Contents

There is, at this moment, in my living-room:

1. One yellow sand-pail's worth of Little People arranged around the LP farmhouse.

2. Said yellow sand-pail, underneath the flower table.

3. A dozen stuffed animals dumped haphazardly on the floor between the coffee table and the couch.

4. One large Wedgits "cake toy" arranged in a manner using several tricky angles perched precariously in the centre of the floor.

5. Three kitchen chairs, a small black folding chair and a couch cushion arranged into a square cat house.

6. A promotional gingerbread boy toy from the third Shrek movie containing cards that confer superpowers (such as flight) and a promotional Candyland toy including a special magnetic candycane on the coffee table.

7. One white doll's bootie between the lion chair and the big chair.

8. A calico critter's bedroom set including bunk bed arranged next to the playground set.

9. A pair of old science experiments on the kitchen table: two small bowls of water, one of which has dissolved in it a few teaspoons of salt, and the other of sugar. I believe we are waiting for the water to evaporate. This may take time.

10. Two sport socks the size of my palms underneath the kitchen table.

11. A piece of neon-green cardstock with "BEYOND" written on it in dark green pencil crayon underneath the stuffed animals.

12. A paint press (Francesese term for a book which you "paint" with water, making images appear), and beside it a small bowl of water and two brushes, all on the kitchen table.

13. A three-year-old pair of thick eyeglasses with pink hooks to wrap around the ears, between the Little People and the stuffed animals, on the floor.

14. Two small, filthy sandals, encrusted with sand, beneath the coffee table.

15. On the couch, one mother, clearly exhausted, remembering only now (again) that she meant to teach her daughter how to put her own toys away.

Posted by Andrea at 7:22 PM | Comments (5)

Mom Points

People who design points programmes must hate me: I have a free credit card, pay the balance every month, never pay interest, and use the points every four months or so for a free week's worth of groceries. I have a points card for the drugstore that I use solely to rack up extra points on the weekends they're offered and pick up free stuff when I have enough points, once or twice a year; and used this way (without ever getting any extras) it works out to about 30% of everything all the time. All of their careful marketing efforts have utterly failed to make me buy anything I wouldn't have bought anyway; I just get a lot of free stuff. (An added bonus is the well-stocked linen cabinet from which I rarely run out of anything, since the key is to stock up on necessities on the extra-points weekends.)

But it occured to me last week that I might be spending a bit too much time plotting my exploitation of points-for-purchase programmes when I realized that I now think of mothering acts, at least sometimes, as a way to earn points. Which I then spend.

For example:

I dropped Frances off directly at senior kindergarten just as class was about to begin (2 MP). I worked out and did my homework and picked her up again just as class was ending (2 MP, total of 4). We went home and ate tuna sandwiches on whole wheat bread with a side of cheddar cheese and locally grown grapes (3 MP, total 7). After watching a few short Clifford episodes on dvd (neutral) Frances asked to play outside, and out we went, me with my homework. Frances found a bucket of mud and settled in for an afternoon of very messy play. Hands in all the way up to the elbows. Hair got muddy, face got muddy, shirt got muddy, pants got muddy, shoes and socks got muddy. Occasionally she would head inside to bring out a plastic toy and cover it with mud. I'm not sure what she thought was going on, but as I sat there (reading about grammar through the lens of pro-choice and pro-life arguments--don't ask) I thought: exploration of nature! Scientific experimentation! Outdoor play! Then she started pouring buckets of water into an old rubbermaid and trying to sink some of her toys and leaves from nearby bushes, and I thought: physics! Displacement of matter! Mass, volume and weight! Cause and effect! I did not think: laundry! Mud all over the floor and I just mopped yesterday! Need to give her another bath tonight! I'm not sure but I think that has to be worth at least five or six Mom Points, so I was up to a total of 12, minimum.

Then supper was roast pork, mashed potatoes and apple slices, for a couple more.

So you know what I did, of course. I spent them.

A few days later when I was stressed and exhausted, she watched two extra hours of TV (cost of 3 MP) and I let her eat (healhty) snacks while she was watching it instead of having regular meal times (another 3 or so MP). That's ok, I still have about 10 Mom Points in the bank that I can spend today, since Mondays this term are going to be brutal. (Classes 8:30 to 4:30, which means daycare for Frances 7:30 to 5ish, which is a long day for a little tyke and doesn't leave us much time to play together--but it's only one day a week and I've been saving up my Mom Points!)

Mom Points can only be obtained from good mothering, and can only be spent to atone for acts of less-than-ideal-but-still-acceptable mothering. You don't get to earn Mom Points by doing the bare minimum, and you don't get to spend Mom Points on anything you know isn't really good enough (like yelling at the kids--those exchanges work out of an entirely separate and non-barter system of Acts, Apologies, Guilt Levels, Improvement Plans, Good Intentions and Breakthroughs). You get them when you have extra energy to be SuperFun Mom or SuperHealthy Mom or SuperPatient Mom. And you spend them when you are SuperTired Mom and need to lie down on the couch for a few hours, or skip a bath one night, or serve dinner out of a can.

This is nothing revolutionary. It's the same impulse that tells us to make up for a trip to the dentist's with a small new toy, or that it's ok to spend four hours watching tv today because last saturday we were at the Science Centre and didn't watch any, or that cake for breakfast is part of a balanced childhood and besides last week they had fruit and yogurt every day--except that my mind has decided to explain this to me as a points program. Earn and spend! Like currency. It's a little disturbing, frankly.

In the meantime, today is going to be a crappy day for Frances. Last week when I dropped her off early at daycare, she cried for the first time in a year. I tried to comfort her and failed, but was still late for class. I got to be a bad student and a bad mom.

But that's ok, because yesterday I took her to the museum and we looked at dinosaurs and she's been asking for that for months, and we went to a park, and out for dinner. The points calculator in my brain is already telling me I'll come out slightly ahead.

Posted by Andrea at 7:28 AM | Comments (8)

A Couple of Books about Kids and Divorce

So. I'd read one book about the effect of divorce on kids when I first separated, but recently decided that I need to know more, so I went out and read another three plus the first one again. On the one hand, I now have new lines in my forehead and a deep appreciation for lamaze breathing. On the other, I can at least compare and contrast them in the finest tradition of english undergrads everywhere. (Wait a minute. I am an english undergrad! Crap.)

Hopefully you don't need one of these. But if you do, now you can benefit from my obsessive researching, you lucky devils. At the bottom I'll summarize the main points that all the authors agreed on. If you feel like trusting me, you won't have to read the books at all.

The first: The Truth About Kids and Divorce

Robert Emery is a divorced dad (currently remarried) with one child from the first marriage and four (!) from the second. He is also a therapist and researcher in the area of the effects of divorce on kids.

Pros: Generally positive and upbeat. Lots of emphasis on the importance for separating parents to avoid conflict, especially in front of the kids, and some suggestions for how to coparent in a high-conflict situation. Speeches and scripts for what to tell the kids and suggestions for custody schedules depending on age, developmental stage, and level of parental conflict. I don't mind telling you that Frances's schedule with her Dad is lifted right out of this book. Also focuses on how important it is for parents to deal with their emotions on their own so they can continue to be available and stable when parenting, so that the children can focus on being kids and growing up.

Cons: Not a whole lot of statistical information or research on the actual effects of divorce on kids, so if you're looking for that kind of data you're best off looking elsewhere. Also, the number of times "punishment" was mentioned in the parenting section made me cringe. You may want to skip that part. Unless "punishment" gives you warm fuzzies. I don't know.

The Second: Child Friendly Divorce: A Divorce(d) Therapist's Guide

Diane Berry is another therapist who deals with kids and families undergoing divorce and who has been through a divorce herself with her own children. She also developed and administers a mandated post-divorce parenting programme in her state.

The Pros: The book is divided thematically into various issues and topics that divorced parents will have to deal with. Blessedly, she leaves out parenting advice. It's based on a mandatory parental education programme in Wisconsin for divorcing couples. The book is basically the course in written form. While sharing what is ideal in terms of children's adjustment to divorced families, she emphasizes how far her own situation was from it and how it was resolved positively for all concerned, including her child.

The Cons: From what I can tell the book is self-published and is fairly ridden with typos. It could have used a good editor.

The Third: We're Still Family: What Grown Children Have to Say About their Parents' Divorce

Constance Ahrons is a therapist and researcher possibly best known for her previous books, including The Good Divorce. One of those studies has followed a group of children whose parents divorced from the late-70s/early-80s onward.

The Pros: The book is based on a study of approximately 100 young people beginning when their parents separated in the 1980s and continuing up to 25 years post-divorce. She includes both statistics from this sample and from other studies and interviews with the Adult Children of Divorce (a term she's not fond of). The book is divided thematically, and each chapter deals with some particular issue that divorcing parents need to deal with: communication with the other parent, visitation schedules, new relationships, step families, and so on. She is also positive and upbeat and focuses on the resilience that children show in the situation and the strengths it develops in addition to the harm or damage that may be caused. I found it very useful to 'hear' the voices of the kids affected themselves, rather than filtered through an interpreter (much as I find it so helpful to hear from my bloggy friends whose parents are divorced).

The Cons: The sample size is small. Her conclusions are very and perhaps unwarrantedly positive; she tries hard to find positive messages within the data and unabashedly asks her interviewees for what good came out of their parents' divorces. On the whole, though, I don't have many criticisms.

The Last: The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce

Judith Wallerstein is another therapist and researcher and either helped found or is strongly affiliated with the Center for the Family in Transition.

The Pros: Wallerstein also based her book (and a whole previous series of books like it) on a study of approximately 100 young people beginning when their parents separated in the 1970s and continuing up to 25 years post-divorce. She includes statistics based on this sample as well as interviews with the ACOD. She also collected interviews from a "control sample" of children who grew up in families with similar issues in the same neighbourhoods at the same time to try to tease out the effects of the divorce itself. The book is divided by storyline: each section deals with a different 'kind' of family (unhappy, violent, etc.) and contrasts one family that ended in divorce with one that did not. The issues that the divorcing family in each section faced are then subsumed under the heading of that particular kind of family.

The Cons: I have serious doubts about her methodology, not least because her "best case" divorce scenario is of a family where the father left the mother for his mistress and then the mother lived the rest of her life unhappy, lonely and bitter. Then the adult daughter's discomfort with intimacy and difficulty with relationships is laid solely at the feet of the divorce without considering the circumstances under which it occured, the torn loyalties she must have felt, and the obvious role of caretaker she assumed towards her mother. Frankly it felt like manipulating the data to achieve a certain result, since even from my own acquaintance I know full well that this story is not the best possible outcome of a divorce. Becsuse of the book's division into kinds of stories rather than issues, it's not quite as user-friendly. And it is by far the most dire of all four of the books. Whether intentionally or not, she presents the message that no matter what parents do, their divorce will irrevocably damage their kids and all of their future relationships.

I don't doubt the veracity of this message (to a point), but the other three authors managed to portray it in far less discouraging terms, to wit: the divorce is undeniably traumatic for kids and they will not be the same people they would have been if you stayed together, but there are things you can do to mitigate the impact on your children, promote their resilience, and continue to be a good parent. Ms. Wallerstein prefers to focus on the many ways the people in her study sample are damaged by her parents' divorce. In her concluding section including advice for divorcing parents, the advice consists almost entirely of the many reasons not to get divorced in the first place and then follows up with an admonition to try as hard as you can to remain a stay-at-home mom if you have been one previously and to fund your child's college education if you are a father. Her advice for society is to fund various programs to strengthen the institution of marriage and contains not one suggestion for assisting families who do ultimately divorce. This advice may be entirely accurate and true but for a divorcing parent it is not helpful, and at many times I felt like thwacking her over the head with her own book.

~~~~~

What pleasantly surprised me about all of the books--even Wallerstein's--is how much the experts agree on what parents can and should do. If you've spent any time reading general parenting manuals, you'll know this isn't to be taken for granted. I find it reassuring.

1. Don't fight in front of the kids.

2. Don't put the kids in the middle. Don't ask them to choose sides, blackball the other parent, share inappropriate details with them, or force them to carry messages between you.

3. Similarly, allow and support your children in their relationship with the other parent (unless you have reason to believe it is dangerous or damaging).

4. Create the most stable environment possible as quickly as possible. Minimize the changes to your child's environment and routine and space out major changes so they don't hit all at once. (I wasn't able to do much of this w/ Frances b/c she started school at the same time and we could not afford our house after the divorce, and she adapted fairly well, but it is still good advice to follow if you can.)

5. Explain what is happening to your kids. Don't let them find out when Daddy packs his bags and goes to a motel. Say over and over again that it isn't their fault and that you and their other parent will always love them. Give them as much information as you have about how their lives will change after the separation or divorce--where they will live, when they will be with each parent, school and friends and activities, and all the rest.

6. Educate yourself about and be aware of the behavioural changes associated with separation and divorce for the age and developmental stage of your children. Get help when necessary.

7. Get help for yourself so that you are able to be present to your kids and continue to take care of their needs.

8. Understand that your children will have a very different view of the divorce than you do. That even in abusive situations, your children may not understand why you had to leave. That good news for you (new jobs, new friends, new relationships) is not necessarily going to be good news for them. That your happiness does not necessarily lead to their happiness.

9. Take new relationships slowly and give your kids time to adjust to them. Remember that children become attached to new people quickly, and if they continually lose new adults in their lives it will be like going through a series of mini-divorces. Also remember that a new partner (and their kids, if any) is another huge transition for your child and they may need space and time to adjust.

Divorce is hard on kids. Make no mistake. You can do everything perfectly and follow all nine rules to the letter and your kids will still be sad and cry and miss their parent/s and the way their family used to be. You can't make it so that your children aren't hurt or affected by the divorce; you can't make it so that they will still be the person they otherwise would have been (and maybe you wouldn't want to--maybe that's why you left in the first place). But you can do a lot to make it easier on them. As Emery put it, if you do your own part of the work and try your best, you can avoid making them grow up faster than they should have to, let your kids stay kids.

Posted by Andrea at 7:05 PM | Comments (9)

Kid Grief

I haven't been sure whether to write or post this or not. Frances's struggles to deal with the divorce I've largely tried to keep private. It is her very own first tragedy and I've no business poking around in her head to share her messy feelings and terrors with an audience, especially when I know perfectly well that audiences grow with trauma. But Frances's Take on Adult Relationships is not complete without some glimpse at the other side, in which Mommy and Daddy's new relationships are not happily ever after for a little girl who still misses her family.

As potentially invasive as writing about her grief might be, it would surely be worse if I told the world that she was feeling just fine.

In We're Still Family, Constance Ahrons argues that watching a parent enter into a new relationship is often harder for kids than the initial divorce. Partly because it's another series of changes, partly because children often fear losing their parent's attention and focus to someone else, partly because it can make the divorce itself seem more irrevocable. According to the Experts, there are a lot of things that parents can do to mitigate these effects, including waiting until you're ready to be in a new relationship, taking it slow, keeping plenty of kid-only time, piling on the affection and reassurances, and waiting at least two years after the separation to either move in together or get married. (Thank you, Cat.)

Not that this makes it easy. Frances has responded just as well as I think a kid possibly can--which is no surprise, because that's how she typically does things--but we've still been dealing with a few issues that date from around the time she was told not only that Greg is my boyfriend but that her Dad has a new girlfriend. More big changes for a small girl.

I can't just tuck her in and go at bedtime anymore.

When she asked me a few weeks ago if I could sleep with her "just for a little while" instead, and I said no, she grabbed my arm and said "PLEASE, Mommy," with an edge of desperation in her voice. "OK. Just for a few minutes, though," I said, and climbed in beside her. It's become a habit, and I can no longer just kiss her and go. When I tried it again Sunday night she wandered into my room two minutes later and stood at the foot of my bed. "Hey, kiddo; what's up?" I asked her. Frances burst into tears. "I just wanted you to sleep with me for a few minutes!" she wailed.

So back we went, and I cuddled her, and she went to sleep.

She is asking for a lot more reassurance in her own undemanding way.

For instance, one morning she threw her teddy-bear at me. "Frances!" I scolded. "Are you supposed to throw your toys?"

"No," she said, and got very quiet and serious. I leaned over and kissed her cheek and she grabbed my arm. "You still love me even when I hit you, don't you, Mummy?"

Or how many times each day I now hear, "When I am a grandma and you are a grandma you will still take care of me, won't you, Mommy?"

"Yes, sweetpea, I will." How scary it must look when your Mommy and Daddy stop loving each other and start loving other people. Maybe it could happen to you, too. Maybe they could stop loving you and fall in love with another little girl. "For as long as you want me to take care of you, I will take care of you."

"I will always want you to take care of me," she says with great assurance.

The saddest has been the missing.

Especially for the first few days after the Boyfriend Talk, she missed her Daddy and cried about it a lot. And she missed her old house and cried about that too. I asked her what about the old house she missed. "I miss the roof," she said. "And I miss the bottom part. I miss the frogs in the backyard. I miss the flat part. I miss NB."

"I'm sorry, sweetie," I said. "That's a lot of things for a little girl to miss. It must be so hard. You've lost a lot of things. I wish I could give them to you."

"I wish you lived in Daddy's house," she said.

It was the first time she voiced anything like a wish for a reconciliation.

I remember when Erik and Frances and I all used to snuggle up in the big bed with Frances in the middle, back when she was a baby and toddler, and she would roll back and forth and grin in utter delight at seeing her two favourite people both smiling back at her. She's lost that and I can't get it back for her. I can give her other things that are at least as worthwhile in their place--a sane mother, for example, or a better relationship model, or better communication skills. But can she understand any of that at four?

The most flummoxing has been the--I don't even know what to call it. I can't call it defiance, but it's as close as I've ever seen Frances get to it. "Frances, sweetie. It's time to get dressed. Frances. Frances? Hello? It's time to get dressed. Honey, put down the toys. It's not play time. It's time to get dressed." She doesn't rebel or tantrum. She doesn't do anything; in fact, she gives no indication she's heard a word I've said.

As four-year-old misbehaviour goes, it's pretty mild. It slows me down in the morning and that's about it. What's going on in her head when she's pretending that the person standing right beside her and speaking right into her ear isn't actually there? Is she angry at me, and expressing it in a safely passive-aggressive way? Is she feeling too rushed and like she doesn't have enough playtime? Is she stressed or unhappy and not sure how to express it? Is it just a typical stage? Is it the result of eating too many blueberries? Who knows.

All I know is, it's not like her, and given everything else that's going on in her life, the very last thing I want to do is get into a power struggle with her--about anything, but especially about the trivial stuff she ends up ignoring me over. ("Frances, do you want apple juice or water with dinner? Frances? Frances? Hello? Frances McBean, I'm asking you a question. Apple juice or water? Hey!") Because I know her well enough to know that when she is feeling happy and secure, most of the time, she is a charming, social, well-behaved, people-pleasing kind of little person. So.

So. In a few weeks we're both going to be at school, and one of the unvoiced promises I've made her is that I will make sure we have more time together then than we do now. I will make sure that however I arrange my homework and working out and writing, it will leave me with more time to spend with Frances than I currently have--because that's one of the reasons I'm doing this. And we will spend that time doing things that she likes doing, that she gets to choose, as much as I possibly can. I'll arrange the morning schedule to give her more time to dawdle. We'll keep talking about feelings (oh the conversations about feelings we've been having these last few weeks!) and how it's ok to be angry or hurt and I'll still love her no matter what. I'll slather her up with reassurance and affection and attention and see if that can bring back her nuclear smiles.

Posted by Andrea at 10:00 AM | Comments (8)

Frances's Take on Adult Relationships

All of the Experts agree that it is best to be honest about the status of your new relationship with your child relatively quickly, and as we all know, parenting Experts are never ever wrong. So, thinking to myself that Frances and Greg might be spending some more time together over the fall and winter, I decided to come clean with the WBPE, BN, and tell her that Greg is my boyfriend. "So ... what do you think about that?" I asked her.

Frances: I think it's great!

Andrea: You do? Oh!

Frances: Greg is nice. I like him.

Andrea: Awww, that's great.

Frances: Yeah. He's my friend, even when he's big.

Phew.

Of course nothing is ever over quickly and simply with young children, so the next morning over breakfast Frances says, "Greg has a girlfriend!"

Andrea: Yes he does.

Frances: You are Greg's girlfriend!

Andrea: That's true, I am.

Frances: Do you love him?

Andrea: [pause. How much information is too much information at four? Do I need to reassure her that I love her more? Ack!] Yes. Yes I do.

[silence]

Andrea: So ... how do you feel about this?

Frances: I think it makes you expensive.

Andrea: Expensive?

Frances: Yeah.

Andrea: Expensive!

Frances: Yeah.

[silence]

Andrea: Why does it make me expensive?

Frances: Because you love him.

Andrea: Oh.

It was right about there that I gave up. Frankly, I don't think such a conversation could go better at that age, and if a little bit of english had to get mangled in the process, I'm willing to pay that price.

Up until now Frances and Greg have not had much to do with each other. I see Greg when Frances is at her Dad's house, with one exception; they have only met each other twice and both times casually and briefly. The last thing I want to do is expose Frances to more potential loss. She still tells me that she misses the old house, her old daycare teacher, her best friend at that daycare, the little boy who lived next door, the frogs in the backyard. It's been a year. I thought, since I can't guarantee that a relationship I have will be permanent and that therefore I won't have to worry about her losing him, that I'd try something else.

"If we ever broke up, and if Frances wanted to, would you let her stay friends with you?"

"Of course!"

"OK."

"I've stayed friends with all my exes. I even became an honorary "uncle" to Little N, who I adore, almost a decade after her mom and I had dated."

"I know. But I have to ask, I can't just assume."

"I know. And if that ever happened I would tell her that myself. She's a great kid. Why wouldn't I want to still see her grow up?"

"Well, I know I think that way, and I'm not biased at all--but I have to be careful where Frances is concerned."

"I know you do. And the answer is yes, I've thought about this too. But it's not going to happen because, as I've said before, I'm keeping you."

Just over a week ago Greg came over and played Calico Critters with Frances while I made up spaghetti with homemade meatballs and tomato sauce (I even pureed the sauce so Frances wouldn't reject it for having 'plants' in it--aka basil--which has got to earn me a few SuperMom points). Then we played Sorry, as you've already read, and watched an episode of Walking With Dinosaurs on DVD, in which a mommy and daddy proto-mammal ate their own young to escape from a couple of mean miniature dinosaurs. Greg and I exchanged horrified glances over her head. "Isn't that nice!" said Frances. "The brother and sister are sharing!"

Big sigh of relief. Catastrophe averted. Successful day all around.

On another single mom blog I read, MsSingleMama, there was a troll who hung around for a day or two dispensing his invaluble wisdom for romance for the single mother, to wit: you are damaged goods, and if you expect to find love again, you'd better lower your expectations and be ready to be extra sweet, extra forgiving, extra generous to compensate for the innate burden of your children. His girlfriend is apparently a single mother who I suppose must have fallen for this line of horseshit. I happen to think that Frances is a pretty amazing person and anyone who gets to spend time around her is lucky, even if that cuts into spontaneous road trips and seeing new releases in the theatre. It's lovely to be with someone who feels the same way. And now I get to relax a little bit and let them get to know each other a little more.

Posted by Andrea at 9:41 AM | Comments (7)

Anti-Anniversary

(Now is when I meant to publish this. Apologies to those who saw it a few weeks back.)

It was a year ago that I moved out of the house with Erik and into my apartment. I have the same attitude towards that year that most of you do--where the hell did it go?--but also a strange sort of gratitude, that Frances and I have made it this far already and we seem to be doing ok.

Not perfect. OK. This, mind you, is more than good enough, considering how many days this past winter I sat down on the couch and cried, thinking, "I can't do this. Why did I think I could do this?"

As it turns out, I can. I just have to give up on frivolous goals like being well-rested. As it turns out, it's even good for me in some ways. I have 63,000 words written on my novel, a stack of acceptance letters for other writing projects (and a stack of rejections, which I'm proud of if only because it shows that I am working on it), a six-day-a-week working out habit, a freezer full of healthy leftovers for midweek suppers, a new career adventure I'm embarking on in two (ack!) weeks, a boyfriend and a relatively busy social calendar (for me). I try to figure out why none of this happened while I was married (with the exception of the boyfriend, which is self-explanatory) when I had more time, more rest and more help. I think it's because all of my personal goals were construed as selfish within the context of that relationship. As it turns out, being selfish feels pretty good. It's my favourite part of being single(ish--see boyfriend, above).

My least favourite part is the lack-of-sleep bit.

I wish I could say that Frances is as OK as I am. She is happy most of the time, but she misses her Daddy. She misses the old house and asks me sometimes if we will ever move back there. It breaks my heart to say no.

For so many reasons it was the right thing to do, including Frances's long-term best interests. I don't regret my decision, though I often regret that it was necessary. But here we are, a year in. So far so good. Here's hoping for better-and-better.

Posted by Andrea at 9:11 AM | Comments (6)

Technically I think you can only call it a 'nightmare' if you're sleeping.

I thought you should all know that I'm absolutely terrified about going back to school.

I'm not terrified of being a student. I've never had any trouble with schoolwork. I think the lowest grade I ever got on anything was a B and I got through half of that Masters going to 65% of my classes and doing half the readings and still got straight As, so while I'm a little bit worried that my confidence in this regard is bordering on arrogance and my comeuppance may be coming, I'm not terrified of being a student.

I'm not terrified of the immediate impact on family life, since I expect Frances and I will have significantly more time together because my schedule will be so much more flexible. I am not, in the short term, terrified of being broke. I have savings. I'm not even terrified of wandering the hallways searching desperately for my classroom only to arrive and discover I forgot to get dressed that morning.

In other words, I'm not terrified of anything one might suppose I ought to be terrified of. No no. Instead, my terror has decided to reach far into my future and draw some surprising conclusions about the long-term ramifications of my choice.

For example, I consider it a foregone conclusion that I won't be able to get any paying, relevant work while I am a student, let alone any freelance work, thus depleting my savings. Especially considering the rising cost of gas and groceries. My budget won't hold.

Considering this near-certainty, I obviously won't be able to find work once I graduate, thus plummeting me into debt.

Once I do find a job, it won't pay enough for me to keep my current apartment, and I will have to move, uprooting Frances from a neighbourhood she will finally have come to think of as home, depriving her of her school and friendships and stability. Again.

Whereupon she will of course decide that she hates me for ruining her life and choose to go live with her father. And you will find me, five or six years from now, sitting in a hovel clutching a bottle of something alcoholic while humming vaguely malevolent songs to myself. The power will be off because I won't have been able to pay the electric bill.

See? Perfectly rational.

The leave request is in at work. The farewell lunch is, I believe, all planned out. I have signed up for classes, paid my deposit, and bought a parking pass. I have notebooks and pens. I have a backpack. After today I have fifteen working days left. Also, insomnia.

Posted by Andrea at 9:13 AM | Comments (10)

Wee Treehugger

We were in the mall and I was trying to find a way to convince Frances to walk. As is the case with many children, she can run, jump, skip, dance and turn cartwheels all afternoon, but can scarcely walk for fifteen minutes before declaring herself exhausted and asking for a lift. I needed to get groceries and pick up some books on hold at the library and had foolishly forgotten to bring my cart, so was in the position of lugging several heavy hardcovers to the grocery store, and Frances was asking me to carry her.

"Oh sweetie, look at everything I'm carrying! I can't pick you up," I said.

Just then she stopped. "Mummy, is this a real tree?" she asked me.

"Yes, it is."

"But it's inside!"

"I know. Isn't that silly?"

She nodded. "I like this tree. Can I touch it?"

I nodded, and she petted it, then wrapped her arms around it and gave it a hug, resting her cheek against the bark with her eyes closed. Onlookers grinned at her. "Oh Mummy, there's another one!" She ran to the next, and hugged it too.

"How many do you think we can find between here and the grocery store?" I asked her. "Can you count them?"

Off she ran, all requests to be carried forgotten in the excitement of tree-counting (there were eleven, we discovered), and this ploy worked all the way through all the errands right until we left the mall, at which point she promptly asked me to carry her again. Still. Success! I congratulated myself on being such a creative, thoughtful mother, who came up with something educational and positive that would get her child moving on her own steam and at great speed through all the errands she had to do.

Every time since, when we've gone back, she insists on stopping, counting, and hugging every tree.

It is very sweet.

And by and large, it slows us down. "Mummy, it's another tree!" She stops, pets it, gives it a lingering hug. Onlookers grin. "So it is," I say, looking at Marvin II's clock. "Come on sweetie, it's lunch time. Let's go home."

"Oh, there's another one!" Off she runs. I sigh.

Posted by Andrea at 8:39 AM | Comments (5)

Lesson Plans

I suck at relationships.

Not that this needs to be said out loud (or written publicly); the briefest of glances at my romantic resume would make it very plain. I suck at relationships.

There was a period of a few months after the separation when I believed this so intensely that I thought I did not want to be in a relationship--a traditional, monogamous, public relationship--ever again, and made decisions on that basis. (Lesson Learned #1: Don't make decisions in the first few months after a separation. It's a bad idea. Trust me. Whatever seems like a good idea right away, if it really is a good idea, will still seem like a good idea in six months to a year when your head starts to straighten out.) I even flirted with the idea of open relationships and polyamory, though the opportunity to put it into practice never appeared. Good thing, too.

You're all familiar with Attachment Parenting, so I'll assume you are at least minimally aware of the (misused) theoretical basis of it, Attachment Theory, which argues that an infant's relationships with its primary caretakers in the first two years of life will influence the kinds of relationships that infant will seek for the rest of its life. (Cue sense of foreboding and doom.) This may be overstated; later events and relationships can both ammeliorate and exacerbate those early lessons. But the evidence still shows a clear relation between the style of attachment between a caregiver and an infant and the quality and duration of relationships (including friendships and romantic relationships) that infant will form as an adolescent and adult. Most people (app. 60%) have a secure attachment style as adults, meaning they are low in jealousy, high in trust, can self-disclose, and have relatively happy, stress- and conflict-free, and long-lasting relationships. Bracketed on either side of the majority are two quite different kinds of minority: those with insecure attachment styles, and those with avoidant attachment styles. Insecure attachment styles in adults result from relationships with caregivers that were too close, too clingy, and did not allow the infant to differentiate or form an independent identity; the adult then forms relationships that are jealous, possessive, even obsessive, high in stress and conflict, with difficulty in ending bad relationships and tolerating absences and separations. Adults who had unresponsive caregivers as infants or caregivers who were inconsistent in their ability to meet the infant's needs develop avoidant attachment styles. These adults end up in relationships where conflict is low because self-disclosure is nearly absent; they feel they don't particularly need or want closeness, don't depend on other people, tend to have short relationships, and are very low in possessiveness and jealousy.

It occured to me, sometime in the months following the separation when my head began to clear, that declaring myself 'over' relationships and going for casual or multiple relationships would, in my case at least, be nothing more than giving free reign to an avoidant attachment style that had never done me any favours before and wasn't going to start making my life any better now. It was just a way of hiding from all of the things about myself I didn't want to change or confront.

Some people do that, and it works for them. But if I'd gone on in that direction, absolutely the thing to do would have been to keep Frances separate from all aspects of my romantic life forever. It would have been traumatic for her to constantly be getting attached to new "important" people who inevitably leave.

Which leaves me in a much trickier position: someone who would like to be in a 'regular' relationship but whose track record does not inspire much confidence in the success of that endeavour; certainly not enough for me to just throw Greg and Frances together.

I could just not have relationships, but that too strikes me as a way of giving in to the avoidant attachment style and the conditioning that produced it. Not good.

I could just keep it all compartmentalized indefinitely and hope that "permanence" would announce itself to me one day, with gongs and cymbals and banners and an interpretive dance, so I couldn't miss it. As if permanence and the lack thereof were an external condition, and not a partial result of my own behaviours (including the choice of who to be involved with). But this strikes me as wishful thinking, mostly, as well as a shirking of responsibility.

I've decided to do the much harder thing: unlearning all that conditioning that left me with the avoidant style in the first place so I can eventually have some confidence in the permanence of a relationship, to the extent that fate doesn't intervene (Mac Trucks are not particularly responsive to reasoned argument). Then the worries about introductions and the eventual traumas following from them will be much, much less important. (Which is not the same thing as unimportant.) I think, this way, there is the potential for everyone to be happy and to get what they need.

I wonder why this doesn't come up as an option or a suggestion more often in the discussions on this topic that I've read--that if a divorced or single parent is going through a lot of short-term relationships to which the kids are intimate participants or observers, the best course of action may be for the parent to honestly explore the reasons for this pattern and work on fixing it (and in the meantime, keep the kids minimally involved). Doesn't it seem like a good idea? Yet all of the discussion revolves around whether or not you should introduce the kids, and how evil and selfish you are for wanting to introduce the kids, and how much damage it will do to introduce the kids to someone who ends up disappearing. Instead of what kind of relationship the parent is looking for, and how the parent should best go about achieving that, and how much involvement kids should ideally have in that kind of relationship.

It all comes back to the same place these days: I need to learn how to be different. This is yet another way it will make me a happier person and a better mother, not to mention a better partner.

Posted by Andrea at 9:57 AM | Comments (12)

Day One: Not the rousing start I'd hoped for

Today's plan was a playpark and the video store for a rental. The playpark was rained out--again, I can't remember a rainier June in Toronto. Looking at the rain I decided at the last minute to take the car rather than the subway and head to the Best Buy instead of Blockbuster, bring a new movie home (at slightly greater expense, but Frances is still at the stage where she likes to watch something new a thousand times, so this will be more satisfying for her). We picked up a few cheap movies and were out our door when there was a "Hey, guys" behind us.

It was Erik. "Daddy!" said Frances, and latched herself around his neck.

"I was doing some shopping too," he said, "but I didn't get anything."

For a few minutes we chatted by my car while Frances hugged her Daddy. Then he tried to say goodbye so we could head home. Frances's face knotted up and she sobbed.

It's hard for her to see her Daddy for just a few minutes and say goodbye again when she misses him so much. I asked her if she would like to spend some extra time with Daddy before going home, and she nodded, and he suggested going to a playpark (it was sunny by then--though it's raining again now), and she nodded again, so that was the new plan. Except that when I got up to get into my car, she sobbed again.

"What would you like to do?" Erik asked her.

"I don't think we should do that," I said. "Let's just go with our new plan." I didn't want her to feel that she was being forced to choose sides, to pick which parent she wanted to spend time with that afternoon.

Poor little bunny. When she's with her Mummy she misses Daddy; when she's with Daddy she misses Mummy; they're never in the same place at the same time except maybe when she runs into them in the middle of a Best Buy parking lot. It's hard enough for a grown-up to deal with. But she is just a little girl who must desperately wish sometimes that things were still the way they used to be.

It's freedom for me, but it's a huge loss for her.

Soon she will be here again and we will watch a new movie together on the couch, and eat some snacks. I'll snuggle her up and wonder what to say and how, and wish there was some way I could make it all right.

Posted by Andrea at 2:19 PM | Comments (5)

Vacation Plans

In eight hours, I will be on vacation, and so will Frances. It's been years since I've taken two weeks off in a row, and I can't tell you how much I've been looking forward to it. I'll stay up too late on the off-chance Frances will let me sleep in the next day. I'll buy us sugary and salty treats. We'll go the farm and the park and the amusement park and see fireworks. We'll probably watch too much TV. I hope we'll finish a stuffed monster or two and maybe I'll teach her how to crochet. We'll go swimming in the apartment complex pool. And then, right in the middle of it all, Frances will go stay with her father for a week, and I'll have that second week of vacation by myself.

It wasn't supposed to work out that way. I'd signed up for a writing workshop that week, and it got cancelled. That's life.

Then Frances will come back and stay with me for a week. And then she'll go stay with her Dad for a week. And so on, right until school starts up again in September.

On the one hand, I know that time off will be good for me, if I have the sense to use it to recharge, catch up on my sleep and my reading, see Greg and my friends, and in general not be a single mother for half the summer. On the other hand, how am I supposed to recharge, catch up on my sleep and my reading, see Greg and my friends, and in general not be a single mother, when I'm paralyzed by missing Frances?

I won't need to get her ready for daycare in the morning or wash her clothes or buy her food or pack her snacks. I won't need to corral her toys every evening or sweep the day's sand imports off the floor. I can run outside every night those weeks, if I want to; I can up and leave for the store or a movie, like I could before she was born. All kinds of possibilities, assuming I'm not mired eyeball-deep in a dark funk.

The important thing is that it will be good for her. She misses her Daddy very much, and they need this extra time together. But, in advance--oww.

When I picked Frances up from daycare yesterday, she said something about growing up and not having anyone to take care of. I can't remember exactly how she put it, or why it came up.

"You might," I said. "You might decide to have babies and take care of them. Or maybe you will have pets to take care of, or a garden. Or maybe you will decide to be on your own and you won't have anyone to take care of. There are lots of options. You can decide when you're a grown up, if you want to take care of someone or not."

She thought about this. "I am going to have babies, and take care of them. And I will have a garden. And you will be there, to take care of me."

"That sounds lovely. I'd love that."

"Yes. I have three things I want to tell you, Mummy."

"Oh?"

"When I grow up, I will have babies to take care of. And I will plant a garden. And you will be there, to take care of me."

Taking care of that girl is exhausting and difficult, but I love it. The apartment feels wrong when she's not there. When there are no high-pitched impatient requests for apple juice refills or chocolate chip cookies before supper, no little outfits to put together, no socks covered with sweat and sand to pick off the floor, no families of stuffed toys to trip over by the sofa.

Saturday to Thursday, we will have our vacation. We will pack it full of fun, weather be damned.

I won't think again about the week after that until it gets here.

Posted by Andrea at 8:31 AM | Comments (4)

The burden of perfection

There is, sometimes, such a thing as too good.

I used to have Frances's little lion chair set up with a stepstool placed beside it to hold snacks and drinks when she is watching a dvd. This ended on a day in the winter when we were both ostensibly home sick, yet Frances had, as always, a seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy. She was suspending herself off the big comfy chair beside her little set up, kicking her merry feet, and knocked her glass of apple juice all over the floor. Then she did it again.

I was tired and sick and did not want to drag myself off the couch to mop apple juice off the floor (again) and decided that we were going to get rid of the stepstool. (It wasn't the first time this had happened, just the first time this had happened twice in one day when I happened to be sick.) Her snacks and drinks could go beside her lion chair on the floor. Then they would be out of range of her feet when she was on the big comfy chair. I was, I'll admit, snappish and waspy when delivering this information to her--that's it! It's going, I'm getting rid of this thing, I'm not mopping any more apple juice off the floor because of this stepstool!--but the worst that was directed at her was that she should be more careful of where she was kicking.

This was several months ago and she still periodically assures me that she will never knock the apple juice over again.

It is, I think, a combination of traits: a high level of sensitivity, a very good memory, an eagerness to please which makes her miserable whenever anyone is unhappy with what she has done, and a blooming perfectionism relating to her own behaviour. She is determined to be flawless; then everyone will love her and be happy with her and she can be happy too.

It is the hardest thing about being her mother.

Now, I know that all my mother-readers are dealing with temper tantrums, a desire not to please, what seems like deliberate obtuseness, and so on; and so dealing every day with a child who is bound and determined to behave perfectly does not seem like such a great trial, and it does make the day-to-day management of the household much easier. But it can't possibly be healthy for her.

I ask myself if I am doing anything to contribute to this, and the answer is no, I don't think so. At least I can't think of anything. I try to be cheerful and stable around her; on the rare occasions that I'm not and she tries to comfort me, I thank her and tell her that it isn't her job to make me feel better. (Including headaches and stomach bugs.) If I snap at her, I apologize and tell her that it wasn't her fault; I've tried to reassure her all along that the divorce had nothing to do with her. I do everything I can to support her relationship with her father. I listen whenever she wants to tell me how much she misses him, and how she loves him most. I don't tell her everything will be all right or she will feel better soon; I let her be sad whenever she needs to be. I reign myself in constantly in those rare instances when she approaches misbehaviour: when she whines or stalls or doesn't listen, which is as bad as it gets, the most I've ever had to do is count to three. Even that is often very upsetting for her. All the while I'm telling her that even when I am upset at something she's done, I still love her more than anything; and yet she still acts as if she believes that love will be withdrawn from her and she will be abandoned if she is not perfect.

When, the other night, she was not listening to me and putting her pyjamas on, and I counted to three and she still didn't listen so lost her bedtime story, and I put her to bed, the first thing she said to me the next morning when I woke her up for school, even before "good morning," was, "I promise I will listen to you today, Mummy. Do you love me, even when I don't listen?"

The burden of perfection is far too great for her thin shoulders, but how do I get her to put it down?

The literature on children and divorce presupposes a normal child--an obstinate and wilful creature who frequently and joyfully experiences anger. I was told to expect regression, difficulties with potty training, tantrums, problems sleeping, regression in language abilities, feeding problems.

"Preschoolers can display a wide range of emotional behaviour in a short time. Anger is the most common way for preschoolers to show pain and distress. Hitting, kicking, throwing things, pinching and spitting at other children are common ways for young children to express anger. ...

"Fearfulness is also a sign of anxiety or tension in preschoolers, particularly when it is in response to events the child used to feel comfortable with. Troubled preschoolers may also show sadness, withdrawal or lack of energy." http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/mh-sm/divorce/4_e.html

But Frances is not a normal child. She just rolled with the punches and kept on going, a little sadder and more subdued sometimes. She misses her Daddy and her old house. Sometimes she has nightmares that he came to get her, and then left again. They wake her in the middle of the night, inconsolable. I miss her old nightmares about dragons who burn her up.

"Despite their considerable physical and emotional achievements, preschoolers have a limited ability to understand separation and divorce. For example, because they understand relationships in self-centred terms, children may feel that they are the cause of certain events. Children often believe that a parent's worries and anxieties, and perhaps even the divorce itself, are their fault....

"Children may think that they are being abandoned by their mother, unloved by their father or that they are being punished for angry feelings....

"Children experience a significant loss when one parent is less involved in their lives. Not only will they often miss that parent's presence and affection, but some of their physical and emotional needs may not be met. They often have overwhelming fears that both parents will leave them."

I wonder, sometimes, if that is why she so needs to be perfect. Why those tiny words, those little grains, lodge so deeply and stick in her memory for months. Does she think she is being punished, that she was bad? Is she afraid that she will lose one of us for real if she is not good? If so, where did it come from? Does she really think that if she doesn't listen to me for a few minutes I will stop loving her?

"Personality is a major factor in development and plays an important role in a child's reaction to divorce. By the time children are 3 to 5 years of age, most parents can recognize the ways their children cope with stress. Some children sulk, others 'talk back' or get angry, still others become overly submissive or obedient."

I remember when she was a baby with reflux and everyone else seemed to think she was difficult, that her crying was temperamental, but I could tell that she was actually a very happy baby who only cried when she was in pain. Sure enough, when the reflux got better and she learned to sleep on her own, the crying stopped almost overnight. Ever since she has been that unnervingly obedient, well-behaved, happy, sociable, affectionate little girl I write about so often. So I'm not claiming that the divorce or our reactions to it or the way I parent or Erik parents are solely responsible for her continual struggle to be perfect. But I worry that the sensitivity and the good memory and the desire to please have made it very easy for my particular little girl to blame herself for what happened, believe she is being punished and be terrified that if she is not always good from now on, she will lose one of us forever.And how do I know? How do I look inside that beautiful little blond head of hers to see whether she is really just the most resilient and naturally well-behaved child who has ever existed, or if locked in there somewhere is a void saying it's all my fault?

Posted by Andrea at 9:57 AM | Comments (11)

Stasis Motherhood

Just in case any of you are confused about this, let me be absolutely clear: single-motherhood is a double-dose of martyrdom. Single fatherhood, interestingly, is not; but if you are a mother and you currently do not have a live-in partner, I hate to break it to you, but society expects you to flatten yourself with a steamroller and lay face-down in the mud for your kids. Not because they need you to, but just because you enjoy it so gosh-darned much. ("Yum, mud! No, sweetie, let me stay here for a few more minutes so I can get another mouthful.")

It's the only explanation I can think of for why there is so much judgmentalism directed at single mothers who are trying to figure out when to introduce the kids and boyfriend(/girlfriend?) to each other.

Note what I did not say:

I did not say that there is judgmentalism directed towards parents who are trying to introduce children and new partners. For example, as Rachel Sarah recently pointed out over at Single Mom Seeking, when Kate Hudson and her son went to brunch with Lance Armstrong and his kids, and her ex-husband, all of the vitriol was directed towards Kate and the damage she was doing to her boy. I have yet to see anyone panic over the long-term effects to Lance's kids of meeting his new girlfriend and her ex-husband. Yet for the life of me I can't see any reason to believe the effects would be any different.

I am also not saying that the judgmentalism is directed towards single mothers when they actually do introduce the boyfriend(/girlfriend?) and the kids. All you have to do is wander on to an internet forum and pose the question: So I've been dating someone, when do you think they should meet my kids? Many of the answers will be kind and interested, and advise waiting until you are comfortable, not shoving the new person down your child's throat as a love interest, meeting on neutral territory and doing something the child will enjoy, and so on. Peppered throughout will be unmuffled gasps of horror: what, are you crazy? Introduce them? Maybe if you're getting married, just maybe (no thought given to how disorienting that would be for a child: Hey, honey! Meet my fiance! We're thinking of getting hitched next month, want to be a flower girl?). Once you absolutely know for a fact that it will last forever (no thought given to exactly what that means: umm, what if he dies next week? No thought given to the other people in a parent's life who turn out not to be permanent, and the damage that must be lurking your child's psyche when the friend whose birthday party you went to together last year moves to Switzerland this year). Certainly not in anything less than a year. It might be best to just put of the whole crazy, selfish enterprise until your children are practically adults themselves. (Wow, what a fun household that would be. Is it just me, or are some of you imagining the kids sitting around a coffee shop table at some point groaning to each other, how the hell are we going to get mom to go on a date and just get laid?) What are you rushing for? Don't you think at all about your children?

There's only one explanation: people are crazy.

No, wait, that wasn't it. I'll try again.

There's only one explanation: people are so deep-seatedly sexist that it makes them say and believe completely crazy things. Like:

When a mom is married to the biological father of her children, the time the mom and her partner spend together will enrich her children's lives. It will make her a better mother to them, so regular date nights should be part of her mothering repertoire, and if this means grandma or a stranger tucks them into bed sometimes, so be it. BUT if a mother is NOT married to the biological father of her children, the time the mom and her partner spend together takes away from precious mother-child time and turns her into a selfish, shrieking harridan who will scar her children's developing psyches. She should ensure her entire life revolves only around her children until they are dating themselves. Some exceptions can be made for mothers who are dating when the child is with the ex-spouse. If there is no ex-spouse and you've always been single, you're just shit out of luck, lady.

When a mom who is married to the biological father of her children has friends over for dinner who then disappear forever, no one even thinks to remark on it. Well, that's life. Some people stick around forever, and some people don't. But when a mother who is NOT married to the biological father of her children has a MALE over for dinner who the child never sees again, this will traumatize them and make them believe that no one will ever stay, relationships never last, and love is a myth. I'm not entirely sure why "Sweetie, this is my friend Robert. He's going to have dinner with us tonight" would make a young child picture weddings and happily-ever-after in the first place, or why their absence would even be registered, but there you have it.

What the hell?

As long as you are safely the property wife of the particular man who has fathered your children, your happiness is sanctioned and encouraged and your relationship will bring your children joy, stability and comfort. But if you are not married, any relationships you have can only come at the expense of your kids, you narcissistic bitch, and why did you bother having kids if you were just going to give them to someone else to raise? No, wait, that's the daycare debate. Why did you even bother having kids if you weren't going to sacrifice your happiness and stop being a person until they're adults anyway?

Let's assume that someone wanders through here one day, wondering why single moms would ever want to introduce the kids to the boyfriend. Why not just wait until they're fifteen? Why not give it a year?

Because, lovies, single moms are human beings too.

It's true. They're not just phantasms of the religious right, or bogeywomen conjured up to scare uppity wives into obedience. They are real, breathing, exhausted human beings. They have relationships, and they have kids. They probably have jobs, too, and maybe a few friends. Do you know what it costs to keep all those selves compartmentalized? To never mention the boyfriend around your kids, even though you're spending most of your kid-free time with him? Do you know what it's like to always be missing one of them? To feel like you never get to spend enough time with either, so by extension, you rarely have any time to yourself, because the only time you could take would be away from one of them, and for your own selfish sake you're not willing to do it. Do you know how tiring that juggling act gets? Imagine if you could only spend time with your husband or with your children, you could not ever put them in the same room at the same time, for a year or more.

So I imagine having both Greg and Frances in the same room at the same time, and besides my belief that they would probably enjoy each other's company, oh lord would it ever make my life easier. That's where the selfishness comes in. Yes, internet, it's true: I want to sleep. I want to have them both near me at the same time. I want my life to be a little less complicated.

If I truly believed Frances needed that year, I would give it to her. And be frazzled and exhausted and stretched too thin, if that's what it took. But I don't think she needs it. I don't think she needs her mother to be a martyr and a nun. I think she needs her mother to be present when she's there, usually happy and engaged, a sympathetic listener, and a setter of boundaries and provider of nutritious food and safe shelter. She also needs me not to expose her to unnecessary hurt; so I understand the cautions of not-too-much-too-soon. Frances loves everyone. There are no barriers on that heart of hers (yesterday, I watched her chase after two girls her age at the playpark shouting, "guys, hey, guys! Wait up!" "You're too little," one of them replied, which did not seem to damper her enthusiasm for playing with them in the slightest, and she kept running around with them for a while). Anyone she meets she will love, and then losing them would break her heart. I know and am very conscious of this fact.

But it is not just true of mom's boyfriend. It is true of the kids she meets at school, my other friends, their kids, her "sister" C, the kids she chases around the playpark, our neighbours--anyone she ever meets has the potential to become someone very important to her, who one day she may lose or who may reject her. That's just one of the things that happens to everyone born on this planet. I can't protect her from that, I can't guarantee it will never happen to her. I can be careful and try not to expose her to it unnecessarily, but that's all. She is a human being. Loss will come in to her life. It already has.

(I'll just include a brief parenthetical explanation of the other extreme, in which apparently reasonable and intelligent people use such introductions as a screening method for their dates. As in, on the second or third date, introduce the kids to the date, and if the kids don't like the date, the date is never seen again. I have to think it is a terrible idea to give a child this much power of their parent's personal life; moreover, it feels like boundary-setting, and boundary-setting is what parents do for their kids, not what kids do for their parents. So blah blah blah, walking the middle line, need to make sure the new person is safe and respectful of children and knows that the child comes first but this does not mean the child is made into a tyrant who approves or disapproves of mommy's or daddy's friends, etc., so on, the end.)

Here is where I wave my theoretical magic wand and make an explanation for this bizarre behaviour appear behind a cloud of dry smoke: it's because single mothers are, first and foremost, mothers; and as we all already know, mothers aren't really people. Once you become a mother, you are not entitled to happiness or the pursuit of your own goals, you do not have needs for personal space, alone time, companionship, hobbies, intellectual stimulation, or sleep. This applies to all mothers and, so far as I know, no fathers. Fathers are still allowed to have needs (just see what happens when a married dad stops getting laid regularly.) They are even allowed to have wants. Mothers are not, because mothers are women, and women aren't really people, and motherly women are especially extra women who have used their reproductive organs, which retroactively revokes their personhood. Those of you who are mothers already know what I'm talking about.

But mothers who are married may be lucky enough to have a husband who will 'babysit' the kids, thus 'allowing' his wife to take care of her personal needs, maybe even 'pitching in' around the house so that the mother doesn't 'need' to make those kitchen floors whiter-than-white all by herself. She is still not really a person, but she is a not-really-person with an in-house resource who may indulge her claims towards personhood and enable her to express them from time to time.

Single moms? Nope.

This does not entitle single mothers to find other, creative means towards balancing their own needs with that of their children. It requires a complete personal obliteration of the mother's needs on the apparent assumption that for a mother to have needs necessarily disables her from being able to care for her children's needs.

This is one area in which the experts appear more reasonable than the rabid masses, fortunately, perhaps because the experts are psychologists or relationship experts as opposed to parenting experts. Which isn't to say that they agree. Apparently, I can introduce them "when it gets serious," "when the boyfriend/girlfriend will be around for a long time," "when you know it is permanent" (? What's this with permanence? Whoever knows when anything will be permanent?), "When you are discussing marriage." You can either introduce them as a friend, or on the other hand believe that total honesty is absolutely required and explain why this person is important to you. In other words, no one has a clue, but you're sure to fuck up somehow and then someone can explain it to you after the fact.

About my own approach I won't say much except that Frances has met Greg once as one of mummy's friends, and I detect thus far no signs of trauma or undue attachment. Mummy has friends and sometimes she meets them and she seems to enjoy having the opportunity to charm another adult and show off her toys. (And just so my dinner guests are warned, Frances is really looking forward to reading to you "Today I Will Fly!" this evening. Possibly more than once.) They probably won't spend much time together for a while, because Frances is only little and doesn't understand adult relationships, nor should she have to. (I'm still recovering from all those talks we had about whether or not girls have weenies on the inside.) But in the meantime, yes, I expect they will occasionally be in the same room at the same time, because it means Mummy gets to be a bit happier. And I am just that selfish.

Posted by Andrea at 12:13 PM | Comments (8)

Self-Definition Switch

Early motherhood is a meatgrinder. Pre-child you is fed in one end, and out the other comes maternal-you--ground up, bloody and raw. It's not pretty, and it's not fun. And it felt permanent, too. From I Am Andrea to I Am Mom, and then trying to figure out how to marry those things together.

Now? I hardly ever think about it.

In fact, in the wake of the Truth In Advertising post, I realized that somehow, without my realizing it, I no longer consider being a Mom a central part of my identity. Frances is a separate person; we have a relationship that is the biggest part of my life and a huge responsibility, of course. But that relationship is no longer something I am. Now it's something I do.

It's something I do a lot, but it's not me. Like being a daughter, a sister, a friend. I say I "am" those things; but what I really mean, if I think about it, is that I participate in them. In a fundamentally different way than I mean when I say I "am"--I don't know--an introvert. Or analytical. Or overly sensitive.

I don't even consider myself a single mom so much, although of course in demographic terms that is what I am and the census-takers would not expect me to pontificate when asking me a direct question about my demographic status. But while it was a riveting question for, I'd say, the first six months after I moved out, in the same way that motherhood was a riveting question for the first two years, now I sit down and can't quite puzzle out what "single" and "mom" even have to do with each other. It seems to have about as much relevance as "single runner" or "environmentalist mom." Enh. So what?

I don't know. Maybe I'm just terminally sleep-deprived, but "single" and "mom" today feel like two unrelated things. The first is a signifier of a lack of one kind of relationship, and the latter a signifier of a different kind of relationship; so the first, I suppose, is something I don't do right now, and the second is something I do. But they're still not me. And what do they have to do with each other, except that according to a commonly-held cultural viewpoint you're supposed to do both of them in tandem?

They've both changed me. But they're not me. Any more than I am my job, my apartment, my friendships.

I'm afraid that this will come off reading as if I don't love Frances as much as I ever did, or as if I care less about motherhood in general or being a good mom or all of those other very good things. But it's not that. (As anyone reading last week's mommyblogging post could probably tell.) It's not even that I think I have the motherhood question all sorted out; good mothering continues to occupy all sorts of valuable mental real estate. (How do you get a highly-conservative four-year-old to try spicy food? How do you dissuade her from snuggling with the baby mole for long enough to finish the dishes? What's better: an extra ten minutes of joint playtime, or another short book before bed?) It's more a sense of separateness, possibly facilitated by spending two days a week apart: I have no choice but to become someone separate from motherhood.

[This is where I restrained myself from blathering on about the many many meanings of the verb "to be" that all get muddled up together and confused.]

But it's a very curious--and possibly temporary, I know--sensation. Now motherhood is at the top of a very long list of things that I do and roles that I play, something that as it turns out I can stop doing for a few days each week and still be the same person (unlike being introverted, or overly sensitive, which I could not stop doing for a few days and still be the same person). Which is not how it felt in the beginning, not at all.

Posted by Andrea at 1:49 PM | Comments (5)

Truth in Advertising

SingleMomSeeking had an interesting post up last week about the online dating conundrum of the single mom--how much do you say about your kid in your profile?

My approach has been: nothing.

Zip.

Because when I put up a profile, I am not in fact looking for a stepdad for Frances, even if that is what she's asking me for. And I'm not shopping for a husband who will take the two of us as a package deal and swear their eternal love and allegiance to the both of us. All I'm looking for is someone I think I have enough in common with to spend a pleasant hour chatting over a cup of tea. If we get to that pleasant hour chatting over a cup of tea, and we'd like to have another pleasant hour chatting or doing something else, then it might be time to make a few disclosures.

It's sort of like being diabetic, and I remember on a community on tudiabetes a while back someone asked in a tone of great anxiety, when should I tell a date that I'm diabetic?

My advice would be: whenever it happens to come up during conversation. If you treat it like a big deal, your date is going to treat it like a big deal; if you are full of anxiety about this horrible secret you have to share, then your date will think of it as a horrible secret, and reconsider seeing you because OHMYGOD you might actually be looking for a nursemaid or someone with better health insurance! When in reality, you are just looking for someone to chat with for an hour over a cup of tea, so calm down. If you are out and about in public with someone the shots or the tester will come out and I guarantee that if you treat it casually, as just one thing about you, so will your date. "Oh, this? Yeah, I have to test my blood sugar. Mmm hmm, diabetic; fifteen years. Well, the needles aren't so bad since I started on the pump"--and you can see how it goes. I'm not saying that there's no anxiety in this approach, but I've never, ever had anyone say, "Holy shit you're diabetic! This changes everything! I can't date a diabetic! Jesus christ, you ought to include that in your profile." I've never had anyone complain about it in offline dating, either; and at this point in my life I've been on dates with at least 20 people so I think we are approaching statistical significance of a sort.

Everyone on planet Earth has shit in their past somewhere. Being diabetic is difficult and hard but it is not the most important thing about you and someone asking you out for a first date has absolutely no inalienable right to know your health history. My attitude is much the same about Frances.

Someone who is going to be spending an hour chatting with me over tea does not need the intimate details of my personal life. Frances won't be coming for tea, so whether or not they will get along is immaterial at that stage (it doesn't stay that way, but there's a lot you can't tell over a computer). A first date has absolutely no inalienable right to know about your family history. They don't need to know that you've never been married or that your parents split up when you were five or that you have six younger siblings all with the name of George, even the girls. All they need to know at that point is, do I know enough about this person to believe that we would have fun chatting over tea for an hour?

That's it. There's really no need to make it any more complicated. Tea: yes or no?

While you are having a pleasant hour chatting over tea, your kids will probably come up. Talk about them. Be positive. Don't be filled with anxiety or at least don't look like it. "Yes, I have a daughter. She's four, her name is Frances, and she's perfect." That's gotten me through eight first dates in the last several months with people who did not know I was a single mom in advance and it has never been a problem. At that point they still just want to get to know you. They are asking themselves: did I enjoy this hour chatting over tea enough to see this person again for a movie or dinner? They are not asking themselves: holy crap, I don't know if I can be a step-parent; if I ask him/her to see that new movie with me next weekend we could be living together before you know it and I am too young and my life would be over! Not unless you make it seem like they should be considering their ultimate role in your life vision of a reconstituted nuclear family. You can relax. It's ok. It's just a date.

Of course you can include this information in your profile. Why not? Go ahead and put in the diabetes and the kids. But frankly I think this is a bad idea; to me it is a lot like a prenatal diagnosis.

OK it's a bad analogy but it's all I've got right now, stick with me.

When someone tells you that your unborn baby has some syndrome or condition, it becomes all-consuming, because it's the only thing you know about them. You don't know their sex or their eye colour or their temperament or intelligence or anything but this syndrome, so this syndrome grows in your head to become your baby. Trust me, I know from experience.

When you find out after the baby is born, it's still hard and sad, but you already know a lot more about your kid. You know how they smile and how they laugh and whether they prefer Elmo or Dora and how they like to be put to sleep. It's not the only thing you know about them anymore. You've met them. Your baby is no longer defined by the syndrome, it's just one thing about them, and no longer the most important thing.

Kids aren't a genetic syndrome of course, but I hope you see the point I'm making: when it comes to online dating it's a lot easier to say no than it is to say yes. You've got ten messages and you can't speak to all of them let alone date them, so you have to find a way to screen out the ones you're not interested in. It's easy enough to say that you only want to date someone who isn't turned off by single parents, but they don't know you yet, and chances are that the "diagnosis" will become you in their minds, and they won't be thinking about YOU as you are, they'll be thinking about the single moms they hear about in the news--the ones raising screwed up kids who become delinquents who get knocked up early, become poor, perpetuate cycles of low achievement, can't stay married, whatever.

If someone meets you and isn't interested in the total package, including the fact that you have other important people in your life who wake you up a few times a night and depend on you for food and shelter, then it wasn't meant to be. Fine, move on, it was only tea. But the same goes for whatever reason a first date doesn't lead to happily-ever-after, and most of them don't. They might have a problem with your book collection, your voting history, your parents, your medicine cabinet, what have you.

I mean, what about you isn't part of the total take-it-or-leave-it package? What would you be willing to give up or change for a date? That list is pretty small for me. I don't put those in my profile either.

It's not a full-disclosure document, it's an advertisement. It's not a marriage contract negotiation, it's tea. After that, maybe it's a movie. At some point it might become a marriage contract negotiation but they will have had plenty of chances to consider your parental status before that happens. As well as your book collection, your voting history, and the state of your toilets.

I frankly consider it more important to emphasize that I am bookish and strange, as that has much more of an impact on whether or not we will enjoy chatting over that cup of tea, and will affect whatever might come after too. Bookish and strange, take it or leave it! Yeah and don't talk to me about changing the diabetes either--really don't, because I can't change that even if I wanted to. And I do.

I won't change my politics either--or the wicca, the feminism, my writing, my friendships--maybe I should put that in the profile too? No? Why not? Is it because those things are not generally considered valid reasons to reject someone--and single parenthood is? Are you, in effect, saying "this is something I know is undesirable to a lot of people so I'm giving you a chance to reject me on this basis before you've even met me"? Are we agreeing with a culture that says single parents are unattractive?

If this relationship alone--and not our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, crazy cousins and friends who, let's face it, are also unalterable parts of our lives--is the sole one we believe that people have a right to know before they've even met us, then I think we are.

It might be a lot more fun and a lot less stressful for everyone involved if all the forecasting of pressures and expectations and disappointments along the road between the cup of tea and the honeymoon could be postponed until after you've figured out whether or not you would even enjoy spending time together. What would change if, instead of saying, "I am looking for a relationship and therefore I am on this site looking for the perfect person to spend all my time with" (and getting all invested in a relationship that at that point exists solely in your head) "which means they had better be prepared to accept me exactly as I am before they even know who I am, which means they have to know that I have kids so they can ask themselves if they're ready to be a step-parent," you said "I am hoping for a relationship and therefore I am on this website to have some fun with some interesting-seeming people, and maybe one of them will turn into something great." Keep an open mind, keep the expectations down, have fun and see what happens.

It's just a cup of tea. Right?

Posted by Andrea at 11:38 AM | Comments (2)

It was my new toy for about 20 hours

I have a confession to make: I am typing this entry (on Sunday) from a new laptop computer purchased with a portion of my income tax refund. A small portion, even. And it's a nice laptop, too. It's pretty, and it is fast and powerful enough to play the roleplaying and strategy games that I gave up when I moved out last year, and it even has a webcam and a little microphone built in.

I wasn't sure what use I would get out of the latter, if any, until I mentioned the purchase and the camera/microphone combo to Erik as he was dropping Frances off on Saturday.

"Do you have skype?" he asked. "If you did, Frances and I could talk on the computer sometimes. Would you like that, Frances? You could show me things you were working on at school!"

Frances was very, very, very excited about this idea, and for the next hour asked me when she could talk to her Daddy on the computer, and could she talk to her Daddy on the computer? and she wanted to talk to her Daddy on the computer, please; while I signed up for skype and tried to figure out how the webcam worked. Then couldn't find Erik so sent him a quick email.

Not two seconds later the computer chimed and it was Erik calling to talk to Frances, and it turns out I just have to click a button to make the webcam work when skype is running, so Frances and her Daddy talked on the computer. She giggled and grinned and waved her feet at him and they blew each other kisses and she showed him some of the pictures she was making, and her happiness filled the room.

She can talk on the phone and they do have a scheduled phonecall every day but she doesn't truly get it yet. She doesn't understand that people can't see her when she's on the phone, so she'll hold something up to the receiver and say, "See?" Or point to something and say, "It's over there." She will roll around and wriggle and kick her feet and Erik won't know what's going on except that she's not speaking. I interpret as much as I can but it's not always easy.

But this was different. Right away she got that she had to point things at the monitor for Daddy to see them. And she could smile and wriggle and kick her feet in the air and her Daddy could actually see it and laugh, instead of wondering where his daughter had gone to.

It's funny how I bought this new laptop for me as a completely self-indulgent luxury--to play computer games* meant for teenaged boys, no less**--and yet now it feels actually worth it because of the nuclear smile on my little girl's face. The two least-seeming practical things turned out to be the two with the greatest potential for family quality-of-life.

So now to the insulin pump and the dishwasher add the webcam. Thank god for modern technology.

Do you remember--people actually used to have penpals? Conduct entire romantic relationships by letter post? Doesn't it just seem so unlikely?

~~~~~

* OK, not just to play computer games. First, there is the case of the stolen button on the old laptop--Frances pried off the windows button and it can't be reattached. Second, programs were getting glitchy. Word, for some reason, would get stuck half off the screen and I couldn't reposition it. Files were getting corrupted. And the cd/dvd drive was not working--either it would read backup dvds as system files, or it wouldn't read them at all. In addition to the new laptop I also got a small external hard drive to back everything up on before the whole thing just explodes in my face; and in the meantime, Frances can use it for playing Dora games.

** This was quite an object of interest to the salesfolk, entirely men, who would say things like. "So, who is that game for? Is it for you? Are you really going to play Oblivion? Wow!" I guess I'm not the typical market.

Posted by Andrea at 8:19 AM | Comments (5)

On the plus side--

There is one undeniable advantage to the single parenthood gig: independence.

Oh, sure, there's no one around to take out the garbage, make supper, get cold meds when you're feeling sick, or get up to comfort a small child who's having nightmares for the third night in a row.

On the other hand, no one tells me they're getting sick of Indian food, reeeeeeally want to see that latest car chase flick and can't we go please please please?, or might be getting transferred to Whitehorse.

I've spent the last few days thinking about a career change. And you know what's lovely?

Sure the finances of it would suck and it would be logistically complicated, but if I want to contemplate a serious income decline so I can go back to school full-time for a year or two, there's no one here to hit the panic button and say "but we were going to buy a new car next year!"

You know, I don't mind that.

No idea what I'm actually going to do about the possible career change and its associated potential education requirements, at least not today, but the thought that I am not responsible to anyone but myself for this decision and don't need to answer for anyone is--lovely.

Posted by Andrea at 9:28 AM | Comments (5)

Just Like Any Other Sunday

Anyone who knows me will know that this is completely out of character, but after my single-mom-friends epiphany a few weeks back I actually signed up for a single-parents group that has occasional family trips. Sunday's was to the Science Centre.

I invented many reasons Sunday morning for not attending--Frances was recently sick, I was still battling the same cold, I'd stayed up too late reading the night before and was really not so much interested in getting out of my pyjamas, plus have I mentioned that I'm an introvert?--but Frances was having none of them. It was the Science Centre! She wanted to go! So we went! And were late! Made it just in time to get our group tickets before everyone else vanished into the bowels of the museum.

There were, as it happened, several other little girls and a little boy just around Frances's age, not that she paid them any attention for the first hour and a half. Not that she paid anyone any attention for the first hour and a half. She ran from station to station, toy to toy, frequently threatening to run out into the main areas without so much as a "bye Mom." In my weakened state I could hardly keep track of her--let alone her, our winter coats, the camera and my purse. Which, incidentally, since I'd managed to impale my wrist on a steak knife turned wrong-way-around in the dishwasher, was already more difficult than usual. It's feeling a little better today (though if I die suddenly and my last words turn out to be, "I knew I should have gone for the tetanus shot!" you'll know why), but on Sunday somehow it made my entire arm hurt.

So as you can imagine I was making a great impression. Which made it the perfect time for another celebrity sighting (Hi, Katie! Sorry I was so out of it). "Frances is so adorable, and I love your blog!" Thinks Andrea: DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, BREAK INTO A COUGHING FIT RIGHT NOW. Croaks Andrea: "Thanks." Thinks Andrea: Good job! NOW MAKE YOUR ESCAPE BEFORE YOUR LUNG ENDS UP ON THE FLOOR.

Frances, the social butterfly that she is, was already strolling through the cafeteria hand-in-hand cracking name jokes with yet-another BFF by the time lunch was over. As for me, I'm just proud of myself for speaking to three whole people who I'd never met before. Even if I do need to extend the definition of "talking" to "sympathetic grunts and nods between expectoration fits."

Posted by Andrea at 8:47 AM | Comments (3)

Self-Care for Single Moms

The sunshine has done uncountable good things for my mood: I may still be walking Frances to school and back every day, but at least it is daylight when I do so, and daylight still when I tuck her into bed (not that Frances is as fond of this development). The snow is mostly gone. We've even had one or two t-shirt only days. I have my annual April sun-rash to prove it.

But the exhaustion is not soaking away into ditches and gutters the way the slush is, unfortunately.

The daily schedule remains the same:

Wake up.
Emulate a headless chicken while getting ready for work and getting Frances ready for school.
Arrive at desk; spare a wince at the time on my phone's display.
Work work work work work blog work work blog work blog blog blog blog blog (shh).
Collect Frances before the daycare closes for the night.
Go home.
Make her dinner.
Talk to her over dinner.
A few minutes of joint playtime.
Check email while she plays a while.
Do a few chores while she talks to Daddy.
Get her ready for bed.
Read her a story.
Tuck her into bed.
Collapse for 20 minutes. Begin to answer email.
Work out.
Write for 30-60 minutes.
Spend a few paltry minutes reading.
Fall asleep over my book.

So this is no good.

Fun on Fridays is enormously helpful but it is, I've come to discover, not quite enough. I need to work in a little bit of me-time into most days, if not every day; and it doesn't often happen. The question is how. Most of the things on that list are must-dos, not want-to-dos or even should-dos. The only thing that looks completely optional is email (so if I reply even less, friends-who-read-blog, it's not personal).

I've brainstormed a few options, like:

1. Leave my cubicle at lunchhour to do something more enjoyable or productive than walk around the drugstore across the street again.
2. Hire a babysitter on occasional Saturday nights after Frances goes to sleep so I can go out, if I want to (the problem here is that often writing or exercising were not done during the day and can only be done in the evening--but that might be addressable).
3. Make an internet deal with myself: no net time or email until xyz are done, so I spend less time getting xyz done. This may be easier now that the sun is back.

The last is the main plan, I think: I've come to realize that the internet is nicely filling the hole left behind by TV; that is, it's a timesuck that swallows huge swaths of my life without necessarily offering much in return. I could probably limit my time on the computer to a much smaller chunk without missing out on anything worthwhile. The issue will be training myself to do this.

So: better use of lunch breaks, the occasional Saturday night out even when Frances is here, limiting internet time.

But I know some of you are single moms, so I'm asking you too: how do you fit it in? How do you find enough me-time to keep yourself from going stark raving mad when there's never another adult in the house when you need one? How do you find thirty minutes a day to sit down with your thoughts?

I think that's what I need: thirty minutes a day in a quiet room with the computer off.

This makes me feel like a big wimp; but the fact is, I'm an introvert. And without some time to myself every day in relative silence and without things to do hovering over my shoulder, it doesn't matter how much sleep or exercise I get. I am constantly exhausted.

Posted by Andrea at 10:30 AM | Comments (13)

No wonder they wanted me to buy her a backpack

Like every other parent in Toronto, I've been following this story with great interest and relief.

Did you know that Frances has homework?

She's four.

Her homework is to bring home a reader every day and read it to me. Every day.

Except that she can't read. And in the new curriculum, for whatever reason, at least in this school, kids are being taught to read by looking at the pictures. She doesn't have a clue yet about looking at the letters and sounding a word out to figure out what it says. No no. She's been taught--and her teachers have informed me that this is intentional--to look at the picture and guess what the words say. (Don't get me started.) So she brings home this reader every day, and looks at a picture of a little boy smiling, and points at the words, and "reads," "the boy is happy!" When it should be "I am smiling." And, given how she's being taught, I can't correct her by saying, "No, look, honey; the word begins with I, what sound does I make?"

Maybe the whole "letters make sounds and go together to form words" part is coming later, I don't know; all I know is, right now, Frances gets sent home with a book every day to "read" to me.

Did I mention she's four?

When they don't bring the reader back the next day with the checklist filled out saying that they've read it, the teacher sends home a note saying "It is very important for me to do my homework every day. Please make sure I read my home reading book!" and they make the kid sign it. (CCW, I know this will ring a bell for you.)

Now perhaps in a family where a parent stays home and little Bob or Jasmine is only in j/k for the 2.5 hours daily and has plenty of time at home to play, this might be feasible. For the child of a single mother who spends 9.5 hours a day at school/daycare, it's obnoxious. Frances and I get home at 6:00. There is then supper to eat, which as every parent of a four-year-old can attest, takes at least thirty minutes. She goes to bed at 7:30, meaning we start getting ready for bed just after 7:00; and at 7 her father calls. And somehow, in the thirty minutes a day of free family time we have, I am supposed to force her to pretend to read me a book?

She's FOUR!

Either just before or just after March break, they'd sent home a home reader about penguins. Frances could not read any part of it. My choices were to either read it to her (thus defeating the point of homework) or attempt to teach her to read myself in the five minutes we had before bedtime by teaching her that "letters make sounds and go together to form words," because as I have described, she was trying to guess what the words were by looking at the pictures. I opted for C--throw the book across the room--and decided then and there that we would not be doing any more home reading books.

Tonight, at the parent-teacher interview, I inform her teacher. I expect it will be handy to have the Toronto District School Board on my side. Wish me luck.

Posted by Andrea at 9:11 AM | Comments (20)

what comes after 'happily ever after'

What do you suppose ever happened with Buttercup and Westley?

True Love survived death, torture, engagement to someone else, abandonment--do you think it survived normal life? Do you suppose it lasted through remembering whose turn it was to take out the garbage and scrub the pots, through post-partum depression and a few years of (probably cloth) diapers, through a few rainy vacations with whiny kids who'd rather have stayed home and played with their friends? Can you imagine them, in their later years, as friends, the torrential passion that brought them together having faded to a good story, an anecdote to tell their grandchildren?

Or do you suppose they eventually drove each other crazy, hated each other? Maybe a middle-aged Westley with thinning hair and a bit of a gut would one day scream at Buttercup, her hair greying and not as willowy as she was, that he should have left her to die in the lightning quicksand.

I am not the first to point out by any stretch that the fairytale in whatever guise has little practical advice to offer. That "happily ever after" is the literary equivalent of turning the telescope the wrong way around, everthing crammed into a tiny frame and all the less-than-perfect details rendered invisible. Does that mean that True Love is itself a lie, or a myth? Should it be given any weight?

Maybe True Love is a chemical hoax, a chimera that eventually vanishes; and you'd damn well better make sure before making an intended lifelong commitment that once it dissipates, the person you are with won't make you hate them one day--that there is the potential if not the actuality for a friendship to replace the temporary insanity of falling in love.

Or True Love is a transcendent experience that doesn't happen to everyone every day, and if you throw it away, you are a fool--you'll never find it again. It would make whatever came afterwards worth it.

Westley: I told you I would always come for you. Why didn't you wait for me?
Buttercup: Well... you were dead.
Westley: Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.
Buttercup: I will never doubt again.
Westley: There will never be a need.**

How long do you think it took for normal life to make Buttercup doubt? The first night where Westley wouldn't stop snoring and no matter how hard she poked him in the ribs he wouldn't roll over? When she had their first child and Westley couldn't understand what the big deal was if he wanted to spend the weekend hunting with his friends?

Did they stay together? Or did they do all that to be together, only to discover that when the adventure was over they had nothing to say to each other?

But if we all know it's a myth, why do we keep coming back to it? Jane Austen has poor Anne Elliot suffer a loveless life for eight years after she turns down her True Love Frederick Wentworth for not being wealthy enough (in Persuasion)--would it ever happen? Eight years? At some point, surely, she'd move on?

Is there anything behind these stories, or do we just want them to be true?

Why would he come back through the park
You thought that you saw him, but no you did not
It's not him coming across the sea to surprise you
Not him who would know where in London to find you

Sadness so real that it populates
The city and leaves you homeless again...

Why would he come back through the park
You thought that you saw him, but no you did not
Who can be sure of anything through
The distance that keeps you from knowing truth

Why would he think, the boy could become
The man who could make you sure he was the one*

We seem a little conflicted about this, culturally; and I know I am a little conflicted about this, personally. My inner pragmatist--the one musing over issues of basic compatibility, similar goals and outlooks, personal and political values--goes to war daily with the inner romantic, who insists that practicality is the antithesis of love and that if you ever find 'the one' you should drop everything and hold onto them with both hands.

The Ancient Booer: Boo. Boo. Boo.
Buttercup: Why do you do this?
The Ancient Booer: Because you had love in your hands, and you gave it up.
Buttercup: But they would have killed Westley if I hadn't done it.
The Ancient Booer: Your true love lives. And you marry another. True Love saved her in the Fire Swamp, and she treated it like garbage. And that's what she is, the Queen of Refuse. So bow down to her if you want, bow to her. Bow to the Queen of Slime, the Queen of Filth, the Queen of Putrescence.**

The inner romantic can be a bitch.

Many of you I know have already consigned these questions to your younger selves, having made choices that you are prepared to live with one way or the other; but my younger self did not make particularly good choices (obviously), and I find it near impossible to just get her to shut the fuck up.

It's funny, I think, that as an intj I am so routinely hamstrung by such un-pragmatic notions as fate. Fate would make it all a lot easier--no choices to be made, no consequences that one is truly responsible for, the decision taken out of one's hands. This is likely why people who believe in fate or predestination are more likely to cheat or steal in situations that permit it than those who believe in free will and responsibility--which is, in itself, a tidy argument against predestination.

Which leaves one with choice. Which leaves me with choice. But choice is impossible when I have no idea what I want--and even a year after the end of my marriage, I don't.***

Westley: Hear this now: I will always come for you.
Buttercup: But how can you be sure?
Westley: This is true love - you think this happens every day?**

Maybe it does. I don't know.

What I do know is that, despite its overtones and themes, A Princess Bride is a comedy.

~~~~~

* From Feist's song The Park

** From The Princess Bride

*** This means you get another post with me blathering on about this--sorry, but this is where my head is these days.

Posted by Andrea at 9:44 AM | Comments (6)

Moody Greys

"One could be forgiven for thinking of suicide in the middle of winter in End City" is how I began a short story which turned out to be about a young homeless mother in a city that officially has no homelessness, and the impossible position that put her in--yet it takes no very great imagination to reword it slightly to be more personally applicable:

"One could be forgiven for thinking of suicide in the middle of the winter of 2007/08 in Toronto."*

Or anywhere in Canada, I've been told. I've heard tales even of knives or guns being pulled on snowplow drivers in Montreal when they pile the snow up at the base of a freshly shoveled driveway. It's been a terrible winter, weather-wise, for most of us; and it is impossible to tell how much of a persistent grey flannel mood might be attributed to the endless snow and cold.

There are the obvious logistical issues: the shoveling, the putting on of coats and boots and removing of coats and boots from self and progeny multiple times per day, the impossibility of the slightest errand, the condition of the roads and sidewalks. I've timed the boots-and-coats part and that alone adds thirty minutes at least to my day. Do you have any idea of how much easier life would be if I could just plunk my darling daughter in the stroller in her shirt and pants and wearing shoes, and just go? I long for that day and those stolen thirty minutes more than I remember ever having done in any previous winter.

But I wonder, too, how much the sheer weight of all that cold and snow drags us down. It has been several degrees colder than normal now for many weeks; the seasonal daytime high in Toronto this time of year is seven degrees above zero (celsius), and today we are getting two; on Friday, we will be two below. That's cold for January, let alone almost-April. And the snow--the infernal, ever-present, endless snow. One eventually comes to believe that Hell, to be truly Hellish, would need to freeze over, because nothing could be more lethal to the spirit than these vistas of dirty white stretching off in all directions as far as one can see. That I am currently inside and looking at a computer monitor does not appear to help. It is as if the physical weight of all that water-laden slushy snow is in a knapsack that I drag with me wherever I go, pulling on my shoulders.

Yes, I know we're all spoiled and over-privileged westerners; yes, I've read The Long Winter too, and I remember, with startling clarity this year, those scenes of privation and near-starvation in a small log cabin during a hard winter without all these modern bells and whistles. These snowplows, shovels, subways, heated shopping malls, boilers, cars, dvds and electric kettles that have been making this winter just barely tolerable. But as poverty is largely experienced through one's comparisons with the people one is nearest to, and not through comparisons with people starving in distant countries, so the experience of an awful season is compared, in the mind, with actual seasons one has actually lived through.

Even Frances feels it, telling me each morning as I wheel her stroller through the front door and we come face-to-face with the shoulder-high snowbanks in the courtyard, "I'm sick of snow."

"Me, too."

"I want spring. And summer! I want spring AND summer!"

"I'll take spring, for now."

"Is it going to be summer next week?"

"Probably not."

How do you delineate? How do you separate the separate effects of an already-challenging situation, the logistical issues of a hard season, and the emotional effects of the snow and the cold, on a grey flannel mood? How can you tell how much of it would simply evaporate were tomorrow to be sunny and ten-above? I tell myself that next week has to be better because it has to start getting warmer and the snow has to melt eventually, even if only in July. Meanwhile, my mind has taken on the colours of slush.

Posted by Andrea at 9:44 AM | Comments (11)

Revenge. Ah, I mean, Lessons Learned #1

Dating in the age of the internet isn't just a bit of a tweak on the old scenario. It is a fundamentally different proposition. It bears no relation to its old flesh-and-blood cousin. It is the Borg.

Sure, it looks the same--and then its head twists off and reveals the nest of wires underneath.

For one thing, grammar assumes an entirely different weight in a relationship that begins online. In person no one can tell if you confuse they're, their and there until it's too late, and you have them under your spell. Online is a different matter. The near misses, Dear Readers; the ships that pass mere inches in the night, never knowing how happy they might have made each other, for want of a proper spellchecker. And, how easy it is to bewitch a writerly girl with an impressive grasp of the mechanics of ellipses and a refusal to fall prey to the lure of multiple exclamation marks!!! I've discovered a heretofore unknown weakness in myself for men who know when to use apostrophes and don't sprinkle them willy nilly throughout the text; also, a blind prejudice against this netspeak the young folk insist on using (while I'm on this, why do I keep having to fend of 25-year-olds? What is the allure? I'm older and a single mom, for crying out loud; pick on a girl your own age). Nothing is a bigger turnoff than "ur". Any men who googled "internet dating" and ended up here: "your" is only an extra two keystrokes, exert yourself.

But this, Dear Readers; this, this is a mere nothing. A drop of machine oil in the comprehensive Exxon ocean of difference between dating old-style and new.

For instance: the possibilities inherent in being dumped by dating profile!

By now you will have heard about those crazy highschoolers and their modern propensity to rid themselves of an unwanted relationship by changing their MySpace status from "in a relationship" to "single." This truly is not using the full potential of the internet. For that, one needs to look to the adults, who are using their advanced experience and social skills to truly mismanage themselves.

For instance, let's suppose you have gone out on a couple of dates with someone whose name begins with, oh I don't know, A. Over the course of these dates you have managed to exchange some information, including that you're not a big fan of television and don't have the time for it anyway, haven't been to a concert in donkey's ages, and can hardly tell the difference between a hockey stick and a baseball bat. The night before your next date with the person whose name may or may not begin with A, you notice that they have rewritten their dating profile to include a preference for girls who like TV, sports and going out to concerts a lot.

When you then express your disinterest in seeing them again via another modern means of miscommunication (ie email), A, if such he can be called, might express some surprise. Pray, whatever can you mean Andrea, what might I have done to offend you so?

In the old world of dating, that might have been that. Oh, you might have sat by the phone a little, whimpered into your diary, but in a city the size of Toronto you'd only run into them again ten years later when they'd lost all their hair and you were looking fabulous, right? Just humour me.

Imagine if your telephone, in the olden days, had a little red light that lit up whenever the person you were seeing was home.

For those of you who count yourself blessed to have moved on from that stage: if you have a blog--you know those little sidebar widgets that let you know who stopped by to read even if they didn't leave a comment? Imagine if that little widget told you whenever anyone who had ever left a comment on your blog was surfing on the internet. So that every time you were blogging and that other blogger you'd had a falling-out with eighteen months ago was on the internet, or reading your blog, you would know.

Internet dating is a little like that, because the sites? Have widgets to tell you whenever someone you spoke to previously is also on the site.

So here you are, and your diary is telling you to shape the hell up, girl; he wasn't that special anyway. You log in (not like you weren't seeing other people all the way along anyway, right?); and there that damned widget is, helpfully bleating, "A's online!"

Do you erase the messages? If you erase the messages from and to this individual, you will no longer be so helpfully informed whenever he's online. On the other hand, it could be offensive. You would like not to be aware of him without sending the message that you hate him, his entire hometown and the horses they rode in on. What's the etiquette?

You say to yourself: I am an adult. I am 32, this is not my first relationship, I refuse to be made to feel as if I am back in grade 10 and we are sitting on opposite sides of biology class. I will extend an olive branch, and see if we can coexist. I'll send an email. "No hard feelings?"

The olive branch extended and seemingly accepted, you soon see him again at your online haunt, and decide to say hello. Does he reply? Why, no; he ignores you for ten minutes and then logs off.

Forget this, you say: immaturity it is. You delete the messages, and now never need to know again that he ever existed.

I read through all of the above and the only thing I can find that might have happened thirteen years ago is:

We made plans to go see a movie.

We made (and broke) the plans by email, looked up the showtimes online, and found a review in an internet newspaper; but, we made plans to go see a movie. Well, that; and he's beginning to remind me uncomfortably of a certain boy whose name begins with R and sounds like an unpleasant bodily fluid.

The rest is all this newfangled internet dating stuff; and the best I can say about it so far is, it keeps me out of the house on weekends and provides some excellent blog fodder.*

And you there, in the back, wiping your brow in relief that you never have to deal with this? Thank goodness you're married! Yeah, I know: but remember:

Your kids are going to be dealing with this one day.

~~~~~

* OK, this is a slight exaggeration. Remember, I'm not blogging the nice ones.

Posted by Andrea at 9:11 AM | Comments (4)

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 m