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Fighting For Sanity

~ counsellor, mindful, single parent of 4 men

Fighting For Sanity

Tag Archives: parents

Food as Memory

10 Sun May 2020

Posted by Catriona in childhood

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food, grandparents, memory, parents

I was going to have a stab at my self-development essay but this is what springs to mind. If we consider Maslow’s hierarchy of needs then food is on almost every level. At the lowest, food is a basic necessity to keep us alive and there may be little pleasure in subsistence eating. The further up we go the more it can become about the pleasure of eating good food whether alone or with others. We may enjoy and/or share the preparation. It may be symbolic of belonging to a culture or faith, cooked and eaten as part of a ritual, or simply a birthday cake.

We have hang ups about our food. We may always clean our plate through fear of whether there will be a next meal. We may rush our food because someone else might take it. We may crave certain foods because we never had them as a child. There may have been forbidden foods due to parents’ culture or for health reasons. Attitudes to food vary across cultures and continents and between families. Books have been, and will continue to be written that explore our complex relationship with food.

All of which is a lengthy introduction to my food memories.

My paternal grandmother baked her own bread. The anticipation, as a child, of waking up in her house to the smell of home-made bread, and bacon that would go under the grill once I got out of bed spurred me to get dressed quickly. My mouth waters at the very thought. Wensleydale cheese was always present and went very nicely on her bread too. She was a good plain cook who didn’t make a fuss about food but just got on with it. I loved her steak and kidney pie or pudding, although I wouldn’t normally eat kidneys but not much else sticks in the memory. She made chocolate fridge cake which my children still love and what is now called millionaire’s shortbread. She was very un-snobbish about food. We would always visit the fish and chip shop and it was way into my teenage years by the time they replaced the fish counter that my father couldn’t see above as a child. Being in Yorkshire, it was all cooked in beef fat and there were scraps (or bits, depending on where you’re from). We would also walk down to the local ice cream dairy and get slabs of vanilla ice cream that we would eat between wafers or occasionally a cornet but the pleasure was in walking slowly back home, enjoying our ice cream and joint pleasure in it. We’d also enjoy eating them in cold weather (which made them last longer) and watching passers-by express surprise in their faces as they saw us. We did drink tea by the gallon and it would take me several weeks after a holiday  to return to merely drinking it by the pint. She would always have a small jar full of Midget Gems, a chewy fruit gum, that she didn’t mind me enjoying even when I didn’t have a tickle at the back of my throat.

From Yorkshire we travel to the south of France for a very different attitude to food from my maternal grandmother. She grew most of her own food, pretty much everything she could to supplement a small  pension and I learned to enjoy simple fresh food that was grown under perfect conditions. We got baguettes from the local bakery which made the best crunchy, chewy holey baguettes (and occasionally burnt) and croissants or pain au chocolat on Sundays. That was breakfast and when I was very small I would bring people breakfast in bed. Then, if I wasn’t paying attention, sometime between 10 and 11am my grandmother would cry out that she was feeling faint and needed help so I would go and pour out the white wine and we would have a glass or two while finishing off the morning chores and getting lunch ready. Lunch would be tomato salad, with “our friend Basil” if he was growing well, another salad, fresh bread, cheese, pate, rillettes and the much loved saucisson. It was a table spread full of ordinary local food that tasted fantastic. Unless too hot we would always start with my soup as my grandmother made the best, sometimes with vegetables going from earth to saucepan in a very short space of time but always with a lusciousness that attests the quality of home grown ingredients. Dinner would be much of the same, or especial favourites like black pudding (boudin noir), green beans and scrambled eggs. She wasn’t much of a meat eater and would only cook it if we were there. We drank red wine with our meals that came from the farm across the road who only made enough for themselves and a few neighbours. It varied in quality from rough to vinegar but it was what we drank. I remember as a child the price going up to a franc per litre and becoming aware of inflation. They would also bring over an occasional rabbit, skinned, considering my grandmother a softie for asking them to cut the head off first. If corn was being grown (for the cattle, not for humans) we would ask permission, get everything ready and then go and choose our own cobs, getting them into a pan to cook as fast as we could. We would spend hours round the table, sitting, chatting, drinking, discussing everything. Food was important to plan for as my grandmother was used to a visiting van which diminished from twice a week to once a fortnight and there were no shops within walking distance so we would consider food markets and supermarket trips a necessity of any holiday that would also help her stock up. We would have one gourmet meal out each holiday that may involve confit, magret, foie gras, rognons but we would also go out for more ordinary meals (although in that region, no food is ordinary) and go to Routier cafes where you get whatever they are cooking and one hotel restaurant we went to each year for the best cream of mushroom sauce ever until the proprietors died. Food was hugely important but it was part of life, interwoven with daily habits and views. Living in the agricultural countryside meant being aware of the rhythm of the seasons and growing your own food gave that personal and practical insight and awareness. A favourite book of my grandmother’s, Philip Oyler’s The Generous Earth, puts all this perfectly.

And so to my parents. All of I sudden I don’t want to write any more. They were fussy about food, talking about it at length. They liked European and Mediterranean/North African food and still do. They were adventurous within quite those quite limited boundaries. There were childish foods that were frowned on, like mashed potato, ice cream other than “adult” flavours of pistachio and coffee, junk food such as fish fingers, burgers take away pizzas etc. Having said that my mother and I used to have Toast Toppers for lunch. My father loved lemon so lemon sorbet, lemon tart, lemon anything was always good. We would have Chinese, kebabs or Indian takeaway, and of course fish and chips. If we had roast my father would say two helpings of meat is enough and then sit and pick at the joint for himself which I always felt very unfair. I could fill up on potatoes and veg, not him. He would always assume that if he was full, we would all be full and was at times amazed if one of us was still hungry. Mostly we talked or sat in silence and sometimes they did the crossword and I read a book. I learned to eat quickly and quietly and to not complain if I didn’t much like it. They taught me to value good food, whether it’s fancy or plain, to look at the quality of ingredients rather than the number of them. She did host dinner parties and I would always help, eventually being left to make pudding by myself and it was always my responsibility to set a nice table. After a supermarket shop my mother would at times treat me to a fast food burger and chips whilst staring at me in surprise that I took pleasure in eating it. I cannot actually think of dishes that my mother cooked that bring up the warm memories that I describe above from my grandmothers. I remember lemon meringue pie, crumbles, bolognese, cottage pies, roasts and later cassoulet, waterzooi but very few specific dishes and she made an enormous variety. That says something.

What have I retained; what have I passed on to my children?

I had joy in cooking until I had to do it every day for a variety of taste buds and lost it. Now I rarely spend more than 30 minutes preparing a meal) but I try to pay attention to what I want to eat and what I like, rather than what I feel I should. There are foodstuffs from my childhood that I absolutely yearn for, and others I am happy to have let go of.

I feel that food is the one area that I completely blew with my children although they are now making better food choices. My eldest enjoys cooking and experimenting. The second is not particularly bothered as long as there’s plenty of chocolate in some form and a minimal amount of veg. The third has more of an adult palate and shares my joy of salad, as long as there is feta. My youngest eating is very limited and he will get very stubborn about not eating foods he doesn’t like, which includes all fruit and veg. And yet he still grows.

I suppose what I have taught my children most food-wise, is that they are allowed to choose, to refuse, to like different things, to not clear their plate, to eat between meals, to have pizza for breakfast and muesli for dinner. I encourage them to try different/new foods/dishes but I don’t force it. I think they all recognise the difference between eating food as fuel because you’re hungry and eating something that gives pleasure to the senses as well. Between us as a family we eat chips with mayonnaise, ketchup, or vinegar, but never a mix.

Are My Parents Racist?*

08 Wed May 2019

Posted by Catriona in diary, parents

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parents, privilege, racism, white

  • My parents happily vanished next door to the Pakistani family when they were infrequently invited to enjoy a good meal and for the neighbours to show how modern they were by letting my mother sit with the menfolk with tumblers full of whisky she felt duty bound to drink. They never came to our house. I recall no real interaction other than these meals.
  • When my sister brought back a boyfriend from university, who happened to be Asian, I overheard them wondering what colour the babies might be. And no, she wasn’t pregnant. This is the only time I can pinpoint a memory of a person walking through our front door who isn’t white.
  • We spent a few days with German friends in Germany. After we returned home my parents sat at the dinner table making stupid German jokes (about keep things in order, that sort of thing). It was one of the very few times I felt able to stand up to them and say that given the nice time we had how utterly insulting this mockery was and I actually said that if they couldn’t behave themselves I would go and eat elsewhere. They subsided into shocked silence. I probably managed it because it wasn’t about me.
  • My parents think all Americans are uncultured. Nothing good has come out of the USA. This despite my father’s favourite novelist being Raymond Chandler, as American as apple pie and my mother enjoying a long list of Hollywood films. I might agree with them on the cultural value of McDonald or Coca-Cola but they do not fully represent America.
  • They have always valued and prized the Middle East and were fortunate enough to visit Syria before it fell apart. They admire the history, the science, the intellect, the architecture and art. They enjoyed the holidays they have taken but did not notice the “now”; they could not tell me anything about the man on the street, let alone the women.
  • They like certain groups of foreign people because they have great food and nice restaurants. Whether they like them beyond that I am not sure.

I should add that my father has visited more countries in his life than not so he has been exposed to different cultures the world over, although maybe (probably) with a lack of engagement with the ordinary person.

It was not until I started listing these few memories out that I realised that my parents, as far as I can remember, have never discussed black people. Certainly not as friends, nor as part of a history of colonialism and absolutely not as people with their own history and culture. Africa interests them not at all, except for the Mediterranean part. My mother did once point out to me that my grandmother had lived in South Africa for a while and that is why she took such an interest in the plight of black South Africans, as if no other reason was possible.

The world seems to divide up into the interesting bits: Europe, with Italy and the Med the favourites, continental Africa and the Middle East as good, and the rest full of uncultured people (Americans and Australians and no doubt other countries not beginning with A) or some sort of blank, not worthy of consideration.

My son suggested that they were generationally racist, in that they aren’t really racist, they simply talk that way, in the way their generation do. I do not think this is true. I think my father is hugely an intellectual snob which he interprets in a racist manner.

* <tl;dr> of course they are – they’re white, as are my entire family, so we are all racist, whether we admit it or not.

I have always tried not to be overtly racist, in words and deeds. I am currently trying to grow my awareness of institutional racism, not as something that merely belongs to organisations but that is embedded in all aspects of this country, from who runs it down to personal white privilege. In this sense a country is a giant institution and granting easier access and progress to whites is built in to every aspect. I have not had to give this much thought in my life, which is itself a privilege.

Today I got out of my car in my road and was greeted by name by my local police officer, out on patrol. We had a nice generic chat about the neighbourhood and what was going on and she pedalled off. I didn’t worry what questions she would ask me, whether she would want to frisk me, search my car or ask me anything too personal. I felt not one jot of anxiety. I was aware, during this perfectly innocuous conversation that it would probably have been different had I been black. I would probably not have known her. She would probably not have known my name. I wouldn’t have already interacted with my local police from the point of view of a community organiser. I would of course hope that this particular officer wouldn’t treat a black person differently. But I have that hope because I am white.

 

Feeling Vulnerable

16 Fri Nov 2018

Posted by Catriona in diary

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bullying, parents, passive-aggressive, peers, priest, sister, suicide, teachers, vulnerable

child coweringI went *there* in triads this week. I didn’t want to but felt that there is little else on my mind. It started off being a conversation about a running slanging match I’m trying not to have with someone via work. His aggressive hectoring attitude makes me feel small and insignificant so I have responded totally unprofessionally by running away and ignoring him. This has naturally made me think about the bigger picture and I chose to go there. In some ways I think the last three years of counselling has been about getting me to go there.

I don’t deal well with hectoring bullies. The last time I had to was about ten years ago and that time I did go to pieces and struggled to get back. This time I felt more that I knew what I was running away from and why.

My father bullied my mother. Not in an overt domestic abuse type of way, but in a very passive-aggressive manner that said “if you don’t make things happen how I want them to happen then I will not be happy and if I’m not going to be happy then no one else in this household is going to be remotely happy”. No pressure.

I’m not sure I’ve ever called it bullying before.

My peers bullied me at school, both primary and secondary. Catherine started it, the American who had enjoyed (I think) the position of being the only foreigner and maybe I threatened her status. What did it involve? I struggle to recollect. There was lining up for the school bus home and being accused of queue jumping, no matter how long I’d been there. I’d have to let her and her little friends in or else. It was whispers, words spread, that I smelt, or was dirty, or was mean. I really struggle to put words to it.

The local priest (Roman Catholic) bullied me at school. I was the only one in the year who was not preparing for my First Communion. The priest took us for RE, which was probably more Religious Instruction than Education. He belittled me for only being a Protestant and I was thankful that my parents hadn’t been honest and put me down as an atheist. He tried to convert me, almost by force, and it failed. We also had to go to confession after our First Communion and once a fortnight we would spend the afternoon in church taking it in turns to confess. As a Protestant I didn’t have to confess but I did have to spend two or three hours contemplating my sins and my inadequacies of not being a good Catholic, sitting in a dull and dreary church with nothing to do.

My French teacher bullied me at secondary school. Mme Van De Steen didn’t like foreigners. I never knew whether it was just the English speaking foreigners or all of them (I did meet an American who had also suffered at her hands who had somehow managed to resolve it). It didn’t much matter. She told me she would make me repeat the year if I didn’t buck up and then she would sit there and not help me. We would go through exam papers and review the answer and she would pick me out to answer a question I hadn’t been able to answer and still couldn’t and she would mock me for not knowing. I expect my French was better than her English but that wasn’t the point.

My sister bullied me in a passive-aggressive way. One-upmanship. She needed to put me down in order to feel better about herself. This went on well into her thirties, if not forties. What hurt with her is that my mother used to be very aware of it and would thank me for not biting back. Then one day she stopped seeing it, as if something had just switched off and she couldn’t any more. I did call her out on it and she just didn’t know what I was talking about.

My first boyfriend made me cry a lot. I honestly have no idea why, just that we’d sit in the pub and I’d spend the evening crying while we were talking. When I did split up with him he then threatened suicide, which is another form of bullying and it took me a year to really split up with him. He didn’t commit suicide.

My second boyfriend had been to Oxford so my dad liked him. He was incredibly sarcastic which was fine up to a point. I was not very nice to him and he was generous. He moved from one side of London to the other so I didn’t have to commute in order to go to college and then I dumped him. But there was an underlying edge to him that wasn’t bullying, more just poking holes at me.

All my subsequent partners followed similar patterns: they would seek to dominate through bullying or passive-aggressive behaviour and just wear me down. They almost succeeded.

 

Outings

17 Tue Jul 2018

Posted by Catriona in daily journal

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inertia, outings, parents, road trips, trips

The blues seems to have gone. I had therapy and went to college to hand over a deposit that for some reason cannot be done online. I thought about doing something nice while I was in town but it was hot and sticky and I really couldn’t be bothered.

We talked about outings. One of the reasons I got a car was so that I could have days out, with or without children.  Places that are 40 minutes drive away are a couple of hours by train so I never went. This hasn’t really happened, other than the one year that 4son and I went to most away games. There are plenty of destinations, like museums, gardens, stately homes etc. let alone the small towns and villages where you can just go for a wander. At the beginning of the holidays I looked at such destinations that were available on the Art Pass but haven’t gone. So why?

My parents are obviously the first things holding me back. Their voice is telling me to plan a day out down to the last detail and you have to get up early to make the most of it and it must include a good walk. None of these are true and I know that.

When I first learned to drive I did drive to parks that are only a few miles away and go and have a walk. I struggled, not being familiar or competent at driving (or parking). I knew that these trips were good for me, both for driving habits and pleasure. But I never quite made it into a weekly habit.

I still don’t feel comfortable about parking and like to research whether there is a car park or whether streets have public parking. I don’t like making quick decisions about parking spaces, especially with traffic behind me. I still think my car is bigger than it is and find it difficult to gauge whether I will fit in a space.

Inertia also stops me. There is always something I can do at home that stops me from having a day out. This is me just making excuses but it’s also why I liked having a course starting at 1pm so it was easier to take a few hours in the morning for me. Of course I don’t have to go for a full day out, just a couple of hours will do.

In other words, I need to just get out and do it. Pick a destination, go, see what happens. I don’t need more of a plan than that. Let’s see what I can do.

The Nub of It

19 Tue Jun 2018

Posted by Catriona in daily journal

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parents, PTSD, stuck, trauma

So I talked to my therapist about the way my parents are filling up my headspace, with the endless dichotomy between trying to engage with them for no positive result and trying to keep my distance, which makes me feel guilty. All contact makes me angry and although the power is diminished from what it was a few years ago, it’s still there and it’s still too strong.

She suggested, and I was so surprised that I didn’t thank her for her honesty, that this was beyond her and that I should look elsewhere for someone practised in resolution of PTSD. She acknowledged that she had faced a similar difficulty with her parents and not been able to resolve it before their death and wished for better for me.

I spent years at the start of counselling wondering whether I “merited” counselling as I hadn’t had a major trauma and it’s taken me a long to accept that my parents’ ongoing treatment of me constitutes trauma of a different kind. I don’t want to have to start with someone else, even if it’s just for this one piece of work I need to do. But I  need to do the work. So I will have to think about it, look at different types of therapy for this, and think about how I discuss this in a phone call.

In the meantime I suggested to my therapist that if trying to go to the heart of it makes us stuck, then let us revert to the other end and try looking at intuitive eating, which was the reason I chose her in the first place.

Housing Benefits Saga

18 Mon Jun 2018

Posted by Catriona in daily journal, personal

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anxiety, benefits, housing benefit, parents

My local councillor offered me an appointment next week to talk to a benefits person about my long going dispute and it scared me. Writing letters is one thing; a face to face is another. I need to do it as I need to get it sorted but this feels like putting my life in someone else’s hands and I don’t like doing it. My anxieties rise to the fore: will they listen, will they answer, will they belittle, will they engage. I feel like I’m going with my begging bowl rather than as a capable adult who just wants some explanations.

It’s not just the six years they investigated either. It’s ongoing as children get older and their status changes. I have no means of checking the figures if they don’t provide them and I feel helpless.

Some aspects of this bizarrely remind me of my feelings towards my parents. You think it is one thing, that happened but is lingering and yet it keeps come back to annoy and each time they don’t respond I feel invisible, ignored and aged about ten.

However, I recognise the need to get it out of my head so, unlike with my parents, I will make the appointment and I will try and resolve it so it stops taking up headspace.

 

 

 

Angry Words

17 Sun Jun 2018

Posted by Catriona in daily journal

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anger, daydream, death, parents, roleplay

After a very peaceful day I have surprised myself by having highly inflamed rant at my parents after they try to stage an “intervention” along with my sisters to ascertain why I’m not as friendly towards them as I should be. I somewhat let rip, telling them how angry they make me and asking what did they do for me, before storming out with a screw you to them. And then I stop daydreaming.

My heart is pounding. Nowhere near as much as if this had really happened but I can feel it. I think about this more and more and don’t really know what to do. If I have words, however calmly, they don’t listen and I get more angry. But the more I don’t say anything the more it angers me anyway.

I debate for a few days over replying to an email from them. How much to say if anything? I put off returning their phone calls and most definitely going to see them. I note when they ring my sisters but not me to pass on news but I don’t look forward to their calls or initiate the call myself.

I have come so far on my journey in the last few years but I don’t know what to do with them. I can’t change how they react; I can only change my attitude but what changes do I make to help me find peace when every contact with them brings me anger. I don’t want to wait until they’re dead for something to shift.

The End Has Come

14 Thu Jun 2018

Posted by Catriona in daily journal

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course, ending, irritation, parents

So, it took a while as one by one we drifted off but we have finished the course. We have submitted our portfolios of work for the Level 3 Certificate in Counselling Skills (person-centred) and we are done.

Well, until our interviews for next year for most of us.

It is sad finishing up but it is a great achievement to finish, considering the attrition rate we had and we did all make friends on faceache.

Most of us went out for a few drinks and then three of us went out for food and we had a jolly evening that was actually quite gentle.

I feel relief that we’re done and that we have our Thursdays back, as well as sadness that we’re done and we have our Thursdays back. But really I overwhelmingly feel proud of us all for finishing, for doing the work, for making friends, for sharing very personal stuff and for entering into the swing of it all.

I was pleased although we were all surprised, to have one last triad considering we didn’t bother last week and took the opportunity after a peer talked about her irritation at her parents to talk about my irritation at mine. They irritate me, but they don’t listen. I may not love them (?) but on some level I still desperately care what they think and have a sliver of hope that one day they’ll pat me on the head and say they’re proud of me. I would like to bin that sliver of hope as it would make life easier.

As my therapist said, my relationship with my parents is not lost in the past of childhood but is still here in the present. The hurt cannot heal while it’s still being generated and I have to learn and to decide how I am to cope with that.

2016, a personal review

02 Mon Jan 2017

Posted by Catriona in children, diary, family, parents

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bombshell, change, changes, competence, development, driving, job, parents, poetry, sons, therapy

I think, as we enter a new year that I’ve come such a long way and yet still have such a long way to go. I wonder if I will ever make it. I’m more aware of the work yet to do and it scares me. Feeling comfortable with who I am sounds so simple and yet so far.

I’m sitting in the pub starting this while listening to Comfortably Numb which is what it takes to start this post I’ve been ruminating over for the last week. I’m finishing it at home the next day.

Whether 2016 has been a good or a bad year for me I really don’t know. I think it has actually been good but I don’t feel it.
Continue reading →

Bad Dreams

02 Thu May 2013

Posted by Catriona in personal

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2sis, acceptance, dream, mind, parents, sleep, subconscious

I thought, this year, and since finishing my last lot of therapy that I had accepted things.

I thought that I had got to a good place where I had thought about all the things my parents, and 2sis, had done to piss me off during my childhood, and that I had come to grips with them. I understood, forgave them and more crucially, stopped worrying about it all.

I was moving on, however slowly. (And about time too!)

My dreams tell me that I clearly haven’t got over it. Over the last few months I’ve dreamed of my parents and my sister more than ever before. I’ve shouted at them, told them what for and broken off relationships. In the latest instalment, I was with 2sis and we came across a limestone wall, limestone that reminded me of my grandmother’s house which 2sis now owns and I burst into tears. Then I woke up.

I don’t like waking up tearful and angry, feeling emotional before I’ve even got out of bed or opened my eyes.

I thought that I had got over the fact that they were never going to understand how much hurt they’d caused me, were never going to apologise or even acknowledge the unhappiness I grew up with. I don’t expect them ever to say something intelligent on the subject, ever. As for 2sis, I haven’t spoken or communicated with her for several years and I think I’ve got used to it.

So why the dreams? Is it just my subconscious come to terms with what my head’s decided? Is it that I’ve accepted all this on some levels but not all the way down and therefore it’s working its way through my mind in my dreams?

I don’t know, and probably never will. I do hope this period doesn’t go on for ever though. It’s ruining my sleep.

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