Tag Archives: the parenthood

Twenty-Eight: Brains

Eli and I were driving to the store today, to look for maple leaf-shaped baking pans. Arlo’s 7th birthday is Canada Day and I thought I might make him a cake for the first time in 7 years but like all my ideas, this one is harder to execute than you might expect. Canada Day may as well not be happening at Michaels Craft Store and Winners/Homesense.

Eli said, “It sure is raining.”

I said, “Yup. But, it’s June. It always rains a lot in June. Remember last summer when we left for Ontario and it was raining? And then when we got there, it was SO HOT.”

“Yes, I remember,” Eli said.

I turned left at the corner.

“I have a picture of that day in my head,” Eli continued. “the day we arrived in Ontario.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. And it’s hot in the picture. And there was a car seat just for me in grandma and grandad’s car.”

“Yup.”

“It’s too bad you can’t come in my brain and see the pictures too,” he said.

“It is too bad,” I said.

“The small part of my brain is showing the pictures to the big part of my brain.”

I laughed out loud, even though Eli doesn’t like it when you laugh out loud because he hasn’t figured out yet if you’re laughing with him or at him.

“I’m laughing because it’s a great picture in *my* brain now. Of your big brain and your little brain,” I explained.

“It is kind of funny,” he allowed.

This is one of my favourite pictures (in my brain) of our trip to Ontario last summer.

Twenty-Seven — Why Are We Here?

Ginger is doing a weekly prompted bloggity thingeroo .. you can participate too, if you want! I am going to answer both prompts because the first one is a very short answer.

Prompt one: Why did you start blogging?
A: I started blogging because I wanted people to read my words.

Prompt two: What is the best decision you ever made?

So much waffling. What IS the best decision I ever made? Moving to this townhouse, to the city of New Westminster, which seemed like an OK decision at the time, actually turned out to be a great decision. Having children was a pretty good decision, but I’m not sure it was the best ever. Career-wise, there haven’t been many great decisions, other than quitting the job with the creepy boss.

I think the best decision I EVER made was to move out on my own when I was 19.

It was 1993 and I had just finished my second year of university. I lived in Burnaby and went to school at UBC, so my bus trip was an hour each way. I spent a lot of time on the bus, scribbling in my journal or listening to my big, yellow Walkman and staring out the window at Hastings, Granville, Broadway, 10th Ave.

I was starting to really resent my overprotective father. While I was in high school, I complained bitterly but never really rebelled against the house rules. But when I got to UBC and started meeting new people, people I hadn’t known for five or ten years already, people who listened to grunge and electronica and folk music instead of top 40, people who wore cut off jeans, tights, combat boots, people who dyed their hair and pierced their faces and had tattoos and wrote poetry and made films…well, I desperately wanted to be a part of it. That life. The life that started with me being able to stay out past 10 pm.

In June, 1993, I blew away all the treaty negotiations. I decided it would be a good idea to celebrate writing my last exam of the year by drinking a lot of vodka and grapefruit juice in Stanley Park with my friend. Obliteratedly drunk I arrived home well before curfew but that didn’t matter as much as the fact that I was dropped off by a strange man in a pickup truck who had rescued my friend and me from the railroad tracks below Gastown. Apparently we had been wandering on and off the tracks, my friend had a hammer, and the guy with the truck –Bill, I think?– took pity on us and drove us home.

Whooee! was I in trouble. And rightly so. I had to go to my brand new part-time job at the cheese shop the next day with a wicked hangover and that was nearly punishment enough. As part of the fallout from the “discussion” that ensued, I declared that I would move out of the house that summer and get my own place. Dad said, “No you can’t.” Having a bit more than a little of his stubborn blood in my own veins, that was all I needed to hear.

In mid-July, my friend Joanna and I moved into our two-bedroom suite in a house at Main and 22nd Street. A month later, Sarah joined us and we were an amazingly big-haired trio of roommates for a year, after which we went through roommates and new apartments for a few years before settling down with our significant others, to whom we are all now married.

When I moved out I didn’t have any real plan, other than I would work at my job selling cheese and pay my rent and tuition and for food and drinks. Jobs came and went, tuition got paid, albeit more slowly than it had when Dad was paying it, and it took me an extra couple of years to get the credits to graduate, but I did. Eventually.

I learned how to survive; how to cook, clean, give notice on an apartment, quit a job, look for a new one, accept the kindness of strangers, be good to my friends, manage money (eventually..this was a very steep learning curve), maintain the relationships I needed to maintain and release the rest.

What I experienced living on my own made me into the person I am today; someone who understands that ordinary people make mistakes and deserve forgiveness and second, third, fourth chances, myself included. Someone who isn’t scared of smelly people, who sees something interesting in every conversation. Someone who has at least seen how the other half lives and knows how close she came to that poverty line, how close she was to crossing it.

I was young and stupid and lucky. I could easily have ended up on the other side of that line. If my parents hadn’t forgiven me, mellowed, held their tongues, invited me for dinner every few weeks, helped me move. If my friends hadn’t lent me money or fed me booze when I needed it, if, to start with, I hadn’t been young and white and educated, with all the privilege that those afford a person.

God watches over drunks and idiots; double-plus if you are both?

The most important thing I learned was that the real world is indeed a dangerous, wonderful place, and that I could handle it.

And the place where I hold all those lessons; the practical ones like how to budget and the people ones like how to talk to people on the bus, is the place I will draw from when my kids are out in the world and I’m scared for them. The world is a dangerous, wonderful place, and they can handle it.

Twenty-Six — Keeping Track

Once upon a time, I gave each of my children a container of fish crackers and each was happy. I blogged about this in passing and a commenter said, “JUST YOU WAIT someday they will count the crackers to make sure they each have the same amount.” In general, harbingers of doom don’t do it for me, as I am not one to acknowledge someone’s rightness until well past the date the rightness occurred, so you telling me “JUST YOU WAIT” about anything basically makes me want to ignore you. Since becoming a parent, however, I have noticed that it’s sensible to file the warnings away. Odds are, someday I will need them, like the safety pins I keep in my wallet.

Lo, behold, I am remembering the warning now.

The past few weeks have been exciting because we had Grandma and Grandad staying with us. This was good on many levels; extra hands around the house so I could have a shower and grocery shop and not have to take a surly five year old with me, extra feet to walk the kid to school and back again. People to talk to and drink coffee with and drink beer with. People I like in my house! So good, on so many levels.

For Eli, it was good on an extra level: Treats. We went out for lunch. We went out for ice cream. We went to Costco and got fries after shopping. Two extra levels, I should say; the level where you get extra treats and then THEN! the level where you tell your older brother, who is at school all day, all about the extra treats you got.

This has awakened quite a rivalry between the children. Not something I think wouldn’t/doesn’t otherwise exist, but something that was dormant, like mould. Slugs? Shingles? Shingles. Now, even though Grandma and Grandad have gone home, Arlo still greets his brother after school with WHAT DID YOU DO TODAY? WHAT DID YOU GET? WHAT DID YOU GET ME?

Today was Fun Day (formerly known as Sports Day? No longer.) at Arlo’s school. He got to go to twelve different stations in the school, make a bead bracelet, eat a Freezie, hang out with his friends, and then had hot lunch which was pizza, lemonade and ice cream for dessert.

Today was Eli’s last day of preschool. I was volunteering at Arlo’s school so I couldn’t be at preschool for the final moments, when the door opens and the children sing “Goodbye my friends goodbye” with their mothers and fathers present and everyone sniffles. I couldn’t be there because I was helping make bead bracelets, a task which gets harder the closer you get to the hot lunch because no one can focus to save their goddamn life. ANYWAY I decided that for a treat I would take Eli to McDonald’s for a Happy Meal.

So: Arlo got a Freezie, pizza, lemonade, ice cream, a morning spent running around with his friends and an afternoon watching Ice Age. Eli got cheese pizza at school and a Happy Meal after.

As an aside, what did I get during this same time period? I got to stand for two hours without so much as a bathroom break or drink of water, helping small children thread beads onto yarn that frayed and refused to be threaded upon, and do you see me complaining?

Oh, you do? OK.

Anyway, I would call it even between the kids, but that didn’t stop Arlo from “It’s not fair”ing all over the place after school.

To help even the score, he went to his friend’s house after school and this friend has a rather enormous supply of junk food, so when we came to pick him up he was surrounded by empty cookie bags, chocolate smeared all over his face.

Eli says no fair because he got no cookies. Arlo says no fair, because he still has no toy and Eli got a toy with the Happy Meal.

It is a good thing they’re cute.

Tooth finally dropped out this morning.

Twenty-Five

There are those days when your face feels like an avalanche. Bright smiles and happy eyes (smizing!) start the day and then, several hours later, you find yourself recounting the afternoon’s events to your partner and feeling rather like you might be taking down every tree and sweet meadow flower in your path. SNOW IS COMING DOWN ON YOU MOTHERFUCKERS.

“This morning,” I said to Saint Aardvark, “this morning they were great. They put on their rubber boots and raincoats and got their umbrellas and went out at 8 am to walk around the courtyard. I heard them, counting snails and marvelling at how green the trees were in the rain.”

Saint Aardvark smiled and nodded.

“It was so lovely, I was crafting sentimental blog posts in my head,” I added. “But now? Those posts are gone. My head is a pile of dead leaves, the posts are COMPOST. The WORMS are eating them.”

“Great things come from dead things,” said Saint Aardvark.

Onward, Friday; Fun Day, rain, last day of preschool, and all.

Twenty-Two — Squeaky Bird Two

Squeaky bird went away for a day or so and then, today, came back. I went over to the window with the camera to try to get a picture but then s/he moved to the next tree over. That’s when I realized there are two squeaky birds, talking to each other, constantly, about bird stuff. Did you see that bug? That was a good bug. Remember that worm yesterday? Yes it was amazing. Hey do you have any lip balm? What? Do you have any lip balm? Dude, I’m a bird. Oh yeah, you’re a bird. You’re a bird too. Oh yeah. My beak is dry though. Beak balm. Ha ha ha. Do you think there’s such a thing as beak balm? I don’t know. Hey a crow. Watch out watch out watch out watch ou–

Two things. One: I saw the birds and they are sparrows; brown and boring looking but with a black and white stripey head. Like Bowie in a brown suit.

Two: The two birds remind me of my children, when my children are trying to get my attention.

OK, three things. Three: I figured it out (bear with me, I am at heart a speculative sort, so this is probably not true but WHAT IF IT IS and whoops now I’ve convinced myself it is so don’t give me science or whatever to try to convince me differently) — the birds lost their MOOOOOMMMMM. The birds are sitting in the tree where they last saw her and she’s been, like, eaten by an eagle or something, and they’re waiting for her to come back with their lunch and OMG Stanley where’s mom. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.

This would be why I am simultaneously in love with and completely irritated by the birds outside my window.

Why, when the window went silent this evening during dinner, instead of feeling relief because the noise had stopped, I felt heartbroken because obviously THE BABIES had given up HOPE.

Now I’m sitting outside, half-listening for them. When I hear a bird chirp, my head swivels the way it does when I hear a baby cry at Costco even though I don’t have a baby a) at all or b) with me. I am not the birds’ mother! I am not a bird, for one thing!

Damn, I could have written this post about Taylor Swift’s song “Twenty-two” but now it’s about birds and dead mothers. There’s always tomorrow.

Fourteen — Run Club

Back in May I did my first ever race, a 5K fun run. It was fun! It was also on a Saturday morning at 8:30, so the kids and SA dropped me off at the start and then played for a while in the park and then met me at the finish line. Arlo made me a sign that said “YOU CAN DO THIS!” on one side and “RUN! RUN! RUN! GO! GO! GO!” on the other. When I finished the race (ten minutes faster than I predicted! toot toot! [that’s my horn]) Arlo saw some other kids who had just run the race with their parents.

“Hey, so kids can run?” he said.
“Yup,” I said.
“Next year I’M running this race,” he said firmly.
“OK.”

I forgot about it until yesterday when he asked if I was going for a run this weekend.
“Tomorrow,” I said, “maybe..”
“Can I come with you?” he asked.

My first thought was no, because running is my solitary activity and with him I won’t be able to get in a good workout, and many other excuses. My second, less selfish thought was hell yes. I have been wanting to spend more one-on-one time with him since, let’s see, Eli was born five years ago? Promises to go for a coffee date always get put off, and if we do go, then he wants me to buy him things because Eli always gets muffins while Arlo is at school, and then I end up resenting the time instead of enjoying it. And one-on-one time with your resentful mother who won’t buy you another muffin because you hated your first muffin is not what they call Quality.

What a better idea: one morning a week we can go outside where there are no muffins and walk/run/trudge/train.

This morning after breakfast we put on our shorts and t-shirts and running shoes. We jogged along slowly until he couldn’t any more, which was two minutes, so we ran two minutes and walked three and did that six times. Along the way we talked about running and muscles and other stuff and nothing at all. It was a most peaceful forty-five minutes. I felt just as good as I do after a solo run.

I like liking my kid. It feels good, and he is more relaxed and happy too when we spend time together. It’s like when I used to put my naked baby on my bare chest and our heartbeats would synchronize.

I knew there was a reason I wanted that one-on-one time.

Which reminds me to recommend: this post at the Rumpus. Funny and touching and true and relevant. What more could you want?

Twelve — This time For Real!

Tonight was Eli’s preschool commencement ceremony. He and Arlo decided a while back they were both wearing shirts and ties and have been practising wearing their nice clothes around the house, which resulted in many hilarious shots of dirty children in mis-buttoned white dress shirts and clip-on ties lounging on the couch watching Spongebob. Kind of like a flash forward to their eventual frat house.

So tonight was the night! Eli came downstairs in his graduation outfit: cleanish blue pants, socks, white shirt and burgundy tie with white polka dots. “Nice outfit,” I said. “Yes!” he said, “It’s my graduation! I’m going to DO IT this time!”

Note: he has not tried to graduate before.

First we saw a slideshow set to music. The mere idea of the slideshow set to music reduces me to a snivelling mess so it’s a good thing I was in the front row and no one but SA on my right and my dad on my left could see my glassy eyes.

Then the children came out and sang a selection of songs. Eli was in the front and sang and performed beautifully. Not surprising. At the end, after each child received a diploma, the MC said a few words about how wonderful the teachers are (they really are) and how much support they give to the “little ones.” Eli’s pal in the back row said something and then I heard Eli say, “YEAH. WE’RE NOT LITTLE.” And he shook his fist. There was almost an on-stage revolt, but the teachers got it all calmed down. Still, if you need a charismatic child for your protest rally, I can hook you up.

Last, of course, there was cake.

“I want my cupcake, where is my cupcake, you can take my picture if you give me my cupcake.”

Eleven — Market

Today was the first day of the New Westminster Summer Farmers Market. We have been going to this market for years, I want to say four years, but I would have to really think about it. Anyway. It is in the parking lot behind City Hall, Thursdays between 3 and 7 pm and there are several traditions involved:

1. Kettle corn must be purchased
2. and immediately consumed.
3. Sometimes lemonade too.
4. Face painting?
5. Buy stuff, run into people we know, play in the trees, use the port-o-let, go home.

I used to try and put the kids off from eating the kettle corn first — oh hey, let’s choose some strawberries! And check out the fiddler! — all the while they’d be somewhere behind me, tearing the bag open, refusing to share it, yelling at each other, being annoying. This year I gave it up. Here is your giant bag of kettle corn, go sit under that tree, I’m going shopping.

Today they were so stunned by my about-face, they sat quietly and didn’t even ask about lemonade. So I rewarded them with chocolate cats. “Are these handmade?” asked Arlo. “Yes,” I replied. Soon he will be ready for Portlandia.

They didn’t ask about face paint either, which is kind of happy and kind of sad. Sad, because now they’re old and face paint is done. Well, technically, Eli has never asked about face paint, but Arlo always does. It’s his First Market Day Tradition and he forgot. Sunrise, sunset.

Happy: because I didn’t have to wait in line for face paint and because I could spend the money I would have spent on face paint on strawberries, radishes, and perogies.

Sadly, we were there too early to see anyone we knew. Then Arlo climbed a tree, so far up “I can see the top of the telephone pole!” and then he used the port-o-let and it was pronounced The Most Roomiest Port-o-let Ever. I told him we’d send a card to the RCFM and let them know.

It gave me a funny feeling in my stomach.

And then we went home.

Seven — And Counting

It became clear to me when I looked over the past few days’ posts that I can’t count properly or use consistent spelling (numerals or words? PICK ONE) and should be shut out of the Internet entirely. Post 4 was titled with a 3. Post 6 was titled with a 7. This post, which is number 7, is titled Seven. Onward!

***

From age six to seven, Arlo has seemed mentally scatterbrained, like a squirrel chasing many different sorts of nut. He’s been pulled in many simultaneous directions; to anger, hysteria, meanness, sweetness. Sometimes all in an hour. In this way, six has not been very different from four or five, as ages go.

In the last month, though, I’ve noticed a change. He is focused now, but not on anything I can see. He seems perpetually like he’s coming down with a cold; unsmiling, staring off into space. I have been asking him if he’s OK, if everything is all right, apparently too much because he’s got a new habit of prefacing his statements with “everything is fine…”

Don’t panic. MOM.

There is a series of books about child development, year by year, by Drs. Ames and Ilg of the Gesell Institute. Each book has its own compelling title, like “Your Three Year Old: Friend or Enemy,” and contains plenty of comforting statements like “three year olds are the devil…they just are…don’t sweat it” (not an actual quotation) or “the average four year old wants to karate chop the universe six times per hour” (ditto).

I love these books so. I recommend them to people all the time. I read Your Two Year Old, Three Year Old, Four Year old and Five Year Old but recently realized that I skipped Six and now am approaching Seven, the title of which is “Your Seven-Year-Old: Life in a Minor Key.”

All I needed to see was the title and this:

“Your Seven-Year-Old is devoted to the delightful but often anxious and withdrawn child of Seven. Although any seven-year-old will have moments of exuberance, security, and happiness, in general this is an age of introspection. As it begins, parents and teachers may welcome the quiet after the tussles and tangles of Six. But once the child of Seven starts to withdraw it’s almost as though he doesn’t know where or when to stop.”

and I got it, bing, like a small, sharp rock to the forehead. It’s not that Arlo feels physically out of sorts, it’s that his emotional sands are shifting.

We went for a walk through the neighbourhood today, just the two of us, hand in hand, not talking about much. I developed a habit of talking a lot to my children when they were babies because it’s good for them (and they were my only company for a while) — and now I have to learn to shut up. I have no problem doing this with adults, letting there be silences and spaces in the conversation, but it’s hard to do with my kids. I want to know so much about them. I used to be their only theatre. The original TV.

I need to work on it, to let those spaces in the conversation go, let them expand like lungs full of breath. I’m trying. Be cool. Everything is fine.

7 Thoughts on June 1st *

I had forgotten how bad the song “My Humps” by the Black Eyed Peas is. It’s like a car crash in your Chardonnay. In the past year I’ve only been paying attention to Jeff Tweedy’s (of Wilco) renditions of BEP and I think I will go back to that existence because it’s way funnier. Here, go see it. Don’t watch the original afterwards. It will just make you sad for humanity all over again.

I feel this overwhelming solidarity whenever I see another woman my age with grey hair. I want to go fist-bump-five her.

We went to a parade today and it occurred to me that parades are like a very passive Halloween. Kids sit and watch people go by and some people come over and hand the kids candy. In Ontario, Arlo is quick to point out, they THROW candy at you. (we went to a tractor parade on his birthday in Ontario last year)(and it’s true. They did throw candy.) I guess this relates to the softness of the west coast in general.

June 1st is the beginning of the last month of school. Here is a funny post about that. Which you have probably already seen because it’s had 4,000 likes on facebook already.

It being June 1st also means Arlo’s 7th birthday is one month away. I want to embrace the idea of planning his birthday party and have it be the challenge mountain I overcome / climb for the month of June but I think it will probably end up more like me lying at the bottom of said challenge mountain in a pile of poison ivy, weeping. Metaphorically speaking.

I used to be ashamed of myself for going to bed so early. But now I just shrug because I love sleep and sleep loves me and we are going to be together forever and you can’t break us up, no never.

Today I found myself critiquing the parade we went to, compared to the parade we attended last weekend. This is the new thing I’m ashamed of myself about.

*edited to add that of course this is only post number 6 / 100 and I am so tired I titled it with a 7 by mistake.

bad with titles

pretty good with stories