“If you don’t create change, change will create you”

I want to be alone. I want the gloriousness of a bed to myself, hogging all the pillows. Picking all the paint colors, never having to share the ice cream with another adult. The joy of wandering off somewhere on a Saturday afternoon, just to see where I end up.

I want to be loved. I want someone’s arms around me, their breath hot on my neck. I want to see myself reflected, want to share my world with them, my bookshelves, my dreams. Learn to run together, learn to cook, learn to love. Wake up lazy weekend mornings in the sun, like cats.

I want to share. I find myself intrigued and pulled towards a world where love doesn’t end with two, where my thoughts and dreams and wants are tied to two, where all my little hippie dreams play out, and each little part of me is warmed and full. I envision a life full of the green of this earth, the blackness of it’s dirt and the swelling of my own heart.

I have to pick just one?

***

I’m so not good at this. One day to the next, I don’t know what I want.  A partner maybe. Or just someone to play with. Or a situation far removed from what’s considered normal. Or no one, just me. Then I miss arms to hold me at 2 in the afternoon on a bad day or someone to share a inside joke with or just spend the night talking with and I realize I feel like I’m missing an arm, but have absolutely no idea how to figure out how to find one.

I’m socially inept. I’ve been broken inside in a multitude of ways, and am only now realizing how fucking less than zero I have felt, how hideous I believed myself, and still find myself believing if I’m not careful. I had come to believe I was ugly, an worthless, and unfit to be loved. And who wants that? Who wants to be near anyone who believes these things? Who wants to talk to someone who spent years believing no one really wanted to hear what she had to say, that no one cared enough to hear what she actually thought and believed?

I feel as if a lion has taken up residence in my throat, and is finally learning how to speak.

But I still feel so bloody hideous some days, so unworthy. I cast my eyes down if someone looks my way, and don’t wish to burden them with a visage so revolting.

This is why marriage scares me so, the thought of commitment again. Because it has scarred me in ways I never would have seen, and somedays I wonder if I can ever scrape off the scab to let the new skin grow. Because I have come out the other side feeling so horrendously minimized, made to believe that my desire for a life beyond the now, my desire for dreams and love and togetherness were wrong, naggy and bitchy. And sometimes I feel so weighted down with it all, the staggering size of it, and how tiny I feel compared to it.

I am not perfect. But I know I am not the waste of time and space and love that some would let me believe. I am not her. I have never been her.

But how do I convince myself of this?

***

I can’t imagine telling a guy I like them, not without clear input on their end. I can’t imagine having the nerve to just ask a guy to dinner, my mind’s eye telling me, showing me how they’d laugh with their friends, call me fat and ugly and stupid behind their hands, needy and wasted. How I would again be unworthy.

I want to love again. I want to actually BE loved.

But where do I start?

-Have you started over again? What’s the secret? Extra points to answers from people who aren’t already blessed by the gene pool. My fat ass works against me….

No, I’m not stranded, or mugged, or asking for money.

My thordora gmail account was hacked last night, suspiciously soon after linking it, stupidly, to my youtube account. (The ONE TIME i don’t pay attention to this crap and look what happens…)

So yes. I’ve been hacked. My account is, seemingly, back in my safe and loving hands, and I am not stranded anywhere, least of all London. Nor would I ask the 479 contacts in my gmail for money, considering I wouldn’t know 465 of them if they were the ones who mugged me in the street.

So I know, and it’s been fixed. And all my passwords have been changed, as well as unlinking all possible accounts. I’ve never had anything like this happen, and it was oddly disturbing. And quite freaky.

So-change your passwords to something hopelessly obscure, don’t repeat them on various sites (although I didn’t do that with this one) and be damn sure to NOT link accounts together.

Gah. What a bloody mess.

Son

I see you sometimes. You have my hazel eyes, but they’re greener. You’re tall. Someday you’ll be as tall as me, taller even, but your shoulders are broad, your hands soft, your fingernails lovely for a man. You have a voice that trembles the ground underneath, that gentle bass that soothes. Your stride is long, like mine.

You will never be, and I miss you.

***

I cut away the gates to my womb years ago, figuring I was done, figuring it was safer that way, that no child would again suffer my fates and whims. I thought I was broken, irrevocably, and unable to ever again be blessed with child.

My belly is bloated and empty with this craving, with the knowledge of where you could sit my son, where you might have been, had things been different, had I not held resentment at shovelling snow while pregnant, had I not let my blood boil with all the feelings I sheltered and ultimately felt were ignored. There’s a spot underneath my heart your feet would have sat, tucked in, cornered, had I been stronger, had I felt more loved, more worthy, more complete.

I have killed you with all of this. With the hate that simmered so near a surface of glass like love. I ruined where you could have sat as I was afraid, as I was alone, awash in a sea of blank mothering, left unmoored by the one person I wanted to lean on. You disappeared then, in the moment where I pondered you, and the recoil was so harsh I was left barely breathing, folding my desire into a tiny crane and letting it melt in the heat.

But I still see you. I see you in the tiny pink hands of the new babies I pass, the fat maw, the chortle on a shoulder. I see you, a puzzle I’ll never complete, the hands of a son I will never hold, my son, who I can feel in my heart yet can never ever soothe to sleep. I have burned a bridge I cannot rebuild, and left you, listless in a wind.

I denied myself this for years, believing it wasn’t me, it wasn’t who I was. But my body screams it now, aches for it at night, that tiny heart beating inside me, that life growing, potential in a clutch of cells I harbour. Now, when I want so badly for this, it’s the one thing I will never, ever have again.

I shall wish you well in the crowds that hold your spirit, kiss you nightly on my heart.

It’s all I can do.

A bedtime story, with Vivian.

…since they have a high fecundity..hey Viv, you know what that means, right?

No.

It means breeding.

Oh. Making babies.

Yeah, sex.

EWWWWWWWWWWWW! HA! EW! Sex!

You’ll like it some day. You have to to make babies.

How do you make babies?

Well, it’s different for amphibians, but for mammals, like us, there’s a penis…

HA! Penis! That’s a silly word for it!

Well, no sillier than vagina. Or breast.

I like chicken breasts. HA! Penis! How does it work again?

We’ve been through this. Aren’t you doing this at school too?

No.

Sigh. Fine. The penis has sperm and in the vagina it can meet an egg…

EW! EW EW EW EW! I’ll NEVER do that.

ha. Yea you will. And you might not even do it to make babies. Some people do it because it’s FUN.

NO! I NEVER will! EVER! EW! That’s so GROSS!

Alright Viv. I’ll remind you when you’re 16 then.

NEVER!

Alright then.

There’s one thing that I’d like to know-did you ever believe the lies that you told-did you own the fool’s gold that you gave me?

Listen. Cry. I know I have.

(The lyrics if you can’t listen)

Fool’s Gold-Lhasa De Sela

You told me that you’d stay with me
And shelter me forever
That was a hard promise to keep
I can’t blame you for the bad weather

After all that has been said and done
I won’t ask you where you’re going
Don’t keep in touch, I don’t miss you much
Except sometimes early in the morning

Now use your silver tongue once more
There’s one thing that I’d like to know
Did you ever believe the lies that you told?
Did you earn the fool’s gold that you gave me?

I forgive you wanting to be free
I realize you long to wander
And I sympathize with your roving eyes
I just can’t forgive your bad manners

Now use your silver tongue once more
There’s one thing that I’d like to know
Did you ever believe the lies that you told?
Did you earn the fool’s gold that you gave me?
Did you ever believe the lies that you told?
Did you earn the fool’s gold that you gave me?

Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world.

I buy used clothing. I watch the amount of packaging we buy. We reuse things to the nth degree. I walk or take the bus-I don’t own a car, or even know how to drive. I’m buying a push mower this weekend, after my lawn has eaten a gas and electric mower. We don’t eat much meat. I’m planning a garden when I get the money to finish my backyard, and the time.

We buy most toys secondhand. Same goes for books. We rarely eat out these days. We keep the heat to a minimum, use only fans in the summer, covering and closing windows. I seal windows in the winter, firmly shut. We don’t run the water while we brush our teeth.

I buy local eggs, veggies when time allows a market run. I read labels when I shop, try to avoid MSG, Salt, sugar. I make gifts when I can.

So why do I feel so bloody useless if I buy a box of Kraft Dinner, or cannot afford to spend 25.00 on shampoo and conditioner? Why do I so keenly feel my monetary value so keenly when I walk past organic food or handmade goods? Why do I feel the locally sourced, organic rice pasta glaring at me in silent judgement as I reach out instead for the made somewhere in the US in a factory wheat pasta that’s on sale for 4/5.00?

Why does it always feel like revolution is really only for the haves?

****

Grocery shopping these days hurts.

I stare sometimes at the peppers, at 3.99/lb, and gingerly take one or two, relying on the fact that my father always buys oodles anyway. I have become parsimonious with the cheese. We never have ice cream or popsicles, unless the sale is really good. I keep a tight rein on the milk, ration the bread.

Ever get to a cash, and have to put something back, usually something you do actually need, but buying might mean not paying a bill, or getting someone a haircut or shoes?

Ever pick up a box of something salt and chemical laden, and realize that hey, at least the kid will eat it and it won’t be money wasted?

Ever become completely terrified that you won’t be able to properly feed your children because it costs a bloody arm and a leg, and all that natural food, all that cooking from scratch? You don’t have time for it anyway and you then worry about scurvy or vitamin deficiencies..you worry.

And then you go to the local store, or talk to some mothers you know, or fathers, and feel completely bloody deflated because while you worry about food in mouths, any food sometimes, everyone else is worried about where it comes from and if it’s natural enough (whatever THAT means these days) or if we’re doing enough home cooking or avoiding runoff into resevoirs.

I don’t dare walk into the hippy store anymore, where they carry my Bragg sauce in a spray bottle and have the soap I like. I feel like they can smell the chemicals on me, the sodium, the carbs.

In a nutshell, it becomes blatantly obvious that I am not good enough. I cannot afford what they’re selling-this glistening purity, this sanctity in cloth, security in biodegradable cleaners. I have hit lower class-where the solid thunk in my belly means more-where good deals in used clothing will soon be held up against the siren song of the 12 year old who doesn’t want them used.

Where once it was who had the biggest car, it’s now who has the one with the least emissions. Where it used to be which house always has kool-aid, now it’s the one where juice never enters. Another contest. Another competition. So and So only shops here, only buys all natural, blah blah blah.

So and So generally has a net worth that I will never attain.

And that’s the crux of it for me. I make all sorts of sacrifices in daily life, big ones too, that impact my life, the lives of my children, the air we all breathe. I make concious decisions about how I life that for me, is more impactful than not buying McDick’s once in awhile.

But it never feels like it’s enough. It’s like this invisible hand behind me, nudging me that I’m not doing enough, that I should be willing to sacrifice more more more.

But should I? I live in a city because I refuse to own a car, so I can walk or take transit, with the odd cab. I work with many people who commute from out of town “because they can”, running multiple cars, recreational vehicles. I conciously limit the amount of animal protein in the house, even if I cannot afford the 30.00 roasting chicken raised on the eyeballs of angels. I can’t afford it. I just can’t. And my kids generally won’t eat beans or tofu so where does that leave me? How much more do I need to sacrifice at the altar of what others expect from their neighbours?

I adore conciousness. I love the fact that my daughters are aware of why we shouldn’t litter, what the cow really is, how things grow from sprouts and are hard to keep alive. But I grow increasingly sickened by the fact that in so many circles, the inability to support and afford this lifestyle is seen as a failing, looked down upon like something stepped in. How dare I feed my children chicken nuggets! Don’t I know what’s in those?!

I’m very aware. Food is in them. I work full time while juggling a life and a house and school for them and a lawn that will.not.die. I don’t have time to make them by hand. I barely have time in a week to spend quality time with my kids. They win. Sometimes white bread wins. Sometimes even, GASP! a chubby wins too.

I’ve railed against the class asignations of food and lifestyle before, how organic and local source labels seem to be weilded as weapons in classroom and chatrooms. Another opportunity for some to feel important and better, always better. A step ahead.

I say no. I just can’t. I can’t afford it. I simply cannot find the money, anywhere in my budget. I’ll clean with vinger because it’s cheaper. I won’t water my lawn because it’s a waste, I’ll replace my appliances a I can to save energy. But I am done with the constant pressure, nearly as bad as the skinny models parading in bras I’ll never wear, that I am a lesser person for not being able to afford to buy into this organic natural movement.

I remind myself often that nightshade is natural too.

***

I hate this. More than anything else, I hate that I am closer to rock fucking bottom poor than I’ve ever been, and that it alienates me, more and more, from the people I know. Because it’s not a circle I can keep in. Because if the choice is between 11.00 milk  with no weirdness and 6.00 milk, with weirdness, then cheap wins. Because it’s all I can afford, whether I like it or not. Because I AM poor, even if I hate it and it gives me a fucking ulcer at night. Because I live in absolute stark terror that the roof will cave in, and we won’t even have a house, let alone free range, organically fed and petted chickens for dinner.

Because my revolution would involve no one ever HAVING to choose between milks. Mine would never add cachet to a method of farming, or coolness to having read “that” book.

Mine would, simply, make sure everyone could eat without worry.

(Look-I’m not trying to make anyone feel like shit-but how many times can a girl get that raised eyebrow at buying food at Walmart before she gets really freaking defensive and annoyed? Constantly trying to make the best decisions I am able to make for my family, and yet always having this nagging feeling that it’s not enough.

It’s not about any one person-it’s about this first world culture of one-upmanship that seems to extend to food of all things. I want change! I don’t WANT to buy lettuce that scares me. But I do. Cause, you know, they haven’t made that pill yet.

I just wish the answers were easier, the food cleaner, and my wallet fatter.  The events of the last 6 months have really brought home a lot of things for me, and made ME realize that shopping at Walmart? Sometimes a sin I can’t avoid.

And that sucks too.)

Mothers and daughters are closest, when daughters become mothers.

I was 25 and unwieldy my first mother’s day, pregnant but not showing, being fat and squishy in all the places skinny girls start to get taut and glowy around 6 months. I was browsing in the bookstore with my then husband, bemused, fingering the childbirth books, fantasizing about my perfect birth.

Feeling the echoes of my mother, where she should be. A year before this, I had dreamt of her with me as I birthed. I did not give a child, but in hindsight, I gave myself over, releasing her spirit and splinters of her memory from me, bursting forth in light and ache. Perhaps I am a prophet. But that day, I felt only the loss, the emptiness of new life without the guidance of an elder, of a mother, of my mother.

I will never feel as alone as I did that day, surrounded on all sides by mother daughter duos giggling, bonding, drinking latte’s and tea, eating scones and generally, absorbing the air I could no longer breathe.

I made a conscious decision that day, to finally accept my pregnancy, to finally come to grips with my transition into adulthood, to the mother, to the person I would become. I wasn’t just bringing new life into the world. I was healing my own, finding it with groping paws and empty promises.

I picked up a pregnancy journal, and decided it was ok to become someone’s mother.

***

I said I was going to ignore Mother’s Day. And, it’s very likely that I will, knowing there will be no cards or flowers or well wishes, just like every other year-difference being is that this year I don’t have to be mad at anyone about it. It just is.

But it feels off to not acknowledge it.

It’s not razor sharp anymore, that pain. I don’t walk dazed through my days, like I’d fallen down a set of stairs and hit my head and could only see the stars before me. The pain lessens, nearly disappears, leaving me only a reminder of who I’m not, what I could have been, how it all could have been so different.

If I look at the clearly, my mother never dying would have likely meant me never wasting my teen years embroiled in drugs and drinking and confusion. My mother never becoming sick would have meant I would have never moved to Northern Ontario. Never bought a magazine. Never met the father of my children.

Never had my children. My mother’s death directly created my daughters.

As I tell Vivian, frequently-light and dark are only two sides of a thin coin. So it seems, are life and death.

I cannot curse her death any longer. I cannot curse my loss without acknowledging what I have gained. Who I have become. The lessons writ large on my heart, in my skin, by losing her all those years ago. I am a mother because I have no mother.

Ten years ago, when asked, I would have said I would give up anything, and everything to have her back.

No longer.

Becoming a mother has given this to me-a love broad enough to hold my pain, the ability to understand her sacrifice, her pain, her ache, while watching my own recede in the distance like the sun setting in August. Becoming a mother has allowed me to let go in my own way, sitting late at night with a daughter under my child, curled into my body, secure in the knowledge that Mummy loves her, and will never let anything harm her.

I miss my mother. But I’m proud of the mother she has helped me become.

****

Sometimes I stare at the sky as I walk home, and marvel at how big it seems in this province, how spacious and grand. The wind pushes the clouds around, musses my hair and I’ll feel, briefly, like I’m 17 and impossible and wrinkled with pain. The sky smells of tomorrow and I feel my heart pause, sure of her breath on my neck, her perfume on the breeze. Her voice whispers around me, just past hearing, and the world rights itself.

I’m solid again, and grown.

She’s with me everyday, as she’s part of me. I have become her. My daughter’s hold her attitude in their eyes, her bravery in their hearts. My mother’s humour infuses my days, dry and startled.

We are our mother’s daughters.

Kids Are Worth It!-Barbara Coloroso

There’s been a lot of changes at my house lately. My husband moving out, changes with child care, growing up, my youngest in school soon-things are busier than ever and I find myself not always having the time to really sit with my kids and connect as much as I might like.

So when Penguin Canada said they had a few copies of Barbara Coloroso’s “Kids are Worth It!” to review, I jumped at the chance. I’m not so crazy to think that I know everything, especially when it comes to parenting my children. Losing my mother young, I often feel like I don’t always have all the tools I need.

Most parenting books irritate me-they speak in various voices, but mainly in two-one that assumes you’re a blithering idiot, and one that assumes you can’t possibly know what’s best for your children. For the most part, Coloroso avoids these.

Originally written in 1994, and reissued with a new introduction, Coloroso does follow the general parenting advice flow of slapping labels on parenting-namely, splitting them into 4- the Brick Wall parent , the Jelly Fish parent (A&B) or the Backbone parent. All problems and successes flow downhill from these.

Much of the advice using this mechanism is valid-I find I vacillate between a Jellyfish B and a Backbone parent. (Either I just ignore them and then yell when angry, or I actually take the time to sit down and be rational, see their view, let them do the work) and agree her take that we should all parent as a Backbone parent-i.e.-let children, where appropriate, find their own answers. Her quote, which I firmly agree with, “it’s not morally threatening, it’s not unhealthy or life threatening” rings true, and is close to my “no blood, no foul” rule in my honest.

The key it seems, according to Coloroso, is to treat your child as the adult they will become. Give them permission to their own body, their own wants. Allow them the wiggle room when younger to experiment and branch out. Obviously, don’t let them drive drunk-but pick a hill to die on. her example of her son’s crazy hair cut is a great one-it’s his head. A little autonomy goes a long way.

I have really enjoyed many of the common sense suggestions in this book-and have already started using some techniques to help with my children. I had fallen off the rails in terms of thinking through my parenting-I don’t think I was ever that far off, but it’s so much easier to turn back into the brick wall parent and just yell and demand. The message that rebellion can be embraced and managed, and is a good thing-we need to hear that!

I also appreciate the common sense that logic should be followed. If I’m late for dinner, I eat late. I may not get as much, but not giving dinner makes no sense. The message being that the power struggle is not valid or purposeful with parenting-this is not a race or a war

This isn’t a quick fix book, as it warns on the back cover. If you’re closer to a brick wall or a jellyfish, making some changes will be hard. I have to fight my own jellyfish tendencies sometimes, trying to not just go against what my own mother did. Kids Are Worth It! is extremely helpful in laying out the reasoning behind examining, and perhaps altering how you parent.

That said, I am not a huge  fan of the idea that ALL rewards and punishments are fruitless-the motivation for many people (my eldest included) is not only job well done-but the outcome of that, or the implication that a reasonable line of consequences (told you 6000 times to clean your toys-if you can’t take care of them, they disappear) ISN’T reasonable. 

Personally do not like the implication that all kids who are not parented correctly “as backbone” in book will then become promiscuous, drug users or run away. Seems like a relatively simplistic view which isn’t levied by the disclaimed early on that not ALL kids are going to end up like that, and it seems to continually come back to this point through the book.

Overall, unlike many parenting books that leave me rolling my eyes, annoyed, I find Kids Are Worth It to be just as relevant now as it was in 1994, if not more so. The stunning conceit of treating kids like human being-what a concept. This book was also great in terms of covering and applying the concepts to all age groups-something not all books are able to do.

Not only did Penguin Canada provide me with a review copy, they also gave me 2 copies to give away! To win, leave me a comment about your most difficult parenting scenario so far, and what you did to alleviate it.

I’ll take comments until midnight, Saturday May 8.

Duplicious

I try to never lie.

I mean, I’m sure I lie to my kids occasionally, telling them their mouths will swell shut if they keep talking at 4am, or I might shave 10 pounds from my weight to preserve my vanity. But the big stuff? Who I am, what I look like, what it means to be in this body-I don’t lie about that stuff. What’s the point? Eventually someone will find you out, and you lose the person, as well as, presumably, your self respect.

I had recently connected with someone through my blog, or so I thought. Conversations I’d look forward to on email, the kind you sometimes only have with new people. I thought I’d made a friend.

The odd comment would be weird, but then, I’m rapidly discovering that with most people, I’M the odd nut, so I chalked it up to the awkwardness of conversation, stilted through emails, and moved on. But then I asked for a picture. I’ve been talking, on and off, to this person for months, they’ve read the blog. My life is up here, in technicolor. Seemed only fair.

I received a picture obviously pulled from a catalogue, or an ad. When I questioned it, I was basically told I was broken, with the person immediately running offline. Which makes me then question if the pictures of their children weren’t stolen off someone’s blog or some other site as well, a life crafted as a lie to make me feel comfortable.

I really don’t understand-I don’t get the lying, I don’t get the falsehood. Nor will I put up with it. I’m cautious by nature anyway, but had thought I had found a friendship, as I have found with so many of you. But something…isn’t quite right. While the antennae for wrong was triggered awhile ago, I could never quite figure out why. I wonder if I know this person, in life. 

Mostly I wonder why.

People mock me for my lack of faith in humanity. But generally speaking, humanity reinforces my cynicism with this type of behaviour. I wonder what a person gets out of this. I really do. But what is gained, in any case, aside from my anger and irritation?

So if anyone emails me, and I’m a complete snot-now you know why. People, you piss me off.