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those of you who live in Canada probably have heard, unless you are currently hibernating under rocks that shelter you from all media input. those of you who don’t live in our fair former dominion may not be surprised by the news even if it is news to you, since we’re all kinda hippies up here in the socialized medicine Great White North, after all. or something like that. except Alberta.

Canada’s 2006 census results came out yesterday, and the nation - or at least its media - is abuzz. it’s just not sure over what, precisely. shall there be celebrations? wailing and gnashing of teeth? general Canadian awkward politeness and obsequious expressions of tolerance? probably all of the above, from strange bedfellows.

in Canada, the married folk over the age of 15 are, as of this year, for the first time outnumbered by single folk over the age of 15. and the “nuclear family is in dramatic decline,” according to the same stats…with married couples with children being the only family grouping to experience a drop in numbers during the five years since the last census. the Cleaver model is apparently on the wane, at least as compared to same-sex family groupings, commonlaw family groupings, DINKs, and lone-parent families.

i preen for a moment, feeling terribly avant-garde. thinking me & Dave oughtta get married so as to maintain our cool, our separation from the herd, since all these unmarrieds are clearly just tryin’ to copy us.

in seriousness, though, i don’t know what to make of all this…of what marriage means today, of what the shift signifies, of what’s really happening behind all these demographic slices and categorizations. are we realizing Trudeau’s vision of a just society, that vague rhetorical vision of diversity and equality in pluralism, or morphing into Sodom and Gomorrah? tea leaves can be made to tell almost any story you want them to. and if you squint your eyes up right and peer into the future of the Canadian family, these stats can probably speak to and support every single pluralistic instinct you or i possess, and every single reactionary prejudice that exists within us, too.

i giggled a bit when i realized that i, tied by sweat and bond and love and hope and word to my partner and to our family, count as single by the statistical definition. fair enough, by the strictest interpretation of the term…but surely there’s a problem somewhere with that definition, with the binary of choices it implies? i giggled again, more nervously, when i realized that much as i’d be pleased if our particular version of family were common enough that O would not be stigmatized by the indifference Dave & i have towards formal marriage, the preponderance of common-law families and lone-parent families doesn’t necessarily reflect a society of Bon & Daves. it reflects a whole mishmash of people, at multiple waystations on that path of commitment and responsibility that Dave & i (and the official “married” party line) consider our family to represent. others, of course, are on their own, different paths, entirely.

and there’s the rub. because i didn’t giggle at all when i acknowledged that i wince with what can perhaps best be described as class distaste each time i discover that a cousin or a half-sibling, much younger than me, with no completed education and a minimum-wage job, is pregnant (as seems to be happening a lot lately and giving my old-school, elderly “where did i go wrong?” grandfather heart palpitations.)

having grown up an immediate family composed of my mother, my grandmother, and i, i’m inclined towards a non-traditional definition of family. yet despite the relative glass house of my own upbringing and chosen cohabitational arrangement, i cringe a little at all these whispered announcements within my own personal extended family. because even if we all fit into the “new configuration of families” rising in numbers on the StatsCan charts, and even if we’re all blood, their choices make me uncomfortable, faintly patronizing, and worried. and maybe…if i’m honest…just a little envious. because for all i cannot imagine having made the last three years of my life - dramatic and traumatic as they’ve been - work when i was 20, or with any of the treat-of-the-month guys i knew when i was 20…it would have been nice to have found the sense of purpose motherhood’s brought with it earlier in life.

the only real arbiter of whether a family “works” is time, and these young relatives of mine may rise to their occasions and create happy, productive lives for themselves and for their children. i hope they do. but it’s hard to accept that not everyone who shares my census box doesn’t actually want to copy me, doesn’t see my version of subversion (too much education, underpaid work, proud and stringent fiscal independence, and the choice of partner - and my children’s father - as the most important choice in life) as the be-all and end-all of how to live. who wouldn’t want to be sparklingly original like me, i think?

and then i laugh at myself, and wonder if Canada doesn’t do the census every five years just so we citizens can have a Rorshach test in which to view our reflections. it appears, married or not, that i’m as traditional and conservative as June Cleaver and buttered rolls. and my own little version of the nuclear family, whether StatsCan is quite ready to recognize us as such or not.

i don’t like the world we live in, a lot of the time.

i don’t like the bitchy, vapid, rampant consumerism that passes for chicklit these days, nor the fact that chicklit isn’t itself an ironic categorization. i don’t like the sanctimonious mommy wars. i don’t like the veneer of cheap celebrity and snarky gossip that passes for public discourse, nor the fact that i have opinions on Brangelina despite the fact that neither Brad nor Angie would know me if they sat on me. i don’t like what image the combination of all these cultural bits and pieces makes of me as a woman, a female, a category…a person.

nor do i like what a sanctimonious, bitchy, tabloid-eating, mommy-warring pill i actually morph into whenever i consider the train wreck that is Britney Spears.

but what i really don’t like is when i go a step further and become the caricature of myself that all that misogynist pop culture would like to reflect me as, and buy into it, get lost in it. i think i crossed a line the other day when i came face to face in a grocery store lineup with news of Nicole Richie’s pregnancy. Nicole Richie, all 81 pounds of her, has miraculously managed to conceive and carry a child for four or five months thus far, and has already blossomed in the public eye from a rehab candidate on a variety of fronts to that blessed, anointed creature - the mother-to-be. the happy ending.

and my first thought? was cruel, and shameful. that little Miss My-Daddy-Was-Once-Famous does not deserve a healthy baby on top of all the bounty she’s already been given with no seeming effort or talent on her own part. that it’s really enough that she’s been stuck in front of our faces for years just because she grew up with with Lionel Richie for a father and the please-god-let-this-be-a-joke Paris Hilton for a friend. erm, enemy. erm, friend. whatever. that it’s really enough that young women struggling with eating disorders with no resources available to help them have had to watch her waste away in the public eye for waaaay too long now. that it’s really enough that people with normal adult body weights struggle to conceive, to carry…merely to ovulate, for chrissakes.

i have a truckload of empathy for all the people who are NOT Nicole Richie, and for whom watching her blossom her way through this pregnancy presumably without a hitch will be one hell of a bitter pill.

and i had a truckload of pity for me, who never had rehab available nor a tv show handed to me, nor…well…a happy ending with my firstborn.

but i had none o’ that for Nicole Richie.

because somewhere, obviously, i’ve bought the myth. that not only are celebrities open season, which - given the perks - may have some merit…but that they are actually NOT human beings, in need of common human decency. from me. that the world of glamour and privilege and apparent silver platterdom that they represent is a zero-sum economy: their presence in it is keeping ME out. their cakewalk is responsible for my heartbreak, or for the pimples on my thighs, at least. just for a second, i wished statistics would catch up with Nicole Richie. i wished her loss. i wished her crushed, like so many ‘real’ people have been, just so i could stop reading about her little miracle and the sunbeams suddenly emanating from her butt. so i could stop hurting in the place where the article was rubbing salt in all my old wounds.

and then i was horrified with myself, and ashamed. because i do NOT really wish that particular heartbreak on any human being. not one. certainly not just because they’re privileged, or lucky, or famous. there is no equation there.

and yet, in media and discourse we move more and more towards a cheap flippancy that encourages that equation, that fosters an ambulance-chasing fascination with celebridee foibles, for huge money. and the step between eagerly watching someone crash and burn, and wanting them to crash and burn, whilst licking our lips and telling ourselves they deserve it, is a very teensy one. i don’t think it’s a coincidence that the German word “schadenfreude” entered our pop culture vocabulary somewhere in the past decade or so.

and it’s ugly, taken to its extreme. it’s ugly, when i look at it in the mirror. it’s ugly, to take a real wound and make of it a hateful, blameful, dehumanizing cheap shot. and then to have a cultural bandwagon that in any way allows me to feel smug and “normal” for having such vitriol for a person who bears no relation to me whatsoever.
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i don’t think that either Nicole Richie or her unborn child will be impacted by my moment of bitter Grinch-heartedness and ill will…my superpowers, for good or evil, are not so impressive. but i will be impacted by that nastiness, if i don’t prune the branches of the tree it springs from. and Oscar will too. i have no problem with him learning to have opinions and pass judgements, even disparaging ones, critical ones. but i don’t want him to learn to discount other people’s humanity…even people it’s hard to see as people sometimes.

so when i came across Alpha Dogma’s post on schadenfraude and it’s opposite, mudita, last week…i was humbled. and hopeful. i’ve never heard of mudita - the altruistic joy of witnessing the good fortune of others - before. i’m not even sure i believe, precisely, in altruism.

but i think i’d like the world a whole lot more if it had more mudita going on it. if that was the lens we trained on those we choose to celebrate, whether in dumb tabloids or in our real lives.

So AlphaDogma…thank you. for something that was lovely, and opened up a window for me. for something that was perfect.

you deserve this.

Dave, o strapping specimen of courage that he is, is outside cleaning the shed.

his parents were here for the past couple of days, looking after O while our sitter’s camping with her own family, visiting with us, and generally just being the wickedly energetic, capable, helpful people they always are. seriously. i’ve won the in-law lottery. envy me at will.

now, every time Dave’s parents are here, our shed - better known as the dusty hellhole stacked high with open paint cans and precarious bladed items, or where good times go to die - gets a bit of a pick-me-up and cleanout that we just never seem to have time for. or rather, that Dave never seems to have time for…i’m too overwhelmed by the shed to acknowledge it, except to retrieve the lawnmower occasionally. the shed turns me into a flailing OCD sissy in thirty seconds flat, and then i just stand there, frozen, looking nervous and traumatized. i don’t have the literacies to be useful in that environment, seeing as in my home changing a lightbulb was a major structural accomplishment…and i go into a panic every time i get inside those four walls and look around at the baffling detritus and unknown tools that crowd it.

this shames me a little. but the shed, i swear, is scary.

luckily, since O was born, i am only called on to help in there when he’s sleeping. because it is clearly - with nails scattered around the floor, and old exposed wires, and an inch of sawdust on everything - not a childsafe environment.

i wish the rest of the world were as clearcut.

because the truth is, i get that same deer-in-headlights feeling of cluelessness and overload every time i try to weigh whether a food or a toy is safe for my child, or whether a patch of grass is a playspace or a toxic chemical dump.  i do try.  i read stuff.  it conflicts.  and so i’m constantly trying to piece together pictures that make sense, based on sources that appear reliable, and standards that i like to hope are sufficient and current and grounded in evidence, not just best-guesses like my own.  but it’s pretty boggling…and hey, i’m a highly literate person with a background in research.  and still, the whole process makes me feeling like i’m standing in the shed, overwhelmed and possessed of a powerful urge to flee.

Mommy Blogs Toronto is, with the BlogHers Act Canadian initiative, going to try to do something about this craziness with chemicals and global capitalism and labelling and standards.  with a chorus of blogs around the country in support, they’re going to be talking to NGOs and charities, and forming partnerships aimed at trying to eliminate/reduce harmful chemicals in food and retail products…and then presumably they’ll get back to us about things we can do.  which is cool…really, more than cool.

i hope they hurry.  ’cause on this issue, which matters to me, i still feel confused and unsure of my footing, of how to make any difference on my own, or even how to make good judgements.  so…i’m grateful to them for taking the lead, and i will lend my voice and hands however i can.

and hopefully stop feeling so stunned by all these questions of soy vs. dairy, food additives, neighbourhood pesticides, and whether it’s possible or reasonable to avoid buying children’s items from China altogether in the process.

’cause it’s my figurative shed, this stuff, and it’s hurting my head.

i stole it from Whymommy.

i don’t normally make it a habit to theft things from people, particularly people undergoing chemotherapy.  i know Whymommy wants no pity - and thus the pity party horns are tweet, stomp, erm, shove under carpet silent here - but undergoing the rigours of chemo does nonetheless get one a bit of extra respect and room from me.  so when Whymommy asked for us out here to get this word out, i nodded  and pilfered obediently.

’cause Whymommy’s not asking us to read this, to post it and steal and splatter the town with its content, for her.  she’s asking us to read it for us.

please, take a minute.  read.  spread the word.

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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.

P.S. Feel free to steal this post too.  I’d be happy for anyone in the blogosphere to take it and put it on their site, no questions asked.  Dress it up, dress it down, let it run around the place barefoot. I don’t care.  But I want the word to get out.  I don’t want another young mom — or old man — or anyone in between — to have to stare at this thing on their chest and wonder, is it mastitis?  Is it a rash?  Am I overreacting?  This cancer moves FAST, and early detection and treatment is critical for survival.

i’ve been talking to Oscar since before he was born…nattering on, internally and out loud, telling him about the colour of the walls and the name of the kitty and what mummy would really like to be doing instead of laundry. much of which i would never dare repeat here, for fear of y’all’s virgin ears and such (and pesky local laws), but O keeps my secrets safe as houses.

’til now.

it’s started. he’s begun to communicate. and worse better (jury’s still out) not only communicate, but comprehend. the child clearly understands every frigging word i say. i say, “Oscar, where’s Oscar’s nose?” - he touches that fat little button. uh huh. i say, “Oscar, where’s mama’s ear?” - and fumbling little fingers try to tear my earring from its fleshy nest. i say, “Oscar, bring mama the bunny” - i gets me a bunny. (or he ignores me completely. but that’s inherited from his father, i think, and not a sign - at least in his progenitor’s case - that he doesn’t know the words i’m using.)

all of these are good things. exciting. but sometimes i don’t say, “Oscar, show mama the book” or “where are your toes?” or “give me a hug, lovey.” nope, those fine phrases are barely the cream off our one-sided chatter of habit here. under the cream, habit being what it is, are also the phrases of an, erm, slightly tempermental grown woman with a mouth like a sailor who hasn’t been allowed around speaking-aged children in over a decade. i, um, swear. a lot.

my ongoing prattle is full of interjections like “sweet merciful Jeebus, you goddam f$&*%^ing cat stop biting my ankles!” (in the house, when Clementine is feeling frisky) or “eat my ass, lady!” (in the car, when addled fellow driver cuts me off or forgets use of signal light) or simply “shite” (as adjective or expletive, most of the rest of the day). those and other colourful expressions not necessarily fit for the consumption of wee folk have been an all-too regular part of my daily discourse for a very long time. i think it started out of a combined love of language and desire to be very very unladylike. now, while i still love flavourful language and delight in the way a good curse rolls off my tongue, i think perhaps it’s time to rein myself back in a bit. because Oscar’s word for the cat, at the moment, sounds something like “ffffff.” and i’m thinking that’s not a lack of phonetic grasp on his part, but a reflection of what he may believe kitty’s name to actually be.

so, i’m probably unfit to be a parent and you’re all shaking your heads in shock right now, tsk-tsking and whispering “but she seemed almost nice!” yeh, well fuck off. i’m really very upstanding, and it’s just a sign of my great piety (snort) that the name of the lord is never far from my lips, okay?

but i’m not sure that speaking like me will get Oscar invited to any birthday parties.

so if any kind soul out there is nodding her head, thinking “i too have (or had!) a potty mouth, and have advice to offer this poor wayward soul before her son’s first clear word comes out as ‘cocksucker’”…please share. do i wash my own mouth out with soap, or what? do i just tape “good golly” and “my stars and whiskers” all over the walls until they start to sink in and infiltrate my deeper mind? do i say “blow this” and risk O sounding like a Tarantino film extra by the time he’s in kindergarten?

how does swearing happen or not happen in your house?

gimme some f^$*ing halp, here, people.

the Just Posts rolling around on the calendar always gets me thinking about what really matters to me. what i consider social justice to mean, and to require of me. what i consider a life well-lived to be. what i want O to learn, from me, about what it means to be human.

all these answers change and shift, from month to month…my mind is not organized along doctrinal lines, on most of this. i think our society’s problems are systemic, yes. i think we are made more human when we find ways to connect with others, yes. but this is messy stuff, and every time i delve into it, i come up with another part of the elephant in my hands. except for one little bit.

i know exactly what i hope for Oscar. i have, tucked away in that part of my brain that knows the lyrics to everything if the tune to almost zilch, my own personal holy scripture on this one. i know what i wish for the young.

it came to me one summer morning almost exactly seven years ago, packaged up nicely in a folky melody with harmonicas, to boot. i was still in my twenties, plunking away on my M.A. thesis in a little attic den with CBC playing on a tinny radio, when a song came on and had me from the first word.

and i was riveted, transported backward and forward in time. what they were playing was Bob Dylan’s version of “Forever Young” - not to be confused with the Alphaville song of the same name nor with anything by Rod Stewart, thank you. it is a simple song, for a Dylan song, a benediction written for his children. it is the song Howard Cosell recited, in honour and tribute, over the last rounds of Muhammad Ali’s comeback fight in the final days of the fighter’s heyday. it rings for me with all the political and cultural and systemic upheaval of the culture and era i was born into, and with the legends of Dylan and Ali when they were icons of youth and promise and change. it rings for me with all the idealism and anger of the sixties, and it rings for me with hope. with the fresh start of youth. with the goodness and possibility i see in kids, every day…that fragile thing that so few of us are able to keep nearly long enough.

i’d heard the song before that morning, but not for years and years…it evoked for me the comforting familiarity of childhood, and the remembered scratch of my mother’s Joan Baez records. but it also evoked, in me, for the first time, a deep, primal urge to have a child. to be a mother. to shape a life. to take on the risk and staggering responsibility of actually raising a human being. that draw…to do well by the hostage to fortune i’ve been blessed with…is still the most compelling thing i know.

i like to think, sometimes, that we’ll be able to raise O to be better than we are. more giving. less grasping. more able to approach difference with grace and empathy and interest, rather than discomfort and shuffling. more likely to take action, to believe he can make some kind of difference. i don’t believe in the modernist notion of progress, true, and i am weary, already, with the cynicism of my post-boomer generation that has watched Dylan and Ali grow old and mortal in the harsh public eye. but i still have hope. i believe hope gets reborn with every new generation.

this is what i hope, for Oscar…for all children.

May God bless and keep you always,
May your wishes all come true,
May you always do for others
And let others do for you.
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be righteous,
May you grow up to be true,
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you.
May you always be courageous,
Stand upright and be strong,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

May your hands always be busy,
May your feet always be swift,
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift.
May your heart always be joyful,
May your song always be sung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.
- Bob Dylan, copyright 1973

i know not all these things will happen for O. i know not all of them should...his wishes to eat more and more and more cheese, for instance, might have an unfortunate effect on his digestive tract. but he will have the chance at more of these things than most. and when the day comes - and i hope it does, in the sense that i hope to see his adulthood and his flowering - that he leaves his youth behind and grows into a man, i hope that he can carry into the world a little of the beauty and the promise that is in him now. that he can keep believing that he is worthy of the words of the song.

no matter what.

if he can, i will know i’ve done well by him.

…but oh, i am so lucky to have that chance. for me, a just world might start with all little children having the luxury of believing these words were written for them. for that to happen, though, more parents than i can get my mind around would need believe it about themselves first. that they are worthy. that there is help, and support out there. that people give a shit. that the world is not just a spin cycle of pain and damage that has hurt them, and will hurt their kids in turn. to Thordora, who wrote a raw, fierce post a couple of weeks ago about the turning away that meets mental illness and poverty so often in our culture, i offer up a Just Post nod and my thanks, for continuing to add to my internal catalogue of what i believe social justice requires of me. to notice. to try. to be courageous, and stand upright, and not hide from suffering even when i don’t know how to fix it.

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with Jen & Mad at the helm, the Just Posts have raised over $1300 for Open Arms and the Stephen Lewis Foundation this month. so many little children who need a chance. please keep giving,  where you can.

yes, May has apparently been meme month. i’m trying to cut down my consumption of memes (though i am enjoying using the word immensely, darling Dave) as well the contagion i spread to others, but to round out the month and hopefully step into June all pure and untagged, this particular chain letter seemed worthy.

Plain Jane Mom tagged me for the Charity Meme. nine days ago. i’ve been letting it ripen.

the rules are simple - copy the list of charities and links (grab it from whomever tags you) and add your 5 favorite charities or non-profit organizations to the end (link to their sites with anchor text of the causes they champion). of course finish things off by tagging 5 other webmasters/bloggers and then publishing the post or the webpage.

now, i know charity is, by definition, a good cause. and i went to Sunday school as a little girl and memorized me some 1st Corinthians 13, which for those of you not carrying bits of the Christian New Testament around in your brain as slightly out-of-place cargo, runs along the lines of “faith, hope, and charity…and the greatest of these is charity.” seeing as i’m largely faithless and involved in a revolving up and down struggle with hope on some days, i generally figure i need to make a friend of charity. i’m blessed. i can share. i may be cheap, but i’m an easy touch.

so why does this charity meme, which is obviously well-intended and is working to pull together a fine list of good causes to which i might choose to donate money or time should i find myself so inclined, make me so uncomfortable?

i’m not sure. i think the word has perhaps been tainted for generations, and each layer of it adds confusion to what “charity” really means, what the societal good is, who deserves its fruits, and whether and what they owe those who contribute. plus a whole lot of other crap. it’s messy, charity. is it a yuppie salve? an excuse not to really get one’s hands dirty and help people? absolution for government or corporate or neighbourly negligence? necessary? a bane of the welfare state? just a way of sharing one’s blessings with a larger circle? i’ve given charity, i suppose, and have certainly been its recipient. sometimes, the giving has been done with condescension…charity can make one feel like trash, i know. or it can make one feel wrapped in a blanket of caring and safety that one couldn’t have woven oneself.

i like to think the difference might be love. later translations of 1st Corinthians 13 - those that use modern, not Shakespearean English - translate faith, hope, and charity as faith, hope, and love.

so here are five large-scale charities i support, with love & gratitude - either for having been there when i and my loved ones needed them, for being there in case i ever do, or for reminding me that there is a world outside my door and much to get down on my faithless knees and be thankful for.

1. Run for the Cure - Canadian cancer society, breast cancer
2. Medecins Sans Frontiers/Doctors without Borders - international humanitarian medical aid agency
3. World Vision - international children’s aid/sponsorship agency, promotes sustainable gifts of livestock, crops, and school supplies
4. March of Dimes - American organization for preventing premature birth and supporting preemies
…and lastly, and a little more personal & more timely…
5. the IWK Children’s Hospital - where Finn was born and where sweet/saltyKate’s twins are right now…the annual fundraising telethon is this weekend.

here’s the list thus far:
LDS Humanitarian Services – donate to charity
American Red Cross – emergency response
Wasatch Homeless Health Care Incorporated/4th Street Clinic – health care for the homeless
Newborns in Need – knitting for preemies
Habitat for Humanity - housing
American Red Cross - disaster relief
Raleigh Rescue Mission - homeless raleigh
SOS Children’s Villages - sponsor a child
Samaritan’s Purse - emergency relief programs
St. Jude Children’s Hospital - cancer research
The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation - children with AIDS
Make a Wish Foundation - grant a child’s wish
Save the Children - children in poverty
Ronald McDonald House - helping sick children and families
Toys for Tots - toys for all kids
Run for the Cure - breast cancert
Medecins Sans Frontiers - humanitarian medical aid
World Vision - children’s aid and sponsorship
March of Dimes - preemies
IWK Children’s Hospital - kids’ health

i don’t want to tag for this one. i do want to see it continue…but i want participation to be voluntary. in my own little mind, charity works best that way. if you do take it up, gimme a nod and let me know.

the housecleaners came today, thank Jesus. since last November, they’ve been coming every four or five weeks, two women my own age, and scrubbing the floors and the bathroom and the windows, leaving our tidy but grubby little house grime-free for twelve whole minutes and bringing me great joy and a profound sense of freedom. the one hour they spend here every month releases me from a drudgery i particularly hate, and more important, from the fear that my child will die from eating off my floors. the $30 i spend in that one hour is my ticket out from under the burden of housewifely neglect and all the stereotypes of my sex role. both women tease me that if i don’t get a job soon i’ll have to come work for them. and if some month, freelancing fails to net me the $30 luxury of freedom from my own perfectionism, i’ll happily pick up a pail in someone else’s house rather than lose them cleaning my own. $30 is nothing, for what i get out of it.

i got a pedicure last week. it has been almost ten years since i first discovered the Nirvana that is the pedicure, and though i’ve only had perhaps twenty-five of them in the ensuing decade, i can tell you about each one, like rhyming off lovers in a rolling list of memories. the soak. the scrape. the tidy clipping, the smoothing and filing into pretty moons. the massage. the painting and polishing…my one nod to overt societal beauty conventions…me who never wears makeup feels naked without toe polish, usually matte red-brown, sometimes French, usually chipped and months old because i wait so long between visits to the aesthetician. but i go. last week, after months and months of scratchy, neglected feet scraping small holes in my socks, i went, hoping to usher in some sandal weather. the woman i go to talks too much, shares too much, but she has steady hands and i pretend to sleep and sometimes really do slip out of myself, into that suspended space where all i have to do is lie still and get my toes prettied. she is the cheapest in town…$30 for forty-five minutes of relaxation, turning my hooves into proverbial silk purses. and again, $30 is nothing, for what i get out of it.

Oscar goes back to his sitter’s house tomorrow, for the day, so i can get caught up on my freelance editing and my job searching and the housework that the cleaners don’t do and the errands i want to do, and all your blogs. he has been there three days so far…Tuesdays and Thursdays these past two weeks. he seems happy enough with the arrangement, squeaking with pleasure when we arrive, hugging the dog, greeting the little girls of the house like a mini-Elvis come to swagger for their pleasure. his sitter is kind, and engaging, and if she has the tv on too much for my liking she’s still using his cloth diapers without complaint and feeding him nutritious-ish lunches and setting limits gently but firmly so far as i can see, and it seems like a good home, a caring enough place. for eight hours a day, she is good to my child. my child. my beloved, my baby. for eight hours a day, for watching and wiping and feeding and laughing with him, teaching him, being there for him, she charges $30 total.

and $30 is nothing, for what i/he/freaking society as a whole gets out it…when you consider how many little children are in some form of childcare, how many of ‘tomorrow’s leaders’ are being shaped by someone who gets paid eight times less than the woman who does my feet, and still significantly less than the people cleaning my house. because that’s the market rate, because that’s apparently how we value that work. and i took all the feminist courses years ago, and i knew all this in theory, but still, when it works out this coldly, this cleanly, i’m stunned.

now, O’s sitter can make more. she can take in more babies, more children. right now, she only has her own daughters and himself in her care. but starting in June, there will be two more one-year-olds there, on a full-time basis. and she’s willing to take O full-time. and she mentioned another child who might be coming part-time, too. and i think “my stars, five babies, how will my preshus ever get the attention he deserves?’

but $30 is nothing, friends. and Dave & i can find different options, sure…hire someone we pay reasonably to Nanny for him at our place, instead…though i think he’s really ready for the interaction with other kids, ready to be out of the bubble of this house a few days a week…or i could pay the sitter more! except then i think i’d look like some weird white-liberal-guilt twit who doesn’t have a job but has to feel magnanimous so she won’t have to deal with her class issues. maybe it would offend the sitter’s dignity. maybe she’d be thrilled. maybe both. i dunno. chances are i won’t do it.

and even if i did, it wouldn’t be $30 an hour. i know that childcare is day-in, day-out - hence the reason i’m paying someone to do some of it - and i know that i only get, on average, four pedicures a year, if that. but still. but still. isn’t it weird? my pretty feet and my child being kept safe by someone else…both luxuries i choose to pay for right now, but i pay eight times as much for the former because that’s what my society deems a fair wage. because that’s the going rate.

tell me, friends, what the fuck is right about that? ’cause i cannot figure it out.

i am, alas, not an ideal travel companion.

i’d like to be. i have a bit of an idolatrous relationship with the concept of travel, and - if i am honest - with my vision of myself as an intrepid, worldly soul. i had this particular affectation of identity long before i ever went anywhere…books taught it to me young. damn books, making kids all uppity.

but this specific form of vanity makes me, generally, quite a reasonable traveller - i’d rather shoot myself than appear gauche and colonial, and i try very hard not to wander through halls of history and culture squeaking “don’t look, Ethel!” between the hayseeds in my teeth. true, i am ever-willing to mortify Dave by forcing him to pose, teeth bared, in front of statuary of the ancient world, but everybody has weaknesses, right? other than a minor fetish for cheesy photos and a terror of insect life that made a month in Malaysia back in 2002 perhaps not the best choice Dave & i ever made together, i’m a pretty savvy, culturally sensitive, adaptable traveller type, even with kidlet in tow.

until you get me in an airport or other official/officious-type environment. then, no matter how many maple leafs i might staple to my backpack and how many Canadian passports and formal documents i wave, i become the quintessential Ugly American, expecting the order of the universe to align just for moi, just like home, and right the fuck now, thank you very much. (and i say this with no offense intended to all you lovely Americans who aren’t like this whatsoever and bear no responsibility for this unfortunate stereotype which i, with all apologies, have perpetuated not just here but at airports and customs offices and such around the world. though i do try to say “eh” at the end of my sentences when i get outraged, honest.)

i hadn’t entirely acknowledged this little, erm, predilection of mine until this trip. Dave certainly had, over years. i’d remained in denial, even after i actually tried to claw my way through a plexiglass wall to the little cage where skanky Czech Easyjet drone sat smirking at me and demanding money for the very same piece of baggage the London Easyjet agents had passed through with no problem three days before, as per their stated policy which i’d called from freaking North America to check on…because i thought my reaction to said smug living Bratz doll was perfectly reasonable. i felt that my urgent, primal desire to make her feel as randomly powerless and screwed over as i did was a rational one, friends, even if she’d likely have shredded my face with her Lee press-ons had i actually been able to get through the plexiglass dumb enough to resort to physical violence.

i thought this right up to the point at which i found myself giving the finger to a customs officer in Montreal. this is bad form, i know. this is not smart. this is particularly not cool to do in front of your child, even if his back is turned. this is not especially cool for one’s travelling companion either, apparently, particularly if he does not relish the idea of spending the night in a holding cell with a sick baby and a crazy woman at the behest of an offended official.

mind you, the official never saw me flip him off. which i knew he wouldn’t - his turning away summarily, dismissively, was what had precipitated my reaction. there was no offense registered, only released. but Dave saw. and when he (quite politely, i credit him) drew attention to it, i realized…perhaps i have rage issues.

they’re not general rage issues…though there is a strain of deep fury running through me, angry at the world for its injustices and slights, still wounded in the places i have tried to make whole through a lifetime of writing it out, self-salvation or at least survival through words. but i can usually contain the rage. only those closest ever see it, and only those - i am very careful, and have been for a long time - who are not easy prey. only once, more than a decade ago, have i ever lost my temper with a child, or a person in my care. long before Dave & i ever had children we had this conversation. i trust myself with Oscar. i know better. i will not wound him with my own damage.

but those people who do the business of official paperwork and rubber-stamping, who hold the huge power of people’s comings and goings in their hands and who are often free to use or abuse that power randomly and without apparent logic or consistency, them i sometimes wish to wound. it isn’t personal, this rage. it is, rather, the depersonalization of this aspect of travel that sets me off. if an airline or customs official is remotely civil, or offers moderately humane explanations for the Kafka-esque policies and regulations that sometimes crop up in the course of changing countries and continents, particularly with baggage in tow, i am - in return - a perfect lady.

but apparently, my view of the whole transaction is a little skewed. the onus isn’t on them to be civil, though many certainly choose to be. the onus isn’t on their countries or airlines or policy-makers to be transparent, or to communicate their policies clearly, or even for those policies to be fair - in some cases - to people who come from outside their particular political zones or cultures or what have you. intellectually, i know this. intellectually, i know that my saga of what Dave laughingly calls “poor white girl fights ridiculously cheap airline” is silly in the grand scheme of human injustice, and perhaps even offensive. but it’s not the moral rightness of my position that i’m interested in defending, or even exploring (at the moment). when i rage, i rage like a moralist, my vocabulary full of implicit “shoulds” that the offending official has failed to deliver. but i think i take the moral position as a last ditch before the abyss.

my rage is a cover for horror. not at lack of civility itself, but at the absolute nothingness that seems to be left when civility is stripped away. at the way power allows human beings to take advantage of each others’ vulnerability, even in petty official ways. at my own nakedness and complete incapacity in the face of another’s choice to be officious and self-interested, no matter how i prepare myself, no matter how right i may be on paper, no matter how much i scream…because i am far from home, far from recourse and redress in that moment. or worse, because no matter how hard i tried to find out everything i needed to know, that i failed. and now i am subject to the whim of someone who gives not the fuck what i do next. that very realization, at some instinctive pre-verbal level, makes me want to scream. and so goes the vicious circle.

some people, less privileged than i in their accidents of birth or their reasons for international border crossing, live their whole lives in these Kafka-esque moments of subjectivity to the uncaring, unhearing, officious world.

i shudder.

i wonder what kind of rage that kind of impotence creates.

and i realize i have no clue how to deal with any of it, theirs or my own, except by being a little kinder every time i have power. i wish i thought it were enough.

i want to figure out a more grown up way to teach Oscar to deal with the world, else we’re going to have to stop this travelling thing damn soon. ‘how i spent my summer vacation in a Thai prison because mommy had a tantrum’…yeh, that would go over well.

i want to be above the fury and the abyss of powerlessness. i do not know how to get there.

to those behind the “one day blog silence” idea,

while i find the events at VT terribly sad, and your intent to respect, reflect on, and empathize with “victims of our world” a noble one, your unilateral declaration of a random “one day blog silence” is really pretty shocking.

before making grand, sweeping declarations of silence in the blogosphere in future, you may wish to step back from your good intentions for a moment and consider that a) attempting to silence others or incite self-silencing by mass declaration rather than invitation is pompous at best, and b) that whatever date you choose for this silence is bound to have deep personal significance for someone, unrelated to the cause (again, however good) you are trying to promote and thus unsubsumable under your particular banner of silence.

in other words, who the fuck do you think you are telling us that “the Blogosphere (which, last i looked, was not a monolithic entity to be directed at your whim) will hold a One Day Blog Silence “?  and that it will be on April 30th?   because you said so?

do you understand the implications of that kind of dictate?

my firstborn, as it happens, died on April 30th, 2005.  i still grieve him.  my blog is the one place where i’m free to express that ongoing grief without feeling that i burden others too much with my sadness.  it is also the one place where i get to share his short life, and the joy he brought his father and i…where i am able, in a small way, to have him live on.  when you lose a child, there is too much silence.  silence is the problem.  my heart breaks for those families who’ve lost children and loved ones at VT…and for the silences ahead of them.  but the world knows of their children…they will not be forgotten, they will be eulogized and memorialized and written of and have their stories heard.  and cold comfort though that may be, it’s something.  memory is a lot, when there is nothing else left.  as a parent, and a blogger, my responsibility to my lost child is to mark his having been here too, to memorialize him as best i can.  on the anniversary of his death on April 30th, i can only do that with words, not with silence.  not with the blanket of silence you’re trying to lay sanctimoniously over the blogosphere.

i have no problem with you choosing to be silent on April 30th to honour the VT dead.  i know your intentions are good.  but to try to co-opt the blogosphere en masse to accord with your intent by making a declaration of silence, you leave some of us in the terrible position of appearing to disrespect the deaths at VT by honouring our own dead with words.  words are all i have to give my son.  and that date - or any other - is not yours, nor mine, to own.  invite people to join in your campaign, sure.  but do not dictate others’ speech or silence at will.

Bonnie the Very Angry