like metaphorical acid reflux, lava-hot. it splashes up without warning, spatters out of me in mutters and expletives and tears, my face raw and shocked.  i am all powder, fuse worn down to a nub.

i am fine, and insane, all in the span of thirty seconds.  and when i am fine i think the insane is probably a drama queen, self-aggrandizing and blown out of all proportion.  and when i am not fine i think we cannot all get out of this alive.

it is lack of sleep and the bitter loss of the happy, weary infancy i’d dared think we’d finally gotten, third time lucky.  it is two weeks of asthma attacks and flu and both children up several times a night, in addition to the colic, the brutal colic, the sweet-merciful-Jeebus-seriously-who’d-i-torture-in-my-last-life colic that stomps on my last, frayed nerve and breaks my heart and makes me feel helpless and cruel, a mockery of comfort and motherhood.  it is the laptop broken and the furnace rusted out all at once and all the lightbulbs burnt in chorus and the diamond earring lost raking leaves, my only diamonds, ever, gone…like money hemorrhaging, like lurking failure and chaos have found me easy prey.   it is the call i got yesterday that Oscar’s ear surgery - scheduled for this Thursday - has instead been postponed to the day before Christmas Eve.  because heck, when better to trek to the hospital with a two year old and infant for the day?  what else would i be doing that time of year?

it is all these things, and none of them.  it is that they all add up.

one last straw, again and again and again, and in my head i listen for the laugh track and hear only crickets and then the anger surges and i am awash and afraid all at once.  i see red, literally.  i flail, inside, look for things to throw and then despair even of that release because, fuck it everything’s broken anyway.

everyone else’s happy babies send me into paroxysms of mourning and self-beratement.  the warm buzz of the early, contented-ish weeks and you deserved a break this time around has fallen silent.  i did not deserve a break, after all.  apparently if i can squeeze out a live baby i should expect no further mercy from fortune.  apparently it is my lot to watch helpless and frayed as my children suffer, one after the other.  colic is better than tubes and a ventilator and blue-black toes and death, i know.  i know.  and yet it all feels bizarrely similar from where i sit watching my days unravel…the useless mother, unable to comfort, unable to protect.  perhaps that is where the rage comes from.

there are few witnesses, save for a screaming infant and the little boy.  i hide my face from them, afraid of this ugliness, this fury.  i do not want to be this way.  i do not want to mark them, leave them pocked with  acid.  i do not want them scarred.  i do not want to excuse rage as a reasonable, acceptable response.  i do not want to be what i am right now.

it will end.  the part of me that is fine and rational intones this.  the insane part knows that doesn’t matter in the moment, unless it ends now.  another month, perhaps, given that she was nearly a month early….in the grand scheme, it seems so little to endure.

but in the moment, exhausted, choked with bile, it is too much, too unfair, too big, and i wonder if the next cry or the next stupid broken household item will be the one that breaks me, and i long for a protector myself, for someone to rescue me from this powderkeg while i am still fine some of the time.

unstable/embittered but housebroken thirty-six year old, up for adoption.  seeks mother.  will travel. likes pina coladas and predictability.  free to good home.  bonus miniatures included, requiring tlc and earplugs.

Posey and i, on our first day to ourselves in more than a week, both of us slightly flu-impaired and grumpy but mercifully alone, the house ours, our day free from doctor’s appointments and toddlers and other civil company. she’d been kvetching in her swing, so i picked her up, grabbed the ancient cassette tape Oscar had unearthed from god knows where at breakfast time, thanked fortune that we still possess an equally ancient stereo, and plunked the sucker in. and there we were, sliding across the hardwood of the den, her a whimpering ball in my arms, me a grimly determined picture of festive joy. i was inaugurating my infant into tradition and holiday cheer; Paul Revere riding the dark days of Canadian November, shouting the holidays are coming! the holidays are coming!

we were dancing to the Boney M Christmas classic Feliz Navidad.
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i’m not entirely sure how Boney M became a Christmas classic for the rest of the world…i guess catchy kitsch goes a long way for a post-sincerity generation that prefers traditions leavened with irony. but for me, personally, Feliz Navidad became a centrepiece of all that is warm and fuzzy and delightful about the holidays the very first time i ever heard my college roommate sing it aloud.

her name was Andrea.  she had a decent voice…good pitch, clear tone.  her voice carried above the rest of us.  and somewhere in the middle of an impromptu drunken exam-time singalong, we all trailed off and cocked our heads, eyebrows raised.  because Andrea wasn’t singing Feliz Navidad as she bounced earnestly in time to the marimbas.  Andrea was singing at least no one died.

i don’t claim to speak Spanish, but i knew that was a pretty Eeyore-esque take on the spirit of the season, however accidental.  and i loved it.

sometimes i’m a bit of a Grinch when it comes to the holidays.  i don’t like the commercialism and the pressure to spend, i’m not religious, i find putting up the tree a daunting chore.  and yet, there’s something about the darkness and the snow and the lights and the forced family time - tense though it often is - that i value, that i hearken to.  even at eighteen, i got that “at least no one died…i wanna wish you a Merry Christmas!” was the ultimate in frank and honest Christmas caroling.  so in the years when we are lucky enough to gather without new faces missing from the tables - because with three sets of grandparents and four separate belief traditions in our immediate families there’s always more than one table for us at the holidays - i sing me some Boney M and grin and bear it all, with the help of the seasonal chocolate boxes.

that’s what i was reminding myself of yesterday, holding this longed-for daughter, safely here despite colic, despite a rough run with all of us sick and tired.   a year ago, had i been able to look ahead and see us, the four of us, with our extended family still well and present in our lives, i would’ve thought, how lucky.
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i had just soared into full vocal flight when the elderly creaky tape gave up the ghost.  it died, in the middle of At Least No One Died.   the voices slowed alarmingly, and deepened, the old sound of stretching plastic strangely familiar and yet from another world, a lost time.  then it snapped.

i was crestfallen.  we were dancing.  i was cheering myself up.  i was introducing my daughter to one of the primary Christmas carols.  i was being resilient, dammit, after a rotten couple of weeks.  and then my heirloom tape…gone to Jesus.  cruel, cruel world.

i tweeted my sorrow, noting that the holidays were now ruined before they even began.  Josephine and i trudged upstairs, and i moped about, whistling lamentations that sounded like Boney M, the Funeral Version.  she fed, and was just gearing up for one of her wailing sessions when i thought i heard footsteps on the stairs.  Dave.

he had read my tweet, left work, run to the record store and purchased me a fine new CD version of Boney M Christmas, replete with disco cover art and snowflakes.  then driven it home, all with twenty-five minutes flat.  no gift of the Magi was ever so kind, so thoughtful…especially when you consider that he’s now doomed himself to a steady diet of Boney M over the next four weeks.

i think i already got all i wanted for Christmas, this year.

it’s been AWOL, lost in the buzz of sick kids and late-onset colic and seasonal sadness and the secret certainty that i am utterly useless, overwhelmed, depressed.  whatever you call it, it’s ugly.  it’s been a perfect shitstorm the past couple of weeks, all of a sudden, out of the blue…a swell of internal and external afflictions that coincided like Murphy’s Law personified.  and i’ve become like an old-school tv after the channels go off for the night…all snow, no picture.  blank.

when i found my brain this morning, it was rocking in a metaphorical corner, musing.  why do we use the word “uncle” to indicate surrender? it asked me, rather plaintively.  who’s Uncle? whose uncle? i shrugged, waved at it, happy to note that it was thinking about something, at least.  i told it i’d ask you guys.

who, tell me, friends, is this mythical uncle we can surrender to?

and will he pick up the pieces for me, do my laundry, help me pet one child to sleep without the other screaming like a banshee?  if i surrender, if i admit i’m failing here, will Uncle step into the breach?

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i am not sure why i’m even telling all this, except to get it out, to put it somewhere outside of me so it does not leak out at midnight when i’m trying to settle a baby who’s cried all evening long and suddenly find the tears pouring hot down my own face.  i am not as alone as i feel,  nor as bad as i sound.  but i am overwhelmed.   and the chiropractor hasn’t helped the colic, and Oscar’s sitter now has the flu, so for the seventh straight day here we all are, crying.

i’ve been hit enough times to know what’s happening, but by the time i figure it out, i’m already flat on my back, dazed.

grief sneaks up on you long after you think you’re done.

the sadness is quieter now than before, harder to recognize. the steel cleats that shredded me have been traded in for ballet shoes, blunt and hard yet graceful, somehow. still, it feels like being trodden on, ground under. i try to acquiesce, go limp, play dead…long for twenty-four hours to simply lie on my couch and breathe, to come to terms with this ever-morphing, gruelling visitation. but there is no sanctuary, no retreat…either from grieving or from living. and so, quietly wretched, stretched between despair and normalcy, my fuse grows short…even the simplest things overwhelm me. can you not see i’m busy here? i want to shout to my sinkful of dishes, my dirty sock pile, my beautiful, living, demanding, non-sleeping children. can you not see this weight perched on my chest? can’t you see that i am not okay?!?

but i am pinned under, and my voice does not carry. grief beats out a merry rhythm about my head, brutalizing and relentless. all is grey.

a year since the ultrasound said blighted ovum. a son whose traces i can no longer feel, connect to. an emptiness i am still bewildered by, after all this time. November again. so much promise lost, so many expectations adjusted. and yet, and yet…so many blessings, so much busy-ness. i believe myself healed. almost always, i feel it. but oh, when i don’t, when old grief sidles up by surprise and takes me out at the knees, i lose my bearings. i get scared, fear she’s brought friends, and luggage. i panic.

in my very first-ever rugby game, the only team sport i ever played, the ball made it out to me at wing only once. and i caught it, an impressive feat considering that i have the hand-eye coordination of a hippo and was actually in motion at the time. pride and delight swelled up in my chest - i was high on accomplishment. and then the steel-cleated she-behemoth was right there, out of nowhere, about to flatten me, and i turned and fled. in the other direction. ahem, you know, towards the other team’s line. my fight or flight instincts are damn clear, and i know when something’s bigger than me. except the she-beast caught me anyway and ran right over me, taking the ball with her. WHUMPH. and my coach pretty much made me the waterboy after that.

i’d like to run, right now…to flee. especially since i know i can’t just lie here until grief passes on to elsewhere again. but if i tried to outrun her, she’d only catch me. somewhere or other she catches us all.

so instead i will pick myself up and go feed the baby and say a quiet thankyou for all that i have that i do not deserve and i will try to keep my mouth otherwise shut so i do not snap, so the grey does not escape. and i will be quiet, quiet with this old companion i never invited, until again she takes her things and leaves me in her wake to find my peace.

we tried full-on potty boot camp last weekend, since Dave had a few extra days off and nothing says vacation like wiping piss off the floor. in hindsight, we should’ve just flown to Thailand for the full moon party, or something. our plan failed utterly. he was ready on paper: had successfully pooped in the potty with pride just a few days before, was learning to pull down his own pants, was keen on flushing, could stay dry for hours at a time. he wears cloth, so he knows full well when he’s wet. what we forgot to account for was will. his potty-readiness is coinciding with the realization that he is an entity unto himself, and this dictator-readiness is made of stronger stuff than his urge to pee in plastic.

when he was left to roam the house in underpants Sunday morning, he announced his need to pee precisely as he finished soaking through the first pair. with the second two, he got up off the potty after a prescheduled try and promptly pissed right through their Thomas the Tank Engine decals, gleeful grin on his face. oh, he said, both times. that’s MEIN pee!

it’s interesting, watching this sense of selfhood emerge. interesting, that is, if one can detach emotionally from the shouting and the whining and the refusals of all things that have formerly pleased Little Herr Happypants. a self-identifying toddler is a rather abusive creature, not overly concerned with the feelings of others, nor a mother’s attachment to little habits of affection or personal care. dose is MEIN toes! he howls, when i bend to kiss them. NO-OH! that’s MEIN hairs! he laments, when i try to run a brush near his tangly mane. i don’ WANNA pee in the potty! he announces, suddenly, when enticed to the throne at his usual longstanding times.

he wants control, this kid. control of his self, above all else…though control over everyone else in the house and vicinity wouldn’t be bad, either, if you’re offering. he’s suddenly caught on to the diabolical fact that until this point his father and i have made all significant decisions regarding his life and well being, and those “would you like to brush your teeth or wash your face first?” forays into agency are, in fact, decoys masking the horrible, awful truth that we force cleanliness onto his person, just as we force regular nutrition and sleep and make all the real decisions about where he goes and when. he is outraged, mad as hell, and he’s not gonna take it anymore.

so he’s peeing on my floor, people. i don’t think we’ll be training him any time soon.

what i do wonder is if, once engaged, this struggle for control will ever lessen. looking ahead, to sixteen or eighteen or - thinking of my own relationship with my mom, ahem - thirty-some more years of that’s MEIN thingamajiggit (insert any object of desire or personal attribute here), i get so very, very tired.

at first i was sure he was innocent. i mean, look at that face…those curls…that sweet expression. what could bring more joy to a mama’s heart than to see her boy snuggling her baby, both of them smiling?

then i looked a little more closely at the photographic evidence. more specifically, i looked at her.

that was no smile. he was definitely goosing her.

whew.

this morning feels historic, even way up here north of the border. i fell asleep before the race was called last night, but i watched Obama’s acceptance speech on youtube this morning, and damned if there wasn’t a whole lot of sand in my eyes. i wept like a baby before i even got my morning coffee.

because Obama does represent hope and change, even to this white Canadian chick/woman. it’s not just the audacious, breathtaking fact that a man of colour is President-Elect of the most powerful nation in the world. it’s not just that he speaks eloquently and intelligently, and that he conducts himself with decency and calls for dialogue and cooperation between the partisan factions that have increasingly divided the continent over the past decade. those things are big, and they set an immediately and significantly different tone from what i’ve seen from south of the border before.

but for me, the tears came when he thanked his family. his patchwork family, with his grandmother at the centre.

Obama didn’t just overcome racial prejudice to rise to the pinnacle of visible power. he overcame his own - and my - generation’s antipathy towards “the broken home” and its products, us children of divorce in a time when divorce still carried stigma. he doesn’t have an American apple pie family, tidy and iconic. he has had to learn to love and forgive and accept people’s limitations in coming to terms with the word “family.” he has had to make his way without his father’s name and connections paving his path. he has had to work to exceed people’s expectations of what he appears to be, on paper. a small part of me sang in pride and vindication watching Obama this morning, because his family structure looks more like mine than i’m accustomed to seeing in the halls of power, on either side of the border.

i’ve heard him called elitist, during this campaign. and i howled with laughter, because to me he looks like the very model of a modern meritocracy in action…finally. he is not a scion, not the son of a dynasty. he’s achieved what he’s achieved based on intelligence and hard work and ambition and the love of an unconventional family, particularly a grandmother who taught him to believe in himself. he’s the American dream.

and this morning, just as millions of African-Americans looked at him and felt their horizons of possibility expand, just as people across the world looked at him and felt hope for leadership and healing, i looked at Barack Obama and felt all the whispers and pitying looks that dogged my childhood and my perceptions of myself go poof, invalidated finally and completely by a man who stands tall and proud and humble all at once and says “we can.”

sniff.
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how are YOU this morning? what are your hopes for Obama and his presidency? do you believe this is the beginning of a sea change…how?

…they abound.

her whole face lights up. i’d forgotten how nothing is quite so heart-melting as a baby’s first smiles.

someday, if the world is kind, she’ll flash this same cock-eyed grin - with teeth, we’re hoping teeth come with the package in good time - to some kindred soul, and maybe the earth will shift a little for one or both of them and that somebody, somewhere - maybe someone not even yet born - will taste a bit of this smitten silliness, this joy, that i feel when her eyes lock with mine and shine. i hope that for her. i really do.

but for the record, let it be known…mama was first.

when i was twelve and suffering the exquisite torture that is eighth grade, i wanted to be Boy George for Hallowe’en. i had never wanted anything so badly, with such angst and investment.

i found a baggy men’s shirt at the thrift store and safety-pinned patches to it. i had flowy pants and poorboy gloves. i hoarded all the bandanas in the house, and found a plastic porkpie hat somewhere that i convinced someone to lend me. i knew all the words to every Culture Club song ever written. i could taste it, that costume, the cool. i saw myself triumphant, transformed into someone larger than life, someone other than ordinary, weird little me. but i had one problem.

my hair was a whole inch long. and wigs were not something sold at the dollar store in 1984…at least not where i lived. wigs were expensive, blue-tinged old-lady hair replicas sold at upstanding proprietors. Boy George’s be-ribboned braids could not be copied by any wig i could get my hands on.

we lived with my grandmother that year, my mother and i, in an old, tall yellow house with slanted ceilings and sharp corners. we had cupcakes every Hallowe’en, the three of us, in that Formica kitchen…whether we were living there or not, it was my grandmother’s neighbourhood i trick or treated in. when i came down the stairs that year, all made up and swishy and awash in colour, long black-brown braids twisted with yarn poking out of my bandanas and swinging ’round my shoulders, my mother clapped and my grandmother beamed and when my mother asked, bewildered, “where did you get the hair?” my grandmother and i smiled at each other.

because it was her hair, my grandmother’s, a glossy braid that had hung to her waist when she was twelve. cut while WWI was still raging in Europe, it had lain coiled in a cedar chest for almost seven decades, peeked at but undisturbed.

and then i’d raped it. with her express permission, her blessing, i’d plundered that thick plait, torn it to pieces, tarted it up with rags and elastics and ribbons to make a Hallowe’en costume. a costume of Boy freaking George. a costume of which no pictures even exist, because the camera was broken most of that year. and the hair - that beautiful braid - when untangled at the end of the evening was ruined, brittle as it was after all those years, impossible to return to its coil. i tried. my grandmother said, gently, “don’t worry.”

i felt beautiful, and interesting, and magical in that costume. i doubt half the people who saw me had any clue who i was. i doubt my grandmother would have recognized the real Boy George if he’d waltzed into her living room that night. but i felt like royalty, inheritance tumbling over one eye in the signature kiss curl as i winked floridly to every candy-giver and minced my way off into the October night.

a part of me still feels shame about what i did to that braid…that artifact, that piece of history. and a part of me thinks my grandmother was wise as shit, and sends up a “thank you” and a smile every Hallowe’en, as i eat my ritual cupcake.
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Oscar wanted to wear the same Hallowe’en costume - an elephant - that he wore last year.

i figured, great. it’s cute, it’s warm, it still sorta fits him, it saves me buying (erm…or making, but really, we’re talking buying here) a new one. what does he know the difference?

dandy. until i went to take him to the same sitter’s as last year…in the same costume. and i went to put up his photo here on the site…in the same costume. and a little voice at the back of my head shrills, what kind of mother puts her kid in the same costume two years in a row?!?!

damn. more costume guilt. how about the fact that i borrowed a costume for Posey, failed to take her anywhere much at all in it, and didn’t even get a decent picture.

fail.

but we had fun. and Posey smiled today, even if no photographic evidence exists outside my memory. happy Halllowe’en, everyone. may the candy be plentiful and the spooking be sweet…and may i suggest a cupcake or two?