as a teacher we find it difficult to see a student fall and not get back up. It is also difficult to see them fail and fight to the bitter end in their twisted logic. You yearn for them and their ignorance and pray that they find a way to still want to learn and trust that you know what you're talking about. As a mom who is also a teacher, my one important student did both. It broke my heart as I could do naught but inform her she failed, in her folly and her forced ignorance. It killed me but I had to stand firm and I was ruthless.
It would be unfair of me to rob her of the opportunity to better herself. Most of you would have done things different, I'm sure. No one wants to bring bad news to their little prince's or princess' doorstep. No one wants to discourage their kids and neither do I. Understand that. Inherently, many parents secretly fear their children succeeding them, but ultimately do not give in to their own selfish fear and try to perpetuate them forward. I see things differently than you. It doesn't mean you are wrong, it just means I don't agree and here's why.
I don't want my child representing herself and her environment and community with a failure's attitude. Nor do I want her to misrepresent herself because she has been coddled and lied to her whole life (which she hasn't but you get the point). Today was a harsh day in teaching her and guiding her. She is stubborn and brought to my attention two passages she wrote. I couldn't read them. They made no sense and were riddled with grammar, punctuation, spelling, vernacular and sentence structural failures. Try as I may she wanted nothing to do with fixing these items and it was infested with ignorance. She wanted my opinion. She said. But the truth was she wanted acceptance and unconditional kudos and I couldn't give her that honestly. It's hard being a writer with a kid you have corrupted who looks up to you as her idol who shits on a paper and hands it to you and expects total acceptance because of relativity. She didn't get it. She cried. I felt like shit but stood firm.
The truth is I was insulted. I was insulted she would represent herself in this unfinished manner. She wanted me to approve of her idea, but I found an idea lacking in all the sea of misused adjectives and adverbs and metaphors among the many clerical errors that she is old enough to correct. The vernacular wasn't even up to par for a fourth grade "C" student and it broke my heart. She is trying too hard and didn't finish the work and there was nothing to form an opinion on, but she pushed and defended her words, what few of them had made sense. I tell you this because I want you to know not only am I hard on you all or myself but I am also hard upon her. I expected better from her. There was nothing for her to say but it seemed she wasn't happy with my confused anger and the opinion I had. I questioned her intent in wanting my opinion and challenged her back citing the need of acceptance. We all need it as artists. When we don't get it we go back to the drawing board or we quit. I told her if that was all she had to offer and if she stands on that kind of work and defends it, as she has proved, that she needed to quit and soon. Remarkably I meant it.
No one would be more proud if their child surpassed them in fans and notoriety when it comes to following in their parents footsteps than I would be if she did and succeeded. But she represents herself, we all do and not just herself but me, her future children and spouse/partner, her father (asshole! >cough<) and her environment. It WAS insulting. That she was so blinded by the want of stardom that she failed to see the valid need for improvement and the fact that she deliberately chose to forgo the laws of "writing" and invent her own laws and force them onto a person and hold them hostage. She even told me another person was not pleased and I questioned her, she citing this girl knew so little about writing. She still didn't see how she failed, epicly! If a child of her own age couldn't identify with the material then she had not succeeded in producing anything of use to the world she wants so much to belong to, mine and other writers'. I told her this. I told her if she continued to write for herself alone without having an audience in mind and without a structured and organized plan, then she might as well write her disorganized shit in a journal and never put it to the world. I "banned" her from the kingdom of pens and pencils and paper and ink and paint and crayon. I banished her from my eyes begging her to never bring her teacher another passage.
I don't have a single regret. If she wanted an opinion on an idea, especially an unfinished one, then she should have sounded off the idea, and then I would give an honest opinion and she could write from there in her own words what she expressed and she wanted to convey. A seamstress is designing a dress and her master dressmaker sees her plans and tweaks them with her. Then she goes and sews and builds the dress, always under the watchful eye of her master (until she herself becomes a master) to guide her and help her to produce a worthy gown. But Lobo went and made a train wreck of a dress that didn't fit its customer and was awful and gaudy and had no significant purpose other than to reflect to the world the seamstress had not learned a damn thing and that she did not care what the customer wanted. Then proceeded to tell them they HAD to wear it and that she was appalled and flabbergasted that they would see it as anything but brilliant. They were flawed in her eyes and not her untrained self and her inflated ego. >POP< I burst that bubble and ripped every seam and shredded every bit of stitching and left her there with her heap of disorganized thread and fabric and mess and told her to clean it up.
I'm a cunt ain't I? And keep in mind this is my princess! (Calm down, calm down!) I love her more than life and she is MY GOWN that I present to you and what good of a master dressmaker would I be if I hung and unfinished product in my shop window? Would you buy it? More than likely not. I have an obligation to produce a functioning citizen who represents her culture in her own unique way but within the realm of the laws of her craft. These laws were made by me and other masters who put our time in and by you, the consumer. And I take my job, work, art, motherhood seriously enough to make her see the error of her ways. She wants to quit. I get that. She thinks she has wasted her time, and she has in this moment. But I know she can do better-I have seen it, and I know she has potential, seen that too.
It is up to her. She has to decide her dream is worth fighting for and admit failure (that's the hardest step and the most important) and return to the desktop and the teacher and seek help for where she went wrong. I will gladly open my arms and tell her it's okay as we all have set backs. I will demand truth, honesty and hard work and I will reward it kindly. I asked her what she did with the two papers. She said she destroyed them, shredded them herself (my shredding was metaphorical for those of you lovelies that didn't pick up on that), and upon looking for them, I find she lied to me, again. I feel for her, I confronted her as she again defended herself saying she shredded them in her heart. She didn't (I'm glad), and in a none too motherly tone and more like a school marm from 25th Reich, I told her she will correct them and I will see them again and we will discuss them!
It behooves me. I actually paused this blog tonight to go to the kitchen trash and get the "shredded" articles to rewrite them word for word to present them to her as an assignment to correct as a surprise. But instead found more lies on top of the ones she's been telling me all along and worse, herself. And I have never lied to her, ever...it's true, but she sees the rest of the world and the other hominids doing it all the time to a selfish benefit and gain and sees Honest BAbe struggling and losing most of the time in her honesty and figures it's okay. (She won't even get the BAbe pun because she refuses to learn. She feels it is beneath her to learn and that the things I do just fall out of my ass as gold. She wasn't there when I fell and got up and fell and got up and fell and got up...etc.) So either way, the donkey will drink the water if I have to take her to the sea myself and drown her. If she's lucky, she will die and be reborn again more pleasant. If she's blessed, she will die and come back as another master's daughter/son. But she will take in the water. I wished for a hallmark moment. I wanted to find them shredded and make them whole again and encourage her, but she chooses every time to do things the hard way.
If she wants it she's got it. A fight for her life and her life's work. But I guarantee she won't step out into this world unfinished. She will either be one of the elite and make herself proud or she will decide to become a baker, but I will still love her no matter what she decides and still push her and still be her worst critic until she learns to be that and be her best cheerleader when she succeeds. I can't be naught else...It's been a long and tiring day and will be this night, as I have to force myself to stay up after the sickness that attacked me the last 48. I love you all and her more and hope you understand and respect what I did, even if you don't agree with it...~mobe's love to her all and her all to her loves.
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