As time goes by …

You guys, kids make me feel so old … Kids I babysat have reached their thirties. Most of them now have kids, themselves, and they’re looking for babysitters. Kids I am too old to have babysat because I was making real money by the time their parents were looking for a sitter are in their twenties, and embarking on relationships and careers and life. Kids in university look like … well, kids, to me. Kids I gave birth to (ok, that makes it sound like there are alot of them – there are actually only two) are slightly taller than me, have shot past my shoe size, and are raiding my closet and make-up stash on a daily basis. Having big kids is awesome – but, again. So. Old.

It never fails to annoy and amuse me, in equal parts, to hear a question that starts with “Mom, when you were young …”  It blows my daughters’ fresh, young minds that there was a time when a personal computer took up a whole room, when a household contained only one phone (and it was tethered to the wall), when if you missed a TV show, you missed it, because there was no way of delaying or even recording them. When many people didn’t have any typing experience because typists typed on typewriters and sold their services to those who needed something typed. When penmanship mattered. When you had to wait a while to see the pictures you took. When you kept those pictures in an album, and shared them only when someone asked to see them – rather than making them public property, and flashing them in the face of anyone even remotely connected with you. I could go on and on – but I think that will make me sound like a grizzled grouch, so I won’t.

While I am well aware of how things have changed since I was a child, the changes that have occurred during my adult life seem a little more sneaky. My father-in-law, a wise and lovely man in many ways, says that time moves faster the older you get, comparing age with speed. I often feel like my twenties and thirties have been fairly steady, but then I see a cube-shaped TV. Or a flip-phone. Or a butterfly tramp stamp. I also think I look just like I always did, and so do all the people around me. Then I flip through a ten-year-old photo album, and I’m shocked by the glossy young faces beaming at me. That glossy young thing is still in there somewhere, I swear, but perhaps deeper beneath the surface than I care to think.

One of those times-have-changed moments came to me recently in the form of a newspaper. Ryan and I celebrated our fifteenth anniversary this past summer. Fifteen years of marriage! It’s been lovely, for the most part (no marriage is perfect, and anyone who acts like theirs is – well, that person’s a dirty liar complete with pants on fire). Tying the knot was a leap of faith that has led to this beautiful life. Our anniversary celebrations are pretty simple. Dinner out, glasses raised and clinked, an exchange of cards.

This year, though, I did a little something extra – I dug out the Ottawa Citizen (another thing that wasn’t there when I first subscribed – the Ottawa Citizen online) from August 2, 2003 (our wedding day) out of our closet. Right away, I noticed the very different logo and font. They’ve changed so subtly over the years that I didn’t notice until now, seeing old and new side-by-side. The paper was so much thicker, too, since readers couldn’t be pawned off to the website for “additional content” – and there were far fewer ads. The newspaper didn’t have to sell itself to sell itself, if you will. I’ll try not to bore you (perhaps I already have, but if you’re still here, it can’t be that bad) – but here are a few tidbits from that yellowed, dusty, fifteen-year-old treasure:

Mars came closer to Earth than it had in 60,000 years. 55,760,000 km, to be exact. How this was determined, I have no idea. Now, we’re talking about living there!

A hadrosaur skeleton was found in northern Alberta. Until then, these duck-billed dinos were thought to live south of Edmonton only. This has not changed anyone’s life. But everyone loves dinosaurs, right?

The legalization of gay marriage was being debated. Now, it’s a fact of life in Canada.

Omar Khadr’s saga was just beginning. He was captured and sent to Guantanamo Bay to be tortured and rot in 2002. However, he was interviewed by RCMP and CSIS investigators in 2003. Since then, he’s been recognized as Canada’s child soldier, and therefore Canada’s responsibility – and, against all odds, seems to be doing well these days.

America was still seeking Saddam Hussein. By the end of the year, they would capture him in his “spider hole”. The next three years would see him charged with, tried for, found guilty of, and executed for crimes against humanity in general, and war crimes specifically.

An editorial extolled the virtues of the Yellow Pages. Remember them? I flipped through those highly organized grainy pages many times, in search of a roofer or a plumber or a piano tuner or a furniture store. They also made a good booster seat, and a fine prop for wobbly furniture.

Great buzz was being generated by a new product: the Biniki. This is a sort of bra for your ass. It promises to “lift and define the derriere, smooth out the backs of the thighs and, in general, beautify the backside.” It works like this: “Biniki consists of two leg loops that are attached at very specific points along the waist-hip band. The leg loops are designed to perfectly encircle the bottom. Once Biniki’s waist-hip bands are in place and the leg loops are self-adjusted to fit the individual, the skin on the backs of the thighs will lift up, the bottom will be raised and Biniki is guaranteed to stay in place.” Sounds so comfy! Can’t imagine why everyone’s not wearing one … Before, and after:

Men with saggy asses could wear a Maniki. I couldn’t find a picture, mercifully.

Housing prices were soaring. The ever-present, always-consulted, generally vaguely-referenced “experts” were warning of a bust to follow the boom. You know what they say: the more things change, the more they stay the same …

I can’t stop time – and, mainly, I don’t want to stop progress. However, I can – and must – deliver on the implied promise of the title of this post. Sit back, close your eyes, and enjoy Ella Fitzgerald’s rendition of this beautiful song …

Aces

 

I wear an awful lot of hats. Possibly, the weightiest one is that of mother. It’s a huge part of my life, so it’s not surprising that I’ve written a great deal about motherhood. It is joy and pride, as well as sorrow. It is hard work, and incredible reward. Mothering small children is simple. Not easy, but fairly basic. You make sure they are nourished and clothed, and you start to teach them skills like sleeping through the night on their own, expressing themselves in socially acceptable ways, and treating other people decently. You work out household rules and discipline tactics. You try not to lose yourself in the process – you want to be more than just Mommy.

In terms of the daily grind, big kids win – no contest. They bathe and dress themselves, and do their own hair. They get their own snacks – and even their own meals (though not every day, unless you don’t mind them coming down with scurvy). They do their own laundry. They can manage most of their homework on their own. I have not encountered many people who hate homework more than me. Your kindergartener is adorable, believe me – but I’m done coaxing kids to sound out words, pushing them to read and write in french, and proofing penmanship, and I like it that way. When I am rushing to slap some dinner down in front of my hungry family at the end of a long day, I can ask Fiona or Bridget to set the table, take and fill drink orders, chop veggies and meat, throw a salad together. They empty the dishwasher. They mop and vacuum. We don’t have to pay for daycare. We can play board games more complicated than Chutes & Ladders and Hungry Hungry Hippos. We appreciate many of the same foods, songs and movies. They have a wicked sense of humour, strong opinions, interesting takes on the world. The pleasure of their company outweighs the work and fuss.

All that being said, sometimes I feel like time is moving too fast … For one thing, people love to tell me how awful my life will be once I have two older kids. Just wait, they say. You’ll be nothing to them. They will ignore everything you say and do until they’re about 25. Though there have been challenges, neither girl has been as horrible as these assholes seem to hope they’ll be. Turning 30 didn’t bother me. Pretty sure 40 won’t phase me, either. But Fiona turning 13 this summer? That has hit me hard. I have a teenager. Yesterday, Fiona and Bridget returned to school after a long, lovely summer break (yes, I know, I owe everyone a blow-by-blow of our road trip – I’ll get to that). Grade 8 and grade 6! Back-to-school is bittersweet for me. I’ve never been one of those parents who can’t wait for September. But I am very excited for the girls. They’ve been planning their look and their moves and their whole damn school year for days. They woke up like firecrackers, and they couldn’t stop grinning and giggling. But I am also sad. Each school year brings challenges and opportunities that will change them utterly. I will never see these kids, as they are right now, again. They’re gone the moment they set foot in the classroom on the first day, and they’re never coming back.

Yet, when we hang out together, watching TV or reading, they both want to sit next to me. One on either side. They lean heads on my shoulder, they sneakily sniff my hair. Their hands creep their way into mine. They need just a few minutes, talking to me about their dreams and joys and frustrations, before we say goodnight. Every morning, they come find me, still warm from the bed, for a welcome-to-the-new-day hug. I have not lost two cuddlers – I have gained two young ladies, self-sufficient and smart and sarcastic, who still need my hugs. They may be as big as me, but they still need me. Everything’s still coming up aces for this mother.

Congratulations on getting through the easiest part of your life?

The youth and I do not always get along well, it’s true. There are alot of things I just don’t understand about how they do their thang. Fake glasses with thick frames, when all I ever wanted to do with my glasses was get rid of them. All that eyeliner. High-waisted shorts. Man buns. Endless selfies under layers of filters. Texting each other when they’re in the same room. The strange popularity of obnoxious YouTubers. I will stop right there, as I don’t want to sound like a shirty old cuss. Now, if everybody will just get off my lawn and pull up their pants, I’ll get on with this rare post in support of young people.

It’s graduation season. All over the world, people are closing the book on one chapter of their life and moving on to another. Our darling Fiona is leaving the familiarity and security of her school of the past five years for highschool at Notre Dame. With the added fuss of end-of-the-year activities, including uniform fittings and a leaving ceremony (because apparently sixth grade grad is a thing), our June’s been ridiculously busy. She’s excited and nervous, all at once. Big changes are coming. Every spring, for several years now, my Facebook newsfeed contains at least one person sharing the following meme:

It’s made me snicker every time, I admit. However, it’s not true. Being a kid is actually really hard.

Your personality is still forming – and so are those of your peers. This means that every day you make a conscious decision as to how to present yourself to the world, and that world consists mainly of people who are too immature to respect what you’re offering. Popularity occupies a disproportionate level of importance, and is based heavily on things that are beyond your control. Good hair. Clear skin. The right (i.e. trendy and expensive) clothes. Smooth moves. I’m pretty sure teenagers have not changed that much since my own teen years – which means smooth moves still elude many of them. You have strong opinions, but they are laughed at by many of your peers and dismissed by parents and teachers. What do you know? Talk to me again when you’ve been around the block a few times …. If you put out, you’re a slut – and guys like you while girls scorn you. If you abstain from sex, you’re a prude – and girls like you while guys don’t bother with you. If you’re queer, you face the heavy task of trusting people with that deeply personal piece of information – and they might not react well. Everyone probably assumes you’re straight. You’ve been alive less than 20 years, but people are asking you what you want to do with the next 30 or 40 years of your life. You are constantly being tested on what you know, even though alot of what you know is new – and there’s more of it every day. The results of these tests determine whether you can follow the career path you’ve told everyone you want to follow. You’re being evaluated by just one institution’s accepted metrics – yet you’re being told that you have to measure up or you’re going nowhere in life. You’re facing years of testing, development, uncertainty – and debt.

Not all of you are going to make it. Failure, bad choices, heartache, unintended pregnancy, mental illness, drugs, crime, and suicide stalk you like wolves. Your generation is the one that is most vulnerable to all of these things. If you’ve made it to graduation, fab for you – it wasn’t easy, and you should be proud of what you’ve accomplished. Here’s to your future!

 

I’m not all “pass-the-mimosas” about back-to-school.

The contents of my Facebook news feed over the past couple of days have consisted mainly of children heading for higher learning. Some of the pictures are a bit much – heavily posed, complete with props (sigh). Most of them, though, are simple: a grinning kid (or two or three) looking first-day-of-school cool, with shiny new gear strapped on his or her back. Fuzzy new haircuts, missing teeth, eyes bright with anticipation.

Accompanying many of these pictures is a line or two about how much the kid’s parents love back-to-school. There are pics of parents cheersing with champagne flutes as the bus drives out of sight, parents dancing through the halls of their home, parents sprawled on couches with a beer and a remote – and I get it. Back-to-school is, for many, a return to regularly scheduled programming. September means that you finally have a solid reason for telling them to take a bath, go to bed, wear clothes that match, brush their hair. I’ve written before about how good back-to-school is for our kids. And, if you are a stay-at-home parent, when the kids go to school, you get a break – one you’ve earned after a summer of being with your little monsters all day every day. I have Fridays off. In the summer, I spend that day with Fiona and Bridget, and it’s lovely. Lovely as it is, though, I also appreciate the Fridays when I am at home and they are not. I can do any shopping that needs doing (and, with four people who hold fast to the high-maintenance habits of eating, practising good hygiene and wearing clean clothes while living in a clean house – not to mention two people who keep growing – there’s plenty of shopping to do). I can whip the house into line before the weekend, which means I don’t have to waste the weekend doing stupid things like weeding, scrubbing and vacuuming. And I can eat lunch all by myself. This benefits nobody but me, of course, but it’s a nice novelty.

For the most part, though, I can’t join the yearly fall conga-line with Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration” soaring in the background. (That was fun, though, eh? Great song ….) For one thing, I’m not a stay-at-homer. So, for me, school doesn’t mean much of a break from my kids, and it adds fuss. The need for agenda perusal, early bedtimes, clean clothes, neat hair, nutritious snacks and meals to promote learning …. Daycare don’t care, school does. Alot. School supplies, indoor shoes with non-marking soles, a bajillion little snack-sized plastic containers (with rogue lids). Hauling your kids out of bed before dawn and barking at everyone while doing things at silent black-and-white movie speed – only to be late again. Homework. Sweet cousin-of-Jedidiah, what is it about homework that so often leaves the kids and me teetering on the brink of hysteria at the end of what’s already been a long day?

More than the fuss, though, back-to-school means change. On Fiona’s first day of school, when I saw her itty-bitty four-year-old face pressed against the bus window as it rumbled away, I cried because I would miss her. Her backpack was almost as big as she was:

My days would be so different without her – but I still had two-year-old Bridget to deal with, and I grew to cherish my Mommy-and-Bridget time in the afternoons while big sister was at school. By the time Bridget’s first day of school rolled around, I was back in the office. Her daycare provider, one of the sweetest women I’ve ever had the privilege to know, sent me a picture of her all ready to go:

SONY DSC

And I cried again. Not because I would miss her. She and I were already apart that day, and many days. This time, I cried because I knew what I was losing – my baby. I knew that, although the child who stepped off the bus that afternoon would look the same, she would be different on the inside. New surroundings, new friends, a new role model. And I knew that she would keep changing. She would lose her babyish pronunciations. Manners and the influence of other children would turn her from a human tornado to a little lady. Her end-of-day stories would be filled with people I might never meet. For the first time in her life, I would have no control over a significant part of her world: the classroom. When I dropped her off at daycare that morning, I knew I’d be picking a different kid up at the end of the day. Still mine, but different.

You’d think I’d get used to it. Yet, every year on the first day of school, I get a little watery thinking about my girls. I know as I’m taking the requisite back-to-school picture that I will never see these kids again – they’re passing through this phase at the speed of light, and the coming year will change them utterly and irrevocably, starting with who’s at the front of the room and who’s sitting next to them. This is as it should be, and I’m cheering them on every step of the way. I can’t wait to see who they’re going to become. But I’m not ready to knock mimosas with other mothers about it …. I miss them already.

Back-to-school is not for everyone – but I’m trying to see the other side of the coin.

Where, oh, where has summer gone? There’s less than two weeks left! Yes, I hear you, gotta-be-right windbags: summer doesn’t technically end until late September. You probably also like to remind people that black is not actually a colour, and that “I can’t get no satisfaction” really means that you can get at least some. Whatever. We all know summer’s over when the kids go back to school.

Most of the items on my summer bucket list have been crossed off. I’ve watched all the flowers come and go in our garden. Having lived in this house for a couple of years now, I know there are more to come, and I’ll be watching for them, too. I’ve enjoyed several sun-drenched happy hours on one of our plastic chairs with a book and the buzz of cicadas and crickets all around me. I’ve made three or four different kinds of popsicles, lemon cream, blueberry-cinnamon-Greek-yogurt, blue raspberry and peanut-butter-chocolate-pudding (new this year). We’ve had a few picnics – on a sunny, breezy day, packing a bag with sandwiches, pickles, cheese, fruit, cookies and juice (or, if you will, vodka), and heading for the park is lovely. We’ve had some barbeques, and dined al fresco both at home and at various restaurants. We’ve spent the odd lazy afternoon at the beach. I took Fiona and Bridget to Mont Cascades for a day. Fiona and I kept pace with each other as the daredevil half of the family. Bridget faced up to a few of her fears and enjoyed some of the tamer water slides – and surprised us by riding Mammoth River with us twice! We went to the Capital Fair, where we all enjoyed the ferris wheel and the Wacky Wurm (which, after a unanimous verdict by Facebook friends, was declared to be, in fact, a caterpillar). Ryan and Fiona had a go at the bumper cars, and Fiona challenged for my Queen of the Thrill Rides title with the Cannonball. I saw her Cannonball, raised her a Pharoah’s Fury, and won that particular hand. There was a musical instrument petting zoo, and a regular petting zoo, and both were great fun. Food trucks galore …. Ok, this post is starting to become an advertisement for the Capital Fair. What was I talking about again? Oh, yes: my summer bucket list. We went to an outdoor concert, Earth, Wind & Fire, and enjoyed some good music and a summer sunset. The girls enjoyed a few nights in their itty-bitty tent. It’s technically a two-man tent, but I think the two men would have to be very close …. In fact, they might have to know each other in the biblical sense to share this tent.

Of course, our summer hasn’t been entirely idyllic …. There were sunburns, mosquito bites and stings of the wasp and bee variety (one per child). There were days so disgustingly hot and humid that the make-up melted down my face as I was getting ready for work. These were usually followed by nights of tossing and turning, peeling the sheets off our sticky skin and gasping in the direction of the open window, craving even the lightest puff of fresh air. There were deluges, accompanied by the awesome power of thunder and lightning. There were skinned knees, and a nasty episode of motion sickness after twisting around on a tire swing way too fast and long (Bridget doesn’t get on those now). There is a dead chipmunk in our yard, foul and festooned with insects, which is taking its not-so-sweet time to return to the bosom of Mother Nature. And there is one thing left on the list: our big summer road trip! We’re leaving tomorrow, but we still don’t know where we’re going. Which is just how we like it. The day after we return, though, is the first day of fourth grade for Fiona and second grade for Boo.

I know many parents are giddily soft-shoeing down the back-to-school aisle of their nearest department store, daydreaming about the moment the be-backpacked backs of their offspring disappear down the street to the bus stop. I know a few parents who would have school go year-round if they could. I am not one of them. In fact, I might even be the opposite of those parents …. I’m really not feeling the rigid mornings, packing peanut-free lunches, tripping over backpacks stuffed like Thanksgiving turkeys, spending whole evenings hunched over the kitchen table trying to work out what in the name of deep-fried butter the teacher wants from the kids (there’s that fair sneaking into the post again). I don’t want to wade through the drama of who-said-what and who-didn’t-sit-with-whom. And head lice! I. Can’t. Even. with the head lice ….

I don’t want to sink too deep in the Pit of Despair-and-Fundraiser-Hatred, though, so I’m going to try to come up with some positive things about sending my girls back to school.

There will be order in their days again. Structure is good for kids, and I honestly couldn’t be arsed to provide it during the lazy-hazy-crazy days of summer. Sometimes, that shows in their attitude and behaviour. Rules and schedules will return to two little people who really could use them. Their nutrition and general hygiene will improve, as schools like children to be fed properly for learning and bathed regularly. Ring-around-the-mouth is not a game we’ll be playing anymore for the next ten months. No whipping hair into a braid so no one can tell it’s been dragged through orange juice, ice cream and licked lollipops, then rolled in playground sand and slept on. No more scraggly fingernails with whole flowerbeds of dirt under them. No longer will the sniff test be used to determine whether something can be worn in public.

They will be using their brains for more than pondering how SpongeBob can die a dozen deaths and still be fine at the end of an episode. Yeah, we’ve taken them to the library a couple of times, and we answer their bazillion questions and toss in the occasional intelligent thought of our own – but homeschoolers we are not. We pay taxes so that somebody else will do the eju-ma-catin’. They will be able to see their friends without me having to see their friends (or their friends’ parents). A few of their friends are lovely, with lovely parents, and they’re no burden to have over or hang out with. Most of their friends, though, are other people’s kids – and, by definition, teetering somewhere between mildly annoying and simply atrocious. Usually, it takes awful parents to make awful kids – and, if you’re not sufficiently hard-hearted to ignore your child’s pleas to see their friends because they havn’t seen them all summer long, you might even end up hanging out with the entire rotten tribe. When school starts, though, they’ll see their friends every day, and it will require no effort or forbearance on my part.

I’m sure there are more good things about back-to-school, and I’ll rediscover them when September comes. In the meantime, though, I’ll treasure these last few days of summer. Starting with hitting the road tomorrow!