Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site dartvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!qantel!dual!ucbvax!decvax!dartvax!waltervj From: waltervj@dartvax.UUCP (walter jeffries) Newsgroups: net.women Subject: Re: Parent-son relationships... Message-ID: <3599@dartvax.UUCP> Date: Thu, 19-Sep-85 00:33:44 EDT Article-I.D.: dartvax.3599 Posted: Thu Sep 19 00:33:44 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 20-Sep-85 07:05:53 EDT Distribution: net Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH Lines: 55 Someone recently suggested the topic of Mother-daughter/son relationships. I've been giving it some thought these past few days... My relationship with my mother has been a love/hate-hot/cold one which has kept it interesting if nothing else. There's a little ditti about a girl with a curl in the middle of here forehead, and when she was good she was very good but when she was bad she was nasty. That is what our relationship has been like My mother is very much a "Type A" person, agressive, domineering, driven, work- aholic, must win. Maybe why my parents are still married after more than 25 years is because my father is not like that. He is also a work-aholic but he is quiet, easy to give in. The violent part of my relationship with my mother stems from my being so much like her. I (in the past because I am working at toning it down a bit. no use being an early heart attack canidate.) am also a type A with all of the above attributes I ascribed to my mother. The result is that when we clash it's head on and do the sparks ever fly! That is the negative aspect of our relationship, we tend to clash very strongly. Currently we can take a few weeks of each others company but then we need to be apart. BUT, we are working on it. We're both aware of this and things seem to be getting better as my father commented the last time I visited them. The negative side is pretty powerful, yet, the positive is stronger still... My mother, and my father for that matter, have always treated me as a thinking feeling intelligent being. We reason things out, we talk, questions are encour- aged and answers provided where ever possible. They never treated any of their children as just kids who couldn't possibly understand. They have also always been very supportive of our enterprises and dreams. One simple example is that my mother is terrified of hights but she once told me, when I said as a senior in highschool that I wanted to take a year off to be a smoke jumper for the USFS "If that's what you want then go for it, I know that you are very thorough and carefull so I'm not worried about you." I never did become a smoke jumper but her confidence in me gave me the selfconfidence to do things, to try, to experi- ment, to experience.I now teach rockclimbing at Dartmouth, which to her is just as crazy as jumping out of airplanes into fires but she remains as supportive as ever. My parents supportiveness of myself and my siblings was not wasted for if nothing else, we learned how to be supportive of their endevers. My mother is a family physician and very active in the politics of medicine.Over the years she worked her way up through the ranks of the state and then the national medical organizations until recently she was elected to the previously all male board of directors of the American Academy of Family Physicians. Through it all she had both the moral support and the labor of her family (We enjoyed late nite envalope stuffing and labeling parties with the whole family participating, all 5 kids included.) I don't think at this time that I can say that we always, or even most of the time, get along smoothly, but, when things are good they are very good... What has my mother (both parents?) taught me? Confidence in myself and what I do, independence, curiosity... What have I given her? Support for her endevers, the freedom to follow her own career course (as has my whole family when we have moved to follow her jobs)... what else? hmmm... -Walter. / /_ "'Questions! Questions! Questions!', shrilled -==- the turtle, 'Done't you have any answers?! iiii 'What good are the answers if you don't ask the right questions?' demanded the finch as it did a little tap-dance on the turrle's shell" Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com