by Serennah Harding (written at age 15)
[2006]
My father married at eighteen and hadn’t any parenting experience, even after growing up with two younger brothers and three older ones. He married my mother, also eighteen at the time, and she had only her mom’s example to follow. I remember my dad practicing some specific “tricks of the trade,” and whether they were passed down through parents or grandparents, I do not know. I think they were made up on the fly. But they stemmed from an instinct that we should just be kind and loving toward each other. Wow . . . what a concept!
When it was just my two sisters and I roaming the house for almost five years before our brothers came around, we each had a position, a duty. Hannah, the oldest, would devise some “grand” misguided scheme. Rosie, the mediator, would follow and drag me along. And I, the youngest, would not object. As you can imagine, most often, all three of us got in trouble at the same time. After our dastardly plan crumbled upon itself, my dad would give us the benefit of the doubt and we each got to speak our piece. Even if that meant simply pulling out the pacifier and crying, “Please, Daddy, no!” That was my line. Rosie would go next and all she could think of saying, like Eve in the Garden of Eden, was, “Sorry, Daddy, Hannah made me do it.” What do you do with “faking-sorry” children? Then, Hannah would plead her case and lead the way to “time-out.” Of course, we all went to different places, one to the bathroom, one to the kitchen, and the other to her room. Hence the term “divide and conquer.” If we ever refused to go to time-out, then “spare the rod and spoil the child” would come into play. Rosie and I would look at each other with tears in our eyes and hug under Dad’s request. We would apologize again, even to Hannah, and she would come out of time-out to apologize as well, this time truthfully. After our four-way group hug (and even kisses on each cheek), I would pop my pacifier back in my mouth, Dad would wipe my teary cheek, and then I’d stroll away none the worse off. Rosie would wipe her glasses clean, move her hair out of her face, and walk back to the table to finish her drawing. By then, Hannah would already be outside climbing halfway up the tree, figuring out how to swing herself over the top of the playhouse.
That’s how it always went; false confessions, punishment, true apologies, hugs, kisses, then return to work or play. Even to this day, it has always worked. In a way, my dad let us solve our own problems. He’d help us along, but it was up to us to get to resolution at our own pace, so that it would be true resolution. No fake apologies accepted. If we didn’t want to apologize, just like not wanting to eat our veggies, then my dad would say “just go ahead and starve,” like the Beast from Disney. We couldn’t and wouldn’t be happy until an apology was made.