my own needs in the process. It's not so much that I've only now recognizied this fact, cause actually it was always painfully obvious :( However, what's new for me, is that I've grown to be comfortable with the fact that I don't have to do such things. I'm not as compelled to take up every cross I see. The bitch now though is knowing where to draw the line, when to speak up, when to walk away.

And in that regard, I've been sitting at a marriage crossroads for some time now. I've little hope that my husband is capable of mustering enough substantive change to ever engage my heart again. However, I am still hopelessly in love with my dtr. And I'm not sure which path to take. End the marriage? OR Continue to change myself and assert a gradual pressure on everyone from within it?

I believe that my daughter and I are together for a reason and that I've learned much from our relationship. However, she is still knee jerk fighting, same as the day she was born, blindly marching through life, damn the consequences. And perhaps that is how it should be for her right now. But what if there were some influence I could swing at this time, some mode of living I could model that'd be optimal, something on my part that could bring us both to a higher purpose?
How will my next move or non-move affect her? What's best, what's right, for her, for me....
- a model of compassion? and patience? or have I taken that road too far already?
- a model of healthy respect for myself? of personal independence? but where's the line? when to say when? the freedoms I've taken so far feel downright addictive. How will I know when I've reached enough?

What are the potentials? How much is possible?

How do we get to - and everyone lives happily ever after?
Oh wait, stupid question, right? That's fiction, unrealstic.

The given is that this is another no-win sitation that I am tasked to learn from;
and her job is to make it as tough as possible on me.
Yep, that's it. No doubt.
Damn it all. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!


Ok well, writing about it didn't resolve anything for me, as I'd hoped it would; posting it probably won't either,
but it's been on my mind so, blog this, whatever!