Shouts From Down Under

How Benjamin Button's curious case became a real puzzle.

I think everyone has the battle of bonding. It makes the battle of the midlife bulge looking like a minor problem.

But...bonding. Parent child relations. I confess I find it as unfathomable as understanding women. You thought you had it nailed down, in black and white, done and dusted. You even said to yourself, "finally, I understand women!" You said that. You were so certain. You said it aloud even when operating loud machinery such as a whirly bird finishing off a raft house slab of concrete, or while mowing the lawn using the noisy old smokey Victa.

I've said the same about bonding with the young ones. Surely the previous generations had it so much easier. They didn't have the ultra available 24/7 universe accessible modern technology running interferance. Those old great grandparents of ours may be considered draconion these days, with the discipline meted out on errant youth.
Were they better off for it? Both generations? The whipper and the whippee? The strapper and the strapped?

These days it's just plain old cashed up or cash strapped. P.Correctness and medication and if you're lucky, some online conflict together, shooting the living gigabytes out of your fellow house dwellers.

It seems to me, that despite every effort made over the years, I'm still no closer to understanding the bonding process, than I was before we spawned our young. Now they've left the nest, bar one, they'll probably remember how one time Dad used to badger them to come do stuff that was real. The problem doesn't seem obvious, and could easily be grabbed as a convenient excuse. "Awww we had no money so I couldn't bond with our kids".
Its not just technology obstructing family relationships. Its not just rebelion against fuddy duddy parents. Its not necessarily lack of cash either, or both parents unemployed.

No. There are other causes of this missing "get-it-ness".

You can't even go fishing these days without licences, equipment, and safety gear. No more dozen little worms in a dirty little tin, bamboo pole or stick, a scrap of line and a bent pin.
Lots of other stuff requires permits, licences, gear etc etc. You can't do a lot of things you used to, with your kids. Even camping has been pushed further and further away by new housing and "beautification" developments, so that now, even after you drive forever to get to an approved camping facitily, you need a Parks & Wildlife Permit, and enough camping equipment to fit out a Kathmandu Outdoor and Camping store.

No camping without Coleman. No tents without the trailer. No toilets without the Jimmy's thunderbox. You are lucky to be allowed an open fire. (I have no problem whatsoever with fire restrictions, and understand how devestating bushfires (firestorms) can be)

There is the cost of petrol these days. For those without jobs, the level of bills compared to income is much different to years ago.

As for time, well...time spent together would be all very well if some with jobs weren't working nightshift, and others weren't working 18 hour days, sleeping in the lounge between jobs.

So, I'll need an orienteering compass to even find my way back to the main subject of this blog entry.

The subject isn't really parent child teen relations, but more about how back the front (ie reference to Benjamin Button http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curious_Case_of_Benjamin_Button_(film) ) one of life's situations has become.

As I said to Fivesixer , who blogged about camping at a cemetary, and commented on Angels in my Ear 's post about her Grandma, I also attended a funeral yesterday and my thoughts (Robin Williams passing probably nudged things along a bit too) turned to this potentially dark, but unavoidable subject.

My questing mind has fiddled with this notion before.

Why is it, that we wait until someones funeral, to get to know them? How does that work? I'm not accusing anyone here so please don't take this as anything more than my own musing.

Why do we have this so back to front? There's the Eulogy. You find your eyebrows sometimes rising, at least in your thoughts, at some of the facts about the deceased, that you'd never heard before.
You feel a love generated for the person. At the very least, as regarding someone you didn't know well or even at all, at the very least you can feel nostaligia. A sense of wishng you'd known them after hearing all those interesting, private things about their life.


Why can't we reverse this life situation? Why can't we love people NOW? Why can't I (I'm really asking MYSELF all this stuff) learn to have more contact with people, go visit them more, talk to them more, especially relatives, but even just others I see every day.



Motor Sport fans may have guessed who these competitors were - (driver Peter Brock, and navigator Mick Hone), at a checkpoint, here in Ulverstone Tasmania, one of the last legs of TARGA TASMANIA before the ill fated race in Western Australia. One of our sons took these photos.

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/sport/motor-sport/seven-years-on-loss-of-peter-bro...

Why can't I learn all those fascinating things about people NOW, while they are still alive, and they can know that I appreciated them so much!!!??? That they could know how much I loved them?

Why is it that it's not until too late, you realise you didn't develop that bond with your children that you should have?

But then, all is not lost. I had those years myself, when I didn't understand my parents. I just wanted to rush away, out into the big world of freedom, making my own decisions.

And I know something that is a great comfort to me. Our children, grown up and gone ('cept 1) love us dearly, in a far deeper sense than some camping or fishin' could ever bring.




Sparky