Misunderstanding

My children (I suspect children in general, but I only have a very small sample living here) feel misunderstood. “Mommy!” they cry. “You don’t understand!” “Tell me again,” I will say, and they will try again, talking slowly, perhaps wondering if I am hard of thinking as well as hard of hearing. Sometimes I, or Ed, will move a scrap of paper lying on the floor. “NOoooooo!” someone will howl hours later. “Where did the Instamatic Alien Glue Machine and Chocolate Bar Dispenser go? It was right here!” and I’ll realize that I have mistakenly binned the IAGMCBD because I am living in some miasmic adult world while they are deep deep in a surround sound technicolor child universe and to me it looked like a piece of rubbish.

Of course, most of the time I don’t actually think, poor misunderstood children. I think — argh. Then I remember, so clearly, how I felt as a child, so misunderstood. So alone in a world full of soulless and soul-eating cretins. I remember once being very disappointed that our attic had turned up no portals to other worlds, no orphans hiding from cruel stepfathers, no trunks filled with old books and treasure maps, no ghosts. I decided that no future child would have to suffer this lack so I packed a box with all my most prized possessions — my first pointe shoes, an autograph album from grade school, a book of poetry I had written, a sun catcher and other heartfelt offerings — and put it in the attic with a note on top and on the envelope I wrote, “Please open.” I left it there, pleased and imagining some future girl finding the box that her great grandmother (the famous author and dancer) had left, reading the yellowing letter and feeling pleased that the attic had held treasure.

A couple of weeks later I checked on the box (I was impatient) and found that my mother (my mother!!) had opened the letter (that said, remember, “Please open”) and, having realized that the letter wasn’t really for her, had put it in a new envelope and written “Please open” on it.

I was furious. Beyond furious. I roared and raged and felt that this project of mine had been utterly utterly ruined, spoilt, wrecked beyond any hope of repair. I ripped up the letter, took back my possessions and confirmed what I had suspected, that I was misunderstood, tragic and oh so alooooone.

Now I can see that what I actually was, was a royal pain. A drama queen. Difficult. Challenging. Emotionally wearing. Even trying. What else could or should my poor mother have done? The letter basically commanded her to open it. She did replace it. She did right.

Now I tapdance through the quicksand of my children’s burgoening emotional lives and I wonder what story they are telling themselves about who they are. Because what strikes me most about this story is that I am who I am partly because I trailed along tragically misunderstood through much of my childhood. I was not misunderstood. I was, well, more or less how I describe Daniel. Operatic. So the story I told myself (which was not true) had formed who I am, which seems to call into question, just a little, who I think I am. It bears thinking about. Although not for long, as now it is my turn to be steady, reliable and slightly dense. My turn, in fact, to misunderstand.

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