Raising Debbie: I am a Powerful Woman

When we looked at Debbie, aged fifteen, going on sixteen, we felt proud. We had done well. We had raised her and her two brothers to be independent, kind, caring, self-assured, decent people.

Debbie had always had everything, from the buckets of family love and devotion, to the hours of attention through various childhood ups and downs, to the more tangible things like skiing and horse riding.

No, I don’t think she was spoilt. I worked, so she knew all about the dashing-around-I-haven’t-got-time-right-now, not to mention all the “I’ll be half an hour late picking you up from school”. She didn’t suffer for it and I don’t think children do, providing they know that they are loved and cared for in every way.

She had to work for her pocket-money. Just simple household chores – wash the cat’s bowls, empty the dishwasher, and so on. Nothing unreasonable.

So, no, she wasn’t spoilt.

She was a nice kid. A kid to be proud of.

So how do you cope when it all goes horribly wrong? What does a mother do when her lovely daughter starts to do all the things – the very things – you had trusted her not to do?

How do you handle it when she turns, seemingly overnight, from a sunny, cheerful teen to an obstreperous, snarling one?

When Debbie was almost sixteen she ran away from home with a thirty-five year old man who had just got out of prison. Out of the blue. She had had a tattoo done on one of her breasts, and I had been angry and hurt about that. A small butterfly, or a flower on a thigh or shoulder is one thing – but this was the head of a horse, very badly done, and huge. She had also, for several weeks, been slightly rude to me. Nothing much, just a bit of back-talk at odd intervals, which I ignored. So it was out of the blue.

Debbie put us through six years of nightmare. For four of those years she disappeared completely and we had no idea where she was or how she was. Alcohol, drugs, pregnancies, rape, police … you name it, we went through it.

Debbie came out the other end of it a pleasant young woman, relatively unscathed. We have a close relationship now, and I think I can say I am relatively unscathed too. But her dad has never really properly recovered. Her behavior triggered Meniere’s disease which has been with him 24/7 ever since – fifteen years now. He is clingy in his love for his daughter in a way that is perhaps slightly …. I can’t find the word … desperate, perhaps?

I am a strong woman. Very strong. I learnt to be strong at an early age. I went to fourteen different schools as a child. I changed country and changed language frequently. Sometimes we lived on a leper colony in Africa (my dad was a doctor of tropical disease). I was the eldest in a huge family. These things make you strong. From an early age you have to make or break. It is good for you.

I won’t go in to all the things that helped me, in adulthood, build-up my muscle (so to speak) but suffice to say that I dealt with A LOT. Never, when I was expecting my baby girl, did I imagine that she would be the cause of the biggest test. As part of my “recovery” process I wrote a book, “A Call from France” which was like a kind of catharsis for me.

Here are five thoughts I want to share with mothers who are going through traumas with their teenage children.

TRUST
Show your children that you trust them. This does not mean that you should necessarily trust them, but allow them to feel trusted. Trust, within reason, triggers responsible behavior. They do not need to know that you are still supervising quietly from a distance.

Do The Best You Can
My father always used to say that a parent can only do what seems to be the best thing at that particular moment. We all make mistakes and wish we had done things differently. As long as you are genuinely doing what you think is the best thing for your child, then that is what you must do, even if it turns out to be the wrong thing.

Still Learning
Teens, like children, are essentially selfish. By that I do not mean they are unkind in any way, I mean that their thoughts and feelings tend to centre, perfectly naturally, on themselves. Just as a small child learns to share his toys, so teenagers need to be learn to see the bigger picture. It is something they learn, so do not expect them to understand overnight your feelings when their own psyche has not developed enough yet.

What Do They Love?
I do wish that I had got Debbie involved in something she really loved, for I often think that might have made things turn out differently. Horse-riding or archery or whatever – I do think that if she had had a passion for something like that, it would have been better.

Relax
Know that it will be All Right. Children come home. Children grow up and become sensible adults. Some take you through the mill en route, and some do not. Relax. It is going to be OK. Not today, not tomorrow. But soon.

Catherine Broughton is an author, an artist and a poet. Her books can be ordered from most leading book stores and libraries, and are available on Amazon/Kindle. You can also down load them as e-books from her web site http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk
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Catherine Broughton. Novels, paintings, and poems

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The Atlantic Wall in the Medoc

 

I took this photo near the holiday village of Montalivet (not particularly recommended!) a few weeks ago.  It shows one of many concrete and steel bunkers erected, as part of extensive fortifications, by the Germans during World War II between 1942 and 1944.

We go to this particular beach almost every year for a week, where we meet with fellow campers and old friends.  The beach is glorious and stretches for many miles.   There are three blockhaus there, at first up on the dunes and, each year falling a little more, now in the sea.  The tide washes in and out, sometimes submerging them almost totally, and sometimes revealing them … carcasses ? Memorials ?

– See more at: http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk/blog/the-atlantic-wall-in-the-medoc/#sthash.hmfEMK6L.dpuf

The Atlantic Wall in the Medoc

 

I took this photo near the holiday village of Montalivet (not particularly recommended!) a few weeks ago.  It shows one of many concrete and steel bunkers erected, as part of extensive fortifications, by the Germans during World War II between 1942 and 1944.

We go to this particular beach almost every year for a week, where we meet with fellow campers and old friends.  The beach is glorious and stretches for many miles.   There are three blockhaus there, at first up on the dunes and, each year falling a little more, now in the sea.  The tide washes in and out, sometimes submerging them almost totally, and sometimes revealing them … carcasses ? Memorials ?

– See more at: http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk/blog/the-atlantic-wall-in-the-medoc/#sthash.hmfEMK6L.dpuf

French is a beautiful language

 

People often say to me “French is such a beautiful language” and yes – it is.  It sounds pleasant when you don’t understand it, and it is pleasant when you do.  Some languages are unattractive to our English-speaking ears.  Chinese always sounds somewhat ying-yongy (though I have never been to China and only spent a long weekend in Hong Kong in the days when it was British) to my uneducated ear, though Japanese sounds elegant.  My mother used to say that American children all sound like ducks quacking.  I wonder where she got that from ?  A lot of us find German a harsh and gutteral language.  I suppose it all depends on which languages you speak and where you come from.  For me Spanish is great.  Do you know, the very first word I learn in Spanish was zaggapuntas meaning pencil sharpener!   It has a great sound to it, doesn’t it?  Say it loudly: zaggapuntas!

 

Again, as they pop into my head, some French words & phrases you won’t learn at evening class (accents missing):-

en surcit – suspended, ie prison en surcit, suspended sentence

macho – chauvanist pig.  In English the word macho (which is a Spanish word) means manly, strong, even muscular, but in French it means a man who thinks he is sperior to women

chapeau! – I take my hat off to you

plusieurs reprises – several times (je vous ai telephone a plusieurs reprises)

pas plus mal – literally “not more bad” or “it wouldn’t be worse” (my husband often says this in English, using the direct translation), meaning “a good idea”, ie “c’est pas plus mal si on va a la plage ” – sort-of, yes, we might just as well go to the beach. Note: correctly written this should be “ce n’est pas…” though few would in fact actually say it like that

remue-mininge – brain storm

ca etait ? – was that OK?  The waitor would aks you this as he clears away your plates, for example

baisser les bras – to give up

c’est normal ? – “c’est normal qu’il y a de l’eau dans l’atelier?” meaning “were you aware there is water in the workshop?” (Technically qu’il y ait …)

machin-truc – thingamijig

pas un chat – abandoned, nobody about

deuxieme souffle – second wind

brouillon – rough, rough-and-ready, a bit messy

que Dieu vous offre – that God gives (ie she works every day that God gives)

eventuellement – perhaps, ie shall we go to the beach?  Oui, eventuellement …

Catherine Broughton is a novelist, a poet and an artist.  She lives most of the year in France, with extended patches in Belize and in the UK.  She was born & raised in Africa and has lived as an ex-pat, in one country or another, almost all her life.  Her books are available as e-books on this site (click below), can be ordered from Amazon/Kindle or from any leading book store or library.

https://payhip.com/b/tEva    “A Call from France”

https://payhip.com/b/OTiQ    ”French Sand”

https://payhip.com/b/BLkF    “The Man with Green Fingers”

https://payhip.com/b/1Ghq    “Saying Nothing”

Amazon link:-

http://www.amazon.com/The-Man-With-Green-Fingers/dp/1475029411/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374222784&sr=8-1&keywords=catherine+broughton

(Photo: with my New Caledonia friend on the French island of Ile de Re)

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Snippets of French history: Jean-Paul Marat 1743-1793

Although Marat claimed to be a physician, he had no qualifications, and his reputation as a physician was born when he managed to cure his friend of gonorrea.  He was interested in medicine and in the sciences in general and worked as an unofficial doctor in London for several years, and then in France.

He has gone down in history as a journalist, the most out-spoken and inflamatory journalist of his time, a politician who vigorously supported the Revolutuion and a fierce advocate of human rights.  He was arguably the most radical voice of the French Revolution.

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Snippets of French History: les sans culottes

 

Several people have asked me to write a “in-a-nutshell” summary of the French Revolution.  But I just can’t.  The politics of the years leading up to the Revolution, and the different factions, and factions within factions, in a constantly-changing political situation would be impossible to fit in to anything other than a very fat book.  The French Revolution was riddled with legislation and counter-legislation, small groups gaining a bit of power and then receding, mass murders, beytrayals and atrocities, shifting regimes and groups within the regimes … I recall a professor at University saying that it was like ever-moving and churning vomit with no way of knowing who was where and what was next.

So.  So, I have decided to split it up in to several different in-a-nutshell groups, starting with the sans-culottes.

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Snippets of French History: Louis Pasteur

 

Louis Pasteur was one of three children, born in the small town of Dole in the Jura (central eastern France) in 1822.  The town was a tannery town and Louis’ father was a poor man and a tanner.  The family were simple and devout Roman Catholics with no particular aspirations and nothing in their family history, as far as one can tell, to suggest a genius was born among them. – See more at: http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk/blog/snippets-of-french-history-louis-pasteur-1822-1895-in-a-nutshell/#sthash.YpqRoK0l.dpuf

So you can speak French?

 

Just as they pop in to my head, a few things you may not learn at your evening class:-  (accents missing)

 

to rob Peter to pay Paul – deshabiller Paul pour habiller Jacques

jet lag – decallage horaire

alarm clock – le reveil

the News – le journal, or sometimes les actualites

homeward-bound –  au bon port

chicken- if it is a live chicken it is une poule, but if it is a dead one for cooking it is du poulet

back ache – mail au reins (les reins being the kidneys) if it is low back pain, otherwise it is mal au dos

custard – creme anglaise, though their version is runny and a bit light

jig-saw puzzle – un puzzle (pronounced puzz-ll)

Scrabble – le Scrabble (probounced Scrab-ll)

crumble – un crumble (pronounced crum-b-ll)

sweat shirt – un sweat (often written & pronounced swit)

no hard shoulder (on a road) – chaussee deformee

A French word I really like and that has no accurate translation is “les retrouvailles“. This is a noun created from the verb trouver, to find, and thence retrouver, to find again.  “J’ai retrouve mes amis a la gare” = I met my friends at the station (I re-found them).  The meeting of those friends, having not seen them for days or years, is called les retrouvailles – the finding-againses. Great word.

(illustration: an old gent watching a game of boules in the nearby village of Brouage, France).

Catherine Broughton is a novelist, a poet and an artist. She has travelled a great deal and blogs regularly.  Her books are available from Amazon (& Kindle) or can be ordered from most leading book stores and libraries; they are also available as e-books on this site, http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk)

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People from my books: Debbie

 

She was a skinny little thing.  Scrawny.  She never put on weight.  As she grew in to adolescence she remained basically lanky and thin.  She had miles of legs.  When she tried ballet, as all little girls do, she was already taller than most of the others in her class and, although she had a grace of her own, it was nothing like what the teacher tried to coax out of her.

Oddly enough, Jasmina at this same age, was chunky. No, not overweight, just strong and chunky.  The French call it “bien plante” (well planted).  Mark you, Jasmina had horses and that made her immensely fit, so one can’t compare.  Odd, when you think what a muscle-maniac Hussein was.  I wonder if he ever thinks about Debbie and the children ?  And, if he does, would he be pleased that Jasmina has that same muscular physique …?

Extract from “A Call from France”:-

When we watched Debbie whizzing down the pistes, all her cares forgotten, we knew we had made the right decision. She skied well, with an instinctive elegance. She was cautious but fun-loving, and both she and Max braved the black pistes with no bother, invariably meeting us at the bottom. We rapidly gave names, as I daresay most families do, to the meeting points.

“We’ll meet for hot chocolate at Grizzly Bear café” one of us would announce, or perhaps “when we get to the end of Red Apple piste (named after Bernie ’s cheeks) we’ll go for lunch.”

Two weeks tripped by on the snowy slopes. We were both extremely conscious of Debbie and we did everything we could to make sure she really enjoyed it. Max had to pretend to be over sixteen (easy enough when you’re tall) in order to get in to the disco with Debs every night. We didn’t dare count how much we were spending, but they returned in the small wee hours full of fun, and Max told me there was nothing of any note to report. Debbie danced a lot, he told me, she chatted a lot.

“She can be SO EMBARRASSING!” he declared.

Girls are, I replied.

Ironically the café we skied past on our way to the first lift had to be called …. wait for it – Costa. It couldn’t possibly have been “The Coffee Shop” or “Café des Pistes” or something like that. No, it had to be called Costa. I don’t know if Debbie noticed – I certainly didn’t draw her attention to it.

A couple of times during day time Debbie and Max met friends they had made at the disco, but of course most people were there only the one week.

“Does Debs show any interest in the other boys?” I asked Max .

“Yes – in all of them!”

“Does she dance with them? Is she having fun?”

“Oh yes! She dances a lot. She’s quite good at it. She dances with all the boys. She’s having a great time.”

“And you, Max ?” I asked, looking up at his young face with just the first hints of a bit of hair on his chin, “are you having a nice time too?”

“Brilliant!” he grinned at me.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, “but Debs has forgotten about Costa. She’s looking forward to going to college in Brighton next year. She told me so.”

Sometimes he was so wise for his tender years. He was certainly reassuring. I looked at him. Dressed almost entirely in black he still had the figure of a boy and I suspected he was extremely pleased at being able to go to the disco because of Debbie …

 

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Illustrations for my books

 

Extract from “A Call from France” by Catherine Broughton

 

I was happier at Les Cypres.

I was physically, if not mentally, considerably less isolated. It was only once we’d moved in that I realized just how much the distance between Tulips and everything else had added to my work load, just in sheer driving time. I hadn’t even been able to post a letter or buy a stick of bread without getting out the car and, worse, any form of entertainment or relaxation – beaches, restaurants, cinemas – were all miles away.

Les Cypres offered us more and at closer proximity. As the months flit by we tried a variety of things from jazz sessions to yoga, from archery to Amnesty International. It may be that we asked too much of life, but we were never able to become immersed in any way and remained permanently sitting at the edge. One of the things we got involved in was the village committee for saving the patrimoine – the local heritage – and we attended several village meetings where the restoration of an ancient bread oven was discussed. I suppose the problem was that it was not our country, not our village – hey, not even our language! – and we found it difficult to take any realistic interest in renovating a bread oven, not least because we had an ancient bread oven of our own.

I can’t say I actively enjoyed the proximity of the village shops or the supermarket in Arabor, but I was aware it was an advantage. St Sylvain , the village, offered the basic essentials, despite being closed half the time, and Arabor was at least a town with real live people around, if not very many. It’s funny how you just don’t see French people in the streets in a French town, the way you do in England.

On a Sunday morning, particularly in winter, Euan and I went to the supermarket in Bourcefranc, some five minutes in the car. Afterwards we walked on the beach. I loved looking out over the sea to the island of Oleron opposite, seeing the boats bobbing about in the estuary and the cars passing by over the bridge.

There is something undeniably exhilarating about walking along a beach, even in the winter when that wind whipped in off the Atlantic, searing like a knife through our cagoules and thrashing my hair into a tangled nest. We always parked at the eastern end of the beach, at that time little more than a dirt road and utterly stinking with seaweed and shell fish, and walked directly along the shore line as far as the little sailing club at the far end. We walked briskly, breathing deeply, trying to counteract the stress and strains of the punitive week we had terminated. Big Harry always came too and would charge along that beach barking and leaping through the waves. We still walk on that beach, quite regularly. Sometimes we see Big Harry’s shadow, his ghost, still leaping joyfully in the sand. Bernie joined the little sailing club in the summer and spent many a sunny day out in the estuary, sailing sometimes beyond the bridge and out in to the huge ocean.

Our move to Les Cypres coincided with my little estate agency fizzling out. That is the only way to describe it: it just fizzled out. That last summer at Tulips I had made many sales and had had clients almost every day; by the following spring it was over. At that time the expression “burn out” hadn’t been coined but, looking back on it now, I realize I was all burnt out. Competition was greater, of course, for the proximity of civilization also meant not only proximity of other agents but sparsity of properties available: the abandoned little farmhouses simply didn’t exist, people moved house less frequently, abandoned their houses never, and there was generally little of any interest on the market. My great strength as an agent had been that I was willing and able to drive around all the isolated little hamlets in the countryside, spotting the potential for British clients in the huge old beams and stone fireplaces, which at that time were the very things the French were abandoning. I had seen how to play the market. But it wasn’t just that: somehow the energy and enthusiasm had gone. The need to earn money kept my agency limping along for a while, perhaps six months.

“I’m not doing this any more,” I said aloud as I drove home one day, “I’ve finished.”

And that was it: I finished.

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