The short and highly-edited version

Everyone is alive and at their respective dwellings. My Dad has a few bits of metal wire in his arteries keeping things open, which I gather is standard treatment, though I'll admit I know next to nothing about this. He's been told he's not allowed to climb stairs, drive, or pick up anything heavier than five pounds for the next four weeks. Considering they live in the middle of nowhere and all of his hobbies involved heavy equipment of one kind or another, this is a serious restriction in his lifestyle.

In the meantime, while there's plenty I'd like to be able to say about this, it's not the kind of thing I can put here without a lot of thought and censorship. Everything honest or truthful that I could say about it would be unkind, and possibly unfair.

Thanks to everyone who expressed concern over the last few days, I appreciate it. I hate to segue from "crisis! crisis!" to "let's just forget all that, shall we?" since it feels so abrupt and incomplete, but--let's just forget all that, shall we? For now, anyway. That might be a story I can tell some other day.

Posted by Andrea at 2:24 PM | Comments (1)

Summer Vacation (with a Side of Self-Help)

I actually managed to (mostly) not blog when I was on vacation. Can you believe it? I hardly can myself. And it was, pardon me for saying so, blissful. I mean, I still put in my thirty minutes or so deleting the 1000 spam comments each day that escape the spam filter (not an exaggeration, unfortunately) and commenting elsewhere for a few minutes a day, but mostly, I wasn't here.

Instead, I took Frances to Canada's Wonderland, where she is unfortunately still a few inches shy of the minimum height for most of the fun kiddie rides, including the toddler coaster, but where we had a great time regardless. She rode the rocket ships and the airplanes and we went on the helicopters and train together, and waited an hour to ride Scooby Doo's Haunted Mansion, and she got to ride on Scooby Doo again on the merry-go-round, and I took pictures and carried her around when she got tired of walking and wondered when I would remember that Frances can't finish an ice cream cone on her own and I'm better off getting one for us to share. Then we went to see the Dora and Boots show, and Frances joined the preschool mosh pit at the foot of the stage.

I took her to a Canada Day party and her first-ever fireworks and then listen to her ask me for the rest of the vacation if we were going to see fireworks again that day.

I brought her to the library and watched her play with other kids in the toy area while I browsed the non-fiction and got out a few titles. (I'm on a book fast until September--had I mentioned that? No new book purchases over the summer.) I got Frances her very own library card, which she brandished at other patrons. "I have a library card!" she told them excitedly in her non-library voice. "Aren't you lucky!" they told her. Later, she found a Dora book she has at home already: "I have this book at home!" she told another patron. "Wow!" they replied.

I watched her spend hours and hours playing outside with her beloved sister C.

And when she was with her Dad I spent most of a week with Greg. Back when I'd planned this vacation I was supposed to have spent the week doing a writing workshop, but it was cancelled at the last minute and I decided to take advantage of it. We went to Wonderland, where Greg (a coaster-phobe) was a good sport and let me drag him on a bunch of rides. I wrote 8,000 words of my novel and hammered out a few major plot issues, got a few other things ready to submit and followed up on a couple of others. We watched movies and went to see one of his friends play in an acoustic 80s cover band, and I spent an evening dancing for the first time in ... umm ... ten years? I used to love dancing in my early twenties. Then I married someone who categorically refused to do anything that even approached dancing. I ran, a lot. I spent some time down at the Don communing with nature. I also got air conditioning.

The air conditioning is a thirty-year-old window unit that my parents used in their first house when I was a baby. It has an "energy saver" switch. What do you suppose that meant in the 1970s? Am I going to crash the grid? Can I salve my conscience even slightly by telling myself that I am reusing? Probably not? At least I can sleep.

Now here I am, back at work, with probably seven weeks to go before school starts. Ack.

My life is great when I'm not at work.

Anyway. One of my Happiness Expert books said that the benefits of vacation generally disappear about a week after a return to work (and at least the level of restfulness completely vanishes for me by the morning after, since I can't get to sleep on time and then have to wake up early--I'm beat), but the psychology of savouring can help you get the most from good experiences.

The psychology of savouring! What next.

The Happiness Experts have even come up with some practices that increase savouring so you can hold on to the good stuff, including vacation, for as long as humanly possible. Which sounds good to me, especially the morning after the end of a really great vacation.

1. Share the good stuff with others. Talk about what you love and why.
2. Strengthen the memories. Take pictures, get souveniers, write it down.
3. Be proud and congratulate yourself/brag. My guess is this applies more to "I just won the Nobel prize!" than "I love the Behemoth!"
4. Focus your attention on the parts of the experience you want to remember and block out the rest of it.
5. Absorption: immerse yourself completely in the moment, don't think about what's coming next.

You'll have to take my word that I was repeating four and five to myself like a mantra, especially for the last few days. "Stay in the moment! Don't think about Monday! Pay attention!" And the photos I took will soon be printed and festooned liberally around the apartment and the cubicle (for the few remaining weeks I will have the cubicle), not to mention having already been plastered all over facebook. As for numbers one and two ... guess.

Posted by Andrea at 9:41 AM | Comments (2)

A funny thing happened on my way to a relationship

I'm trying to remember how many first dates I had between last August and now. I think ten. I'm not entirely sure. When you approach possible dates as "is this someone I might enjoy talking to over a cup of tea?" instead of "is this someone I can see myself buying a house with in two years?" it not only takes a lot of the pressure off, it also expands one's options. Someone you're almost positive is not long-term material could still be a lot of fun for an afternoon date.

Most never got beyond the first date. There was the Slacker, for instance, so nicknamed because he was perfectly content to do absolutely nothing with his life--nothing he wanted to learn or accomplish or even fill up his saturdays with beyond video games. Nice guy. Only a year younger than I am, but it felt more like ten. I'm sure he found my preferred lifestyle puzzling and off-putting too.

Ten first dates (and a couple of seconds or thirds) in a relatively short period of time was a very effective crash course in Andrea's Dysfunctional Relationship Skills. I'll spare you the in-class sessions and share my notes:

Class 1: Right-Wing Platitude Boy. Conclusion: Andrea finds it hard to respect people who can't think.

Oh good! A learning experience! That's healthy.

Class 2: The Slacker. Conclusion: Andrea likes people with ambition.

Still good. We're doing well. Ambition is good.

Class 3: A. First Date went well, second date went well, third date seemed to go well but was followed by revised online dating profile including several traits he knows Andrea does not have, i.e. sports enthusiast and TV fan. Andrea was fine with casual dating until perceived rejection, at which point interest was piqued. Conclusion: Andrea really likes people who reject her.

Uh oh. That's not good at all.

Class 4: B. First date went well. Second date somewhat alarming. Banker shows tendencies towards very poor stress management and possibly occasional violence. Andrea refuses to see him again but finds it very, very difficult as he somehow manages to attract her. Conclusion: Andrea is strongly drawn towards people who show high potential for future abuse.

Well, crap. That's just awful.

Class Five: G. Spent first date being mostly silent while date tried to draw her out. She laughed almost the entire time anyway and barely made it home before the babysitter's time was up. Spent the next few days in a pointless anxiety wondering Where This Could Possibly be Going. Conclusion: Andrea prefers not to enjoy herself.

Hey!

Class Six: Second date with G. Terrible movie. G and Andrea spend the entire movie giggling over its awfulness and pointing out the many artistic sins committed during its production, then several hours afterwards in a bookstore coffee shop talking about nothing and everything. She laughs almost the whole time again. Once again, stricken by pointless anxiety afterwards. Something does not feel right. Conclusion: Andrea is thick.

Oh come on, that's not fair.

Class Seven: Another date, inadvertently crashes a man's 50th birthday party to comedic effect. Another date, brings over a very good movie that they both enjoy. Sense of pointless anxiety continues. Andrea ruminates with friends. What is it? What feels so wrong? Do they have too much in common? Is it the chemistry? He's kind, he's smart, we have so much fun together, he's a good writer, there's chemistry but it just feels wrong. Says friend, can you articulate to yourself what the problem is? Says Andrea--(blank space). Thinking about this a few days later, comes to the conclusion that what felt wrong was that he was treating her well. She was not being rejected and there was no visible potential for future drama or problems. Andrea is dumbstruck. Conclusion: Andrea shows some potential for learning from life experiences.

Well--ok. I see your point.

It did take a while, though. Going all the way back to the beginning of my dating career, it took several boyfriends, two husbands and a disastrous post-separation pseudo-relationship for me to figure out that I kept going out and finding boys and men who would treat me badly. I was completely oblivious to it until very recently. At which point I had a visit from Epiphany.

Epiphany: Oh my god! I was going to stop seeing him because he's nice to me!

Reason: Well, that's stupid.

Epiphany: You're right! It's stupid! (pause) I should KEEP seeing him because he's nice to me!

Reason: That is what a smart person would do.

Epiphany: Yes. Right. I'm glad we had this talk.

Which led to ....

Class Eight: Another movie date at Andrea's house. Long conversation after the movie. Andrea asks teasingly, So what is your plan, anyway? Well, G replies, my plan is to be very very nice to you and make you fall madly in love with me. Says Andrea, I think it's going to work.

I'd like to say all those cobwebs have been dusted out, but there is a part of my brain that concludes that anyone who is being nice to me just hasn't figured me out yet. I'll be sitting at the kitchen table and he'll get up to get something from the fridge and I will be momentarily stricken with panic, as if literal skeletons made of old coleslaw and leftovers are going to leap at him from the metaphorical closet of the refrigerator. Don't open the fridge! There's a ... never mind. What was I thinking? I was thinking that there must be something about me he doesn't know yet, something awful that would stop him from treating me well, and that something is apparently hiding in the vegetable crisper.

None of it makes sense, including the Salad Monster. I know.

I'm looking forward to finding out what a relationship is like when the other person and I don't embark on it with mutual agreement about my many deep-seated flaws and the efforts I am going to have to make to address them.

Anyway: Blog, meet Greg. Greg, meet Blog.

Conclusion: Greg's nefarious scheme worked. What will our heroine do? Stay tuned....

Posted by Andrea at 7:20 AM | Comments (27)

Damn you, Shakespeare (Clod and Pebble Return)

(A pastoral scene of low grass, cows grazing, a stream running through a field; and weeping coming from nowhere. A woman who looks suspiciously like me is hunting down the source of the crying.)

Andrea: Clod? Is that you?

Clod: (crying harder)

Andrea: (sitting down carefully so as to avoid Clod) What's wrong?

Clod: he ... he ... he ...

Andrea: Who?

Clod: Pebble! He ... he ... cheated on me!

Andrea: What? Pebble? (pause) Since when have you and Pebble been....

Clod: Around New Year's. We kept talking after our conversations with you last year and one thing led to another and we fell in love and it was like being hit by a bolt of lightning but then... (sobbing)

Andrea: I'm sorry. That's awful. What's going to happen with you and Pebble?

Clod: I don't know. (sniffling) What can I do? He tells me he's in love with this, this Gravel, and he won't leave her, but he doesn't want me to leave either because he loves both of us. He keeps saying "that's what love is, 'bind another to its delight,' remember?" What can I do?

Andrea: Well. (pause) You could break up with him. I mean, what does he expect? He gets to have his cake and eat it too? He gets to mistreat both of you to make himself happy?

Clod: I can't do that! Love seeketh not itself to please! Nor for itself hath any care! That would be selfish, I can't ask him to make me happy.

Andrea: But he's being an asshole.

Clod: That's what love is. You don't care when someone hurts you because if you do that means you don't love them, you're thinking about yourself.

Andrea: Oh god, Clod, Blake is a smart guy but he's just a good writer, he can be wrong. You know? You're allowed to have some care for yourself. You need to. You're not going to have a self to love with if you don't give yourself and your wants some attention sometimes.

Clod: I don't know....

Andrea: What makes you think he loves you at all? If you loved someone, would you treat them that way?

Clod: No! But that's different, I'm not him, I don't want to be judgmental.

Andrea: Clod, honey, there are igneous ... mineral ... whatevers ... out there who will love you for the ... I mean to say, you deserve to be loved by someone who treats you well.

Clod: (sniffing)

Andrea: Frankly, Pebble sounds like a narcissistic jerk.

Clod: What about what you said before? All that stuff about "being hurt and choosing to be open to it anyway"--huh? Were you lying?

Andrea: Noooo.... But if someone is being abusive you don't invite them in to do it again. You close the door in their face. You keep the door open to people who deserve to come in. The ones who will give to you what you give to them.

Clod: I don't know if I can. I've tried to leave him before and it never goes well. I just can't seem to get over him, I can't seem to really leave or forget him--and I try but then I end up going back.

Andrea: My love is as a fever, longing still
for that which longer nurseth the disease,
feeding on that which doth preserve th'ill,
th'uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
hath left me, and I, desperate now, approve
desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure am I, now reason is past care,
and frantic now with evermore unrest,
my thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,
at random from the truth vainly expressed.
For I have sworn her fair and thought her bright,
who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

Clod: That's it. That's exactly how I feel.

Andrea: He's writing about his lover the way an addict talks about heroin.

Clod: (silence)

Andrea: That's not good. You know what heroin does to addicts who don't break the addiction.

Clod: (sniffing) I don't want to be selfish.

Andrea: Clods draw Pebbles the way worms draw fish in that stream. Pebbles see the lack of self-regard and it draws them in like a heroin addict too. But you know what happens to the worms. They get stuck on a hook, and then they get eaten.

Clod: I'm being eaten alive.

Andrea: Yes, you are.

Posted by Andrea at 9:18 AM | Comments (4)

Mean Girls

We don't get much playtime on weekday evenings; but what we had, on Wednesday evening, we decided to spend outside. It was sunny and warm if below seasonal and after spending so much of our days indoors I feel it's important to get out. I was blowing bubbles and Frances was catching them when C appeared, running with a gang of big-kid friends. "C!" Frances shouted. My heart sank; I know some of these kids, they are not kind. Among them is the little girl with the curly hair always jammed under a cap who manages to give off the impression of a Dickens' street urchin without any of the charm or innocence. When C is with the little girl with the curly hair, she never wants to play with Frances. "C!" Frances ran over and started talking excitedly about the big bottle of bubbles her Mummy got, and maybe she would like to play?

The little girl with the curly hair said, loudly, "She can't play with us. She's too slow." She mimed a sprint; "She can't run." The other kids left on their feet or their bikes and Frances was alone; she came back.

"C won't play with me."

"Oh no?"

"The girl with the curly hair said I'm too slow."

"How do you feel about that?"

"Sad."

"Do you want a hug?"

She nodded, and I cuddled my girl on my lap. "Slow. Well that's just silly."

"I'm not slow! I'm fast!"

"No, you're not slow; you're just little. The other kids are bigger, that's all."

She burrowed her head against me. The little girl with the curly hair walked over carrying her bright pink Bratz basketball; I hadn't previously known such a thing existed. The little girl with the curly hair's eyes are deeply crossed. This is a fact that would normally be insignificant, except that Frances's eyes too would be deeply crossed--if she weren't wearing her glasses. She has glasses, and she wears them. The little girl with curly hair does not, and I found myself wondering if she doesn't have any, if her parents can't afford them or if they don't care or if no one makes her wear them; I found myself wondering if I should feel compassion for the little girl with curly hair, but at the moment, I couldn't do it. She was the little girl who hurt my little girl. I wanted her to hurt.

She grinned at me. I glared.

"It's fun to knock on doors and run away," she said.

"Actually, that's very rude," I replied.

She heaved her basketball in the direction of my front door; it banged off a wall and lay on the ground a short ways away from us. She stared at me impudently, expecting what? A laugh, a smile, a grimace? I stared at her calmly; she ran away, leaving her ball behind her. Though I am only assuming that it is her ball, that she didn't just pick it up somewhere.

My little girl and I went inside and upstairs and after she got into her jammies, we had a long talk about why people say mean things. I tried to tell her that it's the mean people, not the people they're talking about. That it's normal to be hurt and sad, but in the end you have to realize that mean people don't make good friends, and that good people who make good friends will not say mean things that hurt you and make you sad. That it's important to find those good people, and not worry too much about what the mean people say, because the mean people are mean to everyone. It's hard to find the words. She's only four, how much can she understand?

When she's a little bit older I'll try to explain that sometimes the mean people are really very sad, and that they don't care about other people because no one cares about them; but right now all I care about is that she knows how worthless the words are.

We read Stella Fairy of the Forest on the big bed and I walked her back to her room and tucked her in, and we talked about the fun things we did that day--something I am trying to do with her like my 3 Things book. She liked blowing bubbles, and oddly, she liked talking about mean people. I asked her how she was feeling.

"Sad," she said.

"Oh? Why sad?"

"Because," she said morosely. "Because it was a fun day and it's hard to say goodbye to a fun day when it's night time."

So there may or may not be a Girls Staying Up Late Party when I am on vacation with her in July. There may be snacks, and movies, and waiting until it's dark before we go to bed. Frances wants to invite some friends. Stay tuned.

Posted by Andrea at 7:21 AM | Comments (9)

In Support of my Change Addiction

Miche and I traveled downtown together for the Motherlode Conference in 2006, or at least we traveled around together, I can't remember which because my memory tends to lose these details. I do remember wandering around an art supply store with her, brain boggling at the tremendous variety of supplies (and their cost) and the way they crowded each other into the aisles. Apparently artists may have an elevated aesthetic sense but this does not translate into the places in which they purchase their goops and daubers. I remember that it rained (I think). I also remember a comment Miche made which I'm going to very loosely paraphrase because I don't remember it all that well; she said that the bloggers she knows of that have 'done well' in terms of blogging are doers.

I'm not sure I believe this is a universal fact, but it is a fact that the bloggers I know and have built relationships with, the ones who populate the corner of the interweb in which I hang my virtual hat, are all doers. I can't think of a single blogger I know and interact with regularly whose primary way of experiencing the world is to log eight hours in at an uninspiring job, go home, watch five hours of television, and go to bed. And when you consider how many people do live their lives that way, it's incredible, really, that so few people seem to do this on the internet.

You might argue that we've simply replaced the television with the monitor, but I don't think that's so. Yes, bloggers all seem to carry around a glowing screen in the interior of their skull on which future posts are composed in the midst of the circumstances that give rise to them, but on the whole they seem to be people whose lives are more full than average, not less. At least, the ones I know.

Julie's Hump Day Hmm for the week is to consider a blog, blogger or post which inspired one to make a change in one's own life--but the fact is that this is impossible for me, as the inspiration doesn't come from one person, one blog, or one post, but the entire atmosphere (that I fully realize I may have cobbled together myself through being drawn to particular blogs and people and so constructing a community that involves the kinds of people and blogs that are likely to inspire me--but that's a subject for a different post).

I have about a hundred blogs on my bloglines feed, split between personal blogs, mommy blogs, social justice blogs, environmental blogs, lifestyle and psychology blogs, writing blogs, art and craft blogs, and a very very few political blogs. None of them are mean-spirited or depressing--even the ones written by people writing about their own depression manage somehow to be positive places to be, even when the posts are about seriously negative topics. There's no snark, no vicious humour, no mean-spiritedness. It's kind of like sitting in a room full of inspirational speakers, only they're not selling anything.

I'd love to take you on a tour of the entire 100, but that is certainly too much for one blog post. Instead I'll select a few examples (and maybe revisit the topic in the future if there's any interest), being mindful of the fact that any selection will seem as if I'm elevating this handful above the other 95 or so. That's not what I intend. Instead I'm aiming to show you how comprehensive the impact has been.

Laundry. Marla has taught me to never ever wash undies in anything but very-hot-water, a lesson I promise I will take with me to the grave.

Big Sisters. The Social Justice RoundTable inspired me to start volunteering and post about it, which inspired a few of you to start volunteering and post about it, and who knows where that will end? (Yes, still doing that, btw--I haven't forgotten or ignored it though gods know I've had plenty of legitimate reasons to.)

Writing. Getting to know Real Live (Published) Authors through their blogs as Real Live (Imperfect) Humans wasn't the only reason I started submitting more seriously, but it was one of them. Especially when some of them (*cough* Ann *cough*) are so encouraging and kind.

Happiness. This is going to embarass her hugely, but when I see all the tremendous shit LauraJ has been dumped in her life and how she still manages to be this upbeat, lovely, generous person who designs and sews just about everything and sends it off as gifts all over the planet while single-handedly caring for an adorable boy with some very serious disabilities and providing care for all kinds of other kids (for free) (and by the way, Laura, I think your recent idea of reclaiming your weekends for yourself is great, do it!)--I know I can do the same, if I choose to.

Parenting. You told me where to find underwear in small enough sizes when we first started potty training, what to worry about after Erik and I separated and (more crucially) what not to worry about, that it is possible for moms not to be at odds with their teenaged daughters, and that benign neglect is a positive parenting strategy. I can't begin to enumerate the ways in which reading the interior monologues of other mothers has made parenting not only easier, but more fun.

That was fun. I should do that again.

Posted by Andrea at 1:45 PM | Comments (4)

The Brochure

I'd really like to do a post about the Maritime Blog'er weekend, but I'm finding it hard to wrap up in a way that seems remotely interesting to anyone who wasn't there. Like, I like fishcakes, who knew? Or: people are frightened of ketchup? Really? Or maybe: so the ocean is grey. Or, and thordora will like this one, how much for a can of coke?

No.

Though as it happens all four of them are true.

What's sticking with me is what an astonishingly good time I had. In a roomful of people I'd never met before, talking. Me, the slightly-antisocial introvert who is also (as the boyfriend is now very fond of reminding me) strange and bookish. I expected to have fun or I wouldn't have gone, but I didn't expect it to be so comfortable.

(Woops, losing interest for people who weren't there. Change course.)

When I first started writing the blog for friends (holy crap) over five years ago (how can it have been so long already?) I saw it purely as a way to keep them updated about the pregnancy and Frances's early days, and keep material for a possible book I might write one day. Taking it public three years ago March was a way to participate in a community I hadn't previously been aware of, but I still had no idea of what I was getting myself into. I've been tallying it up since I got home:

1. Presenting at the MotherLode with my first group of real-life bloggy friends, Marla, Ann, Jen and Dani; and meeting Miche at the same time. Since then I've visited Dani in Ottawa, gone out to dinner with Marla and Jen and Miche several times, set up playdates between Frances and Josephine a few times a year, and visited Ann's cottage. I hear we're going again this summer, and three of us went out to dinner again on Friday. Miche brought shorts for Frances, and we talked about Jen's new business and my school plans and wondered how fast a bassett hound can run.

2. Meeting dozens or even hundreds of other parents (virtually) who have all struggled with difference in different forms and different ways--an enormously helpful community in the first few years with Frances.

3. Fundraising for Annika. (Which has been on hold since the last update since Annika's been doing so well.)

4. The Winter Holiday of Your Choice Gift Exchange, two years running--which was great fun to organize and loaded me up with holiday stuff (and Sue, I use those bookmarks every day. They really are both pretty and functional).

5. Reading how for some people, being tickled by their parents or siblings wasn't fun, it was upsetting. I think of it every time I tickle Frances and always stop as soon as she says no.

6. Spontaneous gifts in the mail, from good blogfriends like LauraJ and from people I hardly know.

7. Being solicited for publishing opportunities (details still hush-hush because I don't know how it's going to play out).

8. Being found by old friends. Finding out that old friendsknow my blog-friends. Watching old friends make friends with my blogfriends.

9. So that Blog'er begins to seem like the chocolate-cream frosting on the perfect chocolate cake (that was for you, Bon). At this point I'd be hard-pressed to even recall exactly what was discussed, except for the evergreen topic of in-laws. And blogging. And cake.

This whole blogging thing has worked out pretty well for me, even including the hiccups and oopsies.

But 10. is just knowing that there are people out there who show up every day or at least on a regular basis just to read whatever happens to have caught my interest that morning. This makes no pretense to being a single-topic blog; there's no consistency, I change topics and ideas mid-stream, and yet for some strange reason you keep coming back. I don't understand it, but I like it.

Thanks.

Posted by Andrea at 8:30 AM | Comments (10)

I thought I was tired on Friday

Then I went to Halifax for the weekend (technically, a small town to the south of Halifax, which I do not stand by because my geography and sense of direction are lousy, so if someone comes by and corrects me I will not be a bit offended. I did see the ocean, though, so I'm quite sure I was on the east coast).

You wouldn't think sitting around chatting in a cozy living-room with a fireplace while the rain does its level best to keep you all indoors, and the occasional transplant to a small local restaurant to chat over food instead of tea, would be all that tiring. You'd even think it might be kind of relaxing--no children around to make demands, no one to share the lovely comfortable beds or drag us out of them before we were ready, no need to cook or clean dishes or rooms or do anything but sit, really, and eat.

I can't remember being this tired.

I blame it on the prints in the bed-and-breakfast. Each chair, each sofa, a different print from the wallpaper, which in turn contrasted with the quilts, drapes, pillows, throws, tablecloths. It was an effective caffeine substitute.

I would love to tell you more, but the boss is not giving me any blogging time today. Maybe later.

Short version: It was fun, I'm glad I went, Mad Bea Bon Niobe Hanna Kate Thordora and Cin are all as lovely in person as they are on their blogs, yes I really am too lazy to link to them right now but I somehow doubt I have to for most of you, and I've been told that I need to make Frances a card. Right now.

Posted by Andrea at 8:38 AM | Comments (8)

Nothing to see here. Move along.

I am way too distracted and much too tired to manage any profundity today. Sorry.

You can blame the boyfriend and the bloggers who have organized the very official and highly structured Maritime BlogHer in Halifax this weekend for my current state of mind. I'd love to write something meaningful but it's just not going to happen today.

Well, let's see what happens when I concentrate....

Yippee!

No, wait.

See, it's hopeless.

Maybe I can dredge my mind for a happy Frances story to tide you over.

...

She's cute! No, wait....

Frances says something adorable. This happens all the time, you'll just have to take my word for it. I say, "Frances, can I eat you?"

"No!"

"No? Oh... Can I nibble on you?"

"Nooooo!"

"Aww. How about, can I lick you?"

"No! I'm not a lollipop!" She laughs.

"Oh. OK. Uh, can I give you a kiss?"

"Yes." And she turns her cheek. I kiss her. She says, "You can hug and kiss me, but you can't eat, nibble or lick me."

"Oh?"

"Because I am not food. I am all covered with skin, and I have bones."

"That's true. I can feel them in your fingers."

"I am a person. Persons are not food."

"Can't argue with that."

There you have it, Dear Readers: the received wisdom of Frances. Persons are not food.

Posted by Andrea at 10:16 AM | Comments (6)

Neighbourly

We have new neighbours: a mother, her daughter and son, and their very big black dog who likes to bark loudly whenever anyone comes within his vision, which is often, seeing as they too live along the bike path in the back. I have yet to see or hear a father (and as everyone else makes themselves heard through the concrete wall on a daily basis, I'm inclined to think there isn't one). The daughter is somewhere around nine, I think; and the son about two years younger, both thin as cables.

Much of the shouting seems to be about homework. It has to be done inside; it has to be done at certain specified times; this is enforced, loudly, at least once each day. There is also much shouting at the dog, who likes to charge out the back door given any opportunity and then refuse to come to his name no matter how noisily given, his tail wagging. "Bad dog! M! Come here! Bad dog! Now!" they scream. M wags. They bluster and holler and wave their arms. M wags, and runs a bit farther away. It's a good thing he's a friendly dog because he's in our yard a lot.

"That M is a bad dog," Frances will say. "He doesn't come."

I haven't met their mother yet, though I hope to. I also hope she doesn't yell at me. (I'm sure she won't, it's just all I've heard her do so far.)

On my sick day earlier this week, I was not feeling up to making Frances dinner. I was also feeling guilty. I've been self-absorbed at home lately and not spending as much time interacting with Frances in the evenings as I normally would, or as I think she needs; it was mostly unavoidable but that doesn't mean that Frances likes it, of course. So I decided to make a new start and tell her that we'd be spending more active playtime together in the evenings over a cheeseburger and french fries.

We picked up dinner on our way home from school (and I also finally found a backpack small enough for her--it's Hello Kitty but it's blue and sparkly and tiny and she loves it, and is proud as punch to be having her own backpack, and when she woke up the next morning she could hardly wait to go to school and show it off. Plus, it was cheap) and decided that we would eat al fresco, in our yard area out back, since it was such a lovely day. I spread out our junk food on Frances's tiny picnic table, pulled up a small chair for her and a big one for me, and we dug in.

I don't think we'd been out there for even five minutes before C and our new neighbour kids (the daughter I can call A; the son's name I don't know) were there, too, talking about what they like to eat and what kinds of toys they like and where they went to school and who their teachers were and what they were like and their favourite colours (everything except the boy's name, I think). Frances chatted away too between dipping her french fries in ketchup and talking about how big her cheeseburger was (and it was, considering the size of Frances's hands).

This might sound like a strange thing to say about being interrupted in the middle of dinner, but it was nice. In all of my years living in suburbs and eating dinner on the back deck or patio, I can't say that neighbour children have ever scaled the back fence to congregate around shared childhood interests and make friends with my daughter. It's one of the things we all say we miss about the way communities used to be, isn't it? When people are outside where we live now, they're not alone for long.

Which isn't to say that I don't occasionally long for more privacy; say, when C comes knocking on the living room window to find out if Frances is home, and tries to peek around the blinds, and I am sitting on the couch in my pyjamas trying to write. I'm trying to figure out if there is a way to do a bit of gardening out back to at least reduce the visibility into my living space from the bike path as an alternative to keeping the blinds perpetually drawn. We'll see.

In the meantime, Frances can make friends just by going out the back door and playing with a stick in the dirt while I either read in a patio chair or tidy up and watch her through the window. It's a strange bit of nostalgia in the middle of a big city that's mostly let that kind of thing go.

If only M would stop barking.

Posted by Andrea at 8:54 AM | Comments (10)

Tag, I'm It

The lovely Chris over at Mombie tagged me with a meme that (I think) she invented for Mother's Day; and you know me and memes, but I think this one is special. The instructions are simple: what are three things you do well as a mother? Unfortunately I'm sick today (who gets a flu in May?) so it's a challenge to corral my thoughts in a positive direction. Which probably means it's even more necessary. Here we go:

1. Not hovering. Frances plays outside by herself now that the weather is nice; she's been told to stay where I can see her and I pop out occasionally to make sure she's ok, but I figure if she wants to sit in the back yard area and play with a stick in the mud, that's great.

2. Pretending to be stupid. You know what I mean: when they hide somewhere you can totally see them, or put the surprise in the same hand and ask you to guess where it is again, or play a silly word game where they are obviously trying to trick you. "Hmm, where could Frances be? I could have sworn she was here just a minute ago.... I'll be so sad if I've lost her forever. Oh no! I can't find her anywhere!" All the while with gales of laughter escaping from behind the curtain, just above a pair of small white socks and two little pink shins.

3. TV. Most of the week will go by almost entirely TV-free. (Until she becomes fascinated with a new movie and wants to watch it all the time, but that does mean that when this happens I don't feel particularly bad about it--averaged out it's still Not Much.) Yet somehow she has still figured out who the Bratz are. I blame her classmates.

Although she has still to figure out that she can ask me for a particular toy--she's completely not acquisitive.

I won't tag, but only because I can't narrow it down to just a few people I'd want to see tackle it. How's this: are you reading this post? Yes? You're tagged.

Posted by Andrea at 8:29 AM | Comments (5)

Rank Heresy

According to the article by Sonja Lubyomirsky quoted by Julie in her post today, "People learn early in life that success often is a matter of relative rather than absolute performance and, consequently, strive to learn how they stand relative to 'relevant others.'"

Relative success compared to relevant others--let's put that into layman's terms in the form of an internalized thought process, shall we?

'OK, so I'm not the world's best soccer player. I didn't score any goals last week, in fact; but that's ok, because I'm new, I've hardly ever played soccer before. The other people who are new didn't score so many goals either. Though they did score more than I did--but that's different, Joey is so much bigger than I am and Susan has always been such a fast runner. There was that other guy who didn't score any goals, I'm not the only person who didn't score any goals, though he did manage to stop the other team from scoring once or twice, and I didn't do that either--but that's ok. Soccer's a stupid game, I don't really care about soccer anyway.'

In other words, I highly suspect that most people select as their group of "relevant others" for social comparison whichever is likely to be the most flattering for themselves. And it works, right up until you live in a soccer-crazy culture where everyone wants to be great at soccer, and you "not really caring about soccer anyway" becomes just another thing wrong with you.

Like breasts. My female readers will know exactly what I'm talking about--nothing is more important to the social status of a thirteen-year-old girl than breast size. Or maybe it just seemed that way to me since my "relevant others" were all eight years old; I still remember nearly twenty years on a day in the changeroom before or after gym class (hands up everyone who'd still like to go back and torture whichever adult ever came up with the concept of group nudity during adolescence) when I was informed that next to so-and-so, who had half-melons, and next to so-and-so, who had half-apples, I had half-cherries. But that's ok, who cares about breast size anyway?

Oh, that's right, boys. Boys cared about breast size. They weren't even subtle about it. One day in drama class in grade 10, I remember, a relatively well-endowed girl leaned back and put her arms over her head for a good stretch--and the boy sitting next to me nudged his friend and pointed straight at her chest so they could both have a good ogle. Or another boy who was so offended by Guess brand clothing for some reason I never managed to fathom, who said he was tempted to go up to any girl wearing "guess" on her chest or her ass and estimate her bra size. Why bra size? Was there an innate understanding that this would be the most humiliating, or was it just that at that age there was little else as important? He never threatened to guess their IQ or their favourite colour.

All of which is to say that "relevant others" is sometimes a field which we are left to define for ourselves, and sometimes is a field defined for us. In adolescence, no one is free to decide that it's ok if they're ugly because beauty doesn't really matter anyway. We are all left to bleed on that killing field. In my gym class in middle school, there was a girl whose name began with W, with pale blond hair and blue eyes, a beaked nose, and at least and extra fifty pounds. Not only did many of the other girls mock her, but our gym teacher was relentless too, and made sure every day to tell her how unacceptable her body was. I hope the teacher's own body betrayed her in some greusome and painful way, I truly do; W was defined by her weight all throughout highschool, and whenever I ran into her (which happened once a year or so) the conversation inevitably returned to how well or how poorly she was doing with her weight-loss efforts.

~~~~~

I'd like to say we all outgrow it. Certainly it matters less as we get older, and when it does matter it hurts less than it used to; but it still matters, and anyone who says it doesn't has yet to be exposed to the marvelous world of online dating sites. I know, I'm back at that again; but it's relevant so hang on. Let's leave alone for a moment the examples that are so offensively shallow it's hard to believe it's not some massive cyber-joke, i.e. sugardaddie.com and their ilk ("Where the attractive, classy and affluent meet"--sure, that's just exactly what comes to mind when I think of sugar daddies) and focus on those that purportedly are trying to match people up to someone who could be a life partner (Match, eHarmony, certain sections of LavaLife, plentyoffish, etc.). The first thing you have to do upon signing up is fill out a questionnaire. Do they ask you about your views on capital punishment, your charitable donations for the last year, your favourite book, the amount of TV you watch?

No. They ask for your age, your body type, your height, your income, your level of education, whether or not you already have children, if you want any in the future, your smoking and drinking habits, give you a chance to tick off your hobbies (one of the two of the guys I met who listed "creative writing" as hobbies meant that he'd published a poem in the local newspaper's "poet's corner" once, and the other was referring to the three poems he'd written since graduating from university ten years ago, so you can imagine there is a broad field of possible meaning), and ask you to post a photograph. None of this is necessary. You can leave the whole thing blank if you choose but, as they sternly warn, "profiles with photographs get 8x the number of responses." Why is that? Because "prefer not to say" is interpreted by most browsers as meaning that the person has no relative success against any relevant others--that the guy without a photo has two heads, neither of which have a nose; that the one who left the income field blank is, in fact, living with his mother and hasn't held a steady job since 1993; that the one who has decided not to share about his drinking habits was probably drunk as he posted the profile. Sure, there's the ad-lib section where you can wax poetic about your deep and abiding love of cats, the importance of your spiritual values and the number of exes who would rate you an excellent kisser (and some people do, in fact, include this information); but the reality is that if you don't fare well on the social comparison section most people will not bother looking past it to the lovely and loving soul that lurks beneath. (Though in some notable cases the opposite does occur: someone does well on the social comparison section only to ruin it by revealing a sinkhole of moral values in the ad-lib section, for example, the lovely man who sent me a message and revealed that while he was looking for a woman who was beautiful and intelligent (while being neither himself, so far as I could tell), he could accept beautiful and unintelligent. Or--even better!--the man who said he was looking for a very submissive woman to have sex with while his wife was dying of a terminal illness. It's been many months since I received that one, Dear Readers, and I am still hard pressed to identify anything in that sentence that is not offensive, with the possible exception of the conjunctions).

The entire subject of dating, mating and marriage has always been a minefield of social comparison--stock phrases such as "I can do better," "she's out of my league" and so forth reveal it--but dating sites take it to a whole new level not only by making it clear and explicit but also by encouraging it. What do you want? What kind of lover are you shopping for? Make out a list and keep browsing till you find it; there's someone out there, someone perfect just for you, and you won't need to compromise or settle. Why, if you're not getting the kind of results you'd fancy, just rewrite your profile, tweak your age or income, put up a new photograph. It's all about how well you rate, your rank on the social hierarchy; and while the romance experts will tell you this is about chemistry and shared values and expectations, if the behaviour of people on dating sites is any guide, it has at least as much to do with how well your potential love interest reaffirms your perceptions about your relative success against relevant others. It's about bagging the trophy.

Posted by Andrea at 10:01 AM | Comments (13)

Fate For Sale

There was a time I thought that Erik and I were meant to be together--that it was fate, primarily because being together was so easy. No disagreements, no fights. It was only much, much later that I realized that the reason it had been so easy was because all of the hard things were not being said; and as anyone who has followed our story thus far can see, it clearly was not our fate to be together.

Which puts Frances in something of an interesting light, doesn't it? She is the best thing that has ever happened to me, the best person I have ever known; but if my relationship with her father was an accident from beginning to end, then she wasn't fated, per se. A massive serendipity. One of those fluke gifts of the universe, maybe; something that you could not possibly have deserved, but ended up with anyway.

Because the more I think about it, the one hallmark of fate is that it is never easy. It isn't something the universe throws into your lap. It's more like a gun the universe holds to your head while you're standing on the edge of a cliff. "Jump," it says, "or I'll shoot."

Who would argue that it wasn't Martin Luther King's fate to be the person he was, doing the work he was doing; or Gandhi's; or Bhutto's; and look at the terrible price they and their families paid. Or how many authors and musicians were jailed or killed, the price they paid to give us the work they were born to do. And how incredible it is that they paid it. It's hard to fathom such bravery. They must have known, or at least suspected. I think most of us are not cut from that cloth.

I know I'm not. I've known since I was five years old that I wanted to write and be a missionary, and there's nothing else on earth I'm better suited to. Ok, the mission changed; but I still have the soul of an evangelizer. (I hide it well.) (Don't laugh.) Unfortunately I've known since I was seventeen that I have an expensive chronic illness, and the price to pay to do the work that I still believe I was meant to do is simply too high. Both missionaries and writers are lamentably underpaid and have truly shitty health insurance policies.

Some cost even more.

One in particular I have carried around like a jewel in a little velvet box for a very long time. I took it out and looked at it sometimes, polished it, believing that if or when the time ever came, I could pay the price. The time came and I tried to pay it. It was fate, you see; how couldn't it be mine? And I'm strong. I'm very strong. If I can't pay it....

I can't pay it. The Universe is just going to have to shoot me.

I guess I'm stuck carrying that little velvet box around. Opening it up sometimes and polishing the jewel, then putting it away again. It's fate, you know. You can't just leave it on the curb for a dumpster diver.

What do you do with these little bits of cast-off fate, when the price was too high to make it real? How do you grow a scar around the place where it was supposed to be, so you don't tear it open again on a thousand little things? How do you reconcile the life you have with the life you still believe and can't help believing you were supposed to have?

Posted by Andrea at 2:16 PM | Comments (3)

Ugly Duckling

When I was in middle school it was widely believed that I was too unattractive to ever be loved. I would walk down the hallway, and a boy would say loudly to his friends, "that is one ugly chick." Or I'd be followed around in the shopping mall by groups of barking boys. Or see a caricature of me being passed around in class that no one had even bothered to try to hide. It was always the same: I was too skinny, flat, my hair was gross; the list of defects went on and on and I had been made aware of each of them.

At that age I had no expectation that this would ever change, and thought I would either spend the rest of my life alone or maybe someday find someone who was willing to look past the hideous exterior to what was underneath (assuming it was not also hideous). I did not have a bedrock of self-worth that had been built by unconditional love within the home, so what happened at school cut deep. I believed all of it.

This didn't stop me from wanting love or affection, only from believing I would ever receive it; so in grade eight, there was a boy in my class with red hair and green eyes. We'll call him J. I had a huge crush on him. He was tall and a little gawky and he laughed a lot. That's all I remember about him, really.

Towards the end of the year, someone passed me a note that said--paraphrasing from a nearly-twenty-year-old memory--that he liked me a lot. His name had been signed to the bottom. I was elated. I walked home from school that day thinking that maybe I wouldn't be alone forever. The next day I wrote a note back saying I liked him too.

When he read it, he laughed, doubling over in his chair, and showed it to all of his friends. The note from the day before had been a hoax. It was funny, you see; the thought that anyone could ever have a crush on me was instant joke fodder to my entire grade eight class.

Kids are cruel, yes; that's not the point.

A few months later I cut my hair and started wearing miniskirts, and had filled out some; and a month or two after that I was sexually harassed for the first time while walking to my part-time job at McDonald's when a boy came up to me in public and introduced himself with, "Hi, I'd like to fuck you sometime."

I haven't often seen boys at their best, Dear Readers.

Internet dating post-separation has been more of the latter than the former. No one has messaged me to tell me that I am inherently unloveable and too ugly to be wanted. It must happen to someone and the ego that can withstand that is tougher than diamond.

But I get emails telling me how amazingly beautiful I am and how happy I could make someone by writing back--with never a mention of anything else I might be interested in; or the one who wrote me to say "ur hot" and asked me to tell him all about myself (having apparently not read the handy-dandy profile right beside the picture in which I talk about how much I like books and writing and enjoy saving the world for a living) or the weirdo (no other term will suffice) who ambushes me every single time I log in with an IM containing his name and phone number and the imperative "call me."

Umm, NO.

Says one:

The sun has come. The mists have gone. Thereafter, I came across your profile; it’s interesting to know and to come across. It's so amazing how you can speak right into my heart from the look of your pix; you’re the epitome of beauty.

(I've chosen this one for mockery specifically because it is so obviously plagiarized. I love how "pix" is thrown in there as if it instantly contextualizes the rest of it.)

When highschool started, I loved it when people told me they thought I was beautiful, because for so long I had heard only how ugly I was. I didn't believe it, but I loved it. Really? Beautiful? Halloo! My problems are over! Because surely then I was loveable, people would want to be around me. By the end of highschool, though, the lie underneath the promise had been exposed. Being attractive didn't solve my problems. Seventeen magazine lied, I tell you.

By the end of highschool, when someone told me they thought I was attractive (however phrased), I grimaced and looked away.

It took me a long time to figure out why. Until this February, in fact.

It's the flip side of the same ugly coin. When I was twelve, everyone thought I was ugly and therefore not worth getting to know; now I'm 32 and there are plenty of people who think I am worth getting to know only because I am not ugly. It still has nothing to do with me, the me who has to get up and leave the room when a character in a movie is about to make an ass of themselves, the me who has perfected the art of losing one's temper in a truly spectacular fashion, the me who was lost for days a few years back in the discovery that stars are not evenly distributed throughout space but are clumped about so that the fabric of space resembles lace, and there are parts of the galaxy you could sit in and not see any stars. The boys didn't care then and they don't care now; I can't help feeling that the same people who made my life so miserable back in grades 6-8 are the very ones haunting internet dating sites haranguing pretty girls to "call me call me call me."

I'm not naive. I know whoever decides to contact me on one of these things is doing so at least in part because they're not repulsed by the photograph I put up, regardless of what we end up talking about. But I've noticed that the only people I'm remotely attracted to or end up talking with more than once are the ones who rarely, if ever, make any mention of what they think about my face.

Posted by Andrea at 8:47 AM | Comments (15)

Come and Go

"Boys come and go, but friends are forever" goes the cliche; but in my experience, forever friends are as rare as good boyfriends or life partners. At every important change in circumstance, some friends stay and some friends drop away; and no matter how many times I've seen it happen, every time it takes me by surprise.

When I moved six miles across town at the age of nine--when I went to a different university than some other friends--when I got married. Do you remember what that's like? When a friendship you thought was based on a connection you had to that particular person turned out to be as ephemeral as your demographic status, and somehow, painfully, after your demographic status changed the friendship fell away. Sure you changed, but not that much; sure, your responsibilities changed, but you still had time for them--and somehow it didn't matter. One day you realize that it's been years since you've spoken to so-and-so and you don't even know what their phone number is anymore. And you can't pinpoint anything specific that went wrong, just one day you were both at the same place in your lives, and then you weren't, and then somehow or other you never spoke to each other again.

For those of you who are moms, how many friends without children did you lose when your eldest was born? Do you remember the confusion, wondering how someone who'd comforted you through heartbreak and job loss and problems within your immediate family and who'd celebrated your wedding, taken you out on your birthday, now never replied to emails or returned messages or wanted to go out even when you'd managed to get someone to take care of the baby and you had the time?

I'm back in it again.

The last few years I've had a pretty busy social calendar, generally going out once or twice a month, which is impressive for a hardcore introvert like me. But I think since last August, not counting the joys and trials of dating, I've probably gone out once or twice period, with friends.

The monkey on one shoulder reminds me of my increased responsibilities and decreased time, that it's been a particularly brutal winter and no one's wanted to go out, that my friends are busy and have their own lives and responsibilities.

The monkey on the other shoulder wonders if people are afraid that single motherhood is contagious, if they just don't know what to say, if I've changed more than I can recognize myself. (Sort of like when my readership numbers went down by 30% the week after I moved out of the house, last August, and never recovered--not a good week for my estimation of human nature, Dear Readers.)

This is not a plea for excursions, really; I say this because when I first posted about the Cat a while ago, several friends coincidentally emailed me that day to say, "Hey, we should go out!" And it was very sweet, but that's not the point of this post.

It makes me appreciate the friends who have stayed friends through all the demographic turbulence even more. They're real connections between two people instead of a coincidence that seems solid but can melt overnight, like I'm hoping the snow does next week when we finally get seasonal temperatures around here.

It also makes me realize that, as I had to get married friends when I got married and had to get mom friends when I had Frances, now that I'm a single mom, I guess I'd better get some single mom friends.

It stinks, though.

Posted by Andrea at 8:43 AM | Comments (9)

Moral Dilemmas II: where I answer my own rhetorical questions, or start to

Him: What do you think about dating more than one person at a time?

Me: I think it's fine, so long as everyone is being honest and knows what is going on.

Thinking: And even then...

When do you owe someone that honesty?

While before the first date is too much too soon, and after marriage is too little too late, there is a wide grey area in between where potential misunderstandings, hurt feelings and awkward conversations abound. This is probably why most people either a) avoid dating more than one person at a time or b) avoid having the conversations, thereby cheating by default.

But: is it the expectations that lie at the root of those misunderstandings and hurt feelings--that is, that people date one person at a time, and therefore only exceptions to this rule require communication--or the lack of honesty? If we expected people to be dating more than one person until hearing otherwise directly from them, how would that change?

~~~~~

Last week I read a column in the Globe and Mail titled The Other Woman, all about those poor sad dupes who believe the married guy loves them because he buys them lingerie.

Before I get to the part where I choked, I'd like to point out that any woman in any relationship who believes that a guy loves her because he buys her stuff, regardless of their official relationship status, is a poor sad dupe. This is not an affliction that holds only for The Other Woman. All of us are in the position of attempting to judge someone else's intentions and honesty based on a combination of gifts, actions, words, looks, consistency, and so on; none of us will ever fully penetrate or understand the heart of another.

Here are the choking hazards:

It's true there are women who profess not to care if their man leaves his wife.

...aha, but they are miserable, self-deluded wretches, engaged in a pathetic pretense. Deep down all women want the diamond ring and the white-picket fence. We have chosen to disregard what the women have to say about themselves, and will shortly share with you instead the musings of a group of self-proclaimed 'experts' who have not a shred of evidence among them.

But I would suggest that's an unhealthy display of defensiveness and self-degradation, and it points to the problem that many psychologists say underlies the reason single women settle for a part-time man. It's that old bugaboo: low self-esteem.

...because there's no such thing as a psychologically healthy woman who doesn't want to be married or partnered, would rather have several casual relationships over one serious one, enjoys being single or has tried marriage and didn't like it. Since we can't find a mental illness common to all women sleeping with married men which can be treated pharmaceutically (pity, it's so much more profitable), we'll just shame them all into silence or compliance by telling them it's their low self-esteem.

Here's one way to see things clearly. Think of yourself as a Ferrari in a garage that you are offering to him to use any time he wants. You fill it up with gas. You keep it clean, finely detailed for his pleasure.

...because clear thinking in relationships always involves objectifying yourself and seeing yourself primarily as a man's ticket to orgasm. This, by the way, also defines high self-esteem (see above).

The best advice, however, is the pre-emptive kind. Channel Barbara Amiel: When she was between husband No. 3 (David Graham) and husband No. 4 (Conrad Black), she was in London, moving among the great and the good. There were plenty of men, but she knew what she wanted and what she deserved.

...because Conrad Black may be a felon, but he's a rich felon and he was all hers. Good thinking, Barbara!

Ready for more? Let's read a few comments.

On second thought, I'll let you read the comments. Except for this one: "Here's one thing I know to be true: Cheaters cheat. It's what they do."

Too true. Scientifically proven. DNA studies have in fact found that these types are a separate sub-species, the Homo Sapiens Infidelus.

I have been both the jezebel and the frigid bitch. I was the same person both times. Wasn't I?

My self-esteem was not sky-high the one time and rock-bottom the other. Being the jezebel, if anything, reduced my sense of myself because what the hell was I doing? Why was I doing this? A scenario that strikes me as more likely (if you believe women are people) than a wilting wallflower waiting for a married man to make her feel complete. My ethics and morals were not substantially different. I was the same person--not, in either case, wholly innocent; not, in either case, wholly to blame; in both cases the same mix of insecurities and strengths, blind spots and clear thinking, wishes and fears, smarts and stupids that I am on most other days. I was me.

Anyone can become at any time the person they are sure they will never be, doing the thing they are sure they will never do. What sort of hubris allows one to think they are exempt from human failings? At the very least any woman who's ever been through the first year of motherhood, when all of our precious notions of what sort of mothers we can be and will be crumble into a haze of sleep-deprivation and expert-laden guilt, ought to know better. She ought to know that all of us are capable of failing those we love most on earth simply because we are sometimes not the people we thought we were or wanted to be.

Most of the science I've read on the issue of infidelity concludes that both men and women are not lifelong monogamous pair-bonders, but opportunistic adulterers. That is, we will remain faithful so long as we are convinced that this is our best deal (in a modern society, factoring in the cost of divorce, the impact on children, and so on); but once we are presented with something we think is a better deal, we'll take what we can get, for as long as we can get away with it.

It's not a flattering portrait of human nature; but then, science can also explain most of our altruistic and nurturing behaviours including within our immediate families through mathematical formulas based on ratios of genetic relatedness. It feels noble, spiritual, pure, high-minded, and it's not.

From the gutters of humanity's primate nature (ask any female chimp how many males she fucked per offspring and, if she were human, she'd give you a wicked little laugh) to the heights of romantic idealism in the next installment, since this one is getting long enough, don't you think?

Posted by Andrea at 9:03 AM | Comments (4)

Down With Love. Sort of.

Not all of us are happily coupled on Valentine's Day, you know?

There are those of us who are happily uncoupled, unhappily coupled, or unhappily uncoupled.

All this balloon hearts and chocolate boxes and roses stuff--the last time I really got excited about Valentine's Day I was in highschool. More power to those of you whose hearts are fluttering as I type with wondering about what your sweetheart has planned for you today, and my sympathies to the ones who only wish their sweetheart was planning anything but you already know that despite store windows filled with pink-and-red signs for the last four weeks that you're not getting anything because s/he's somehow managed to forget.

For the rest of us, a potpourri of smug news about romance:

1. Hey, you know that old trope about how men want beautiful women and women want rich men? You know that it's hogwash? That people will say that it's true but when their behaviour is measured both men and women value attractiveness over money? Yeah, take that Bill Gates.

2. Did you know that kissing transmits information about health, intentions, willingness to commit to raising children, and genetic compatibility? According to Scientific American Mind (and really, why would they lie to us?) it might have evolved from the primate feeding tactic of chewing food for children before passing it directly to their mouths. So romantic. (Still, read the article.)

3. Of course, Frances's school is going all out. There is a Danceathon! Everyone is to wear pink or red! There will be a special snack at kindergarten! There will be the annual exchange of tacky, punny, branded cardlets! It is all too exciting for words! Valentine's Day, hurrah!

I much prefer this version.

A few nights ago we were curled up on the sofa and she started talking about getting married, for some reason. Knowing Frances it came right out of the blue, as her topics of converstation frequently do.

"Do you want to get married someday?" I asked her.

"Yeah."

"Do you know who you want to marry?"

"I want to marry my Daddy," she said. "But he told me that I can't."

"That's true," I said, lips twitching, trying not to giggle. "There are rules that say daughters can't marry their daddies. But there might be someone else one day."

She had no reply but a heartfelt sigh.

With two divorces under my belt my belief in marriage and monogamy might have been ground to a fine powder, but love is still beautiful. Even if it doesn't stay.

Posted by Andrea at 10:16 AM | Comments (13)

Even when it's good, it's bad

He put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, smiling, and said, "So are all of your friends married and having kids right now?"

"All of them." I laughed. "Actually, so was I, but I separated last year."

"Really!"

It's so strange to think of all of my friends just entering the funhouse as I'm leaving it. So many engagement rings and wedding rings and ultrasound photos and baby showers; and stranger still is, we're all the same age. But as out-of-step as I must be with the typical life cycle of my actual generation, it's hard for me to think of my life as inappropriate: my mother was married when she was 17. Seventeen! And still married, 37 years later. So for me to be married at 24 was practically delinquent. I was pushing spinster status.

So there they all are, getting married and having babies, and I'm getting divorced and (unless something changes in the next few years) probably done with having babies, as sad as that makes me.

Except that another friend or two and a colleague are in marriages that are either crumbling or have crumbled. You're told to go out and get this thing and then build your life on it, but then sometimes in a matter of hours it vanishes; this thing that was supposed to be the foundation of your adult life turns into gravel. All of a sudden all the other things you thought you had, you don't have either. The job and the house and the neighbourhood and the family and the friends and the finances and the plans and the retirement and all the other things you built on top of this one thing that was supposed to be the foundation; the foundation gets whisked away like the magician's tablecloth, only nothing else stays standing. When you lose your spouse you don't just lose your spouse. You lose everything else.

Sunday morning I woke from a dream where it was last summer again, and I was moving out of my house. Sorting through all the paperwork, choosing what to bring, what to shred, what to throw away, what to leave. I emptied can after can of recycled paper, carried boxes into the truck. My father and mother and brother were there, for some reason, though my brother lives out east and wouldn't have come for such an occasion in any case. Coming back from carrying one box into the truck, I walked down the hall, into the old kitchen, and put my palms flat onto the countertop, rested my forehead between them, and cried.

Now: I don't miss my ex-husband, and I don't miss that house; but all of the things I built on the assumption that they would be forever, and which were lost too--I suppose, the paperwork; what to keep, what to leave, what to destroy--all of that, Frances riding her tricycle down the driveway and walking to find toads in the woods nearby and the picture of the family I thought I was going to have all those years ago, the one with a happy child between two happy parents who are happy with each other, maybe another happy child or two in time, the one that proved itself to be so entirely illusory that it could not tolerate the contrast with reality--all of that. So even then, even when all the traces of love in the relationship have been scrubbed out with acid and salt, even when you know it is the right thing to do, even when part of you is looking forward to some of the changes, even then, it's hard. It's a hard thing. Even when it's not the actual person or the actual place that you miss, even when it's just the idea of those things, what they were supposed to represent.

Then I think of what it must be like when the spouse you might lose is someone you still love, the house you might lose is one you still love, and all of the other things depending on that, the entire life built that might be about to crash down, and you'd think I'd have been through this often enough to know what to say or do, but I don't.

Posted by Andrea at 8:49 AM | Comments (9)

It was almost brief.

I've written so much about volunteering and 'enough' and finding time and making babies lately that I'm afraid, if I do it again today, I'll only make you mad ("speaking of ENOUGH, Andrea..."); so I'll use them handy-dandy bullet things to say:

1. Jen and Mad are having their baby shower today. Go have some cake and stick a gift-ribbon on their hair, and see the tremendous pile of shower gifts they're sitting on.

2. I am undergoing Screening Processes, since my volunteering options are the kind where they Screen you, to make sure you aren't a criminal trying to get access to vulnerable populations. So, no details yet, but it's still going to be 24 hours this year. The plan is the Big Sisters--they have group programs for volunteers who can't commit to the full 8 hours a month (the prospect of which makes me faint) and I love kids, and it will be good to work with people instead of trees and dirt, which is more my normal thing.

3. I'm also going to be interviewed about it tonight by the lovely and talented Bon over at Chrib Chronicles, around 9 pm Ontario time, and you do the math elsewhere. The link will be here. Bon and Jen and Mad and I will all be talking about the social justice wedding stuff, or at least we will at the beginning.

See? That was short. I can do short.

~~~~~

OK, I can't do short.

Hey! It's a day to read!

And you're here. Oops. So am I. So I'm going to tell you, first of all, that turning off the computer to read something print-based is a lovely idea. And secondly, since Friday belongs to Frances around these parts, I'm going to blather a bit about books today.

I taught myself how to read when I was three, according to my mother; and I see no reason to disbelieve her since my only memory of kindergarten is of sitting in the cloakroom with a grade-five student who volunteered to show me flashcards of words like "telephone" and "dinosaur" while I heard my friends outside drilling the alphabet. Thus I have no memory of a time in which I did not understand what letters are, how they are put together into words and how they connect with each other to form sentences, how the sentences link to make stories. I have no memory of a life before books. This makes it strange to see Frances tottering slowly towards literacy herself as I try to make this process conscious and show her how it all works.

Books are magic. I am an addict, and I'll admit this clearly makes me biased, but books are magic. Each one is a potent little package of incremental transformation. It mixes our own mind with someone else's, and when we pull back again, neither one is quite the same for the experience. A book makes a reader, and a reader makes a book. That object you hold in your hands and for which the bookstore charges you (or the library swipes your card) is not, properly speaking, the real book. The real book is what happens in your mind while you read it. That physical object, all those pages with black marks on it, is just the means of transmission.

Every book you read is yours and yours alone; it exists for you and because of you. The particular experience you have in your mind while you read it will not be duplicated by anyone else. No one else will see Anne or Gatsby or Huck or Peter Pan the way you did (until they make a movie of it, anyway). The author wrote it and lots of other people worked to get it to where you could pick it up; but you closed that loop and made it a book by letting it into your mind.

The internet doesn't do this very well yet, I don't think, because it is difficult to make your mind as open and receptive as it needs to be when your monitor is giving you eyestrain, your mouse is giving you carpal tunnel syndrome and your uncomfortable chair is giving you a backache. It is difficult to resist the temptation to skim, to skip, to click away when it gets difficult or challenging. I don't know if I can think of even five instances where something I read on the internet connected with me in the same place as a really good story or novel does, that left me saying "yes," even though I wasn't quite sure what I was agreeing to, or with, only that in some way I couldn't explain what I had read was the truth, regardless of its lack of factuality. The right book in the hands of the right reader at the right time can do this. It's magic.

If I were to even try to list all of the books that have closed this hidden loop in me, while I am closing the loop of that book while reading it, it would take an entire blog's worth of posts, and you would get bored of it long before I would. They change, of course; if you and I never read the same book because the experience in our minds is not the same, then it is also true that you and I never read the same book twice, because the experience on re-reading will not be the same, either. Some books worsen, and some improve. (Some are like comfort food and we re-read them to get the same experience again but I wonder, actually, if that's an illusion and it changes more than we recognize.)

Books are teachers and friends, counselors and prophets, therapists and clairvoyants, healers and lovers, magicians and heretics. Nothing else can do what a good book does, because a reader is not a watcher or observer but a participant. The words of a book are an intricate lattice with far more space than substance; space which you, the reader, fill in. That's work, and that's what makes the book yours. I think it was Margaret Atwood who said that no matter what it looks like, writing is a performance art; and she was right, and the audience, too, is up on stage, filling in the scenery, singing the chorus, and supplying the cast. That's what makes books special; and they are special, dammit. They're not just movies on a page.

Frances can't read yet. She knows her letters and understands that they make sounds and is beginning to understand that the sounds can be put together to make words. But she's not quite there. She certainly won't be reading "dinosaur" and "telephone" next year. But I don't care. I don't care how or when she learns to read (although I suspect that her teachers at a certain point might begin to hyperventilate). All I care about is that her current delight with books continues. All I want is for her to be able to pick up a new book with the same sense of anticipation and incipient pleasure that I do, looking forward to hours in one sense spent curled up under a blanket on the overstuffed armchair with a snack and drink to hand; and in another, equally real sense, spent in another life, another time, another place, another self.

Posted by Andrea at 12:00 PM | Comments (8)

A Near Miss

Frances does not go over to play at C's house as often as she would like, for various logistical reasons, the most important of which to date has been the toilet. Specifically, their bathroom is not equipped for a person of such small stature to use it on their own (and why should it be?), and I don't know who would help her in my absence. There was, on one of their earliest playdates, an Incident; and it caused Frances great shame and embarassment, so since that time the rule has been that she can go to play for an hour, after she uses our bathroom, and then I go pick her up, because that's about as long as I can count on her bladder lasting. Which is fine; she's my kid, it's my job.

But. Over the holidays, C was pet-sitting her aunt's pomeranian, a round furball that looked more like a stuffed toy than a pet and, as you can imagine, Frances was entranced. I let her go over to play and started the laundry, counting myself lucky to have some unforeseen free time to do it in. As I've mentioned before my apartment does not have in-suite laundry but the laundry room is right across the hall from my upstairs door, so except for its hours (8 am to 10 pm daily) there is no inconvenience.

A couple from Russia (there are many, many Russian immigrants in this apartment complex) was doing their laundry at the same time; the man turned to me and says, "Is that your baby?" I look out and, indeed, there are Frances's face and hands pressed to the glass door separating our block from C's--this glass door is right outside C's upstairs door, so she can't have been there for more than a moment. I grab my laundry room keys and open the door for her; "Why aren't you playing at C's?"

"I had something very important to tell you," she says.

We go into our apartment. "Oh? What was that?"

"C likes her dog a lot. It is a very cute doggie. It kissed me! Kisses are nice." (We'd had the dog and C over for a bit before Frances went to her house, and Frances walked the dog--small enough for Frances to walk on a leash--around the ground floor. When the dog stopped to lick Frances's fingers, she looked positively ecstatic. "He kissed me!" she said, voice full of wonder, and held her fingers out in front to contemplate them. Her first boyfriend (or girlfriend) is going to be hard-pressed to top that reaction.)

"That's true, I can see that."

"Maybe someday I can get a doggie."

My lips twitch. Earlier that very day, on hearing about this situation, a friend of mine had predicted that this request would be forthcoming. He was right. "Maybe someday. When you're a little older."

"OK."

"Are you done at C's?"

"No, I told her I was coming back."

"OK. I'll walk you back there."

I do this--two doors down in the upstairs hallway, and thank the gods for that hallway in wintertime. Only be for long enough to finish the laundry--to get everything out of the dryer and back into the apartment, and then I will go get her. But before the laundry clock is up there is a heavy knock on the upstairs door. I expect it to be C, or maybe C's grandmother (her mother is working) with Frances, and so open it with a smile.

It is not C, nor is it C's grandmother. It is the newest apartment complex superintendant or whatever she is, she helps out in the rental office and I've met her once or twice. She is tall, very slim, with long blond hair of exactly the shade you imagine when you hear "blond"; very pretty, in a Cover Girl cosmetics way. One can imagine the faux-Manhattan skyline behind her in a print advertisement exhorting one to buy their newest mascara or lipstick, with a wholesome toothy smile on her face. Beside her is Frances.

"Frances!" I say. "Why aren't you playing at C's?"

"Well I was," she say. "And then I wanted to tell you something."

"OK. Come in." I don't know what I am feeling. Missed dread, maybe. The joint revelation that something very bad could have happened; but it didn't, because there she is, wanting to tell me something. The new superintendant-or-whatever stares at me, obviously expecting some greater reaction. "A man found her," she says, "wandering around in the L block. He called me."

"Thank you."

Frances comes in past my legs. "I wanted to tell you, Mummy. I have something to tell you."

"Just a second." My heart is beating fast. This woman is expecting something from me; it's clear on her face that she thinks I'm a terrible mother right now, from whatever response it is I am lacking. I should be effusive? But she's fine, isn't she? Standing by my legs, wanting to tell me something. I should be relieved? Was I supposed to think she was missing? But she was playing at a friend's, and I thought she was supervised.

"You forgot your camera again." A stupid thing to say. "Why--why aren't you still at C's?"

"I left."

"Clearly."

I should be afraid? But she's fine, she's right here. I should be apologetic? But she was playing at a friend's! She shouldn't have been playing at a friend's, maybe? Am I supposed to feel caught out, guilty? Because she looks only two, I should have been there with her, supervising her myself?

Once when I took her to the Zoo, and brought her into the kid's area where there is a big treehouse with a big slide, and I walked her to the top of the slide and then taken the stroller to meet her at the bottom, she went missing. I stood there and she did not emerge, although other children did. Checked the top again--not there. Checked the bottom--not there. Checked the top and the bottom again--not there. How does a child go missing between the top and the bottom of an enclosed slide in a play structure? I checked the entire kid zoo, every exhibit, imagining myself explaining to her father that somehow I had lost Frances at the zoo, somewhere between the top and the bottom of the slide. Frances was nowhere. How could she be nowhere? I checked the top and bottom of the slide again; growing frantic. Where could she be? She had to be somewhere. I approached a few strangers and asked them, have you seen a girl about this big, blond hair, glasses, wearing an orange t-shirt? No, they all said. I ran around again, checking every exhibit, and coming around a corner saw a cluster of adults gathered around a child. "Where's your Mommy?" one of them asked.

"Frances!" The crowd parted and I hugged her. "Where were you? Where did you go?" The terror broke and I cried; I'd been so worried and now there she was and now I was crying.

"She was at the bottom of the slide," one of the strange adults said.

"I waited for you and you didn't come," said Frances, crying too.

I said nothing. I couldn't speak, in any case. I just hugged her. And I remembered (and maybe you do too) all the times when I was a small child shopping with my mother, following her boots or shoes around the mall, and looking up to realize that it wasn't my mother after all I'd been following, and trying to find her, and failing, and wondering if I would never be found again, and maybe I would have to live somehow in the shopping centre, maybe sleeping on the mattresses in the department store and eating the free samples in the supermarket; until I was found. I'd never before understood the violence of my mother's reaction when she found me. "I was worried sick," I finally said.

This was different. I'd only found out she was missing in the very instant she'd been found, both halves of the dramatic tale presented in the denouement. Yet this very pretty woman expected the traditional conclusion, me clutching Frances to my breast and telling her I was worried sick.

What I am, at that moment, is furious--she was at a friend's, she was supposed to be supervised, she was not supposed to be sent to walk home on her own--she can't open those big glass doors separating blocks so how she got all the way down to L is a mystery, someone else must have opened all of them for her--and if she walked out of C's house on her own someone should have come to tell me. The first time--she wandered out the upstairs door and no one had time to notice, maybe, and were waiting for her to come straight back in; but two times in an hour? I can't show that to this beautiful girl with her own two daughters at home who clearly, clearly, is thinking I am not right in the head right then. But I am furious. I want to know why my little girl was wandering around L block by herself, when I thought she was safe at her friend's. I want to know why no one walked her down the two doors to find her house, when she is only four for god's sake, and just learning to read; I want to know why no one made sure she got home safely. I do that when C comes to play at my house and C is eight. And I know C's family is Russian and (from Ponderosa Jennifer) that Russian culture is a little different when it comes to child-rearing and C's grandmother successfully reared children there presumably with much less supervision than I have come to believe is necessary. However. None of this is helping, in that moment.

"Thank you," I say again to the superintendant-or-whatever. With the shock still rigid on her face, she walks away, and I close the door.

I am still furious. Furious at them, or myself? Not sure at that point. Why did I walk her back over? Why didn't I ask why she'd been allowed to come out into the hallway by herself? Why did I assume it was a fluke and they knew better? Why didn't they look at that glass door separating our blocks and realize she could not possibly open it for herself? But the fury is certainly not Frances's, who can't be expected to know better, so I calmly sit down and let her tell me this very important thing she needed to say.

"The doggie is so cute, Mummy. C really loves her. It is really C's doggie, not her aunt's. I would really like a doggie, Mummy."

"Maybe someday," I say again. "When you're older."

I imagine going down the hall to bang on their door and demand an explanation; but C is a child, and C's mother is at work, and C's grandmother's english is poor. It would not be a fruitful conversation. It would lead to bruised feelings without hope of resolution and possibly a rupture of Frances's one friendship in our apartment block. And after all, isn't everything fine? Isn't Frances at that very moment asking me for a pet doggie? C is a good kid; it's just that she's a kid. She can't be expected to be responsible for Frances's welfare.

I'll have to speak to her mother, I think, dreading it already. Lord, the potential pitfalls in such a conversation--the potential for misunderstanding and self-righteousness and hurt. But she speaks english and she's an adult and I know her fairly well by now, so C's mother it will have to be, even though she wasn't even there. Because it's clear to me that the one thing I can no longer do is allow Frances to go to play at C's house, not even for an hour. Not until I can be sure that someone will make sure she gets home safely if she decides she wants to leave.

Posted by Andrea at 7:36 AM | Comments (11)

Deserving

Andrea: I have a bone to pick with you.

World: Excuse me?

Andrea: I said, I have a bone to pick with you?

World: Just a second. (rifles through stacks of files) Ah! OK, here you are. You do? Are you sure?

Andrea: Yes. You've probably noticed that Christmas is coming soon to some parts of the world, and it's a pretty big deal to preschoolers. And you might have in your file that I've recently separated...

World: Yep.

Andrea: So. I just thought you should know that I really, really wanted there to be a pile of presents from Santa under the tree this year.

World: And?

Andrea: And? And don't you think Frances deserves it?

Luke 12:15 Then He said to them, “Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions.” 16 And He told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man was very productive. 17 “And he began reasoning to himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?’ 18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 ‘And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.”’ 20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?’"

World: (snorts)

Andrea: What?

World: Let me show you your ledger.

Andrea: (in a small voice) Oh. Never mind.

World: Look at the partial list that just covers all the things you have that you can currently see, without turning your head: desktop garbage can, box of kleenex, monitor, telephone, keyboard, hand lotion, two mugs--TWO MUGS! You never drink coffee!, a can of diet coke, box of paperclips, stacks of paper, TWO hardbacked notebooks, fifteen pictures of your daughter...

Andrea: I see your point.

World: Fifteen! How many versions of her face do you need to reflect on, exactly, in the course of a nine-hour workday? OK, she's cute, but...

Andrea: She is very cute.

World: And do you see the stacks of impossibly thin, one-sheet files over there? The millions and millions of them? Care to guess how many of them are for kids who won't be eating this Christmas?

Andrea: All right. I get it.

World: Deserves! What's wrong with you westerners? How could any of you possibly look around and think that you don't already have much more than you could ever deserve? With the exception of a few of you who truly don't have enough, but the whole North American concept of enough is another problem....

Andrea: I said all right! Never mind. We can drop the whole business. Frances will get the yellow duckie under the tree that she asked Santa for, and maybe one or two other things because I really really really want to give her things.

World: Want. Yes. That's the crux of it. But not so fast, I'm afraid. There is still the matter of your outstanding account.

Andrea: My what? Excuse me?

World: Right here. See?

Andrea: Oh. Oh my.

Luke 12:42 And the Lord said, “Who then is the faithful and sensible steward, whom his master will put in charge of his servants, to give them their rations at the proper time? 43 “Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes. 44 “Truly I say to you that he will put him in charge of all his possessions. 45 “But if that slave says in his heart, ‘My master will be a long time in coming,’ and begins to beat the slaves, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk; 46 the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know, and will cut him in pieces, and assign him a place with the unbelievers. 47 “And that slave who knew his master’s will and did not get ready or act in accord with his will, will receive many lashes, 48 but the one who did not know it, and committed deeds worthy of a flogging, will receive but few. From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more.

World: Yes. And what are you going to do about it?

Andrea: There's no way I can possibly pay all that back.

World: Tough nuts, I'm afraid. We have certain expectations for those of you who are truly blessed, and there are no opt-out clauses. Fortunately we have a few generous payment plans.

Andrea: But I already work full-time as an environmentalist...

World: Yes. And you'll see that's already been applied towards your debt.

Andrea: ...and I already donate five per cent of my income to different groups...

World: Five per cent. How much does it impress you when someone like Bill Gates gives five per cent of their income to some grand cause?

Andrea: (small voice) Not a whole lot.

World: You are a lot closer to the Bill Gates's of the world than the refugees and sweatshop workers. See that kid over there? He's asked for a soccer ball for Christmas, every year for the past five years.

Andrea: Maybe I could do six.

World: I don't understand. So many people just come up and pick my pocket--can you believe it?--thinking I owe them more, they deserve more, and they've got one of these fat files, like you have. Why isn't anyone ever satisfied?

Andrea: I'm sorry.

World. Yeah, well don't you worry. They get theirs. When they die we sic the extra-nasty worms on their corpses.

Andrea: (pause) That doesn't sound all that bad, actually, after a lifetime of privilege and wealth. They can't even feel it.

World: I know, we're working on it. Look, if you want to make serious progress on your debt, you know what you can do? You can work on that kid of yours. All she wants is a little yellow duckie, so just give her that little yellow duckie. Make Christmas about all the other stuff--the baking and cooking and songs. The parts all you crazy people get all sentimental about. Do you remember what you got for Christmas when you were growing up?

Andrea: Noooooo.

World: But you remember the daisybraid and the gingerbread trees, don't you? And the year your dog ate all the christmas cookie ornaments off the bottom of the tree? Singing alternative lyrics to Jingle Bells at the school pageants? The handmade felt stocking with your name on it in glitter? All the paper chain ornaments hanging on the family tree? Give Frances the stuff she'll remember.

Andrea: Good point.

World: And teach her how lucky she is, you know? Teach her how much closer she is to the top than the bottom. Maybe she won't rack up her debt quite so fast that way. Help her start paying it back now. She's got a good heart, I think it'll stick. And she's already got a pretty fat file. Besides, where would you even put new toys?

Andrea: (sighs)

World: In the meantime, I'm sure you could be doing more.

Andrea: I could. You're right. I will.

World: Make sure that you do. That might knock a portion of a per cent off of your accumulated total. And if you really, really wanted to impress me....

Andrea: Don't say it. I know what you're going to say, and just don't.

World: ...then cut down on the book purchases. You already have enough to get you through the next six months...

Andrea: I knew it. I knew that's what you were going to say.

World: ...and there is a library across the street...

Andrea: Yeah, I know.

World: ...do you know how lucky you are to even have a library, period?

Andrea: OK. Fine. Shut up.

World: So?

Andrea: I'll think about it.

~~~~~

Normally, when someone asks a girl when she's going to have a baby, the questioner is risking a broken nose, a missing tooth, or at least a clenched-jaw grin with a nominally-polite "fuck you" disguised as a "not yet." The response one normally does not get is, "What a great idea! I'm going to go home and get started right away!"

So you can imagine my surprise. What you probably can't imagine is how happy I was.

Unlike a real-life labour, this time, the more hours the better. But it's not a contest. If all you can see for you next year is an afternoon free to stuff envelopes, then put your three hours into the ring and be happy that it's three hours more than you otherwise would have done. Not everybody needs to bring a stroller to the baby shower--booties and rattles and bottles are valuable and needed, too.

Meanwhile, not all of you have blogs of your own, I know. So for those of you who don't, I'll put the comments and emails into a separate post, so they're all collected somewhere. Look for it early in the new year.

Posted by Andrea at 10:32 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

A Baby for Mad and Jen

Do you know what, I am inordinately proud of myself about my New Year's Resolutions this year.

In the midst of getting a divorce, I managed to keep four out of five. (I dropped the shopping limit one when it became obvious that I would be setting up a new household--but up until the move I did pretty well.)

I wrote a book (first draft, but I'm finishing this thing whether I ever publish it or not).

I read way more than two science books.

I began exercising again and kept it up, five or six days a week, all through the move--and even when the elliptical machine broke and it took me three months to get a replacement.

I even broke the back of the Diet Coke thing. I think. Knock on wood. I'm down to less than one can a day.

Given everything that's happened this year, and there's a whole hell of a lot I haven't shared because it is not bloggable, you know something? That is pretty good. There is only one resolution I didn't manage to keep: more activism.

Oh yeah. Ouch.

My intentions were good, back in January. There was the magazine and the Just Posts and all the rest of it--then the separation came along, and my eyes focused on the world just past the end of my nose, and it wasn't that I didn't care about anything that happened to the rest of the world--I just didn't care enough, in the context of what I was dealing with, to make myself do something. Oh sure, plenty of lifestyle changes on the environmental side, and a fair smattering of posts on my favourite issues, and a lot of reading. But not the kind of concrete action that makes me feel like I am putting my money where my mouth is.

So when Mad said that she often feels disheartened about the impact of the Just Post Roundtable series, I know exactly what she means. All of these words bouncing around in the ether--what are they good for? Have they put food in anyone's belly? Needed medicines in one hand? A roof over one head? Maybe, but gods only know, really. It can feel futile. Futile and trivial and wasteful. How dare I sit here in my comfortable chair in a nice warm house pounding keys with my fingers when there are people starving out there!

But here is what Mad and Jen's social justice wedding has meant to me, over the past year; and since I was the maid of honour I think I'm allowed to get a little maudlin.

It gives me hope.

Not hope that all the world's problems will be solved by Wednesday next as a result of this blogging project; not even hope that the direct impacts of it will be significant or even measurable. But hope that when life got to be too much and I had to put my light down for a while, someone else picked it up and carried on for me, until I could take it back again. Hope that no matter what it feels like every day, when the (mostly corporate) messages we are surrounded with every day are almost entirely about products or gizmos or fashion styles or celebrities or the salacious use of someone else's tragedy or a bunch of old rich white guys pretending to care for the cameras--and there is almost nothing out there about other people who care or all the small individual things they are doing to make the world a better place, no matter how much it feels like I am the only one, that I am not the only one. There are millions of you, and you are all out there doing your small things too, and no one is paying any attention but it doesn't matter, it all adds up; I feel better every day just knowing you're out there.

Hope is good all on its own; but it leads to more, too, I think. Hope plus conviction can equal courage; and courage leads to action. Small actions, maybe. Saying something in a conversation where you might not have said something before. A letter or email where you might not have written something before. (Speaking of which, isn't the first anniversary traditionally marked with a paper gift? Maybe this is an opportunity to write a letter, if you haven't before.) A donation that is slightly bigger than it used to be. A smile for someone who used to make you uncomfortable. Small things.

But small things can lead to big things. They don't, necessarily, but they can. Certainly without the small things, the big things won't happen either. We all have to start somewhere. But Mad, I share your frustration and desire to see something real come out of this--something that is not just words on a screen.

So I'm going to do that obnoxious thing that wedding guests start to do about a year after the wedding:

Where's the baby?

It's been a whole year; what are you waiting for? Are you going to give us a baby, or not?

OK, maybe the two of you have done enough work on this whole thing. Maybe the rest of us can give you a baby. What do you say, fellow guests? Is there some volunteer or activist gig you can commit to over the next year, to show Mad and Jen that this is not just bits and bytes, but that all the hard work they have put into this is making an impact somewhere?

It's fashionable to do fundraising gigs on the blogosphere--and I'm not knocking them, they're good and necessary and I've run one of my own. But let's do something different. Let's do an hoursraising gig. Let's each of us think about the next year and how many hours, over that year, we realistically think we can divert from TV and blogging and housework to something in the real world, something that is neither writing a cheque nor writing a post (but might be writing a letter). What do you think? Can we do it?

I'll take a risk and start.

Mad and Jen, to celebrate your wedding and all the work you've put into it, I'll commit to spending a few hours a month in an active volunteer role in my community. I'm thinking maybe at a women's shelter, but I'll have to poke around over the holidays and see what I can come up with. Let's say 2 hours a month minimum over twelve months--twenty-four hours. That's my gift back to you. Anyone who wants to participate, leave a comment, trackback in a post, or send an email to andrea at andreamcdowell dot com.

Happy Anniversary.

Posted by Andrea at 12:51 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

The Peril of Positive Thinking

I was, once, dumped by an entire group of women because I was "too negative."

(You're scratching your heads. Too negative? Didn't I just write about how Frances is nearly perfect? Didn't I write earlier in the year about how I was determined not to wallow in self-pity because of the separation? That I was lucky to live in a time and place where I had the legal ability and financial resources to be able to leave? Too negative? Am I sure it wasn't because I was too treacly? Yep. I'm positive.)

See, there once was a place called Fertility Friend, which might or might not still exist, I don't know. And on this site there was a forum, and in this forum there was a group for Canadian women who were trying to get pregnant. And in this group there was bonding; unfortunately, the bonding was unequal, and cliques did develop, as they have a tendency to do.

The shit eventually hit the fan, as shit manages to do, and one of the little bits of shit flung here and there was an email (sent by someone I thought was a friend), enumerating in great detail my faults without any attempt to talk to me first about what I thought had happened, and sent not only to me, but to several of my close friends and many of the women who most disliked me--this, Dear Readers, is not an effective conflict management strategy. Should you ever be tempted to try such a thing, might I advise you to first, for the love of god, talk to the scoldee privately and get your story straight. At some point near the end of this particular email chain was an exhortation from the author that perhaps, if I had only been more positive and worked harder on my attitude, the first year of motherhood would not have been so hard for me.

Consider: I had given birth one month early to a child who might or might not have a genetic disorder, who had numerous feeding problems, did not grow, had reflux and so needed to be kept upright for 24 hours a day, refused bottles, and would only sleep if in physical contact with me. The advice came from a woman who'd given birth to a healthy full-term son who grew at the appropriate rate, slept well, had access to a free in-house babysitting service, and still had not managed to be happy during her first year of motherhood. I was Not Amused--especially as I'd done my very best to be as positive as I could be, under the circumstances.

The thing is, there are times when Positive Thinking does not and cannot make you happy. It can only make you less unhappy. This is what irritates me about the hardcore Positive Thinking/The Secret crowd: Jesus Murphy, if someone is down in a pit and crying for help, if you can't manage to throw them a rope, at least you can avoid spitting on them!

The worst of Frances's first year I kept to myself, until it was well over with--how terrified I was that maybe she was sick, and might die; that I might be starving her, and maybe that's why she wasn't growing, that I might be killing my baby; that this undiagnosable genetic syndrome might carry horrible health risks; the weeks I could not bring myself to leave the house because I was so sick and sore from hearing the things people said about her, or looked at her. How I'd lost weight below where I was when I got pregnant because I spent all day walking walking walking my sick and in-pain baby across the floor, never able to put her down, and never able to eat anything I couldn't grab with one hand. What I shared, instead, was what seemed to me the typical difficulties of new motherhood: getting so tired from a baby who won't sleep days on end that, eventually, you lose it and yell at them, even though you take it back right away; fights with partners about childcare and housework that you've never had before; trying to find the time to do the things you used to do that make you you. Gods know such stories are all over the momosphere, interspersed with the first smiles and milestones and adorable photographs.

That first year was a deep black hole, in many ways; and hold that lantern as high as I could, crane my neck back as far as I could, I still could not see the surface world. I could only see a shallower hole. I did my best, but I defy anyone in similar circumstances to spend time like that in a maternal glow, positive attitude or no.

I think it's probably obvious from the bulk of what I write that I do try very hard to keep myself on the upside of an even keel. My happiness is my job, not anyone else's, certainly not the world's. No one can count on having ideal circumstances every moment of every day (or any moment of any day); therefore, any real and lasting happiness will depend on how I manage adversity and difficulty (keeping in mind that these difficulties are of a pretty minor sort, globally speaking), not how successfully I chase the things or situations I think might make me happy. Things and situations never make happiness, not for long; there are always better things and better situations to long for; we make happiness for ourselves. (Which is not an excuse for not trying to better one's situation, or I'd never bother to try to publish; only a reminder that whatever one wants and is working for in the future, one needs to pay attention to one's happiness now, in the present moment, or happiness will always be out there somewhere.)

And so, yes, there are times when it seems that someone is unhappy out of all proportion to what I know of their circumstances; but that is the key, what I know. Which isn't going to be perfect or complete; how can what I know of someone else's life compare to what they know of their own? If they tell me they're doing the best they can, then who am I, standing on the surface of the world with the sun shining on my face, to wag my finger at them and tell them they could leave that hole if they really tried? If I care about them, then surely it's my job to throw them a rope, or a ladder, or a brighter lantern, or at least a paperback novel and a tin of cookies to pass the time. Not a derisive lecture.

There are times in the years that have passed since then--since Frances learned to sleep in her crib and overnight became a joyful, smiling creature; since we learned to live with the permanent undiagnosis; since I acclimatized to the stares and comments and questions we still sometimes get--that I worry that this blog of mine might hurt someone who is sitting in that hole. That my focus on using my thought patterns to manage my moods (it's a conscious thing, Dear Readers; I work