Fair Warning

Cassandra owns, with pride, a set of grown or nearly grown children, all now in their 20's.  The majority, for reasons best known to themselves, are slovenly house- and/or room-keepers.  They weren't raised in messy, dirty houses and were nagged and helped continually to tidy up, but now that they are pretty much independent, they have reverted to stye-dom.

In a fine, fine book that she read many years ago, The Women of Brewster Place, Cassandra found a passage that struck her at the time, and has stayed with her all along.  An older woman warns a young mother of an infant about the individuality and independence of children, by saying something like, "The first word that child speaks will not be a word you taught him."  This warning is, of course, the first hint of a later disaster.

Once upon a time, a wise, independent, freethinking work mate of Cassandra's was musing about her own grown children.  The woman said, "I was prepared for my daughter to be anything she might want to be, and felt I would accept her choices  with equanimity, whatever they might be.  If she wanted to be a doctor, fine; if she wanted to be a housewife, fine; if she wanted to be an Amazon explorer or a snake charmer, fine.  I would love her unconditionally whatever she became."

"But?"  Cassandra prompted.

"But instead she became Little Miss Prissy Christian, and I can't stand her!"

How many parents have wailed very similar words with similar pain?  Many, many, many.  So Cassandra would like to use this semi-public forum to warn her own children:  if you continue with this laissez-faire careless libertarian behavior, your children will have no choice but to grow up into religious-right underwear-ironing Palin-loving Republicans who will sigh with pained, arrogant patience at all your warnings and attempts at correction.

She's just saying.  And no, don't even think of sending them to Grandma to be straightened out.