Glorious morning

Well, it wasn’t quite glorious at first. It’s glorious now.  To begin the dog began whining when the sun came up at 5 am .  He wants a quickie hump of Laura’s leg but I won’t allow him up on the bed. I was rather pleased myself with an erection. Physiologically that means I’m capable but it’s also called a ‘pee hard on’ and I really was enjoying the warmth beneath the Hudson Bay blanket.  Laura smelt lovely beside me, touselled blond hair on the pillow  and warm inviting body.  The gymnastics involved in either getting up to pee or rousting Laura from sleep for a loving morning of lust didn’t do it.  Thankfully I was able to roll over and return to dreaming after hissing at the mutt to be quiet.  

I dreamed pleasant dreams last night and after wakening.  I was in a futuristic place of learning, studying.  White walls and technology and virtual reality goggles.  I’ve been watching the Netflix Foundation, a recreation of the Asimov classic trilogy.  Like the original Dune movie it is okay.  Like Moses and Jesus.  These movies point back to the book but they just don’t capture the ‘experience’ of discovery and eureka found in reading. Better than the Kardasians or the News, mind you.  In my dream there was that reverence associated with higher learning and churches and holy places. I woke again from sleep with my dog whining. This time his lust was concealed in a layer of « I just want to kiss my mommy’.  The incestuous little runt has been at her ears. So it starts with love and kisses then he’s humping her leg.

Quite the sight really.  Embarrassing.  Too reminiscent of myself when I was in my early teens.  Girls all rainbows and unicorns and us boys pithed frog brains with residual reflexes jerking the hips.  Meanwhile the girls are rather pleased with themselves for causing the reaction. However they would no doubt like a pause button or a speed control like they have on their hair driers.  I consider castrating the mutt but remember Gilbert, the cockapoo before Madigan, called ‘the humper’ by our Thai friend Aim.  It’s a phase.  

I crawled out of bed and did not let him up as he obviously hoped.I love the camper wash room.  It’s like a train or plane or boat..  Totally functional with sink and toilet and shower all in one. The whole little room is moulded plastic like material.  White, with a fan built into the wall that can be pushed out or pulled in.  Wonderful engineering.  I relieved myself.

The dog was still there, ardent as ever. Standing on the bench looking into the bedroom. A cartoonist would surround his head with hearts.  I’m sure I had a similar look on my face when I stayed at a hippy commune and looked into the bed room of one of the girls, her perfect shoulder uncovered and her lustrous hair falling over the pillow.  The pheromal scent of her slowed my step and left an unforgettable image. I’d not ‘stared’ but merely glanced.  My mind is full of snapshots of such beauty.  My dogs however gets the whole video camera and crew going.  There’s no glances on gentlemanly turning away.    I pull on shorts, donned my shirt and  slipped into my sandals.

When I take his leash he’s actually disappointed. His insaniety is such that he really thought we were getting ready to climb into bed with Laura. Instead I’m dragging him outside.  Outside. 

Oh well, he likes the outdoors and deals with peeing immediately.  The plant is happy. The sun is shining  We’re high up in the mountains surrounded by a ring of white capped peaks. There’s a cool breeze and I’m invigorated.  He’s now in sniff and pee mode.  It’s like a dog with social media. He’s scrolling. His little legs carrying him forward.  A perfect distraction. He’s scrolling through the morning while I’m lifted heavenward atthe top of the world . The scent of pine has infused the air. It’s glorious.

Then he shits and I’m pleased because dog owners feel rewarded by these moments. Even the scooping up the poo and carrying it in the little plastic bag is rewarding. But not today. His fur has matted and he can’t get the poop to drop so he looks dolesfully at me. I have to bend down and pull the poop out and off his butt so he can get on with dog world day.. Without me he’d be rubbing his butt in sand.

Back at the truck camper I collapse in the out door lawn chair. I hear she’s up so give her time .  He’s whining again but stern looks have him sitting silently awaiting. I’m facing the morning sun and meditate.  Our father who art in heaven. . Jesus.  Holy Spirit.  Breathe.  Peace. Bliss. Om. Amen . Holy words. It’s glorious.

After a while I take him inside.  He’s ecstatic to see her up running around her legs and jumping up and down.  She is radiant. I understand how he feels for her.   I kiss her briefly on her soft lips drinking a sip of her potent weet scent.  

Then I drag him by the leash into the perfect washroom and wipe  his butt ‘wet ones’. All the while he’s giving me attitude like I’m ruining his suave. 

When we come out she says « He smells of poo », 

« He had an accident.  I cleaned it off but don’t let him up on the table. I’ll shower with him later. »

He climbs squirming into her lap smelling of poo. I think of all the families with kids and baby puke and diarhrea and dogs and cats with shit and such.  Life is Glorious.  

I set about making coffee.  We both like coffee in the morning.  The aroma of stove top expresso soon fills the camper. Life is glorious 

Limit Setting/Holding Love

One of the greatest books of Pediatric Psychiatry was Omnipotent Child by Thomas P. Millar, a West Vancouver Psychiatrist.  When I saw families years ago I used to recommend parents read this classic in combination with an equally great book by Alice Miller, called Drama of the Gifted Child,
Dr. Millar clearly demonstrated in his vast experience that many children were 'neglected' by parents who failed to limit set.  By contrast Psychoanalyst Alice Miller with her intense experience saw that abused children were often a product of being misunderstood 'gifted' children.  As a consequence of reading both books one could better navigate the fine line between smothering, mothering, and othering.
Children overly parented and protected were infantilized whereas children without parenting felt alien.  The happy medium was what each of these great authors sought to help parents and therapists find.
I loved learning as a psychiatrist that if I didn't set 'limits' and allowed a child to 'rage' out of control then I was giving the child the frightening experience of his being indeed the parent or the adult.  This was the essence of the book, Lord of the Flies.  If there is no 'limit' to a child's rage then indeed we are likely to cry "the horror, the horror' like Kurtz because at the most 'primitive' emotions are rawest and most open to dangerous expression.
There is merit in discipline.  Societies have developmental stages like individuals.  Maslow developped a hierarchy of needs showing the need for safety to precede self actualization.  Erik Erickson showed with his 8 fold developmental stages the importance of 'trust' before love.
A child especially an adolescent needs to feel safe in this world. If the child is indeed in control then as Dr. Millar explains so adeptly they develop 'omnipotence' which comes with 'fear' because if there is no one to stop my homicidal or suicidal rage then I'm alone.  Alice Miller points out that the gifted child seeks expression but nonetheless parents and society must 'limit' this expression for the betterment of the child and the family and society.
Even now there is ISIS refusing to accept international law, denying the role of the courts, setting up their own Lord of the Flies, primitive childish society with all the inherrent violence, chopping off of heads and caricatures of real states.  All around them the parent states of this cult and gang are together with military force limitting their expression.  This limit setting is little different from the limit setting that a parent does when a child wishes to bash another child's head with a rock.
So we all want to 'love' the child. Grandparents love that they can 'spoil' the child knowing that the parents will be left with the obligation of discipline.  Single parents often resolve their tyrant power position by leaving the 'discipline' to the state which involves 'child protection' and police and jails.  Historically the mother at home provided the child 'unconditional love' because the father who was the interface with the outside world provided 'conditional love'. In the great 50's classic of this , mother would tell her children 'wait till your father gets home'. If mother and father couldn't "control' a child's behaviour then the community in the form of child protection services, youth court and jails and police did, just as the militaries of the world are now addressing ISIS reign of terror.
I really would love to be in a world where England's Chamberlain was right and Hitler could be 'reasoned' with.  I grew up singing with the Beatles "all we need is love".  I am to this day working on forgiving the violence my school inflicted on children as a norm, the canings and strapping I received.  Of course, if I'd been a tad smarter I'd not of got caught and a tad brighter I'd not have lipped off at a teacher or two.
The fact is, the world's not perfect.  I think if the ISIS members had been better loved and children and had more breast feeding and less aggressive potty training they might 'do unto others as they would have done unto themselves' but I'm older. I've worked with thousands of people in a variety of centers and just find some are slow learners when it comes to limit setting.
One of my patients was a child who was an arsonist.  Despite the communities best efforts to protect themselves they simply could not get the parents 'to control' their 5 year old child so the town simply out of self preservation rejected the family after they had caused millions of dollars of damage.  The parents saw themselves and 'loving' yet the child was to all intents 'neglected' and only with massive arson projects could they get the attention they missed.
In the best of all possible worlds there would be no 'limit setting'. There would be no need for 'police' and 'social workers' and 'military' and 'judges'.  This would be called 'heaven' or 'paradise' but it's not reality.
The fact is, limit setting is a holding form of love.  My parents set rules for me to learn in the home so that I would be prepared for the rules that I would encounter in school and society. Now I've lived in different countries and travelled extensively and am thankful that I was taught so lovingly that there were rules and consequences.
Watching a birds nest recently in a presentation of time lapse photograph with the camera mounted nearby I noted that most of the chicks with little encouragement left the nest but one really didn't do that well.  The parents were by all accounts 'abusive' and 'bullying' but nonetheless the chick was literally 'kicked' out of the nest.  Begrudgingly it flew and appeared happy like the first chick which had appeared to want to fly from the very start.
Some of this is development.  Some of it's resources.  Obviously Adolf Hitler might have needed a few decades of all the mothers in the world teaching him potty training so that he wouldn't be damaged. The fact is he got the best perhaps his mother and his society could offer at the time.  ISIS leaders obviously needed more time on the breast but didn't get it.  Maybe each of them with a few decades in prison and full time with Dalai Lama and Bishop Tutu might lose their passion for chopping off others heads coupled with their adolescent sadistic selfie addiction.  The issue is then 'resource management'.  How much is everyone willing to pay and this question of 'economics' is really tied to the idea of what the 'military budget' should be.  Are the threats external or internal. Should there be more education internally on police or education and health care?
Obviously I believe in limit setting and holding love.  I believe there's a need for balance.  I like moderation. However, I think often I'm surrounded by really stupid people who believe 'all we need is love' and somehow think that the undisciplined masses produce free love and goodness rather than chaos and hysteria.  Am I the only one who saw how the hippy communes collectively collapsed.  I don't think we're going to be a better place when everyone smokes marijuana and we can all hang out at the beach.  I for one am thankful for parents and police and teachers and doctors  and the military and the politicians and accountants. I'm aware that I appreciate 'limits' and stop doing things because I don't want negative consequences. I don't think this is odd. I think it's human.  If I started chopping off my neighbours heads (and some of them really aren't using them) I understand that the community would 'limit' me just like they would a child who took a knife to the playground and began slashing the other children.
I know it's politically correct to sound like an idiot but I even believe the politically correct in a community don't deserve to have their heads removed from their bodies.  Community is about making the most for the most in a  utilitarian sense and involves 'exclusivity' and 'inclusivity'.  If I don't 'limit set' my dog, ie stop him humping your little girl, there's a good chance that a higher power will stop my dog's behaviour.
Because I love my dog, I set limits to his behaviour and clean up his shit. Ideally in time I'll get him to work his paws around those little green baggies so he can pick up his own shit. But I accept for now I'm probably going to have to be the one to do the scooping.  I suspect there's more likelihood my dog will learn how to clean up his own shit than ISIS and the likes will. I still have hope.