motherhood: the dream and the reality

A while back, Danigirl wrote about a contentious and offensive book, Motherhood is a Trap, or something like that. She picked up on this particular quote:

“Generally speaking, people who have children have them for the wrong reasons,” she says. “They have them because they’re afraid of being alone, and they want to grasp a tiny bit of immortality. And anyway, we never get that immortality. You are doing something that is very foolish for society just because you have believed something that is not true.”

Danigirl asked her readers, why did you have children? And now I want to answer.

Whereas Danigirl always knew that above all else she wanted to be a mother, that it was her calling, I knew no such thing. When I was in high school, I thought children were parasites that sucked the life out of their parents and I couldn't understand why anyone would want to bring about their own demise. It seemed like something only really stupid people would do. In my daydreams of the future, I usually inhabited one of two fantasies: 1) I was an underpaid groom who lived in the loft above a barn with a big dog and a couple of horses (who stayed at the high-end barn for free) and worked long, solitary hours exercising horses and shoveling shit and doing all the work their owners were too lazy to do; or 2) I was a reclusive alcoholic in a decrepit shack with a typewriter far away from anyone and who only made weekly trips to the small nearby town for supplies, mostly booze.

After I fell in love, at the old age of 17, long after my friends all had, my fantasies were no longer so solitary; they involved a male life-partner and I came to own the horse stable or make enough money with few enough ties to travel the world, with my life-partner as a sidekick. I remember once telling my mom (who has three kids) about my view of children as parasites and my intention never to fall prey to that trap. She responded that she had never seen her children that way, that yes she'd made sacrafices, but they'd never felt like sacrifices and her children (me included) had actually enriched her life considerably. Right off the top of her head, she pointed out that she would never have known anything about horses without me, or travelled to so many countries without my sister to visit in them, or have learned about art without my brother's talent. This conversation was a revelation to me. It had never occurred to me that children might give something back to their parents.

A few years later, either just before or just after my first year of university, I visited my brother in Victoria. He's eight years older than me, and at that time had been with his partner for five years, and he told me about how much he'd like to have children. I thought he was becoming staid but his enthusiasm was intriguing. He was enthralled with how a child is literally created by love and fascinated by the separateness and yet connectedness of a child from and to the source of that love.

I was 22 when my brother had his first child, and she was four months old when I met her. I was totally swept away by the way she seemed to smile so much more brightly at me than anybody else, by her eyes following my big mop of red hair around the room, likely bigger and redder than anything else she'd seen in her short life on top of someone's head. After that, I knew I wanted kids.

The first time Sugar D and I, er, consummated our affection for one another, I told him that if anything unexpected resulted, I would not have an abortion. I've always been pro-choice, but at that stage of my life, it would no longer have been the right choice for me. Luckily, I never had to make that decision anyways. After we'd been together for a few years, I started to make it clear to Sugar D that I wanted children, and that at some point, his not knowing whether he wanted his kids would no longer be acceptable to me.

I remember trying to persuade him with all the good reasons for bringing children into our lives, but now, on the other side of all that, I cannot for the life of me remember what they were. The reality of parenthood has eclipsed all my earlier, mistaken ideas I guess. I do remember saying that we were already so boring that a kid would fit right in with our family-friendly Saturday morning market trips and not going out on Friday nights life. I was certainly not trying to capture some bit of immortality, because the one expectation I have of my child(ren) is that he is his own person, not some little version of me running around. I was also most definitely not afraid of being alone because I had lots of people in my life and a pretty supportive partner (except for the marriage-kids disagreement, which ended up being very nicely resolved).

I think what it came down to is that I felt I had a lot of love to offer, which is more than some poor children have. More selfishly, I thought that caring for a child and watching him or her experience so many firsts might renew my own wonder in the world, might make me see the world with fresh eyes. And it has. That said, the reality of becoming a mother has enriched my life than I could have ever dreamed possible.

Most surprising of all the changes motherhood has wrought in me is how much I have learned about myself. Who would have thought that being wholly responsible for the survival of another being, so precious they trump everything, would be a means to self-awareness? But it has been for me.

First up, parenthood has taught me about my relationship with Sugar D. Before Swee'pea was born, I thought I was the more emotionally resilient partner; not to say that Sugar D was not emotionally resilient, just that I was more so (anxiety notwithstanding). Becoming a mother has revealed my vulnerability in surprising ways. When I was going crazy with middle of the night growth spurts and a baby who wouldn't stop nursing or sleep, it was Sugar D whose company kept me from totally losing it. And even now, after those crazy, hormonal and awkward early weeks, I lose it far more than Sugar D does, and he always comes to my rescue.

Before I had Swee'pea, I was pretty prone to anxiety. I'd learned how to cope and was doing a lot better, but I would never have considered moving to Toronto, the way I have over the last few months, where people have to ride the subway (horrors!), and elevators up VERY tall buildings, where the streets are dangerous and busy, and people are scary. I know those are silly notions but I have always felt tremendously intimidated by the Big City; I mostly enjoyed visiting as long as I could avoid subways and elevators but it was always a relief to get home. I also didn't really care for the discomfort of long trips and preferred to stay close to home, although my world was beginning to broaden again, with considerable effort.

Now, Swee'pea provides a focus for my anxiety, a number onI have no anxiety. Nothing else really matters that much. And given that he's pretty portable and can be made happy and comfortable just about anywhere, I'm a lot more comfortable travelling away from home than I used to be. I suspect this came in large part from my role as a "travelling feeding bottle."

I have also learned about my ambition. I used to see myself as a coaster, someone who did the bare minimum to get by at work, someone who would choose not to have a paid job if some other financial means came about, who would be a stay-at-home mom in a heartbeat if we could swing it financially. But now that I am a mom, I have learned that I actually do like my job, and I love having a foot in both worlds by working only three days a week. Not only that, but I have discovered a new ambition in my working self. I've started to get frustrated with only being there three days a week, because it means that two days out of three I have to hand off some portion of my work. If I can hand it off to someone whose skills are similar to mine (i.e., another word-nerd), then it's fine. But if the only person I can hand off to has a different set of strengths and weaknesses, I can't trust that things will get done to my standard. And I don't like that.

I mentioned briefly a while back that a promotion has come available at my work. I'm excited at the prospect, enough that it being a full-time job is not a huge detriment. An opportunity like this likely won't come up again for years more. And working full-time might be nice, because it would take off some of the pressure off at my workplace to always be setting up back-ups and handing off work.

Before I became a mother, I may have been just as ambitious. But I also felt like more of a drone, even though I have never been a workaholic or anything like it. I'd lost my passion. Somehow, motherhood has rekindled my passion for photography and personal writing, for really seeing and smelling and hearing the world, for truly inhabiting the moment.

Yet even as I write this, I wonder if writing about these discoveries is somehow heretical to the cult of motherhood, or worse, if making these self-discoveries means I am a bad, selfish mother. That I should focus on the wondrousness of my child and his development, and not on mine. What do you think? How has motherhood surprised you?

ugh

Ugh. Now I have what Swee'pea had: snotty nose, fever, aches, the works.

On top of this, I am having to manage the suspense of waiting to find out if Sugar D got the job nearby. They won't be deciding till next week, and patience is not a virtue of mine. I keep oscillating between fantasizing about sweet it would be if Sugar D got the job and trying to rein in the fantasies so that we're not totally devastated if he doesn't get it.

I remember talking to a friend a while back about how hard I've found Sugar D's commute -- esentially it makes me a single mother for twelve hours a day, although having a partner overnight makes life so much easier that I feel bad making the comparison. This friend has had periods of being a real single mom when her partner has been overseas, and she said something that has stuck in my head: "It's good to learn that you can do it."

I hope soon we can chalk up the changes of the last five months to a learning experience.

night air

There is something luxurious and a little naughty about walking alone in night air so warm it's like a caress on bare arms. It makes me feel young and carefree to evoke a long line of young and carefree solitary walks on warm nights. So it's funny that the first memory to trip through my mind last night was of walking across a small Cape Town parking lot to the car after a delicious Thai meal with Sugar D, Swee'pea, and my in-laws. Nothing young and carefree about it really. Not alone at all. Just a memory of taking a moment to enjoy the fresh smell of a summer night, one of our last before returning to winter. I suppose both nights share a feeling, a knowledge of the end of a summer holiday.

There is something luxurious about walking alone on a warm summer night. But it's just sleezy at the end of October in Ontario.

three passes

He walks by as we exit the house on our way to the park. He's wearing a pink t-shirt, more dusty rose than bubblegum, perhaps even tending towards lilac. His baseball cap is nearly the same colour. He has a salt and pepper beard, full but trimmed, more pepper than salt. He is walking towards the park. We nod as he passes.

It is a shockingly mild October day, a day when the colours seem to leap onto my retinas and the low sun gilds the blowing leaves like it's raining gold foil.

I see him again as we near the park. He has turned around and passes us in the opposite direction. Close up, he looks remarkably like that man, the panhandler with the crutches, who I haven't seen downtown all summer, not since I took this picture:



A few days later or maybe the next day, I discovered blood on the wall he is facing in the picture. I've been wondering, kind of worriedly, where he's gone, hoping that he had just found a place to escape the summer.

After checking on Swee'pea and seeing his puffy red eyes running down his face, I decide to turn around. Walking towards home, I see a man jogging towards us. He's wearing a pink t-shirt and baseball cap too, also with a beard. As he approaches, I see it's the same man and he stops jogging to walk. He doesn't look at me as he passes this time, and I can hear he's out of breath.

After three passes, I still think he looks like that man. But it couldn't be. Could it?

streaming

Poor Swee'pea is STILL sick. That's five days of fever, which seems finally to have given way to a streaming nose, puffy, runny eyes and, no doubt, pounding sinuses. And a nasty, barking, phlegmy cough throughout. I took him to the doctor on Friday and he didn't have pneumonia or an ear infection, but this is one VERY miserable virus. Every day his fever recedes for a few hours, his eyes brighten, almost momentarily, and maybe he eats a few bites, making me think he's on the mend. But then his fever spikes again and his eyes get that only too familiar glassiness and I realize that he just keeps getting worse. Every day, for the last five days, I've thought things were getting better only to have them worsen. I'm starting to lose hope we'll ever emerge from the sickness.

In addition to the drooping and drippiness, it seems that his sleeping habits have regressed to his habits of infancy... he refuses to be put down, not even on the couch, for almost all of his sleep time. I must say I'm handling it much better than I did when he was four months old, knowing that we've survived it before, and it will surely improve once the poor kid feels better. In the meantime, we read and watch tv while a considerably heavier and more mobile baby sleeps and kicks and coughs and grunts on top of us. I like to think he gains some comfort from the thunderous sound of our hearbeats right against his ear, remembering the bliss of those timeless, floating days before the knowledge of bodily concerns like hunger, or cold, or streaming sinuses.

sleepless

It's after midnight and I can't sleep. Between Swee'pea's feverish barking coughs and sweaty little body pushing me off the bed and overheating me and my racing mind (Sugar D has a second interview next week for the local job -- Hurrah!) and a crazy hard deadline that I couldn't get as much done on because of Swee'pea's illness and wondering if I'll have to stay home again tomorrow since Sugar D can't stay home tomorrow when he needs a day next week for the interview... ugh. It seems to me that the medicine isn't working on Swee'pea's fever. When I finally surrendered my four inches of bed and got up, you know what the feverish leach did? He moved back into the centre of the bed. Oh, the irony.

fretting

Wow, it is NOT easy to get ready for a job interview in another city (especially The Big City where people dress really well and always have their hair and makeup done perfectly) when you have sole care of a toddler. It's very difficult to fret over the details of my appearance when a toddler is about to go down the stairs without me or has thrown everything out of the crib I tried to contain him in. Still, it was very annoying to discover that just two weeks ago I packed or threw out all of my hair clips because I hadn't used them in three years. (Half-ass ponytail-slash-bun thingie it is.) I also packed ALL of my makeup, because the last time I wore makeup was a year ago in a belly dance performance (actually maybe it was last March when I had to impress Sage -- whatever). The point is I had to go out to buy mascara at the last minute, and found myself paralyzed with indecision at the vast wall of mascara wands. How does one choose?!?

Of course, none of it mattered. I noticed that neither of the two women interviewing me were wearing makeup, and their hair didn't look perfect either. All that angst for nothing. I looked fine. I did fine. I would be a very good fit for the job.

And while I felt a little thrill at my first glimpse of the skyline and the CN Tower truncated by heavy, low clouds and hearing the clang of a streetcar and then a subway scraping by, I just don't think we belong in the Big Smoke. While I enjoyed being dwarfed by the enormous glass walls lining the downtown streets, I don't think I want to spend forty hours a week high up inside one of them. While it was exciting to watch all the people in smart suits and ties and shiny shoes rushing past a cafe window, I don't want to become one of them feeling tugged by my little one somewhere more than five minutes away from me.

Don't get me wrong. It's a vibrant and exciting city and I felt myself lifted by that excitement. I'm sure we could be happy there, especially with so many kickass bloggers there. But I think I'd prefer a slower life on a smaller scale. Sorry, I know I've said all this before but I continue to waffle so I need to reconsider the options over and over again.

So more finger-crossing for this nearby job for Sugar D. He had one interview last week and may hear the end of this week whether he gets a second.

the one where she posts the cat's accident

Swee'pea has discovered the giddy power of making other people laugh. Lately, his trick for giggles is exclaiming, "Stinky!" in the midst of a poopy diaper change (it actually sounds a bit like teetee but we know what he means).

Yesterday, he discovered a new exclamation to make us giggle. He had two mountainous boogies that had been taunting us ALL weekend from behind the protection of Swee'pea's swiping fists. Finally, while he was eating, one emerged and I quickly wiped it off his cheek. I decided to try again on the other nostril and sure enough, that little booger stuck to the damp washcloth and allowed itself to be drawn out. And drawn out. And drawn out. It just kept coming like one of those trick handkerchiefs magicians use on unsuspecting volunteers from the audience. It was so gross Sugar D and I couldn't help but comment, "Ewwwwww!" as it emerged and then afterwards during horrified involuntary flashbacks.

Later, Swee'pea grabbed a clean washcloth from the shelf and began inspecting it closely. "Ewwwwww!" It's his new favourite word, and he has a special knack for uttering it at particularly apt moments. He sounds like a flippin' teenager sometimes.

Also yesterday, Swee'pea was in his high chair eating when our cat started freaking out. She's neurotic, and especially neurotic about crapping. I suspect she has some digestive difficulties but it's still pretty annoying that she will only crap in a pristine box. I figured she was gearing up for a number two so I cleaned out the little clump of pee that was preventing her from doing her business and she quickly jumped in. I must have said something to Sugar D about the cat's plans because Swee'pea immediately started mocking the cat: "Stinky! Stinky!"

I guess the cat didn't much for his mockery because she leapt out of the litterbox and ran upstairs, her claws scraping on the floor while she did a cartoon-style running-in-place move before finally getting into gear and actually going upstairs. She's carried on like this before in pre-BM moments so I figured she'd come back down to her litterbox and make her deposit. But she didn't. Oh well, I guessed it was a false alarm. Until it actually did get stinky and I went upstairs to investigate. She'd crapped in the guest room.

ode to old-lady stores

I spent a fortune today. I think I spent more money on clothes just for me than I have ever spent in a single outing. In my entire life. I am not a shopper. I don't like shopping, especially not for clothes. But there was no way I could avoid buying new clothes any longer. I have only a few shirts suitable for work, and one of them has an ink stain right near my nipple, and the other two are maternity shirts, one of which also has a faint stain. The two pairs of pants I have that are suitable for work don't really fit, feel weird, and look worse.

I have worn my winter coat for more than nine winters, including the winter I was pregnant and gave birth. It used to be my dad's ski jacket, until he got sick of it nine years ago. I don't think I need to say any more.

I think I'd like to be slightly less of a slob. I know I'll never be one of those women who is ALWAYS well put-together, the ones who have perfectly coiffed hair all the time and wear high heals and nice blouses every day, and NEVER get a run in their stockings. But I think I should make an attempt to at least get some clothes that fit properly and look reasonably well. I realized the other day, with a bit of a start, that I weigh about what I weighed when I was six or seven months pregnant (hey, almost exactly two years ago). I think it could be a while before I'm back to my pre-pregnant size, if ever, so I decided to find some clothes that make me feel good.

So I went to the mall. Where I discovered that I am officially old. How do I know? Because while I did set foot in some of the stores aimed at the younger set, the stores I used to shop in, I didn't find a single thing that either fit or was remotely to my taste. Today I shopped almost exclusively at the old-lady stores, the ones I've never really stepped into before, but out of desperation I did today and discovered, to my pleased surprised, that their clothes actually look nice AND they're good quality AND they carry sizes larger than my thinnest size ever. AND I got really good service from women who don't make me feel like I'm a) a total geezer, b) pathetically out to lunch or c) way too fat to shop there. They don't look at my ass like it's a hopeless cause that no clothing will flatter but give me an honest opinion and find me clothing that fits AND flatters my body. Heck, unlike those waif-like teenagers in the other stores, these ladies sometimes even have an ass. Score!

For those of you who like to shop and would like a little vicarious thrill, here's what I bought:

1) A heavy wool, brown winter coat with a belt. Not terribly exciting but considerably more tasteful than my big ole (and I mean really old and really big) ski jacket. On sale for $70 off.
2) A brown wool blend suit for interviews with a shortish blazer and a longish, fairly straight skirt, almost identical to my other interview suit except that this one fits. It's comfortable (especially important during job interviews -- one of which I have next week for a job in Toronto), and makes me look good, and like I know what I'm doing (also especially important for job interviews). On sale for the price of the blazer alone.
3) A black pair of stretch cords with a camel pinstripe that actuallly fit. More impressive than it sounds.
4) A fairly long brown sweater with a cute almost-belt that keeps it from becoming a tent. (If you had told me two years ago that I would buy an almost-belted sweater, I would have laughed in your face. But it's nice.)
5) Two faux-two-piece-layered shirts -- one brown with a stripey collar and cuffs, the other red with a white collar and cuffs.

I also splurged and bought a book that intrigued me the other day, Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's, and just for Sugar D, the new definitive guide to Javascript. Yeehaw.

Since it's suddenly SO cold, I also got Swee'pea some good mittens. It was horrible this morning walking to the market and watching his little hands go red, but he refused to have a blanket on them. We discovered when I got home from shopping though, that Swee'pea has apparently developed a phobia of mittens. Seriously. When I took them out of the bag and approached him, he kept backing away and shaking his head, a panicked look in his eye. When he'd backed into a corner and I was still approaching, he cried and I stopped. I did the classical phobia thing, where you just try to get the scary scary item as close as the phobic person can stand it, and then bring it a little closer, until he even allowed them on his hands for a second. But he will not let us put them on him for outside. What are we going to do? How do we prevent his hands from getting frostbit this summer? Anyone ever had a mitten-phobic kid in a northern clime before?

dream

I had a funny dream the other night. It featured Aiden from Sex and the City, who Carrie dumped and I could never figure out why because he was HOT and he could BUILD things (I mean c'mon, what more could you ask for?). Anyways, Sugar D and I had bought a fixer-upper in The City, which needed a LOT of fixing up, and we were not really up to the task. Aiden, who happened to be in love with me (unrequited -- huh?) offered to do it all: knocking down walls, restoring original mouldings, putting in a new kitchen and bathroom, everything. Swoon. I felt slightly guilty because there was no chance Aiden's love would ever be requited, but let him do it anyways. After all, we were getting free labour. The renovations took months, but by the end of it we had a grand apartment, utterly gorgeous, AND Sugar D was long gone. I'd finally done right by Aiden. The only downside of the dream was that I woke up before anything got hot and heavy after all the renovations.

a meme that LOOKS like it's about Sugar D but really it's about me

1. Who is your man?

Sugar D

2. How long have you been together?

8 years

3. How long did you date?

5 years

4. How old is your man?

35

5. Who eats more?

He does.

6. Who said "I love you" first?

He did.

7. Who is taller?

He is -- by 1 inch

8. Who sings better?

We both sing horribly, but I’d have to say that I sing better. Or at least I sing more and he asks me to stop.

9. Who is smarter?

This is a tough one. He's probably smarter in a purely intellectual way but I may be smarter in a more pragmatic way. He remembers dates and names from books, whereas I remember street names and when to pay bills in real life.

10. Whose temper is worse?

Mine. It fires faster and more often, though his slow burn can be impressive -- about once a year.

11. Who does the laundry?

I do.

12. Who takes out the garbage?

He does.

13. Who sleeps on the right side of the bed?

I do.

14. Who pays the bills?

I do.

15. Who is better with the computer?

He is.

16. Who mows the lawn?

I do.

17. Who cooks dinner?

Right now, with him gone for 12 hours a day, I do. Years ago, he did ALL the cooking (he makes delicious curries). But over the years I have slowly learned to cook and now my repertoire is big enough to carry us (mostly) through the week. When he worked in the same town, it was probably a 50-50 split.

18. Who drives when you are together?

We usually split it for longer drives. I drive there and he drives back. But I probably drive a bit more than he does when we're driving around town.

19. Who pays when you go out?

He does. Not that it matters because we pool all our money.

20. Who is most stubborn?

I am. Though he gives me a frustratingly good run for my money.

21. Who is the first to admit when they are wrong?

Well, I'm the first to admit when HE'S wrong. I'm probably also the first to admit when I'm wrong, but it happens so rarely it's hard to remember.

22. Whose parents do you see the most?

We see his mom most frequently but for shorter visits. We probably see more of my parents when all the hours are totaled.

23. Who kissed who first?

Oh crap. I seriously can't remember. I could probably reconstruct a version of it but what would be the point. It was probably mutual.

24. Who asked who out?

I asked him out, but he'd already given me his phone number and blushed and stammered.

25. Who proposed?

He did. Unless you count all the times I told him I wanted him to propose.

26. Who is more sensitive?

I am.

27. Who has more friends?

I do.

28. Who has more siblings?

I do. He's an only child.

29. Who wears the pants in the family?

I do. He knows it and I know it.



PS Sugar D would like it known that he also does the dishes, feeds the cat, cleans the litterbox, and finds it unfair that those questions weren't on the exam.

a mini-rant

Yesterday, as I was leaving the grocery store, I heard a familiar, ire-raising, motorzied whine from in front of the Zellers next door. It was a leaf blower.

I know I'm not the first to write about leaf blowers and how offensive they are with their gasoline-consuming, greenhouse gas-emitting, and VERY LOUD motors. (I once read that running a gas lawnmower on an average sized yard emits about the same greenhouse gases as driving a car for 500 km -- how horrifying is that?) But somehow leaf blowers seem like the biggest practical joke on their users.

I know the type. I once had an old landlord with an anger management problem who used his pellet gun for stress relief. He also used his leaf blower. This is a man who barged into our apartment at 7 in the morning in a rage, swearing at me with bulging eyes and calling me the c-word. Not nice. But very concerned about the state of his property. And so he blew leaves around with a very loud machine.

No wonder he was angry, really. Can you get any more Sisyphian than blowing leaves around? Given the great big leaf blower in the sky, more powerful AND quieter that those noisy little beasts, known as, you know, wind. I could see if you were going to be fastidious about leaves on your property, maybe using a leaf vacuum to get rid of them if you just couldn't bring yourself to use something so mundane and unmotorized as a rake. But a leaf blower? Don't these people realize that they're just blowing the leaves around?

t-day

This must be the hottest Thanksgiving Monday on record. It's the first time I've worn a tank top, shorts and sandals on the patio of a public drinking establishment. Come to think of it, it's the first time I've found myself at a public drinking establishment on a Thanksgiving Monday, ever. I've been driven to drink by the stress and uncertainty of the last few months. More accurately, I've had a fight with Sugar D, our first in months and months, outside of our usual bickering, and the gorgeous day far warmer than any October day should be has me craving the pleasure of a pint on a patio.

And so I find myself enjoying a cold one on a warm, breezy patio all by myself. I feel a bit self-conscious being alone, especially after a man, also by himself except for the golden retriever lounging at his feet, smiles at me when I look around. He is wearing the same hopeful expression as his dog. I make sure my left hand is visible to him and rub my wedding ring for emphasis. I read the last few pages of Shutterbabe, which is truly a wonderful book. But I finish it too soon, and am left with three-quarters of a pint and not much to engage myself in.

I wonder if that man has brought his dog along as the next best chick-magnet to a baby, if he's looking for a kindred spirit. He looks nice enough, like someone I know except I've never met him before.

At another table, two men in direct sun frown over a chess game, their beer glasses nearly empty. In the corner, a young man and woman play scrabble next to tea and french fries. Another man, also youngish, reads his book, one hand fondling his temple. A pack of smokes is on the table in front of him, nearly empty, and flattened from his back pocket. I remember how my pack of smokes was almost always flattened like that after a night out, when I had only a few smokes left.

The man with the dog just smokes and surveys, like me, his loyal friend relaxed at his feet. He makes me nervous. He's watching me I think. Every time I look around, he's looking at me and darts his eyes away. I see he's sucking back half-pints like he should have just ordered a full one. He pays his bill before he's finished, telling the server that he's running it out of time. I see he's wearing crocs when he gets up to use the ashtray at another table. Somewhere, some version of family is expecting him, I guess. Did he say he was taking the dog for a walk as an excuse to escape? That he'd be back by dinner time?

My own version of a family is waiting for me too I guess. My MIL is coming for dinner tonight, nothing ambitious, just a visit. I procrastinate on finishing the last few sips, then finally relent.

When I return home, I discover Sugar D and Swee'pea have gone out, and there is spinach between my two front teeth.

letter to Swee'pea: 20 months

Dear Swee'pea:



Today you are 20 months old, nearly two. This month you have begun to latch onto colours and counting. You have blue ("boo") down, and seem to also use it to indicate that you're thinking about or categorizing by colour. You have also said yellow (whoawhoa) and green (dee) when prompted, but the other day when we were walking to meet your dad after work, you looked up at the sky with its lovely sunset colours spread across it (frighteningly early I may add -- I'm totally in denial about the coming winter), pointed up and said, "buhbuh." I think you must have said purple. It was amazing. I think that evening you also looked at different part of the sky and pronounced, "Boo," also accurate. At the early years centre this week, I watched you first gather all the blue balls together, then the green ones, then the yellow and red striped ones, then the blue and white striped ones, and so on.

As for counting, two is your number. You're all over the number two. When you bring out your Counting 1-2-3 book, you point at all the numbers and sing, "two two two," "two two two." So you have a little ways to go in the counting department, but I am still supremely impressed. When you see two items, you yell out, "Two two!" I am thinking I should read Jacob Two Two and the Hooded Fang again. It was one of my favourites when I was about six or seven.


Hey look! You like the swings again.



We are in the throes of a tyrannical toddlerdom. You seem to be a bit of a bipolar ruler, one minute the benevolent dictator, the next an imperious monarch sitting high on your throne while your devoted and indulgent courtiers run around beneath you like headless chickens. One minute you are give hugs and cuddles and laughing and otherwise charming us utterly, the next screaming and throwing your food on the floor if it's not to your taste and otherwise wreaking havoc. There is no doubt, however, who rules the roost in our home.

I have to say, at the risk of treason, the food-throwing thing is really annoying. You throw your food on the floor when you're finished eating (along with your plastic plate, spoon and cup), often looking right at me with an expression that says, "Yeah, I'm throwing food on the floor. Whatcha gonna do about it?" If I offer you something that isn't exactly what you want, you often bat it away or immediately squish it and drop it on the floor in disdain, looking at me like, "How dare you bring me such substandard fare?!? Just who do you think you are? This'll teach you." This is especially irritating if you have been too busy focusing on something else to answer me on whether you want pear or banana, nodding abstractly at one or the other, so I get sick of trying to get your attention and just offer you something, which you reject immediately, looking just like the personally offended medieval monarch.


Off with his head!

I suppose it's redundant to say you have very strong opinions. Lately you have occasionally refused to get out of pajamas or a dirty shirt, weeping and plaintively requesting a "nana" (literally translated as another but really meaning THAT shirt, the one I so unjustly just removed from your back. The horror.)

You also have a strangely insistent sense of direction, sobbing if we leave the house with the stroller and we don't turn towards the park with the covered bridge, playground, and, not incidentally, the ice cream shop. I've noticed if I run some errands in a loop, leaving a store and going in a different direction than the one we arrived from, you also get very upset, crying, "Deedee" (that way) and pointing in the direction we should be going in. This has also happened quite frequently in the car, although I can't figure out where you want to go, exactly. You usually calm down once I've explained a few times that I know where I'm going, we're going to the store to get milk, or we're taking a different route home and it's ok, or whatever.

This month I heard you say your name. You may have been doing this for quite a while, or it may have been your first time, who knows. But I was cuddling you after work and daycare, looking at what someone had written on my facebook wall (I know! I'm a horrible mom.) and you saw my profile image, probably my favourite picture of all time, the one where you're sleeping in my arms wearing only a diaper, and I'm looking serious and contemplative resting my head on your head, at your grandpa's house in South Africa, you exclaimed, "Mama!" and "Bebe!" and I said, "That's right. Do you know who that baby is?" And you said, "Zsa Zsa!" a pretty decent approximation of your name given your challenges with enunciation and the difficulty of your name.


Ever since you started at the new daycare centre, you have really bonded with your Sleeping Leopard, which your Auntie C got for you in Colombia.

On the charming front, sometimes we walk out to meet your daddy who walks home from the bus. We walk along and you stop to investigate just about every leaf and pebble and snail on the way. Your gait is adorable: self-confident and determined, you puff your chest out and make each footfall with authority. It is at once jaunty and officious, somehow. Anyways, as we walk, you periodically call out, "Dada!" until eventually he comes into sight, at which point you yell jubilantly, "Dada!!!" and run towards him, your little arms and legs like propellors, and the scene goes into slow motion in my mind, like a movie, complete with a dramatic and moving soundtrack (usually that song from the beach scene in Chariots of Fire), a scene where two people with a deep love are reunited after far too long. The quick and steady clipclop of your sneakers on the sidewalk is like a metronome for my heart. I can't even express how this reunion warms me. And saddens me too, that your daddy has to be away from us for so much of the weekday. You don't even get to see him in the mornings.



Yesterday we went to Grandma and Grandpa's and lazy thunder rumbled around us most of the day. Nearly every time, you'd exclaim, "Ninno," and we all tried to make sure that you weren't scared by it, that it was something fun and interesting. Last night, just before we went to bed, the storm that had been threatening all day let loose and the pitch black night sky was lit like day with lightning, and the thunder was very loud through the open windows. It was weird for me to hear it at a distance, the sound's passage to my ears uninterrupted by buildings or houses. Anyways, it was probably the strongest and longest storm we've had all summer, and you were beginning to look a little concerned. At one point, very bright lightning struck at nearly the same time as the thunder, and the power went off for a few seconds. You were sitting on a footstool between your dad's legs and it felt like we'd been struck by lightning ourselves, so strong was the adrenaline that jolted our hearts into overdrive and our arms reaching to keep you safe. The lights came back on momentarily, and you looked kind of scared, probably more by the speed of our arms than by the dark or the noise. Or maybe it was a bit of all three.



This morning we drove back home and you spent the first hour just quietly looking out the window, not saying anything and not looking like you were particularly ready for sleep. I watched you in the rearview mirror, the one on the passenger side of the car (the one that says, "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear"), and tried to figure out what you were looking at and thinking about. Were you admiring the autumn colours whizzing by in a blur? Were you observing the difference between these pastoral views and the more urban concrete views around our home? Were you watching the geese in formation, the horses frolicking and the cows chewing their cud and comparing them with the animals you see in your books? I'll never know. Eventually, your lids got heavy and I watched you settle into a peaceful sleep, finally. It is so delicious to watch you sleep, even better than the joy of watching you run or inspect a fallen leaf.



I do worry that you're becoming either a total despot or obsessive compulsive (closing doors I leave open, always on the watch to keep things in their proper place), that we're doing something wrong. But then you do something that makes it all feel right, that you are exactly who you are meant to be and we are supporting your development in the ways you require. I suspect that, as with most things, the reality is somewhere in between. Regardless, I still find myself giddy when I'm leaving work and going to pick you up at your daycare (the daycare at which you finally seem to feel comfortable after considerable heartache on both our parts). I can't get to you fast enough. And I love that I still have this excitement to see you and hug you and feel your soft little arms gaining comfort in mine.

Love Always,
Mum

foggy memories of a leaky time

Inspired by one of my delurkers. See? It's GOOD to delurk!

When I was pregnant, I really wanted to breastfeed. Everyone knows breast is best, and I didn't want to let my baby down. Most of the mothers I knew had all breastfed for varying lengths of time, mostly about a year, one as long as five years. I heard stories of excruciating pain from engorgement and very sore nipples and how some babies don't sleep more than five hours in a row for months and months and months ("Whatever!" I thought at the time, "I'm sure my baby will sleep like normal babies..." -- HA!), of having to supplement with formula and the sky not falling in and being able to develop an exclusive breastfeeding relationship.

Nobody could really describe what it felt like though, and I wondered if it would be weird. I expected that it might feel a little bit sexual, because maybe it makes sense, biologically, for breastfeeding to feel good. I think I did get a few warnings that many, many people would handle my breasts in the early days but that after all the breached modesty of pregnancy and birth, it would be nothing. And it was.

I didn't get to hold Swee'pea for at least an hour and a half after his birth. When someone (Sugar D?) brought him in, the nurses said I should try to nurse him, but I hadn't the slightest clue what to do. He was so tiny and floppy I couldn't imagine how to manage the mechanics. So the nurse showed me how to hold him, just so, and she grabbed my boob and tickled his nose with my nipple and then he latched on. It was a bit weird, but I already felt such miraculous love for this little creature that I wanted to do everything right, and the most reliable way was to surrender my modesty to the wisdom of others.

After that first awkward nursing session, word came down from on high that he was not to nurse and he had to go back to the nursery for monitoring. The nurses didn't know why he would be prohibited from nursing and they just decided not to tell anyone, and I spent the next four hours without him, feeling guilty for putting him to my breast.

I was lucky in that everyone proclaimed from the very beginning that Swee'pea had a near-perfect latch, not that I had any clue. I remember the lactation consultant trying to show me when his latch was good and when it wasn't, when his nursing was actually nutritive and it was just for comfort, and I remember straining my eyes to decode these nuances, mostly unsuccessfully.

It took me a long time (at least it felt like a long time) to be able to identify when his latch was good and when it wasn't, but I was lucky in that my nipples were only sore for a few days to a week. Even when they were sore, the actual breastfeeding didn't hurt, just the transitions onto and off the breast. I remember the awkwardness of holding his head just so, and the pressure I felt in orchestrating a correct latch. When I was pregnant, I thought I'd be able to just figure it out once I had a real baby in my arms, but the reality was awkward, stressful and exhausting. I don't think I've ever before perservered at anything that didn't come naturally to me, but in this instance, the stakes were too high to give up. Plus, I knew I was having it easy, compared to some other mothers.

I was surprised that it didn't feel sexual AT ALL. It didn't feel bad, but it didn't feel particularly good either, it just was. The good feelings were all of the emotional variety, wondering at Swee'pea's beauty, at my ability to provide sustanence for him, at how well he was thriving after a scary delivery. The bad feelings were also emotional, mostly in the middle of the night and mostly during growth spurts, when Swee'pea couldn't get enough milk and it felt like he would never be satisfied, like he would never leave me or my boobs alone, ever again.

I think Swee'pea was around three weeks old when he started to have spinachy, green poos. The midwives didn't seem particularly concerned, but I was. Eventually, a public health nurse decided I had overactive letdown and an overabundance of foremilk, which is higher in sugar and lower in fat than the hindmilk and causes diarrhea. She could tell because Swee'pea often came on and off the breast during a feed, and often choked when my milk let down (which she taught me how to identify -- it's that tingly feeling that comes right at the moment that Swee'pea began gulping audibly). Eventually, we sorted out the imbalanced foremilk (by only nursing him on one boob per feed, starting with one boob for two feeds), but the overactive letdown was something that Swee'pea just had to adjust to. By about six weeks old, I think, or for sure by three months, his feeds only took five minutes.

I think it's amazing that everything went pretty well (because, really, who can complain about too much milk?) but was still SO hard. I can't imagine just how much harder it could be, how much a new mother could bear. (And I had no idea postpartum could be so wet!) It did get easier, and it was second nature by about four months I think, and then it got even easier when he started on solids. Now, we're down to just one bedtime feed, and I occasionally consider weaning. But, it's so easy that I can't come up with a compelling reason either to wean or not to wean. And so, we just keep going with our bedtime feed.

Last week at work, I came upon some of my coworkers, all women. And one said, "Hey Sin, we were just talking about women who breastfeed babies who have teeth." And I said, "Oh, like me?" And she said, "Well, more like older children, like three or four years old," and I said, "Oh, like my sister?" Just to be clear on where I stood on the subject before we went any further. They looked reasonably interested, so I dove in, as balanced and undefensively as possible.

It infuriates me when people pass judgment about women breastfeeding in public or beyond what is considered an acceptable age. But, I've already blogged about that. I say that if a mother and child are able to get through those early weeks still breastfeeding, they should feel comfortable doing it for as long as they like, wherever they like. I've always stood by the belief that if I'm uncomfortable with somebody breastfeeding, that's MY problem (and the problem of a culture that oversexualizes breasts), not the mother's and certainly not the child's.

I finally got around to watching the video of Bill Maher spouting off about breastfeeding in public, and I can't believe that someone can be such an asshole and not give a shit. Mind you, his speech really illustrates exactly what is wrong with our culture (e.g. his joke that the only acceptable combination of breasts and food is at Hooters), a culture that cannot abide breasts in any context other than a sexual one.

If you haven't already read them, I thoroughly enjoyed these posts on the subject.

improvement

Edited: Hey it's Delurking Day! Which doesn't mean that you have to comment, or that I feel hostile towards my lurkers. Quite the contrary: I love my lurkers with an endless curiosity. So if you're up for it, I'd love to hear from you. The very kind Morrigan did it... you can too. Even if you just want to tell me your favourite colour (mine is brown... could you tell?).

I meant to post about this AGES ago, but for one reason and another, I haven't. Last month, the BlogHers Act Canada Eco-Challenge urged us to reduce the packaging we use.

Because I only drink tea and it's near impossible to get a decent cup of take-out tea, disposable cups are not such an issue for me. I already had one of my generously proportioned mugs from home at work (because in my world, if you're going to go to the trouble of making a cup of tea you may as well make it a BIG one), since about June. I do drink from plastic water bottles, but I re-use them or often use cups from the cafeteria. The cafeteria also provides plates and metal utensils, further reducing disposable containers.

But I really suck with plastic bags. I've been collecting canvas bags slowly, and I've been pretty good at using them when I'm out picking up a few items with the stroller. But I really sucked at remembering to bring them with me for the big weekly grocery shop in the car. Last month, inspired by a few bloggers, I decided that any shopping trip I forgot the bags I would buy another canvas bag as a sort of penance, which would at least reduce my plastic bag consumption by two or three bags. The result? I only forgot the bags once, and since then I have had two full shopping trips where I didn't need any additional plastic bags. I have also been using a reusable lunch container, because I used to use plastic bags, which often got gross and I'd throw them out after a single use. So far so good, except that my new lunch bag is something I got from Pizza Pizza as a promotion not long ago, and it says, "Hot and Fresh!"

Also, this past week we rented one of those big bins to throw garbage in as we decluttered. I was really conscious of the fact that all that stuff goes straight to landfill, so I made sure to only put stuff in it that couldn't be recycled or donated. It required a few extra bags of recycling and a cartrip to the local good will store with a full trunk, but it was worth it. I also made sure not to put anything toxic in the bin, like old batteries or paint cans. I may not have it down as well as Mad, but I'm working on it.

For October, the challenge is looking to reduce the toxic chemicals in our food and retail products. I find this a little more daunting.

However, after clicking over to the Environemental Defence's Toxic Nation, I realize that I am already doing some things that could help. For example, I don't use any anti-bacterial products, for four reasons: 1) they don't actually work, unless you leave them on for like 30 minutes 2) the active ingredients are often quite damaging to the environment, forming dioxin or other nasty compounds in the presence of sunlight 3) they contribute to antibiotic resistance even more than overprescribed antibiotics and 4) it's not actually desirable to kill all the bacteria on your skin or anywhere else on your body -- they help keep you well and if they get depleted, they leave room for the really nasty microbial critters. I tried, to no avail, to get my workplace to stop using antibacterial soap in the bathrooms, a vestige of the SARS scare (which is VIRAL, people, NOT bacterial). To my knowledge, it's still there, and it still pisses me off.

I don't use many cleaners in my home. Well, ok, that's mostly because I'm a slob, but it's also partly because of all the nasty shit they put in those things and don't tell us about on the labels. Wherever practical, I use simple, old-school cleaners like vinegar or baking soda or plain old soap. And the cleaning service who comes in once every two weeks to scrape the scum out of our kitchen and bathroom only uses environmentally and people-friendly products. There have been studies that show that children from very clean homes have more allergies than children from slightly dirtier homes with pets and dust. So I comfort myself that I am reducing Swee'pea's allergies by being a slob.

We don't use non-stick pots or pans, unless we're visiting Grandma and Grandpa. I always thought it was just Sugar D's paranoia, but Toxic Nation says those surfaces actually are toxic.

There's a lot more I can do, to increase my awareness and lobby for change. I've signed Toxic Nation's petition to urge the Canadian government to ban Bisphenol A, a hormone disrupter found in baby bottles and other hard plastic containers and food cans. I've subscribed to Toxic Nation's e-updates.

Two things I'm going to try to do this month: find a plastic bottle to drink from that doesn't contain Bisphenol A and using more dried beans and legumes instead of canned.

What are you doing?

a sign?

Aargh. Yesterday, last night, and this morning were all aflutter with me trying to keep our house clean for the virtual tour filming this morning. The appointment was for 9:30 and it couldn't come soon enough... you may have noticed that we are hygienically challenged. With a toddler added to the mix, keeping the place model-show-home ready is near impossible. But I managed to last until 9:30, even putting the dishes away and hiding the dishrack under the sink. Time passed. Until finally, at 9:52, I called the real estate agency to ask where this kid was. Apparently he's very sick, way too sick to come out. Did I want to reschedule?

(I didn't bother rescheduling... now I'm regretting the 150 bucks I paid to have the place totally cleaned from top to bottom yesterday. Oh well... guess we'll see what happens.)

on hold

I used to have a roommate who never seemed able to make a decision. She was constantly flipping coins and reciting "eeny meeny miney moe." I was always impressed that she could leave her fate to the toss of a coin, even for small things like what to have for dinner. I think I've always been fairly decisive and also fairly able to live with the decisions I've made. I'm not much for regret, generally, preferring to use those occasions for learning and making different mistakes later on.

It didn't take me long to realize that my roommate wasn't actually leaving her fate to the toss of a coin. She often overturned the result, using the coin toss as a decision-making tool. If she didn't like the way it landed, it helped her figure out which path she actually wanted.

Not long ago, an old high school friend was shocked to learn that I was not a T (in Myers-Briggs), a thinker like her, but an F, a feeler. She's always seen me as an intellectual, so I guess it follows that an intellectual would be a thinker. But no. I make every single decision based on feelings: either I imagine myself on the other side of the decision and imagine how I feel with different results, or I go with my gut, an intuition of rightness. The problem with this approach is that feelings are fickle. You can mourn the passing of an old way of life at the same time that you rejoice in the new. And fear can be tricky: is it the kind of fear that you should overcome, the kind that keeps us from growing or doing things that are good for us but scary; or the kind of fear that keeps us from doing dangerous things, the kind that is correct and should be heeded?

I haven't really blogged much about it (mostly because I haven't had the time), but I have really been struggling with the decision of whether to move to Toronto. I said we're going to do it, and we've been taking all the right steps in that direction. But I have this niggling feeling that we could get to Toronto, swept up in its excitement and busy-ness, and find ourselves longing for the quiet pace of G-town. I worry that we're being hasty, that moving to Toronto will in fact make for less family time than more, and perhaps we should take more time to consider the options and give the local job market more of a chance to hire Sugar D.

I keep searching for cues from the universe, trying to read the signs of where we should go, but it seems like the universe just keeps throwing us more options, more choices. There is a reason that I prefer to shop at our tiny little liquor store with only five choices of South African wine; the big box liquor store is dizzying, and no matter how long I spend trying to choose, I usually end up going with one of the five choices offered by the other little store. Clearly, I don't do well with a lot of choice. (But mmm, wine...)

I keep hoping that at some point with this move things will take on a life of their own and we will just have to go with the flow, to live with the decisions we've made. But it seems like just about every moment is a new decision point. Stop or go forward? Yay or nay? Today or tomorrow or next week?

Just over a week ago, we decided to throw ourselves into Toronto, that we could probably make ourselves happy in our either place, but we may as well go with Toronto, that the uncertainy and indesiveness is what's stressing us out. The very next business day, my manager announced that a new position had been created in my unit, a more senior position that I would love to apply for. Four days after that, Sugar D got an email about a job prospect not too far from here. Needless to say our earlier decision to focus on Toronto is null and void. We're back to oscillating.

However, these recent developments have shed some light for me. Imagining the possibility of staying in G-town with Sugar D only using an hour a day for travel to work instead of his current four feels like heaven. I feel almost euphoric thinking about staying in our home, proceeding with the rest of my ten-year plan for the gardens, proceeding with the bathroom and kitchen reno next summer, working for the current employer that I know and love, staying with the current daycare, to which Swee'pea has finally adapted enough that I'm not afraid to say it, and having enough time and energy to send good food with him, to stay with our current scattered and lovely family doctor, and the young and smart pediatrician, to have family mornings again and eat Sugar D's curries during the week... that's what I want.

This weekend we fixed and painted and purged and cleaned and hung pictures in preparation for the virtual tour filming tomorrow morning, which we're still going ahead with. Maybe all this is just the universe's way of getting us to declutter our house, to finally throw out the dead dryer in the basement and the picnic table impersonating the Leaning Tower of Pisa in our backyard, to put up a fresh new house number on our old bricks instead of the pathetic scrap of wood twist-tied to the wrought iron railing of our porch, to put out various belongings that we no longer use on our front yard and watch neighbours cart them away to new usefulness. (especially sweet was the young student who knocked on our door this morning and politely asked if he could rescue our tropical house plants, sitting out there nearly dead, and nurture them back to life -- yes please, we've been horribly negligent since Swee'pea was born! -- AND politely introduced himself and shook my hand before going on his way, and the other students who were laden down on their way home from the grocery store yesterday but still found the wherewithall to take away our four seventies chairs that I grew up sitting on every summer at the cottage... I can't tell you the pleasure I get from having neighbours choose to take on these things of mine.)

Which isn't to say that we're definitely not moving to Toronto. Only that we're putting our plans on hold, to explore the possibilities that may allow us to stay here.

Fingers crossed this local job comes through for Sugar D...

life

Life is overwhelming. I used to think that my challenges were unique or different from the challenges everybody else faces. Now, I am beginning to suspect that I am just an incompetent human being, that my mountains would be a more organized person's molehills, that I create or at the very least attract these dramas. I suppose it's in my nature as a procrastinator, avoiding or ignoring everyday tasks until they can't or won't be ignored, the moment at which the universe throws a curve ball and someone loses a job or daycare or housing or a loved one, and the world crashes in on me, struggling just to wash the floor or pay a bill or cook dinner or change the diaper of a rowdy toddler.

I don't know how much longer I can keep this pace up for.

lunatic

Swee'pea keeps pointing out the window and yelling, "New! New!" which is his word for moon. Last night when we went for our evening stroll, the moon was bright and he kept pointing at it and giggling hysterically and yelling, "New! Newwwww!" He wanted us all to keep admiring it and after we put his pajamas on I let him have another look through the window, lifting up his blackout blind. As soon as he saw its glow, he cackled anew. I wondered if his enjoyment stemmed its benevolent face. This morning, his fascination continues. The moon must be magic, if the innocent's response is anything to go by.

* * *

Lately, Swee'pea's been doing some annoying things. Like climbing up on chairs and standing up, and when I go to pull him down, he leaps into my arms, completely unaware of any risk. Or climbing up on the wooden gate at the bottom of our stairs, and arching his back so he looks at the room upside down. He always smiles mischievously, like he knows he's pissing me off and revelling in it, and his smile gets wider, after I've told him to get down with no result and walk to remove him forcibly, like heh heh.

Yesterday afternoon, he did the gate thing, and I told him to get down and then went to remove him the way I usually do. His bratty smile got wider like it usually does. And just as I was about to grab his arms, he let go and fell backwards like the world's most ill-advised trust game. I wasn't able to grab any part of him, and I screamed, [Swee'pea]! His head smacked the floor with the most awful crack, but I think it was mostly because he hit the really squeaky bit of the floor. He cried, and I shook, and I wanted to yell at him, "Don't ever do that again!" I think I kind of did, but I tried to be gentle, not to be too I told you so, because that sucks when you're hurting. Now, he seems fine, but my legs were jelly and my heart palpitating for half an hour.

number crunching

My head is spinning and I've been having trouble sleeping because of it. We've had three agents to price our house (because I didn't like the first agent's price suggestion), and instead of leaping sheep I have endless numbers swirling around my head -- all night long, awake or asleep.

However, I had a particularly bright spot in my day yesterday. Walking downtown to buy yet more grass seed, the barrage of numbers running relentlessly through my mind and distracting my vision, we passed some kids hanging out outside Fresh Start. Four of them, in a row, and I was dying to take a picture. But I continue to be stopped up by my self-consciousness, my awareness that I would be photographing Disadvantaged Youths and feeling guilty for responding to that, for labelling them. So I just walked past them.

As I was passing, one of them commented on how cute Swee'pea was, so I stopped and we chatted. About how our local youth shelter, which served dinner to 30 kids every night and had 20 emergency beds closed suddenly in June with no alternative available. About how they're still waiting for the city to set up a new space and how it won't be downtown anymore. They seemed like genuinely nice kids, and I asked for a photo. I left feeling sad that I never got off my ass to help out at the shelter, and how I wish I'd made more effort to make that photographic project happen, although maybe it's better to give the kids a camera and let them represent themselves anyways. I'd like to volunteer now but since we're leaving town, it's just another lost opportunity. Still, I suppose there will be lots of Disadvantaged Youths in Toronto, too many to count or even to notice after a while, I bet.



After I left them, I saw this guy pulling out a smoke and couldn't resist. He's sitting in front of the grand old post office.



Later, I saw an old crazy friend from school, who I hadn't seen in many years but who's all of a sudden everywhere I go. In fact, I've been seeing a lot of people I haven't seen in nearly ten years... a former lover, and the guy who made good sandwiches in the cafeteria (one of the agents who came to our house yesterday).



I'd been feeling really blocked, photographically, unable to make the kind of images I want to (i.e. with people), so I felt a lot better. Still, I didn't sleep well and I feel hungover today, like some kind of time machine has opened up between my crazy school days and now.

news

Hurrah! For the first time since Swee'pea started his new daycare, I didn't cry on the way to work this morning.

AND Swee'pea only wimpered in advance of our arrival at the daycare (unlike the last few days when he had tears streaming down his face in the car), saving the real tears for the moments when I actually said goodbye and left.

And, we're doing it. We're moving to the Big Smoke. We told Sugar D's mom yesterday, and we're having real estate agents to price our house, and I think very soon things will take on a life of their own and we'll just ride along, until we find ourselves, dusting off and bewildered, in Toronto. Maybe by January?

Expect one of two options: slim postings because all I can think about is decluttering, house prices, and what it will be like living in such a big city (I've only lived in G-town since I moved out of my parents' place) or many posts about decluttering, house prices, and what it will be like living in such a big city. (Note to TO mamas: feel free to -- i.e. please -- share your experiences of the city, how it met your expectations and how it surprised you, both the good and the bad.)

pink balloons

Apparently, I am as raw as I was when I wrote my last post. Which is strange on a day like today, a day so mild that not even the shadows bear a tingle of chill, a day for which I was unprepared and overdressed so I shlepped around town this morning sweaty and uncomfortable. I went to the bank, which is decorated with pink balloons and streamers, and even the tellers, normally so fashionably conservative, have sprayed their hair fuschia. All to promote the Walk for the Cure. How did I discover I am still raw? I nearly cried when I opened the door, and there on the floor is the question, "Who are you walking for?" So arresting to be reminded that everyone, every single person, knows at least one friend or family member affected by breast cancer, someone who may only remain in their memories, accompanying them on this walk only in spirit. Sobering, to say the least.

This post wasn't supposed to be about breast cancer (I don't know what it was supposed to be about, exactly, but not that), but since I'm on the subject, I may as well continue. I know a number of women in real life who have been diagnosed with breast cancer, with both happy and sad endings. But the first person I think of right now, is Whymommy at Toddler Planet. I discovered her just as she was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer, an unusual form of breast cancer that doesn't present with a lump, but with strange skin changes, often in young women during pregnancy or lactation. When she described the symptoms, I became concerned about some weird skin stuff happening with my breasts (still lactating), and I booked an appointment with my doctor for the very next day. It turned out to be nothing, not IBC, but I was grateful to Whymommy for raising my awareness of this kind of cancer.

Later, she invited us to steal her post, which I meant to do, I just haven't gotten around to it. So here goes:

We hear a lot about breast cancer these days. One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetimes, and there are millions living with it in the U.S. today alone. But did you know that there is more than one type of breast cancer?

I didn’t. I thought that breast cancer was all the same. I figured that if I did my monthly breast self-exams, and found no lump, I’d be fine.

Oops. It turns out that you don’t have to have a lump to have breast cancer. Six weeks ago, I went to my OB/GYN because my breast felt funny. It was red, hot, inflamed, and the skin looked…funny. But there was no lump, so I wasn’t worried. I should have been. After a round of antibiotics didn’t clear up the inflammation, my doctor sent me to a breast specialist and did a skin punch biopsy. That test showed that I have inflammatory breast cancer, a very aggressive cancer that can be deadly.

Inflammatory breast cancer is often misdiagnosed as mastitis because many doctors have never seen it before and consider it rare. “Rare” or not, there are over 100,000 women in the U.S. with this cancer right now; only half will survive five years. Please call your OB/GYN if you experience several of the following symptoms in your breast, or any unusual changes: redness, rapid increase in size of one breast, persistent itching of breast or nipple, thickening of breast tissue, stabbing pain, soreness, swelling under the arm, dimpling or ridging (for example, when you take your bra off, the bra marks stay – for a while), flattening or retracting of the nipple, or a texture that looks or feels like an orange (called peau d’orange). Ask if your GYN is familiar with inflammatory breast cancer, and tell her that you’re concerned and want to come in to rule it out.

There is more than one kind of breast cancer. Inflammatory breast cancer is the most aggressive form of breast cancer out there, and early detection is critical. It’s not usually detected by mammogram. It does not usually present with a lump. It may be overlooked with all of the changes that our breasts undergo during the years when we’re pregnant and/or nursing our little ones. It’s important not to miss this one.

Inflammatory breast cancer is detected by women and their doctors who notice a change in one of their breasts. If you notice a change, call your doctor today. Tell her about it. Tell her that you have a friend with this disease, and it’s trying to kill her. Now you know what I wish I had known before six weeks ago.

You don’t have to have a lump to have breast cancer.

unrecoverable

Well, Swee'pea is adjusting -- slowly -- to his new daycare centre. They assure me at the centre that his behaviour is totally normal, and that he will eventually adjust. But I can't help feeling like that "adjustment" is just crushing his spirit, forcing him to lower his expectations of the world, that when he stops crying he will just be giving up hope. It feels wrong.

His crying when I drop him off (and my crying on the way to work) casts a shadow over my day that pulls my shoulders and spirits down all day, until I can pick him up, and he cries again, but only briefly, and we go home where he eats and eats and eats the food he's used to.

Last night, I had a bubble bath and read more of Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War. The latest story sees the author in Romania in 1990, shortly after Ceausescu died. She and her latest lover, a young Romanian photographer who can't speak English so they speak French together, go looking for one of the country's orphanages, which her lover calls Les hopitaux des irrecuperables, or hospitals for unrecoverables.

Sometimes motherhood makes me so sensitive, raw and exposed, to the world's tragedies, especially those befalling other people's children. This book has already brought me to tears once, and the part I read last night made me weep. Hard. Between the haunting photographs of the mostly naked and emaciated children in an institution so cold it doesn't even have mattresses on the beds (they were destroyed by constant bed-wetting and never replaced), and the mental images her words evoked, and the little girl who kept calling her Mama and, finally held close, bit her breast, I had no chance. To think that people charged with caring for children could be so inhumane nearly stops my heart. I know, intellectually, that the institution I have entrusted Swee'pea's care to is nothing like the ignored and impoverished institution described in Shutterbabe; there is no comparison really. Nevertheless, it feels like there could be, but for the grace of God...

If pictures can speak a thousand words, why do we keep writing?

"Call it the curse of the photographer. [...] most of the memories I have since becoming a photographer are four-sided and flat. When you learn to properly frame an image in the viewfinder of a camera, you start to frame and catalog everything you see, whether you photograph it or not. And suddenly, memory has the shape of a rectangle. The vastness of a forest becomes twelve trees with a rock balancing out the foreground. A person becomes a close-up of the crow's-feet around his eyes. A war becomes red blood in white snow. Sometimes I feel like my brain has become nothing more than an overstuffed spiral notebook full of negatives, printed at will in a disorganized flurry by the tiniest provocation."

At one point she freaks out, and her companion tells her to calm down, that she's "trying to understand something that is incomprehensible," a sure path to madness. It's the first time in her career as a photojournalist where shooting, hiding behind the camera, "seems like the most morally appropriate action to take."

As I read Copaken Kogan's experience at the Romanian orphanage, my tears nearly overfilling the tub, it occurred to me that words expand that flat, rectangular frame and make it three-dimensional and fluid. After Copaken Kogan exits the orphanage, having shot a crude and casual autopsy, she vomits until she dry heaves. She writes, "I look up into the sky, and it's as if I've opened the pages of a pop-up book or put on a pair of cardboard 3-D glasses. First the clouds pop out, then a bird. I see the sun and the way its rays hit the newly formed buds in the trees. I see the separate planes of the orphanage building, I see the horizon receding in proper perspective. Everything that had previously turned flat now has heft, shadow, dimension, depth. I see a broken tricycle. It's the first toy I've seen all day."

Combining words and images communicates experience in a way that neither text nor photography could do as well on its own. This book is devastating in many ways, a joy in others. I can't stop reading it; I'm invested. I must see it through to its conclusion.

raunchy walk

Most summer nights, we go for a walk after dinner, enjoying the gentle evening air and fading sun. Lately, Sugar D and have spent these walks debating the risks and benefits of moving to Toronto, what we want in a new (to us) house, and lamenting a nearby townhouse development being built on a lot that used to be full of mature trees but which was completely razed a couple of weeks ago.

Tonight, I talked about the book I'm reading right now, Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War, by Deborah Copaken Kogan. It's a riveting memoir about Copaken Kogan's experiences as a photojournalist in the late eighties, with equal parts feminism and photography. I haven't finished it yet, but already I can recommend it highly, especially for anyone with an interest in photography.

Photojournalism is very much a male-dominated profession, and Copaken Kogan experienced considerable discrimination and harassment, not to mention personal risks in covering mujahideen in Afganistan, junkies in Switzerland, gangs in LA, and anti-poaching efforts in Zimbabwe. The structure of the book is compelling: three parts, titled respectively, "Develop," "Stop," and "Fix," each with two chapters named after different men in her life. Some parts are horrifying, others achingly sad, some embarrassing, others empowering, all of them absolutely engaging.

Anyways, I was telling Sugar D about how much I'm enjoying the book, and how it recounts many of the author's sexual experiences, both good and really bad. At first, I wondered about this retelling of sexual capers, even though I myself have retold my own similar stories. But as her stories get more intimate and disturbing, I realize that this book is another way of attempting to change our culture's sexual double standard (the one that allows men to sleep with many women as normal behaviour but declares women doing the exact same thing as sluts); that just because she has a husband and family doesn't mean she should disown or bury her (hi)story. It is important that she, and others as we're able to, speak up.

Just as I was telling Sugar D about one particularly disturbing experience of hers in Paris, I noticed an enormous amount of flesh and suspicious folds in a window out of the corner of my eye. I saw the biggest c0ck I've ever seen, with the biggest, shiniest red lips I've ever seen wrapped around it. Yep, I busted a neighbour watching p0rn. Not only that, the neighbour was watching it on the biggest screen tv I have EVER seen. It must have been five feet across at least. AND they had all the curtains open. A side window could be an honest oversight, but the front window as well? I don't think so, not with that big of a tv facing it.

We had our little giggle, recognizing how apropos and ironic the p0rn sighting was, given what I'd been talking about, and then I went back to my discussion of the book. I live in a classy neighbourhood.

Letter to Swee'pea: 19 months

Dear Swee'pea:

Today you are 19 months old. It's been a year since I started writing these letters to you and I still haven't gotten sick of them, of pausing to consider the ways you've changed in the past month and catalogue your current interests.



Over the past year, you've learned to climb up (and eventually down) stairs, walk and run. You've learned to chew real food and feed yourself. You've learned to use signs, body language and vocal utterances to bring our attention to things that interest you and make your wishes known. For example, just yesterday when I dropped you off for your second day at the new daycare centre, you wrapped all your limbs around me but one arm, which you extended towards the exit, index finger outstretched insistently, and repeated plaintively, "Bye bye bye bye," with increasing cadence and pitch. Your message was clear: "Let's get the hell outta Dodge, Mama!" It broke my heart that I couldn't just do as you wished and leave. I worry it might have broken yours just a bit too. I cried all the way to work, noticing only the dark and nasty parts of the world, like the dead squirrel flattened to the tarmac, its still-fluffy tail flapping around helplessly in the backdraft of all the cars passing it by. But enough of that nastiness.



Your vocabulary is growing so fast and furiously, I can barely keep up. Indeed, sometimes, I just have no idea what you're trying to tell me; your enunciation can occasionally be just a teensy bit... ambiguous. For example, "bebe" can mean any one of: baby (meaning anyone under 12), airplane, playground, sleepy or sleeping, sweeping, strawberry, raspberry (the whoopie cushion variety not the fruit, which you don't like), grapes, chickpea, green bean, or, as I discovered other day, ice cream.

(Do I need to state that you are a hearty eater? Or is it already obvious from the epicurean evolution of your vocabulary?)



You are very friendly, calling out hello to every person we encounter on our walks. Sadly, it comes out as "whoawhoa" and not everyone realizes that a) you're talking to them or b) you're saying hello. I try to translate for you, and usually people then reciprocate, which makes you happy. I think your friendliness brings warmth and a bright spot to the day of everyone you encounter. (Of course I'm your mom, so I could be a little biased. Who knows? Maybe you annoy the heck out of them.)



Our friend, Warren, who helps us in the garden, is one of your favourite people. You call him Na and talk about him all the time. Needless to say, Na loves his new name (mostly) and that you think so highly of him. You love being in our backyard and digging in the dirt with him.

Another word/concept you've discovered this month is rain. One day when it was raining and we were going stircrazy in the house with no car to go somewhere more fun, I took you out on the porch and held your hand out to feel the cold raindrops. "It's raining," I said, and you repeated, "naynay." Intriguingly, you've expanded the word from the water drops that fell from the sky that day to puddles, both indoors and out, condensation on windows, dew on flowers, and even teardrops rolling down my cheeks once.

You're still kind of boring on the playground, collecting sticks, leaves, and/or pine cones, exclaiming, "ah nana" (which could mean another one, lasagne, banana, or Granny, depending on the context) with each one. If you're not collecting sticks then you'll be climbing stairs and sitting down on them with a contented sigh or grunt of exertion like an old person. I can't think where you've learned that. Except for yesterday, when I took the camera to the playground with us to take pictures of your "play," and you decided to try climbing up some monkey bars, and barely sat on any of the stairs, which just goes to show me -- you will not be pigeonholed.



This month has seen some less than stellar moments from me, leaving me remorseful and drained: tears (the double whammy came when you, frightened, pointed at my tears and said, "naynay," piercing my already sad heart like a knife), loss of patience, even yelling at you once or twice (like when you grabbed a colander of freshly washed and trimmed green beans from the sink and dumped them all over our dirty floor -- what if it had been a knife handle that you grabbed?). Now that I'm trying to make dinner every night before your daddy comes home, the dinner hour -- when we're both tired and hungry -- can be a bit fraught to say the least. But I think things are getting better now that we're adjusting to our new routine (thank goodness!).

This month you also went through a hydrophobic phase when you refused to sit down in the tub and just wailed at the injustice of bathtime. Most times we just gave up and put you in your pajamas, but once or twice you were a bit whiffy and in desperate need of a some cleansing so we washed you standing up while you made your misery clear. Eventually I figured out that you would tolerate a "raining bath" where I let you stand in the tub with the water running. Finally, I bought you some new bath toys. Ever since you saw the new bath toys -- a basketball hoop (or boo as you call it) that sticks to the tub and three colourful balls to put in it and a little waterwheel that also sticks to the tub that you can pour water over to make it spin -- you've been back to your hydrophilic self, once again crying when we take you out. Only the promise that you can play with the bath toys again tomorrow night and the distraction of your toothbrush will quiet you.

This morning you have little purple half-moons under your poor little eyes, the result of too much crying over the last two days of adjusting to your new daycare centre. I hope things get easier for you soon. I don't know how much more I can handle. If I had the power, I would choose a life of sunshine and light for you, a life with no unhappiness. But I don't have that power, and life isn't like that anyways. I've resigned myself now to just trying to offer what comfort I can, and to foster resilience and for when I can't.



Love always and forever,
Mum

my heart

Last bed I went to bed scared... scared that Swee'pea would spend his first morning at daycare screaming, scared that we'd made the wrong decision, scared that we're on the verge of another wrong decision to up sticks to the Big City, scared that living in that big city, riding its subway, working in its skyscrapers with bullet-fast or rickety-slow elevators, would make me scared like I was years ago.

My anxiety didn't last long though, and I slept well. Swee'pea began playing with the daycare centre's trucks immediately upon arrival, and barely managed to pull himself away to give me a hug and kiss goodbye. He returned to the toys happily, singing, "Bye bye bye bye." I left feeling a bit superfluous.

At work, my morning was hectic and stressful trying to get everything that needed doing before noon. I felt like I'd been overprotective starting Swee'pea at the centre with a half-day; he probably didn't need it. I extricated myself from work, not altogether successfully, and raced to the centre. When I got to Swee'pea's room it was dark and quiet with little children spread all over on their little cots. Except for one who was in the arms of a caregiver I hadn't met before. Swee'pea started weeping as soon as he laid eyes on me, and we ran to each other. I held him as tightly as I ever have, feeling slightly vindicated that I was right about the half-day, but mostly awful for putting him through what was obviously an emotional and stressful experience for him. Even after he stopped weeping, his breath still came in those sob-style mouthfuls, like he couldn't quite catch his breath for sadness and relief.

I held him tightly, feeling like my heart would burst into tears at any moment, unable to contain my love. I held him for longer than was strictly necessary to get him to sleep for his nap, and contemplated his fluttering eyes, moving side to side as they followed his dreams, and I hoped his dreams were of happy things and not parental abandonment. I am sadly aware that even now at this young age, I cannot know everything or even anything of his internal life, except for what he is able and willing to share. And I suspect his internal life is more complicated than I'd suspected.

After his nap I fed him some lunch (he'd refused to even take a bite at the centre), then took him to the playground and a baby ice cream. I just gave him an ice cream yesterday, but I figured he'd had a hard day, and ice cream is good. I wonder if perhaps I'm setting him up for a lifetime of emotional and over-eating, but then I think that perhaps this is an important facet of resilience: recognizing when you've had a hard day and giving yourself permission to take it easy and eat lots of ice cream.

many random bits

updated below

Sugar D, on Saturday:

[incredulous, mostly to himself] I haven't had an ice cap this summer...

Maybe that's because I don't actually like ice caps and I just can't remember.

[later, with ice cap in hand] Yeah, I think I just don't like ice caps.

*******

[concerned] The car has been making weird beeping noises when I turn corners. There -- hear it?

Me: No.

SD: Just wait till the next turn; you'll hear it. I guess we should get the car serviced.

[I heard it on the next turn, with the radio off, but it didn't sound like any car-type sound. Suddenly, SD clues]

It's Swee'pea's toy sax, getting its buttons pushed when the car turns left or right.

*****

If you get together with two hip happening gorgeous bloggers, are you obligated to blog about it? Or is it enough to spend your time musing on the engaging and thought-provoking conversations you had?

We visited the bloggers' capital of Canada yesterday to see if we could really imagine living there. We totally can. Except for the frightening house prices. Even though I think our house is quite modest, we could not afford it if it were somehow plunked down in TO.

It was a long and sunny day for us, and we were content driving home in the dark last night, with the dashboard and city lights around us and the big fat blinking airplanes sinking gently back to the earth, one after the other like a lullaby.

**********

Why are they called the Terrible Twos, when the two two-year-old girls I met yesterday were so wonderful? Or do those two bloggers just have the secret of parenting all worked out?

********

The weight of all the work required to get our house on the market has me exhausted already.

**********
Updated:

I have been the recipient of some fantastic linky love in the last week or so. First, Bubandpie, High Professor of Blogging herself, included me in her School of Blogs. Yep, you can just call me Doctor Sin now.


I'll be teaching Urban Photography if I can find some time outside of Operation Move to the Urban Centre of All Urban Centres. And I hope to offer my own selection of courses by blogging.

And, Kyla, lovely Kyla, has bestowed upon me the Blogger's Reflection Award.


"This award should make you reflect on five bloggers who have been an encouragement, a source of love, impacted you in some way, and have been a Godly example to you. Five Bloggers who when you reflect on them you get a sense of pride and joy... of knowing them and being blessed by them."

Thank you, Kyla. I find it amazing that I have that effect on you when you have that effect on me.

The first five bloggers I think of when reading the above?

Bubandpie -- she is so quick to comment on new bloggers' blogs, she is a warm welcome wagon in a place that I found intimidating when I first dipped my toe in. Her posts are always thoughtful and thought-provoking, and I still think about her rage post, the one that said things I couldn't believe she had the bravery to say, things that elicited an Yes! I know exactly what she's talking about! moment at every new paragraph, the one that encouraged me to be brave in my own posts too.

Mad Hatter -- the first blogger to comment on my blog and then read regularly. I love that she still reads me a year later, and every post she writes feels like a gift. She's hugely intelligent, kind and funny to boot (and every pun makes me love her even more).

Sage -- not only does she always have a warm comment when I need one (and, really, when do I not, self-pitying whiner that I am?), but she gave me a ticket to a fantastic concert six months ago and invited me and my family into her home... and this weekend spent hours showing us around her hood. She is a warm and mindful person whom I really admire.

Kgirl -- Not only did she feed my family at seven months pregnant but she gave me the real estate special issue of Toronto Life, complete with sticky notes. She was also one of the first bloggers to encourage me in those lonely early days.

Aliki -- Aliki's writing is pure craft. Every single post. Her posts inspire me to write better posts, although many times I just give in to laziness. She has also been tremendously encouraging to me personally because of her experiences coping with her kids' earlier trouble sleeping. It's so good to hear from someone whose children were very similar (non)sleepers and who coped in much the same way as I do, and who's now on the other side. Proof that sleep does get better.

It was hard to pick just find when I find the blogosphere is full of random and deliberate kindnesses all around. Many of you have touched me personally with your kindness, and I thank you. It really does make a difference.