~ Fourteen Going On Forty ~

I’ve been running around all week like a flea in a fit. The youngest son has been home from school, suffering from his allergies, and as any parent knows when a child is sick it creates a ton of extra work. Also…he likes to talk. He’s one of those people who once he gets going on a topic that interests him can ramble on and on, making it hard to get away. So each day, he’s lain on the couch, sneezing, talking, and watching anime, surrounded in a cotton cloud of spent tissues, while I’ve tried to get all the usual stuff done as well as look after the patient. These are the times you need to clone yourself.

I suspect the youngest son has an active mind. The other day he said, “Do you know what I’m looking forward to the most about growing up?” A number of things went through my head like leaving school, independence, money, etc. He said, “I’m looking forward to having rational conversations.” I think my jaw hit the floor. Say what? Yes. He said he gets tired of the ridiculous things his friends say and it drives him crazy. I was amazed by that. I hung off every word my friends said when I was his age like a brainless gibbon. I had no such discernment.

Since he was a tiny child the youngest has always been wise for his age. And decisive. While I’m dithering about on a decision, like what to name a new pet, the youngest son will deliver a verdict immediately. As the years went by, I started to rely on his instantaneous decision making because he always seemed to make the right choice. He’s fourteen and to him things are very clear. It’s a quality I envy at times. To me things are very grey never black and white, however, I may have gotten jaded with time.

Over a month ago, he begged me to take him to an information evening about junior space school. The $10,000 price tag for two weeks at Space Camp didn’t faze him. He negotiated with his father and has started working every weekend with him as a builder’s hand. He’s saving the money steadily. “I want to do this more than I’ve wanted to do anything else in my life,” he told me. I believed him and want to support him in fulfilling his dream in every way that I can. The other day, in a questionnaire for school, he said they asked what he wants to be when he grows up. “I wanted to write astronaut but thought it would sound stupid.” “It’s not stupid to have big dreams,” I told him. “Dream as big as you like and anything is possible.”

I admire him because I know how far he’s come. I guess when you’ve faced death on the operating table at the age of five it changes a person. But the youngest son survived his double bypass open heart surgery, without brain damage or the possible side effects of paediatric heart surgery like emotional/developmental/behavioural difficulties. He came through perhaps a little weaker physically than his peers. Otherwise he is no different except for his high level of intelligence and a well of compassion as deep and wide as Lake Taupo. I would say he’s an extraordinary individual. If anyone could grow up to be an astronaut, it’s him.

I tell friends, “he’s fourteen going on forty” as a way of saying he has an old head on young shoulders. I remember we were driving back from his physiotherapy one afternoon, and the boy racer in the car next to us screeched to a halt half a car’s length over the stop lines on the road. The youngest said, “Why do that? He’s just showing off. It’s silly.” I thought if I closed my eyes that could be my father speaking, you’d never think it was coming from someone nearly eligible to be a boy racer himself.

It’s humbling being a parent. As Kahlil Gibran said in his famous book, The Prophet, your children are not yours, they are the arrows and you are the bow that sends them forth into the world. As a parent you want the best for your children. You create them, raise them, guide them, love them and then you let them go. Yet, with my youngest sometimes I’d swear he’s the one raising me.

What about you, do you know a child who seems far older than their years? Or are you the old soul in your family?

Talk to you later.

Keep creating!

Yvette K. Carol

*

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. ~ Kahlil Gibran

*

Subscribe to my newsletter by emailing me with “Newsletter Subscription” in the subject line to: yvettecarol@hotmail.com

 

 

 

~ HOW TO COPE WITH THE HEAT ~

It’s been an interesting and intense time of late with the higher than usual summer temperatures and the boys becoming fractious towards the end of the holidays. Adolescence has beset the youngest child, and he’s monstrously tired all the time, not only that he lies around complaining about being too hot and too tired. Apparently all he can do is online gaming or binge-watching anime on Netflix. He tries asking for things, like can I bring him a drink or a snack, from the couch. That’s when I growl, and he says, “Okay, I’ll do it” with a groaning voice as if he was dying. I get that the hormones racing through his body are raising his body temperature and that this is our hottest summer, yet there’s a limit to even the most patient parent’s Zen.

“Don’t you feel hot?” asked the youngest child, plaintively.

“Yes,” said I.

“Well, how do you handle it?” he asked.

“I try not to focus on it but put my attention onto other things.”

“Huh?”

The constant baking temperatures test the patience levels. The boys have been grumpy, and they snap back a lot. We have been having difficulty sleeping, though we each sleep with a fan.

An hour after we’d gone to bed last night, a knock sounded at my door. A weary voice on the other side, that wavers these days between high and low as if uncertain where to settle, said, “I’m boiling, I can’t sleep. Can you help?”

I got up and hugged him. It was like hugging an oven. The youngest is having hormonal surges – just as I am each night when menopausal hot flashes wake me up – his body at fourteen-and-a-half is aflame with hormones. I felt sorry for him. We did a few things that helped his core body temperature come down and he could sleep.

As there is some concern about the “heat wave” predicted for New Zealand this weekend, when temperatures may reach 30 degrees, I thought I might share a few tips on cooling down.

“Temperatures nationwide are above normal on Sunday, not just by a few degrees but in many regions by over 10C as air flows from Australia and the sub-tropics combine to move down over parts of New Zealand,” according to NewsHub.

Here are some ways to cope with the heat

Go downstairs to the basement if you have one as they will always be cooler than upstairs.

Have cold baths or showers

Try to avoid getting sunburned during the day.

Close the curtains on the sunny side of the house.

Don’t open windows facing the sun during the day, open them at night once the temperatures come down

Make trays of ice and hold a cube in your mouth.

Drink plenty of water

Drink iced water. Put your water bottle in the freezer until it’s nearly frozen and then take out and once it melts take small sips, it’s effective for bringing body temperature down.

Apply cold packs which are cheaply available from stores like Pak ‘n’ Save

My friend said that they were saving the money to have air conditioning installed. We have air con though I never use it as it’s too expensive to run, but it’s a backup plan if things get desperate. However, if you don’t have air con at home, borrow other peoples. We hang out in the malls, the libraries, the museum, the public places that are air-conditioned during the day to cool down.

As temperatures continue to climb, we must think further ahead. I plan to get a quote for sun awnings off both sides of the house to cover the verandas and also get quotes for wooden shutters for the windows. I hear getting the windows triple glazed is best. Triple glazing keeps the heat out and in winter keeps the heat in, however, that is top dollar.

My youngest tells me, “This results from global warming, the seasons will be more extreme, summers will be hotter and winters will be colder.” Summers are more scorching, I haven’t noticed winters changing overly, although weather has been unpredictable with freak storms, floods, and so on. I remember reading that Europe and America had heat waves last summer. It’s an undeniable fact that conditions are changing, therefore on a global level, we have to find ways of responding to climate change.

On a personal level, there are also many things we can do to embrace change and deal with what is happening positively. I want to think ahead, find solutions for my family, and get on with living life. How about you?

Talk to you later.

Keep on Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

*

The more you accept your life, the more your life improves. ~ Unknown

*

 

Subscribe to my newsletter by emailing me with “Newsletter subscription” in the subject line to: yvettecarol@hotmail.com

~ NEW YEAR’S GREETINGS ~

Happy New Year! My boys and I returned yesterday from our annual holiday with the family in the Coromandel Peninsula. My sister, her kids, son-in-law and grandson, my brother and his partner and youngest son, my eldest with his fiancée and daughter, a niece and my two younger sons gathered to have some family bonding time in mum’s and dad’s old log cabin by the sea, which some family members have been running as an “Air B’nB.”

We arrived in the Coromandel on the 29th, and we were fortunate to spend a week there. Our days comprised sleeping in, eating, talking, making communal meals, and animated discussion how best to spend our day. Usually that involved either going into “town” the little seaside resort township which hosts a few thousand resident population during quiet months swells to 50,000+ over the summer holiday period, to our favourite coffee shop to eat Hash Stacks and sweet treats with good coffee. Or we would swim in the inner harbour where the boys can jump off the bridge at high tide and the beach is a safe place for babies to paddle. Sometimes the boys went to the playground or to play basketball at the park. It was idyllic.

There was my son’s toy poodle, Charlie, to walk in the afternoons. Then we’d drive in convoy down to the surf beach to go body-surfing. Sam-the-man and I swam and spent hours playing Snakes and Ladders on our towelling version of the game. My sweet one and a half year old granddaughter “Bells” loved the beach. She was far more agile this year. She had a real yen for eating sand and munched a good deal of it every visit. We taught her to leap over the waves and to make her first sandcastles.

Then it was home and into the shower. There’s nothing like pitching in with all the other “cooks” in the kitchen to prepare a huge dinner, roast chicken and roast veggies, butter chicken, frittata, mashed potato and salad, with massive desserts of fruit salad with cream, apple crumble, apple cake and ice creams in the cone. While you’re conversing with the others in the kitchen, it’s nice to see other family members reclining on couches reading or having a chat over cards.

The reserve before my parents’ property is a vast bowl shaped green space for game playing and a children’s playground. Throughout the day, our three teenage cousins would disappear to the reserve, to ride the skim board all three at once down the slope like a toboggan, or play ball, or ride the swings, and they would stay out sometimes until after dark and we could hear the yells of the boys reciting raps they’ve memorised all the way from the swings. One dusk, I said to others with me on the veranda, “The boys are down at the swings and I need to call them for dinner.” Then the three people sitting below our tract of land, listening to music on the edge of the reserve, called out, “DINNER!” and the boys heard and started back up the hill. “Thank you!” I called to the helpful strangers. “That’s okay!” They waved back. Such are the way of things when you’re on holiday.

It feels good the way time slows down when you’re on vacation. “I like it because you’re more relaxed,” said my son. I’m sure he doesn’t mind the late bedtimes either, sitting up in the man cave hunched over mobile phones with his cousins, or the snoring until midday. We all had fun. There were no disagreements, the boys didn’t butt heads. I guess they’re growing up. The break was just what I needed. I took a breather and had long conversations with the members of my family. I had bonding time with my granddaughter.

We spent hours together as a family, swimming, walking, eating and playing games. On the night of the 31^st, we watched TV and played cards until 11.30 when we wandered along to the end of the road where we had located the perfect spot to watch the fireworks. At midnight, we gasped and whooped watching the spectacular display of fireworks released from a barge in the middle of the harbour. The bursts of colour against the black Coromandel Ranges were magnificent, and then we swapped hugs and kisses.

2020 has begun. Whatever you aim for in the coming twelve months, I wish you success. From my family to yours, Happy New Year!

Talk to you later.

Keep on Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

*

 

It is not flesh and blood, but the heart which makes us connected. ~ Johann Schiller

*

Subscribe to my newsletter by emailing me with “Newsletter Subscription” in the subject line to: yvettecarol@hotmail.com

~ IWSG: THE SURPRISES ~

It’s time for another group posting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group! Time to release our fears to the world – or offer encouragement to those who are feeling neurotic. If you’d like to join us, click on the tab above and sign up. We post the first Wednesday of every of every month. Every month, the organisers announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG Day post. Remember, the question is optional!!!

OPTIONAL IWSG Day Question: Has your writing ever taken you by surprise? For example, a positive and belated response to a submission you’d forgotten about or an ending you never saw coming?

Writing takes me by surprise all the time, and that’s one of its many charms. It’s a great way to live, trying to catch the muse by the tail as she sails by on the breeze. Then if you’re lucky enough to catch a good story and follow it through into form, you have the joy ‘going along for the ride’ to see where the tale goes.

One thing that never fails to surprise me, is the way story elements you wrote in rough draft six months ago, suddenly make sense when you get to write the end scenes. That’s the fun of being a “pantser” (someone who writes without a plan). You get to feel part of creating something ‘other’ outside of yourself. You are just a cog in the wheel, a part of the story writing process, not the only agent of its creation, and that is a marvellous, magnificent feeling.

Another great surprise along the way has been the relaxation I always feel in being able to wear my pyjamas all day. I’m a full time mum part time writer. The only time I get to myself is at the weekends – while the boys are at their dad’s – and I use all of that time writing. During the weekend, I will not get out of my pyjamas once. I wrap myself up in a dressing gown, grab a hat and a shawl. Bliss.

It used to be, thirty or so years ago, that I would have hankered to get dressed up and go out somewhere. I would’ve looked forward to wearing my latest gear or hair style, to go out doing things with friends, or going to the movies. I’ve found the older I get the more I adore being at home and not going anywhere. It’s liberating not worrying about how I look. To work from home is relaxing, comforting, and it doesn’t cost very much to do.

On the downside, I’ve been surprised to find that being a writer makes for really awkward social conversations. Being a writer is not a conventional job. Whenever I’m at a party and people say, ‘what do you do?’ and they hear my answer, they invariably ask what do you write? Where do you sell your books? Are you in the library? And so on. When you’re a part time writer and self published as I am, and a relatively long way off being on the library book shelf, it can make sometimes for painful party conversation.

I love the way Alice Munro put it when she said, ‘When you’re a writer, you’re never quite like other people — you’re doing a job that other people don’t know you’re doing and you can’t talk about it, really, and you’re just always finding your way in the secret world and then you’re doing something else in the “normal” world.’

That’s been the best surprise of all about this business. And I guess it’s what drew me into pursuing this as a ‘path’ over thirty-five years ago. As a seventeen-year-old children’s writer, I became hooked on the sheer joy of story writing. It takes you to great heights and lows, and extraordinary lands in between; you get to chase an idea to see where it takes you and experience the journey the characters take with them, it’s exciting.

Hunter S. Thompson said, ‘every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man and hence your perspective changes.’ I think I’ve grown as an author over the years. I’ve changed a lot. My fiction is no longer a hobby, it’s become a lifestyle. I savour every moment. I still revel in the delicious surprises that are part of the job. It’s a wonderful ride.

Does your writing or art every surprise you?

Keep Writing!

Yvette K. Carol

*

If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

*

 

Subscribe to my Newsletter by emailing me with “Newsletter Subscription” in the subject line to: yvettecarol@hotmail.com

~ The Library? ~

The first week back at school, the youngest son and his friends organized a game of laser tag on the Friday night. The group of nine kids arranged their parental transport and played laser tag from 6-7 p.m. It was all good clean fun, and the kids had a ball. This week, they’ve organised to play Call of Duty together at one of the boys’ houses.

I thought, wow, we’ve come a long way from the earlier despair over having no friends.

His social life is definitely waxing. However, for the time being, the youngest still seems mostly content to be at home playing C.O.D, Minecraft or Fortnite on his X-box, or watching anime on his phone. Sometimes, he even reverts back to playing Roblox on his laptop. I still have a buddy a while longer, yet.

We were talking the other night at bedtime. I’ve mentioned this before. My son does his own version of The 10 p.m. Question like the protagonist, Frankie, in Kate de Goldi’s brilliant book, who comes to the door of his parents room every night with a deep, thought-provoking question. On one of the writing courses I did with Kate, she told us that the character sprang directly from her son and his ‘nightly questions about the universe and everything.’ My youngest does his own version: every night, after we’ve all done some reading, cleaned our teeth, and said our prayers, when I go to close the door and say goodnight, the youngest son suddenly says, “Why do people get depressed?” (last night’s question) or something similarly deep and reflective and requiring a long considered conversation. He says he gets most of his ideas at night.

As a fourteen-year-old, I had my head in a book, to the extent that I remember taking twenty books with me, when our family went on holiday to the Coromandel. I suffered frequent headaches throughout the vacation. When my parents had my eyes tested upon our return home, they were told I had 20/20 vision. So they put my headaches down to ‘too much reading’! As if.

I carried on reading regardless, of course, as you do when you’re a teenager.

My youngest son is headstrong in the way of being in his own dreamworld at times. Tonight, he was due at soccer practice at 5.15 p.m. “Finish your food.” “Put your phone down.” “You still have your exercises to do.” Why is he still sitting there watching anime on his phone and eating with one hand, when it’s 4.55? “Put your phone down.” “Hurry up and finish your food.”

Result: we arrived at practice ten minutes late, which is disrespectful to the coach. Next week, I will renew my efforts to coral this long-limbed, gangly, phone-watching teenager and get him to soccer practice on time.

We have had one success story, so far. This year, I forced the youngest son into a new routine of nightly reading. He was consistently getting his lowest marks in English. He’d always enjoyed a bedtime story, but never spent time reading on his own. So this year, while I have continued with the usual bedtime stories for his brother, the youngest son chooses his own books and reads alone. His goal is two pages a night. Sometimes, I have to make him stop after four, or he’ll be late to bed. And he’s now getting better marks in English.

The other night, as I went to say goodnight, the youngest said, “Mum, I have to write an essay for social studies about early life in New Zealand, all about the pioneers. I need pictures and maps. I mean where do you find that sort of stuff?” “I’d go to the library and ask the librarian.” “The library? Thanks, mum, I never thought of that.”

He needed more than Google could provide, yet he never thought of going to the library? That’s sad. The school library would have been my first port of call when I was a kid.

By the way, the youngest loved the idea and went to the school library with a few of his friends this morning. “Did you get any books out to help with your essay?” “No, I got chatting with my friends and forgot to get any books out.”

He promises me, he will remember to actually look for books next time.

I believe in the value of libraries. Well known author, Margaret Mahy said, “I’m here to assert that librarians stand dancing on that tenuous ridge that separates chaos from order. That dancing librarian makes so much of the world accessible to others.”

I’ll be expecting more 10 p.m. questions soon…

(Kate de Goldi and I, 2008)

Talk to you later.

Keep on Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

*

Leave the libraries alone. You don’t know the value of what you’re looking after. It is too precious to destroy.’ ~ Philip Pullman

*

Subscribe to my Newsletter by emailing me with “Newsletter Subscription” in the subject line to: yvettecarol@hotmail.com

~ DEBUNKING MYTHS ~

Last week, my youngest son turned to me and asked in all earnestness, “You’ve never done anything wrong have you, mum?” This follows on from the week before last, when he asked me, “You don’t tell lies do you, mum?” He’s newly turned fourteen and we’ve entered the age of questions. You’ve heard of Kate de Goldi’s bestselling book, The 10 p.m. Question? Her son would come to their bedroom door every night with deep, thought-provoking queries. My son does the same thing.

I answered, that while I do my best, at times I make mistakes, too. I get angry at other drivers on the road. I sometimes forget why I went down the other end of the house. Recently I backed the car into a pillar at a friend’s house, which was in my blind spot, and I stove in my bumper. I’m not perfect. I make mistakes.

Part of the youngest son’s transition from childhood to adulthood, is realizing some hard truths. In the next decade, he’ll learn that parents are not perfect, that life is not fair, that the world is not kind, that the world is in fact a scary, dangerous, ruthless place. Some people call it taking off the rose-tinted glasses of childhood.

The baby of the family is currently readjusting his view of the world. It’s a shame and also a necessary part of growing up. Every child must go through this rite of passage of adolescence, during which time the parents formerly believed to be gods, become human, during which time the reality of life starts to dawn.

It’s a bit of a test.

Still, at just turned fourteen, the innocence of the child is lingering and it’s precious.

As the youngest, I have treasured this son’s childhood. I have truly valued the untamed, free, fluidity of the child’s spirit. ‘Is there a limited number of times that a child will insist on remaining wedded to the moment?’ asks Russell Brand, in his excellent book, Revolution. Brand posits that kids lose their spontaneity as they grow up. ‘We condition our children and ourselves to enter into this spectacle, confining ourselves to a prescribed path.’

The youngest is still in contact with the wild freedom of the boy within, while at the same time he takes tentative steps forward, finding his way into the jungle of adulthood.

I see the same wonderful element of untamed spirit in my one-year-old granddaughter. The spontaneity, the pure fervour she has for life is a joy to witness. She is a long way off from constructing a persona with which to deal with the world.

When my son asks me have you ever done anything wrong, I feel a reaction of wanting to defend myself. But I don’t want to dig myself into a false position, or as Eckhart Tolle put it, to ‘adopt a mental position then we identify with that mental position and it becomes invested with self.’

So, I respond as honestly as I can. That way, the youngest son can come back later – as he often does, after he’s thought about things – and we can continue the conversation.

The teenage brain has been proven by scientists to only be able to sustain attention on a few things at a time. If I overburden him with too much information at once it will be wasted breath. It is far better, and more effective, to converse with a teenager in short instalments. Sound bites, if you will. Then they can retain what’s been said.

I know he will be fine as long as we keep the lines of communication open. I remember my grandmother was proud of her closeness with her son (my father) when he was growing up. She said, they could discuss ‘anything and everything.’

When he would come home from sea for short stints, as an 18-year-old seaman, he and Gran would sit chatting for hours.

Gran said she never had a moment’s worry with dad, because she knew they could talk and sort out any problem.

That’s the way I like to be with my kids.

In our conversations, I try to stay honest, and I try not to have a reaction to the things they share with me, so they feel safe.

The other day I overheard the youngest playing with friends on Fortnite. He said, “If you ever have a question don’t go to your teacher, they don’t like it when you ask lots of questions. Go to your mother. Mums know everything.”

Okay, so I haven’t quite debunked his myths around me yet, but we’re getting there.

Talk to you later.

Keep on Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

*

A child’s bucket of self-esteem must be filled so high that the rest of the world can’t poke enough holes to drain it dry. ~ Alvin Price

*

 

Subscribe to my Newsletter by emailing me with “Newsletter Subscription” in the subject line to: yvettecarol@hotmail.com