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Meanwhile in the trenches…

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I don’t remember when my last blog post was but I am reasonably certain it was a while ago. I think about blogging all the time but the opportunity to sit down for, say, 15 uninterrupted minutes seldom comes around. Or it comes around at 11 pm, squarely 18 hours after I’ve hit the ground running for another jammed packed day. I have a file folder full of half-started blog posts and a head full of half-baked comments. But the headlines come and go and the new Word documents remain untouched. I have developed an addiction to Facebook and Twitter or “how to have a social life in 15 seconds or less.” Life with six children is a constant source of wonder — mixed with exasperation, beaming pride and frustration —  but it is a busy life.

As I write these lines, it’s 10:30 am and there are floors to be vacuumed, three bathrooms to be sanitized, a supper to get on the way, a few plants to be re-potted, a baby to be consoled, a puppy play-area to be set-up, winter coats and boots to be unearthed and two kitty litters to be changed. The greatest thing about finding  happiness in small things — like writing instead of doing housework — is that you find more happiness. We are just wrapping up 10 weeks of kitchen reno during which I was making all the food and doing all the dishes on the deck in increasingly cold weather. When the tradesmen — no tradespeople around here: they’re all guys — come in and say “Wow! it must be nice to have such a great kitchen!” I say “I’m just glad to have an indoor kitchen!!” Small mercies I’m telling you, like indoor plumbing, are the spice of life.

In the last 6 months, I have meant to blog on life with teenagers, the HPV vaccine (did we agree to it or not and why), guidelines for neonatal resuscitation, euthanasia, raising children to be obedient and come out of attics when called (until it came out that the child was in fact being obedient by staying in said attic and my point was moot), avoiding DIY medical procedures like circumcision,  all the things I’ve learned about raising children by reading dog training books, H1N1 mass vaccination in Ottawa (I’m still waiting) and my latest “Parent of the Year award goes to…” Instead, we sold our house and moved into a new one, tore down some serious walls and rebuilt new ones, thought of writing a backyard cooking book, got two cats, mourned the death of one to coyotes, got another one, and a puppy, slept very little, remembered with shame all the friends who have yet to receive thank you notes following the birth of my soon-to-be toddler, and put more mileage on the truck from driving kids to athletic activities than we would have driving to Jamaica and back.

Someday I’m sure, I will have all the time in the world to write. But I’m also sure that I will miss the insanity  of my children’s younger years. Meanwhile in the trenches, if you will excuse me, the baby is chewing on a USB stick and the kitten just wrapped himself in a roll of boxing tape…

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Andrea adds: Véronique, I miss you when you can’t post, but when you are back, it is worth the wait. I laughed out loud three times reading this, and I’m not talking discrete chuckles. (“All the things I’ve learned about raising children by reading dog training books”??) We’re talking the kind of laughter that has people turning their heads in restaurants…now this happens to me quite frequently, I might add, but that doesn’t make this post any less funny.

Anti-bullying meets Clint Eastwood – Feelin’ lucky punk?

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This item from yesterday’s National Post asks if bullied children should be able to fight back.

Thankfully, none of my children have ever been the victim of bullying. But from I can understand of it, it is (a) a learned behavior; and (b) a spectator sport. In these circumstances, I understand how difficult it can be for schools to eradicate bullying when the bully’s behavior is reinforced both at home and in the schoolyard by silent bystanders. But if a school is not solving the problem and providing a safe environment for all children, can it then blame parents for taking the matter into their own hands?

It’s funny though that when speaking about kickboxing and martial arts, the school boards association’s risk manager would say: “The kid is going into those courses for all the wrong reasons.” Isn’t learning to fight and defend yourself one of the basic reason to take martial arts, and improved self-esteem, physical fitness and coordination welcomed collateral effects? Has our society gone so mushy that learning to defend yourself is now a big no-no?

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Brigitte nods emphatically: Yes, and yes! Getting into martial arts so you can learn to beat people up is wrong. No, gratuitous violence is not good. But learning to defend yourself, and using those skills when forced to, even if it means kicking the snot out of a tenacious bully? You betcha.

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Andrea adds: I got into martial arts because I was scared of Brigitte.

A moving testimony

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In Saturday’s Ottawa Citizen. Read it here. The accompanying picture, taken by a photographer associated with the Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep Foundation,  is worth buying the paper copy. I don’t know what else to write. I read it and I cried but my tears were a mix of grief for Joseph’s parents and joy for Joseph’s life. It showed me once again that very short lives can be jam packed with meaning and purpose.

The end of chivalry

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I married a man with impeccable manners. In our early days together, he had to teach me, a liberated woman, how to act in the presence of a gentleman. Seeing him pull out a chair at a restaurant, I would grab the other chair and sit down. “Silly” he would say “I was pulling out your chair!” After learning to take the chair he was pulling out for me, I had to learn not to sit down heavily as he was trying to push the chair in for me. “Okay now, you have to help me here! Sit down slowly to give me a chance to push your chair in.” The same thing would happen when he was giving me my coat to wear and instead of letting him help me, I would just grab the coat. It’s surprising how quickly a liberated woman who had learned to despise such little attentions – “Do you mean I can’t pull out my own chair?” – gets used to being treated like royalty. When, as a military officer, he was deployed to Kosovo, I didn’t fully appreciate these little attentions until a family friend opened my car door for me. I started to cry: it was the first expression of gallantry I had encountered since my husband had left three months prior.

I am now used to men, young and old, smoking-up mall entrances while I struggle with a toddler and a stroller. I still notice fathers and sons sporting baseball caps indoors but they don’t annoy me as much as they used to. In fact, one of my university students wore his baseball cap at every class and I didn’t ask him to decapitate even once! But even with low expectations, I wasn’t prepared for my latest appointment with the end of chivalry.

Last weekend, I drove my large SUV – I have six children and they don’t fit in a Prius – to the grocery store and parked it neatly between two cars. I always back into my parking spaces and I make sure to be centered. Still, there is never a lot of space between my truck and the next one, particularly if that other SUV is not parked straight. I was in the process of taking my two youngest children out of their car seats, holding the 3 year-old with one hand while balancing the baby on my hip, when the owner of the next vehicle, a man about the age of my own father, came up to me and barked: “How do you expect me to get in??” Trying not to loose my cool in front of the older children I replied: “I’m sorry. Would you like me to pull out so you can get in?” “Well, you better!” I plunked the little kids back in the truck and hopped back in without resisting the urge to quip “It would have been easier if you were parked straight,” which for me falls squarely in the category of losing my temper. My oldest daughter looked away and said: “Wouldn’t hurt him to lose a bit of girth. Then he could get in easily.” I tried to make this into a teachable moment about passive-aggressiveness and the many polite ways to ask a driver to move her car. But I think that all it turned out to be was a teachable moment about selfish pricks and their expensive SUVs.

Manners and gallantry are just a few ways in which we are people for the ethical treatment of people (I have my t-shirt, do you?). Which part of our declining – some would say altogether absent – moral standards is directly linked to the degradation of small marks of attention and respect?

And the Parent of the Year award goes to…

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Our family is in the middle of a move. We are moving ten minutes down the road from where we currently live, out of the cookie-cutter suburbs and into the custom-made estate lot suburbs where our children will be able to kick a soccer ball without disturbing the neighbours’ lawns, pools or tranquility. But more importantly, where we won’t have to look at our neighbours sunbathing 24/7. Yes folks, even with the crappy summer we’ve had so far, my neighbours have found a way to work on their tan. Maybe I’m just jealous of their idleness. Still, I won’t miss them: bikinis and Speedos after 40 are a privilege ladies and gentlemen, not a right.

Packing boxes with a three-year-old underfoot should be an Olympic discipline, just ask Andrea who came to help on Saturday. So I guess we should have known things were going a little too well when an unknown neighbour rang our doorbell to bring back our son. He had wandered two streets away “on a walk” as he explained later. “Is he one of yours?” he asked, “I thought you might want to have him back.” In a spectacular display of lying through his teeth, my husband said “Yes, thank you,” resisting the urge to say something like “No, we were doing just great” or, even more accurately “Uh, we didn’t even know he was missing…” Our son, in the meantime, was shooting looks at his benefactor thinking “One perfectly good walk, ruined!”

With six kids under my belt, I have learned to laugh at my parenting failures. Still, each one of them has hunted me with “what if’s?” and this latest escapade from my son is no exception. It can be difficult to keep everyone safe in a large family and my luck sometimes leaves me uncomfortable. What if…

So this is the first ProWomanProLife Parent of the Year forum. What is the worst parenting failure you can now laugh at? You can stay anonymous. Come on, make me feel normal please!

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Andrea adds: Saturday was fun. Kept me on my toes. Between the “match the tupperware with the right lid” game I devised for your three-year-old to keep him from blowing that whistle while you were putting the baby down, and the tap shoes used interchangeably between the three-year-old and your older daughters, I felt right at home. (Who doesn’t want tap shoes? I always have. Plus a show on Broadway, but I digress.) Through it all, your neighbours, serenely lying out in the muggy overcast cloud, drinking adult beverages. You are correct: bikinis past 40 are not a right. In fact, for some, they are downright criminal.

One inspiring doctor, one inspiring interview

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In yesterday’s Part Two of The Current on CBC. Find the interview with Dr. Balfour Mount here. I heard the reply to Dr. Mount in this morning’s The Current. Interestingly enough, while proponents of euthanasia present it as a dignified, compassionate way to die, the follow-up interview (not available online yet) wasn’t nearly as hopeful and optimistic as Dr. Mount’s argument for proper palliative care.

One particular point touched me: when asked why euthanasia never really leaves the public discourse, Dr. Mount — who suffers from cancer of the oesophagus — attributes it to the compassion of the Canadian people for those who suffer. We do not like to see people suffering, we want to alleviate the pain, and euthanasia appears on the surface  like a compassionate thing to do. Dr. Buckman, in his rejoinder, attributes it to the bigotry of a vocal minority of right-wing religious groups. Hope and compassion versus intolerance. Who would you rather have as your doctor?

Of birds, bees and captive audiences

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In my family, all the best discussions happen in the car. My son asked recently, as my husband and I were discussing the purchase of our house: “Why do you always talk about important stuff while we are driving to Grandma’s?” We laughed. It seems that the car is the only place where we can actually finish a sentence. Maybe even two. In a row.

Today I was driving the six kids and my oldest daughter was reading a parenting magazine article discussing pregnancy after 40. She asked me: “Mom, would you have a baby at 40?”  “Not on purpose,” I answered. A snicker came from the back seat where my smart-alec of a son was sitting. “You mean you can have a baby by accident?” he asked cynically. That guy knows about the birds and the bees, you see. Without thinking I said “Yes, of course.” “How can you have a baby by accident?” He’s laughing even harder at this point. Obviously, our promiscuous sex-without-consequence worldview hasn’t got a hold of him yet: the guy knows where babies come from. I specify: “What I mean is that you can have sexual intercourse thinking you won’t get pregnant but you get pregnant anyway.”

So we drive a few blocks in thoughtful silence before he says: “So it means that every sexual relation doesn’t end up in pregnancy.” At this point, I am getting increasingly concerned about my oldest daughter’s eyes, who are about to roll all the way back into her shoulder blades. Nevertheless, she feels up to giving her brother a little bit about the birds and the bees. With a “duh” in her voice she says: “A woman can only get pregnant for three to five days every month.” My son got very quiet for a moment and asked: “So you can have intercourse knowing you won’t get pregnant?”

Silence.

“Did it ever happen to you?”

At this point, I was fervently hoping for a large pothole to swallow the truck, or maybe a bus to hit us. That’s when I reconsidered my pledge to never fib to my children about the facts of life. Relief came from my daughter — who had resumed breathing after turning purple — and hissed: “Dude, NEVER ask a lady that!”

His wife will thank her someday.

This post may contain offensive language

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In late months I have been known as the mother of a newborn but let’s not forget that I am equally invested as the mother of a teenager (13) and a preteen (12). And with teenagers came the highjacking of radio waves and other music-playing implements i.e. my iPod.

When the kids’ music started to appear on my iPod I saw the additions to my playlists as a window into my children’s mind.  If I tell you that my daughter listens to Taylor Swift and Kelly Clarkson and that my son listens to a heteroclite mix of Barry Manilow, The Beatles, Survivor and the Arrogant Worms mixed in with full-length episodes of Mythbusters, you can get a decent outline of their personalities. At first I enjoyed listening to Taylor Swift and remembering why Thank God! I’m no longer the girl from White Horse and Teardrops on my guitar. And I have to admit that when my kids nicknamed their dark-eyed baby sister “Black-eyed pea” I found it quite endearing. Unfortunately, things never stay manageable for long and soon enough, my children had also taken over – in addition to my iPod — the car radio, my laptop and my iTunes card.

Parents, if you never listen to whatever local radio station kids listen to in your area, you must get a reality check. At first, I thought my ears were playing tricks on me, or maybe I didn’t quite get today’s slang: “Wait a minute here! Did Lady Gaga just say ‘Don’t think too much just bust that stick, I wanna take a ride on your disco stick’?? She did? Oh. My. Goodness.”

Thankfully, my children were no more eager to listen to Lady Gaga’s ravings about – ahem – disco sticks in the company of their mother than I was. They quickly learned to change the channel within the first two beats of any song with a less-than-family-rated content. That’s until they sorta’ realized that if mom didn’t get the x-rated content in a song, then maybe it would be okay to keep quiet about it and leave the radio on, if you know what I mean. And that’s why we have been listening to Britney Spears’ latest offering for the last two months.

Parents, what is wrong with Britney’s latest ditty I ask you? Check out the lyrics and tell me if you figured it out on your own or if you needed the help of a savvy teenager. You are not allowed to google “what’s wrong with Britney Spears’ lyrics” (Caveat: this may not work if you a have a home schooled or private religious schooled child who has never been exposed to profanity. I envy you by the way.)

My question for today: I have a 7-year-old and a 9-year-old who love to sing that song. They don’t know what they are singing. Should I tell them and ask them to stop singing, thus highlighting profanity they didn’t know about; not tell them the profanity part but ask them to stop singing – which may amount to asking you not to think about a pink elephant — or should I ignore it altogether and wait for the next catchy top 20 hit, knowing that Britney’s song, like all the other, will soon fade into oblivion?

Legally Véronique

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I like to watch mindless movies when I work out. Something about not straining my brain when I’m under physical duress — yes, duress. I work out on a treadmill so it’s either keep running or get thrown against the back wall. And when I say mindless, I mean “High School Musical 2” mindless. “When Harry Met Sally” mindless. “You’ve got Mail” mindless, OK?

At the risk of forever ruining my reputation as a smart young woman, mother to smart young children, I have to confess a special spot in my work-out movie list for “Legally Blonde.” Reese Witherspoon reminds me of my 9-year-old daughter: they look alike in an impish kind of way and have the same inclination towards sparkle, fashion and small yappy dogs. But I found out something else to like about “Legally Blonde”: it pokes fun at humourless feminists and law students, two populations that cause me headaches from hitting my forehead on my desk. I almost laughed myself off the running machine when I heard this one, told by the feminist law student referring to Harvard Law School:

The English language is all about subliminal domination.
Take the word “semester”.
It’s a perfect example of this school’s discriminatory preference of semen to ovaries.
That’s why I ‘ m petitioning to have next term be referred to as Winter Ovester.”

I promise to try to use it at a party sometime.

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