Saturday 26 March 2011

Disrespecting your parents

One of my best friends in the world was born into a muslim family in a muslim country. Even though her father was a fully fledged, typical English gentleman, he had converted and integrated into the local community, and the family was raised under the watchful eye of her mother who held strong convictions about the faith. Even if she was not the perfect muslim, her children would be.

And so when the family moved to England, the patriarchal homeland as it were, this culture persevered. Father worked abroad for much of the year, and mother took care of the brood in, as I suspect is the case with all mothers, the only way she knew how. This included a hearty respect for parental authority, and instilling of many of the cornerstones of the islamic tradition.

When I first met Laila at University, we were all suprised that she was muslim. I suppose many of us had been brought up to think of muslim women as all wearing the hijab and being of middle eastern appearence, but we were still young and naive to the ways of the world. We would soon see her struggling through Ramadan (although when it came to Eid, she would see me struggling to cook rice when I attempted to "help" her out!) and turning her nose up at alcohol. We would very soon come to see for ourselves the force of nature that was her mother.

The first time I saw her mother was when I woke up in her bed (Laila's, not her mums!). It was actually completely innocent! It all began the previous night, which happened to be Friday. We'd been out and about on a wonderful night, and by the time we all got back to my place (Which happened to be the closest of any of our places to where we'd been partying) it was pretty late. Someone, probably me, thought it would be an excellent idea to stay up all night until sunrise. This was a little silly since it was winter and sunrise was quite late, but we all figured our youthful stamina and copius ammounts of caffeine would aid us.

We took it in turns to nap on my bed and play on my computer. We listened to music and talked, frankly, shit. Then we all went outside to climb up onto the hill at the end of St James' cemetary which backs onto the Anglican Cathedral. This particular spot homes a rose garden and looks out over the Mersey. Of course that is completely the wrong direction to watch the sunrise, but the river looked beautiful in the red gold, and stood in the shadow of the Cathedral there was an eerie peace. Laila and I would meet in the rose garden on many an occassion if we sought solitude and peaceful reflection. I kinda miss living in what was Cathedral Campus simply because it was always there.

After appreciating the sunrise, Laila suggested we go back to her place which was right in the middle of town for a slap up cooked breakfast. Well after a night out and all night vigil, none of us were going to say no to that, so off we went. She served us turkey bacon and fried egg sandwiches (being muslim, she could not eat pork after all) which were quite yummy. She then had to go to work, and our friends went their seperate ways.

I would have to trek all the way back to the Cathedral, but this posed a bit of a problem. We were all slaughtered after our night out, and I was supposed to be meeting Laila that afternoon because her mother and brother were coming for a visit and I'd been invited to go for dinner with them. It would be the first time I'd met any of my University friends families, and I wanted to make a good impression. I knew that by the time I walked all the way home I would collapse into my bed and not wake up till way after I was supposed to meet them. Laila came up with the perfect solution; she had to work anyway, so I could just sleep in her bed. She would wake me up when she got back and we'd be good to go.

So I settled down. The bed was much comfier than the old rickety thing I had in Cathedral Campus, and it was suprisingly lovely and quiet above the city as opposed to in my shared house where there were constant comings and goings and the peal of the Cathedral Bells. In little to no time I was in one of the deepest sleeps I've ever had (I'm a very light sleeper).

Something woke me up. It was probably the front door, or voices. All I remember was thinking Oh, that sounds like Laila is back...that must be her housemate with her, voices I don't recognise... and then the unfamiliar voice of a young man was in the room with me. I was suddenly very wide awake and I opened my bleary eyes. Looming over me was a very puzzled looking asian woman and her son. Laila was no where to be seen.

Suffice to say, Laila had come home to find them on her doorstep and hadn't had the chance to explain that I was there. I mumbled an appology saying I'd been a guest and Laila had offered her bed while she was out instead of having to trail back home. Nevertheless no awkward questions were asked (not to me, anyway!) and we all went out together for dinner that evening.

The next day, Laila was upset. Her mother had, apparently, had a go at her not just about the fact that I was in her bed (an undersandable concern I suppose) but also some things I'd mentioned over the dinner table. She was apparently shocked that I'd chosen to come to Liverpool to "get away from my family and become more independant" when I should have been a dutiful daughter and stayed at University closer to home to be with my parents. This irked and suprised me. How could Laila possibly be to blame for this, how could her mother possibly justify shouting at her about a choice I made before I even met her?

Our friendship group would learn very quickly that her mother had strong opinions on where family came in anyone's sphere of priorities and we'd see that Laila, through growing up as a dutiful and loving daughter, would find it hard to break free of the limits her mothers attitudes imposed upon her.

I've shared Laila's story with you because I don't think anyone from my culture or background would see anything that Laila does as disrespecting her parents. To me, she has never been anything but family oriented, loving and dutiful. Yet, five years on, she's still harrassed in some ways. It wasn't until recently that she's been able to come back to Liverpool without asking her mothers permission in a round about way. When she does come, her mother seems to think that Ben and I are going to lure her into some perverse threesome (I wonder if finding me in her daughters bed has anything to do with that, come to think of it!). She is expected to visit her mothers homeland with her soon, and it would be quite disrespectful for her not to do so.

Since this respect is so important to her mother, Laila has to be careful in some of the things she does. She counts herself as an athiest these days, a huge leap from the meek muslim character I first met, and she sneaks pork based hotdogs home to snack upon, or indulges in a full, all pigs included, English breakfast at the work canteen. Many would think this is nothing, but to Lailas mother? Highly disrespectful indeed.

But then, I think we've all disrespected our parents to one degree or another, whether this be disregarding their strongly held cultural and religious attitudes, trying out weed for the first time, cussing under our breaths, talking back.

I'm certainly no angel. For a time when I was seventeen, I dated a guy a couple of years older than me who didn't want to go home to his family. I don't know why, he was always very evasive when I asked him about it. I met his brother once, and his father happened to come by too, and they all seemed very nice, but he would not go home. Something about his step mother.

Anyhow, part of how he dealt with not going home was to stay at other peoples places if he could get away with it. He did stay at my place every other weekend. One weekend I asked if he could stay and my father said no, he'd been over quite a lot and in fairness to my parents they wanted to be able to relax without near enough strangers in the place. My boyfriend, however, pretty much refused to leave. By which I mean he wasn't invited home in the first place but tagged along anyhow "just for a few hours". Then when it was time to go he always managed to "miss the bus". He dropped hints...oh I may as well just stay here the night...things like that...of course my parents aren't stupid, they knew what he was up to. Eventually he tried to plead that he couldn't possibly go home, and then told me if he did go back to Stockton (where he was from...a good hours drive from my parents place) he'd have to stay on the street all night.

Of course naive little me thought he was being serious about this and got really upset. I was angry at him, of course, for not just going home since it was there, he had a bed, he even admitted it himself. And I was scared that he would end up sleeping in some rough city centre bus depot. I mean, we weren't in love but still, I cared for him and I didn't want that. I pleaded to my parents in tears, and that really got to my dad.

Without raising his voice or becoming confrontational at all, he told him straight; you either go and get the bus now or Bex's mum will drive you back to Stockton, but you aren't staying here. He huffed and said "fine, you can drive me". Obviously he thought that on the way he could somehow convince my mother to say that he could stay. He was wrong of course; even if she would have been swayed, my dad is no doubt head of our household, and once he has put his foot down there is no going back.

He gave his little sob story in the car, his voice wavering. He claimed that he'd slept on a bench before so he'd be ok, but there was no way he was going home. It would only be one night he'd need to stay because he was feeling ill. Me in tears begged him to go home. Oh, he just couldn't, he said. It wouldn't be possible. They all hated him.

This lasted all the way until I just stopped talking to him. He would chirp up pathetically every now and then, but I was worried about what my father was going to say to me when I got home. Finally, we got to a roundabout on the edge of Stockton where my mum would have to either turn off to go to his house, or go straight into town where he'd said he'd stay the night. She asked him straight, where did he want to go. In a voice that was clearly angry, frustrated and generally pissed off, he chose (suprise suprise) home.

I got out the car to see him off, and he did indeed go into his house. My mum gave me a knowing look. Of course he would always have chosen home. I was kind of relieved, but kind of angry. If I'd had anything about me, or if I'd had the maturity and sense that I have now, I'd have had nothing more to do with him. He was manipulative and pathetic. My parents made it clear they didn't want me seeing him anymore. Not by forbidding it, they couldn't do that and they knew it, but by forbidding him from coming to the house anymore.

They deserved respect, respect that he did not show.

They were right, of course. And him not coming to the house would make it difficult to see each other, especially since they knew of his home situation. They wouldn't just let me stay at any old Tom, Dick or Harry's place so we could spend the night together, they were trying to stop that.

Didn't stop me anyway. He lived in Stockton...I said I was staying at another friend in Stockton. She, ironically, was the one who introduced us, and by the end of it was as adament to try and split us up as my parents. She knew nothing of it. One time she did spot us together and she promptly called me to ask about it. Why was I with him? I knew what he was like, we all did...

I suppose hormones is why I was with him. I didn't necissarily have the greatest relationship with my parents then and it was great fun to defy them in that way. Strange mens houses who he happened to be staying with, seedy B&B's in Darlington (which he paid for). I don't know how much they suspected, I suspect they weren't as stupid as I gave them credit for. If they did suspect anything, they certainly didn't say anything.

Oh, nothing untoward ever happened. I met a lot of interesting people and we shared interesting stories. The guy I was seeing and myself had great fun together. But it was still stupid, and probably a little dangerous. If I found out my daughter had been doing these things I would be mortified. But either they didn't find out or they chose not to mention it.

It didn't last long anyhow. I know it sounds like it did, but actually after the incident with my parents it only lasted another month or so, maybe two. I'm not proud of what I did, I'm not telling you this to brag. I just feel like a bit of a fool to be honest. It all ended shortly after he asked me to marry him. Bear in mind that at this point we would have been going steady four months max, probably only three months in all, and I'd known him maybe only a week or so longer. He asked me in the street and I said no, because I barely knew him enough. He said if we loved each other, it didn't matter...at that point I began to worry, because really I didn't love him. He was sex on tap, and I have the libido of a rabbit. The sweet nothings whispered into each others ear were pleasantries and great boosts to the ego...but love?

He was lying, I found out not long after his proposal that he'd been cheating and he didn't deny it. What was worse was that the girl in question was underage, only a couple of years older than my sister, and he was nearly twenty. I felt sick. I called him up and told him I didn't want to see him ever again. I never did, and he only ever tried to get back in touch via the proto-social network of the day a year later (where he proclaimed that he was engaged to the girl of his dreams). He said he wanted to meet up for drinks. I told him to fuck off.

Depending on your outlook, holding onto this relationship was either the worst thing I've done to disrespect my parents, or the least bit. In my view it's one of the worst things I've done that I'm prepared to admit in public on the internet. I'm not proud, I cringe to myself when I think about it. Indeed, I try not to think about it for the shame.

I think this kind of rebellion is natural and normal. The kind of upbringing and relationship you have with your parents will dictate how far you go. Laila's disrespect may seem nothing at all to me, but something she does off hand may make her feel as guilty as looking back at my pathetic ex boyfriend does to me. It's all a matter of perspective. In both cases, we've been after the "forbidden fruit". For her it's pork, for me it was a certain someone.

We can say it's bad to disrespect our parents, and maybe that's true. I do my best not to do it now, in fact they of all people are the people I hold in highest regard these days. Still it would be foolish to try and snuff out adolescent rebellion all together, or deny that it exists. Whether or not you like it, it will always be there.

3 comments:

  1. Right, let's try this again, shall we? And maybe not as long winded this time.

    Rebellion is a natural part of growing up - it's our way of feeling out for our own independence and becoming adults in our own right. Some of us *coughmecough* are latestarters when it comes to rebelling, but we all need that burst of rebelling and mild disrespect for our parents' rules to be able to test our own limits. Sometimes it's not so much disrespecting our parents as disregarding the ideals they're trying to instill in us. As we grow, we develop our own ideas based on the world we know and our generation. Sometimes it leads down the wrong path (that where chavs, ASBOs and velour shell suits lie), but most of the time, rebellion is a way to cast of the expectations that was thrust on us and that we know we cannot uphold for our own reasons. Like how we've started out as "Good little girls" and have arranged clandestine meetings with forbidden lovers or completely disregarded a family-held religion. But if we hadn't rebelled and remained "respecting" our parents' rules and feelings, then we would have risked disrespecting ourselves and our own feelings and might not have become the women we are today. We do it with our parents, as they have with theirs and them with theirs. It's a never ending cycle, but that's why each generation is different from the last.

    Note I said rebellion a lot more than disrespect. Yes, rebellion does mean disrespecting another person's (in this case, our parents') ideals, but it's a long way from completely disrespecting our parents. Real disrespect would be spitting in their faces and still expecting (or demanding) to be fed, clothed and spolt. But I think that would be instant suicide for us, right? ;)

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  2. I tagged you in an award in my blog.

    http://caityslosingit.blogspot.com/2011/03/7-facts-blog-awards.html

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  3. Thanks so much :D I have, however, only just noticed...I will get back to give my seven facts tomorrow at a "respectably human" time lol ^_^

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