Shark in the water! Right? Is...is that a shark?

My kids are watching Jaws 3 again and they are laughing their heads off. There's totally a severed head and everything in that movie. It's all la-ti-da  "isn't a lovely day at Sea World" and then all hell breaks loose.

Anyhoo, that's not what I should be writing about. I mean...about which I would be writing. (groan) I thought my next blog would be part 2 of the series-in-my-head on the lasting impacts of divorce, and I will get to that. 

Ha. Here's the part where they just saw the baby shark and are trying to keep it in the park. They're so excited about what this could mean for the park. They're going to make a spectacle of the thing...

My blog description says:

"Observational humor and social commentary

 from a Catholic mom on parenting, social politics,

relationships, and swimming upstream." 

Most of the time I'm all la-ti-da my kids say funny things, and isn't life full of poignant lessons, and here's some stuff I've learned because I'm over 40 and if I don't write it down, I'll forget it.

But the divorce thing is really the first social issue I attempted to write about. It's also the subject that got me my first "hide post" and even a "hide all posts." It's reasonable to suspect that if you put something out there, not everyone's going to like it. I can try to write about a touchy subject as carefully as possible, but someone's still not going to like it. I'm going to have to be okay with that. I've said it before, this blog is open because I appreciate that something I have written or experienced might resonate with other people and ultimately let them know they're not alone.

Oooh they moved the shark from the holding tank to a display tank... the shark's health is still precarious, so that was really dangerous, and oop- look, it died in front of everyone. The poor marine biologist resigns to let those evil media folk photograph her prize, now gone...

Hot-button issues wasted no time at all in overtaking social media. Social sites quickly became not just a place for family and friends to share news and photos, but a place to express an expanding universe of politics and philosophy. I have two teenagers. My oldest is 18, and is basically part of a "flagship" generation on social media. Over the course of her teenage years, we have watched an eruption of media sites. There's no stopping it; it's been my job to set expectations for my teens' activities on these sites. Their online behavior (that I have seen) has been, for the most part, perfectly within reasonable limits.

Here's the hard part. I don't always know what they read. I can't always tell who they follow. I can't 100% control what they're exposed to. (um,..to what they are exposed?) I don't drive myself crazy trying to limit screen time. I expect them to come when I call, get their chores done, respond the the "real" world before the online world and other we-live-here-in-our-real-life, not just on-the-internet ideas. All I can do is try and model how they should respond. Sometimes I'm pretty good at that. Not so much other times.

Wait wait just a sec.. the shark's mother is inside the park!?! oh holy night what now... Are they going to try and catch that one too? No wait- I think they just go straight for the kill...

I got super duper mad at my oldest a couple of days ago. She tweeted a note she had written and I went ballistic. We did a terrible job communicating with each other about what made me so upset. I huffed.  She shut down. She didn't want to talk to me, She didn't want to discuss the issue. We resorted to messages. I begged her to read articles I had picked, without considering her sensibilities. She sent me an I-will-not-be-responding-to-this note. My temper got shorter and she got further away- even though she was only in her room.

Oh haha- that little girl sees the mama shark and tells her dad to look at the cute little fishie...

We were at a stand off for about a half-day. Then, a local Catholic university called her back and reported to her that she's qualified for a ton of scholarships. Turns out they really want Catholic High School grads who want to major in Theology.

uhh...

Oh yeah. That's what she wants to do.

um...

  

Holy carp (intended)-

there is no shark here to kill us. It's a little fish, not a shark.

I congratulated her, but our unresolved issues made it strange. We had to fix things. I changed my tone. I sent her another article that struck kind of a middle ground, and she changed her tone. I sent her another note asking her to help me with a do-over. We both realize that while we have different opinions on the gravity of the matter about which she tweeted, we don't have to see a shark. We can see a fish. 

Sometimes people need a do-over. I can't control what kind of do-over they think they need.

Her tweet was about a do-over, and I am posting it with her permission:

I really don't like the f-word. I don't like the "accept it or f-off" tone. I don't fall comfortably into using the pro-noun "she."

But seriously. That's all I don't like in this tweet.

I'm not going to presume that she can completely understand why those things make me uncomfortable. I did not ask her to take down the tweet or change it in anyway. We spent some time talking about how "accept it or f-off" is uncharitable to some groups of people, and applauded by others. We talked about how our consciences are all still in formation. We talked about how forming our consciences with reputable resources that cover all angles of an issue is necessary. I suggested that maybe part of her calling to Catholic Ministry would be to help navigate these relatively uncharted waters in a pastoral way.

Oh hang on-they blew up the mother shark. My 12-year old is laughing her bloody head off.

After wading through it all, I was happy when we settled into a dialogue about mercy. It is a skill to operate from a point of mercy. I believe that mercy is the only thing that can connect people who cannot or will not agree about something.

Mercy Definition

dictionary.search.yahoo.com

n. noun

• 1. Compassionate treatment, especially of those under one's power; clemency.
• 2. A disposition to be kind and forgiving. a heart full of mercy.
• 3. Something for which to be thankful; a blessing. It was a mercy that no one was hurt.

I'm not going to comment much on Caitlyn. I didn't know Bruce. I know my daughter, and I care about her formation of conscience. She's 18, and I may not be the official responsible party for her formation anymore, but my behavior is still a model for her all the time. I take that pretty seriously. She is on the edge of making an impact on the world I cannot predict, and the best thing I can do with any touchy issue is to make sure she knows what the official Catholic teachings are, and then teach her about mercy by the way I act and the way I treat others, both here in our real life and on the internet. I started to get a little passive aggressive about Caitlyn on Facebook, and I initially chimed in a little here and there, but I deleted and "unliked" a few things that sent messages in a less than compassionate way. I'm not going to view this as "apologizing" for my perspectives. It's not. I know what my perspective is, and it's just not needed out there today. Besides, I linked in Fr. Leo's post because I feel it resonates well with how I feel right now anyway.

The first thing I saw when I read her tweet was a shark. I went straight for the kill. I missed. We almost created a situation that could have caused a lot more damage than it did. That phone call came in at the just the right time. I asked for a do-over. She gave me one. No blood in the water. 

There's so much that can be said about the use of this quote, but seriously I can't do everything for you.

P.s This post exposes my daughter's perspective. Don't comment negatively about her.  Believe me, I will not be inclined to be a cute little fish about it. I'll be, you know, the other thing. (as nicely as I can)