February, 2009

Tremulous encounters between two worlds, originally uploaded by thaneeya.

Sometimes you cannot draw lines and compartments and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end, it’s all a question of balance.
- Vasantrao Valmik

I’ve been writing a few emails lately. Long emails. Emails that explain why I write a blog, why I write what I write on my blog, why I don’t want Eliza looking to princesses and barbie dolls as ideals and why I worry about Franklin’s emotional strength.
The problem with blogs is that it is a very very small picture of someone’s life. It’s also a very small picture of someone’s thoughts. Many times, more times than not, I sit down to write something here and end up on another tangent all together. My last post was like that. I actually sat down to write about Eliza’s birthday falling on International Woman’s Day and how this seemed fitting considering her personality and my hopes for her. Instead it turned into a post about raising a boy.

Waxing on about how wonderful my life is would probably make a lot of people feel a lot more comfortable. Then again, waxing on about how rosy my life is makes a whole different section of readers send me emails about how they can’t relate to my life and question why their life seems so much harder. The thing is, my life has it’s ups and downs and when I write about the ups, I write about the ups. Sometimes I write about the downs. Sometimes I just write about things that I think about when I can’t find my glasses and my garden’s already mapped out.

To keep balance, I need to feel inspired. I try my best to feel inspired every single day. There are days when I’m not feeling it and those days… well, they suck. It doesn’t take much to inspire me though. Right now I’m designing a Bar Mitzvah invitation and learning how to use more than $25 worth of our Photoshop software. This should tell you how easy I am to please. I’m finding inspiration in my garden, in picking up garbage, in using my creativity, and in raising my children. All the things you’ve been reading about over the past year.

When I write about questioning society’s ability to create healthy boys and men it is because I want to learn how to raise my own son to be a happy person. I want him to feel good about himself and see himself the way his father and I see him – full of promise and joy. I’m not wringing my hands and pacing back and forth in the middle of the night worrying if he’s going to become the Canadian version of Columbine’s Eric Harris or Dylan Kleboldor. I’m just thinking about how to teach him inner strength. Every parent wants this for their children. My parents had huge hopes for every one of their children but guess who didn’t go to medical school because she thought she wasn’t smart enough? I need to learn about this inner strength too.

366-308, originally uploaded by Mr. Moog.

Eliza will be 1 year old on March 8th. The woman I have become friends with at the post office, who I see when we walk to school every morning, and whose son goes to the same after school care as Franklin, is from Eastern Europe. When she learned that Eliza’s birthday falls on this day she jumped out of her seat and congratulated me.

Apparently, March 8th is International Woman’s Day – celebrated everywhere else but here. In fact, it is a bloody holiday in many parts of Europe. You’d be stretched to find anything more than a calendar marking this celebration in this part of the world.

When I told Franklin about Eliza’s birthday being the same day as when many people in the world celebrate women he got quite silent. After a little while he asked me if the world celebrates men. He even had tears welling up in his eyes when he asked me about this.

Turns out that yes, they do have an International Men’s Day. I told him that he was right to ask about that – we want to celebrate everyone. However, I was concerned about how worried he was that there may not be a celebration.

I’m not sure why this is, but I worry more about Franklin’s emotional strength than Eliza’s. I see Eliza, 11 months old, as made of firmer stuff. Perhaps Franklin is my first born and this is why I’m more protective. Or perhaps it’s because he’s only just started public school and Lord Love a Duck that can do a number on one’s self-esteem. Or perhaps I just see the world around me as a little less friendly to men right now.

I’m not saying men don’t get a hell of a lot of opportunity and privilege, but the cost seems too high. School seems to tell them to “sit down” and “be calm”. The media seems to tell them that they have to be stronger, faster and have bigger light labers/guns/muscles.

School?
Franklin seems to be lucky in that his classroom is very activity based and a lot of work is by demonstration and hands on learning. His kindergarten was even more geared this way. Will this start to decrease as school becomes less about play and more about learning? What about the teachers? Why are they always women? His after school care teachers are men but the likelihood of having a elementary school teacher as a male is extremely low. Women teachers… female activities? We sat down and talked with Franklin’s teacher the other day and she has two grown sons – she knows all about Star Wars. She’s trying to learn about Bakugan at the moment but “the learning curve is steep…” I think we got a really great teacher with her. Sometimes it’s the littlest things that make a difference, like the acceptance that boys don’t sit still.

Media? (crapola)
Where are the images of men who are smart or caring or community minded? It’s all about the talent with a light saber or how many goals you can shoot. Are we looking up to Harry Potter because he tries hard at school? Nope. Hermione Granger works hard but Harry’s just… what? Gifted? Determined? Just? Those are good but where are the heroes who like school? We followed Prehistoric Park’s Nigel Marven for a good while because of his “way with dinosaurs” but they aren’t promoting “school is awesome” – more like, “time travel is cool!” Which IS cool and does require school, but still… why we have to read into the heroes to get this information?

Friends?
I’m fascinated with a certain behaviour that Franklin and his friends have begun – the “who’s got the most” “who’s the fastest” “who’s knows more about “Star Wars / Pokemon / Bakugan”. What is this competition about? It’s not like they gain anything from any of it. No one is taking score at the end of the week. It’s only that at that particular moment, there seems to be a test of… I don’t know. It’s only about accumulation of mystical points. When we are alone, we talk about how important it is to be good at other things like friendship, empathy, care for the environment, and care for his family. He knows this and understands it but when he’s with his friends he seems to get sidetracked. Can a male explain this to me?

Am I making sense?
I’m just babbling here. Seriously, I’m just writing off the top of my head and I’ll probably wake up at 4 tomorrow morning thinking about all the silly things I’ve written here but really… has anyone else with boys thought about this? Am I insane?

Before, originally uploaded by AdaSaab.

The photo above is the area I was primarily writing about in my previous post. The path you see directly ahead leads on to the university grounds. This area is located at the end of our street – wide enough to turn around in a car if you absolutely had to, I suppose. Mostly though, it’s a catch all for litter and home to a few rabbit families.

My last post has a lot of complaining in it and as we all know how much I hate a pity party, I thought I’d try and do something about this area that people seem to disregard so easily. I’m going to slowly turn it into something beautiful. I am also going to snag an outdoor garbage can and recycling bin from somewhere and give people a place to put their trash. Although a lot of the garbage is blown in from elsewhere, there isn’t a garbage can for quite a distance.

Of course, everything will be on my dime so this will be a pretty lean landscaping budget. As well, everything has to be both deer and rabbit proof – making my options pretty limited. There will be no edible anything growing here. It would be chomped up before it had a chance to make it to plant adolescence.

For inspiration, I’ve found some great websites:

guerrillagardening.org
GGTV
Toronto’s Public Space Committee
The Citizen’s Handbook (which claims it originated the term “guerrilla gardening in 1993)
the guerrilla gardening wiki page (of course)
Primal Seeds
How to make Seed Bombs

So if anyone has any ideas for plants (or wants to join me!), let me know.

lethal litter, originally uploaded by promqu33n.

Remember that movie, Sex Lies and Videotape? With Andie MacDowell, James Spader and Laura San Giacomo? The one where James Spader’s character turns Andie MacDowell’s repressed world upside down with his fetish for sex interviews?

There’s a part of the film, right at the beginning, where you start to get a glimpse of the kind of life Ann (MacDowell) is leading when she is talking to her analyst;

“Garbage.All I’ve been thinking about all week is garbage. I can’t stop thinking about it. I just… I’ve gotten real concerned over what’s gonna happen with all the garbage.

The last time… I started feelin’ this way is when that barge was stranded and, you know, it was goin’ around the island and nobody would claim it.”

Then her therapist goes on about how she’s only concerning herself with things she cannot control and blah blah blah… foreshadowing…. blah blah blah… character development…

I’m beginning to get a little more than “concerned” about the garbage. We live right by the university – in fact, we have a trail that leads to the campus practically right outside our front door. However, we aren’t “on” university property which means any garbage thrown by wonderfully distracted university students or from the high school students down the road is left to blow in the breeze… and then into the rose hip bushes.

They are prickly rose hip bushes.

Want to know how I know? Because last weekend Franklin was required to count out 100 “things” to bring to school for One Hundred Day. He thought about pennies but he did that last year. Then he thought about lego (but didn’t want to lose any). Then he thought about shreds of paper (he likes to use the shredder).
Then I asked him if he would help me pick up 100 pieces of garbage around the area and he could bring that to school. I thought he was going to come back with a sigh and repeat his request to shred paper but he agreed! We talked about what happens when garbage is left to fly around and where it eventually ends up. He concluded that as we live by the ocean, it will get blown into the water and join the rest of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (which is what that photo above is about). He’s quite angry with garbage in the ocean. He worries about the sharks.

So we collected garbage.

Well, I collected about 75% of it and he took care of 25% while pointing out the rest of it to me in the bushes. It was horrible. Most of it was chip bags. Behind some evergreen trees we found diapers. Old, soaked, and heavy as fcuk. The decoration on the outside was gone but they were still totally intact. We found bottles and cans. We didn’t actually find all that many plastic bags though. We found a billion paper coffee cups.

Franklin went to school with the garbage and afterward told me that there were a lot of kids who brought Pokemon cards but interestingly, no one else brought garbage… Pretty cute that he thought this was an unexpected event.

I still pick up garbage. Every day I make sure I pick up one thing but I can’t keep up with the litter. When it’s windy it’s especially bad. I wonder if it’s always been there but I’m only noticing it now – now that I’m on maternity leave and a little more relaxed and a little more cognoscente of my surroundings. I’ve been out a few weekends before our 100 trip and picked up a few grocery bags full. I don’t feel like I’m making that much of a dent.

And then there’s the fact that all I’m doing is placing it out of my field of vision. Where does it go after I throw it in the dumpster? This gets me even more. This stuff – the chip bags, the plastic and the diapers. They don’t decompose. You can’t compost this. Not only that, it’s toxic to make – some would argue toxic to even use.

I live in one of the most environmentally, politically, socially conscious cities in Canada and I can count the number of moms who use decomposable or cloth diapers on my hands. We have a overflow storm water discharge system that runs into the ocean making it ripe with fecal coliform all because people are throwing crap into their streets. Garbage floats into my stroller on windy day walks.

We are The Garden City and we stink.

It is literally ALL I can think of.

My family needs to prepare themselves for an onslaught of warmed up chicken fingers and crunchy carpets while I don my robe and mutter Bach melodies around the house for at least a few weeks.

This is a photo of my mother. She hates getting her picture taken. It’s not a “Ohhh, my hair looks frightful but alas, I will grant you a little smile for the paparazzi, if you insist” kind of thing. She’s really hates getting her picture taken.

You can kind of see it in this photo, actually. It’s got to be hard having a daughter who carries her camera around with her where ever she goes. I’m constantly looking at things through the lens just to frame my surroundings. When she happens to get in the frame, I have a tendency to snap the photo. Recently, I’ve made a conscious effort not to snap anything. In fact, I try not to look through my camera around her at all. However, it’s hard to do this.

I try my best to understand why she doesn’t want her photo taken. I realize that sometimes we aren’t looking our best and would then prefer a more private life. Sometimes photos are deceivingly horrible. Sometimes we just aren’t photogenic. I can (and have) also not posted photos of people on the internet because they didn’t want others to see them. All that is completely understandable. But to feel this way all the time makes me wonder if it’s not just thinking she doesn’t look her best. It’s got to be more than that and I wish I knew how to help… or if not help then merely to understand and empathize.

My daughter is the splitting image of my mother. They look so much alike and have so many of the same facial expressions that it is uncomfortable at times to do something that displeases her (take a small piece of lego away), wipe her bum or breast feed. The number of times that Eliza looks just like her Taita is so great that I get overwhelmed almost everyday and try to call my mother. My daughter makes me miss my mother even more than I normally do.

I think my daughter is beautiful – with all of her facial expressions, her rosy skin and her blue eyes – because she looks so much like my mother. I just wish my Mom saw herself through my eyes and saw who I see. Perhaps then she would understand why I want to take her picture so often. I want to always remember her – when she was my age, when she was raising 5 young children at once, when she was dealing with teenagers and university students, when she gave me away at my wedding and now, when she is a grandmother with silvery hair and confident hands.
I love you, Mom.

Margaret Roach’s blog A Way to Garden features a new Andre Jordon doodle every Thursday. I’ve posted a doodle of his once before and this is the second one that I’ve really related to. They are simple drawings but they really speak to me.

This time it’s something I’ve been a little self conscious about; my rubber boots. I’m not a shoe person. I don’t have a different pair of shoes for a selection of outfits. I have had my knee high black boots and my green sandals. The boots were for winter and the sandals are for summer. Easy Peasy. I bought my boots the spring before I was pregnant with Franklin. They were old and falling apart. I was wearing plastic bags in the feet because they were full of holes and the zipper on the left leg had come off so I was pulling them up using shear will power. Dickson noticed this and one night as I climbed into bed with Eliza to do our final breastfeed before bed I sat on a new pair of purple rubber boots.

They are perfect. They are exactly what I needed and I love them. The black boots could finally rest. I don’t need anything else. If I’m not walking to school with Franklin or trekking through university trail system with Eliza, I’m in the garden. What more would I need? By the time I return to work in the spring I’ll be back to the green sandals. I have loads of time to get work appropriate boots for the winter.

The problem however, is that this is the only thing I wear. It’s one thing if I’m wearing simple black boots that hide under a pair of jeans. However, I’m now usually seen wearing wind resistant shell pants or jeans with rips all over the knee – along with the purple boots, a dirty red vest and my blue toque. It’s not that I don’t have other clothes, it’s just that I’m constantly “stopping by the garden” and I’m not about to wear nice, regular pants to go shovel the compost or haul mulch. In other words, “Franklin’s Mum always looks like she works in a stable.”

I know this shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t matter to Franklin (that I know of) and it doesn’t matter to my friends but I remember having certain perceptions of kid’s parents when I was young. There were the ones who always wore suits and lipstick and the ones who showed up with curlers in their hair and a jam faced kid on their hip. The ones with the jam faced kids always seemed to be yelling. I’m not yelling (in public) but I’m awfully close to curlers and jam face and in a school of drop dead gorgeous lululemon marathon Moms and SUV jcrew Dads, I wonder how am I perceived.

Rapunzel, originally uploaded by allerleirau.

I was all set to cut my hair last week. I’m not a long haired person. I’m not even a medium length haired person. I once grew my hair for Locks of Love and it was torture by the end. I had a hard time keeping it long enough to qualify for the 12 inches. As soon as I had enough I jetted over to the hair dresser and got her to give me the shortest cut possible without shaving me bald. It felt so good.

I’m not sure what it is exactly that I hate about longer hair. The heat? The way it gets in my face? The way it falls out and I find it everywhere? The way it becomes something to focus on, like another accessory? It could be all of these things – most especially the finding it everywhere thing.

I’m not one to dye it or “style it” into any fashion either. It’s pony tails or messy buns. But pony tails and messy buns aren’t cutting it (for lack of a better word…). I want to look professional and well put together but I don’t want to figure out where to put all those strands. Pony tails and messy buns were for university – along with my sweat pants and flip flops. So, it’s short pixie cuts for me.

I was looking on flickr for what a lentil plant looks like as I had thought it might be fun to grow in the garden this year and came across this photo. It’s perfect. I’m even loving the hair colour but that’s not going to happen – too much maintenance.

I was excited. I was even ready to try to do it myself if need be.
Then Franklin got sick.
Then Eliza got sick.

And then I discovered a comforting gesture Eliza has picked up that has now made it impossible for me to cut my hair. She strokes my hair. She also rubs my locks between her fingers. It’s the first thing she holds on to when I get her at night and the last thing she touches before she falls asleep.

Now I’m a long haired loving hippie.