Week 9 Storytelling: On Raising Children

The worst thing a child can do is defy their father.

This doesn’t apply to all of my many children; most grew up well-behaved. They followed the family’s rules, they did well enough in school, they married a good spouse, settled down and began to raise their own families.

But then Sandy ran away. She was towards the younger end of the pack, a quiet girl. I thought I knew her well, until she left. None of us heard anything from her for years. She was just sixteen, and we didn’t even know why she’d run off.

She eventually came back, years later, but she said she was no longer Sandy. She came back as Sam, a tough, slightly troubled…man. We were shocked. Sandy had run away to change her identity. I tried to welcome her back – she is my daughter, after all – but it was uncomfortable. The family couldn’t – I couldn’t – see her as who she’d become.

My two youngest, though, they accepted Sam without much question. I guess they hadn’t really known Sandy before, as they were the “surprise babies,” born when all their siblings were already teenagers and older. They were thrilled to meet this new sibling, someone who could talk to them of far-off travels and life outside our small, rural town.

The twins were, of course, our last two children, and on them rested all the expectations of perfection. We’d raised so many other good children, how could these two possibly go wrong? We just knew they would do us proud. As Drew and Dede grew up, they proved to be whip-smart and generally well-mannered, respectful kids.

I could tell that our expectations for Drew didn’t sit well with him, but he manned up and accepted them anyway. With Dede, it was more difficult. She could be quarrelsome, resistant to authority, impatient to the point of rudeness. She was a tomboy. She wanted to do everything her twin brother did, even the things that weren’t meant for girls.

I despaired of her making a good match, once she was old enough. I figured she’d resist me against anyone I nudged her towards. But I was wrong. She liked this Cameron guy who she’d met online, a kind of brooding man with a past he didn’t want shared. I thought a much better match for her would be Arthur, someone local who we’d known of for years and whose business acumen would be both a good alliance for our family and provide a strong financial basis on which to raise their own children. I could tell Dede didn’t really like the idea at first, but eventually she dropped Cameron for Arthur.

I guess my children aren’t that defiant after all.

(image of Draupadi)

Author's Note: I based my story this week off of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's retelling of the Mahabharata, a novel called The Palace of Illusions. I was struck by her descriptions of King Drupada's children, contrasting the normal girls of the palace with the character depth and unconventional bents of Draupadi and Shikhandi. Dhri is a bit more conventional, but still he's troubled by what he knows and accepts is his fate. It occurred to me that for Drupada, these three children are probably difficult for him to understand. They're not like the others; they're more complex, more questioning, possibly more defiant, and these characteristics can't sit well with a deeply traditional, authoritarian father, be he a king or any other regular patriarch.

Bibliography:

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions (2008). 

"Pleasing," by Raja Ravi Varma, undated (Wikipedia).