The baby shaved today and I cried.  Again.  When Adam, the man-child, shaved for the first time, he was 12 and the autism in him did not want to have anything to do with a mustache.  Of course now, he’s lazy and does not care about grooming all the time but when it first happened,he did not understand how it go there or why; he just wanted it gone.  With him I was so hell bent on getting him as independent as possible that when it all happened at 12 (the facial hair, arm pit hair, height, voice and zits)  I cried out of some weird pride.  He made it!  We had reached ever so slowly and steadily another milestone! Alleluia! We got him there and watching Tom teach him how to shave was moving in a way only a mother of a special needs child would understand.  With Logan coming into the room today with his tiny, red nose pimples and in his new voice announcing proudly (with two little nicks on his upper lip), “Hey, I shaved!” and Tom ‘s face thinking once more, and probably with my razor, my heart sank.  I was really sad and maybe it was partly

The baby who shaved

the perimenopausal thing that is going on with me lately but I wasn’t happy about the shaving because of what it signified. After Adam shaved, everything happened at once and he was no longer a little boy.  Logan, aka the baby is our only experience of a typical kid in every sense of the word and I have always loved holding onto that, making myself deny the inevitable.  Coincidentally, this morning I came across a post on Facebook of my high school friend Heidi, with her son, Logan, in a flashback photo talking about how much he had grown up since that photo was taken and I wonder if she feels like I do.

Children are born and we nurse them, clean them and comfort them them in a blurry, tiring time warp and then they start walking (in our case running) and you chase them endlessly in another exhausting, tornado-like time warp and then they go to school. You try to stretch money and stretch yourself to make things work well and flow smoothly yet try as you might to carve out a precious hour or two for yourself in a day or better yet in a week, the school phase arrives and it is a killer with it’s endless driving, hurrying, lunch prepping and packing, more-laundry -than-there-are-days-in-a-year time warp that lasts a very unnatural amount of time and then SCREEEEEEECH… before you know it, there’s a dark fuzzy shadow above their lip and they sound somewhat like a donkey cross bred with a goose and they smell a little “oniony”.  Then they are suddenly overwhelmingly “pleasant” with way too much body spray cologne.  You find yourself tripping over shoes you think are your husband’s but they are in reality the baby’s shoes and you wonder when was the exact moment you stopped shopping at Kiddie Cobbler and found yourself in the gents section of the shoe store.

I am the only woman in a house of men.  Chest thumping-watching the game on TV-video game playing in the basement man cave, men.  Smart,

The man-child, maddening yet fascinating

handsome,strong, athletic, talented, hard-working (most times), rough, tough, sensitive, occasionally shy, at times loud, tie wearing, hot water consuming, leaving almost every towel in the house damp, always-ready-to-leave-the-house-before-I-am, men.  To my sons, girls are not so bad anymore.  In fact they are fun, pretty and interesting and so are all Victoria’s Secret catalogs. The baby has no interesting in dating but he has quite a popular position in the friend zone that will work in his favour next year or so, while Adam, lately, is asking anyone he thinks is beautiful to marry him and last week announced the name of the girl in his class he would like to kiss and the name of the other whom he wants to marry. So much for poor social skills and a poor awareness of others. Thank goodness his teachers are experienced in teaching young people with special needs and are able to help everyone keep their hormones in check.   I have moments at home that I refer to as the “Guess who?” phase of the day.  With the baby’s new voice and his heavier step and longer gait, I have no idea which of the three is coming or going up and down the stairs or who is talking in the other room.  In September, both my sons will be in high school and in three years, the baby will be driving and Adam will be in work placements and getting ready to transition to semi-independent living.  Everything is suddenly different around here and except for black and white images frozen in time on the wall, there is no evidence that children ever lived in this house.  Truth is, even though they love and adore their mamma, I started losing them when they hit about age 8 when they started drifting more and more towards their father and the things he liked to do, which fortunately for me includes mowing the lawn and hauling stuff around in the garage, building decks and the like which absolutely do not interest me.   By the end of August, I will be the shortest in the family and the smallest so I think I am going to throw out my step ladder as I have more options now for getting things from the top shelves.

I find myself humbled by their growing up.  They have viable ideas and concrete opinions now and they know themselves and what they want more than Tom and I did when we were in our teens.  While they do not need me around, they still want my company (most times).  I often tag along with them (plus they don’t drive) when they shop and I am in awe of the unique sense of style they both have.  They have both gone from dressing in athletic styled clothing all the time to wearing joggers with just the right slouch and high tops and shirts with patterns I never thought I see  them embrace and with Adam, he pulls off a nerd/Einstein kind of cool sometimes (I mean who else can wear a neck tie with a t-shirt, warm up pants and flip flops to his recital and look cool?)  There is a confidence and comfort they give off wearing their distinct styles and there is a cheeky sense of humour that surfaces when they “school” this old teacher of theirs about what’s in, out, hot and what’s not in their world of fashion.  Lately, I have noticed they have politely (in Logan’s case) interjected in my shopping for their father.  I have been told by Adam, bluntly (because he cannot sugar coat anything) that some of my selections for their dad are “horrible, awful and quite terrible”, while Logan  has suggested he show me a way to keep Dad looking stylish but not too trendy so that he is out of place. I have even gotten the firm but polite  “Daniella, you seriously cannot put Tom in that.  The face just does not match these pants. Go with the cargos.  The man’s in his forties,”

Grow as they may, I still have moments when they want to lean in for a long comforting hug after a disappointing day.  As big and tall as he is, I sometimes get called in by Adam to pull up his covers and turn off his light as he settles into bed and some days, when he isn’t too cool or aloof, he wraps that long arm around me and kisses me on my forehead. I get my good morning hugs, my good night hugs and my “Bye, Mom,I love you” when they leave the house or the car.  The conversations to and from hockey with the baby are intense, wonderful and engaging and the quietly shared chuckles with the man-child as we drive around to his activities have always been priceless.  Adam and I have an uncanny sense that allows us to notice stupidity or absurdly ridiculous situations at the same time and without saying a word, we grin knowing the other observed the same crap and got the joke too.

I have my days when I want to pull my hair out because of these boys-soon-to-be-men. It’s been and will continue to be a tough job, this parenting … this mothering.  Days of joy, days of tears.  Days of anger, days of injustice when their world ends about 10 times in 24 hours.  It is a job filled with tension and worry, insult and apology, youth, inexperience and absurdity, attitude, gratitude but always, always the days are filled with overflowing love and immense pride.  This love, this husband and these sons have shaped my life, made me humble and made me wise.  It has softened my heart, given me patience once so foreign to me and has given me a sense of pride and a love that I never knew could exist within my soul.  I am so grateful to have said yes to it all and yes, even on absolute shit days, I am grateful.  I remember when Adam was diagnosed with autism, my older cousin Nicole sent me an email and in it she had a lot of very profound and encouraging things to say but one line, one very simple line sticks with me to this day and it went like this, 

“It all can get very busy.  Very crazy, draining and overwhelming and then you’ll be in the car one day and you’ll see them walking towards you and you will say ‘Hey, those are mine‘ and all of it will feel perfect and so right,”

With just a year to 50, I find things are changing quickly around here and I like it and hate it at the same time.   The baby shaved today, with his father’s razor.  It seems it was just yesterday they went to buy underwear when finally the overnight pull-up sleep pants were dry.  Tomorrow, the three of them are going man shopping to get him his very own razor.  I will stay at home and probably do what I do best for them – cook  – and I will be here when he comes home and shows me which one he chose. In time, I will have the same complaint I have about their father, when the cheek stubble is too hard to kiss but I will still reach up on my tip toes and kiss those rough cheeks anyway and I will remember with fondness the soft, tender, chubby cheeks of their childhood and rejoice that Tom and I are able to watch these two wonderful lives unfold before our older, more tired but ever so proud and happy eyes.

~For Adam and Logan  – my heart and my soul. Love and joy, Mom.~

Dear Dad,

In Trinidad right now, things are heating up as Carnival approaches.  I have been looking at all the goings on through the lens of Maria Nunes ( yes, Maria Nunes self, Joe daughter, the talented golfer) who is a photographer now and Dad, she’s good; a talented artist. She is excellent at capturing the essence of mas …the essence of our culture.  I look at it all and I am so grateful to her for sharing what she sees everywhere she roams, from stick fighting competitions to the carnival King and Queen costume competition (where I find the costumes sweet too bad, this year) to Panorama where her photographs have made it so easy for me to actually hear the sweet notes of the pan.

Hear nuh, Bas, I think this was the year to go home for Carnival, but Adam is competing in the National Winter Games and the only plane ride we’re taking this winter is to Corner Brook, Newfoundland to see him speed skate and cheer him on. And oui papa, after 10 years, Minshall is back, and so is the theatre of mas.  He took a piece of Russian Ballet culture, flipped it around and has a dude in drag, as a moko jumbie with pointe shoes painted at the feet, doing a continuous bourree across the stage to classical music before chippin’ off the stage to soca.  Its called The Dying Swan, Ras Nijinsky In Drag As Pavlova, portrayed ever so wonderfully by Jha-Whan Thomas.  Dad, it’s beautiful, its ugly, it’s graceful, it’s clumsy, it’s fragile yet strong and it is something to behold.  It is a show stopper, it makes the audience quiet for a moment and they applaud because they find it intriguing. It is, as always, Minshall and as always it is as praised and appreciated as much as it is criticized.

I see it as ole time mas, meets foreign culture, interpreted to suit today’s world with a uniquely Trinidadian flavour.  It pushes you to look into history to the days in many countries when men portrayed female characters; it pushes you to remember and respect the history and performance of mas when you see it is a moko jumbie and in case yuh ain’t know who Anna Pavlova was, you damn well know now.  I am glad I lived to see Minshall do it all again albeit via vidoes and photographs on Facebook. And Peter, Dad, is Peter just as you left him – brilliant, passionate, unintentionally envelope pushing and his mind? Well, even now in his older years, meh boy mind still wide open and he is as articulate and expressive as always.

Even from all the way here in this no-place where I have found myself, I can feel the spirit of Carnival. Just from what Janine and Sui Yen and other friends and family at home post, I can transport myself there. You’d be happy to know I still remember the sound of your voice and I can hear you clear as day talking about Burrokeet, Bookman, Pierrot Grenade, Bat,

Red Devil, Blue Devil, Minstrels, Dame Lorraine, Fancy Indian and Fancy Sailor.   I remember Reina was afraid of Jab Jabs and for some reason I was always terrified by a story you and Mummy told us about a man who lived in Belmont who used to play Devil who died Dimanche Gras night (from lead poisoning no doubt when he painted his skin) maybe because he played Devil mas one too many times???  When Mummy played Mas and you had to take us to the Savannah while you did the commentary for the parade of bands on Carnival Monday and Tuesday, we had the best seat in the house – right under camera 1, to the left of the Grand Stand, up high in the wooden scaffolding with all we needed to eat and drink…pelau, sorrel, souse, macaroni pie and currents rolls, sugar cake and tamarind balls galore!

We were two little girls with a whole television crew of baby sitters, watching mas, waving to the masqueraders we knew, taking in our culture.  But you know, Dad, as much as I loved the modern mas, I have to tell you I loved when the ole time mas took the stage for their moment to remind the North Stand and the Grand Stand where it all began.  The little Pan Round De Neck bands,

The Drunken Sailors and Fancy Firemen      with their theatrical saga boy dance; the mesmerizing writhing of the Bat Dance and my absolute favourite, the Midnight Robbers and their Robber Talk.

 There was this one older gentleman with a fully beaded and worked up Robber mas taking to the mic for his monologue saying ( and you know my memory for nonsense) “I am the Midnight Robber and you shall never know when and you shall never know where but I will come for you in the darkness and just like your father before you I will disintegrate you and grind your bones into gun powder” and then he shot the cap in his gun and scared the living crap out of me and Reina.

As he made his slow, deliberate, dramatic stride off the stage I wondered if I would ever see that Robber again and for six years I did and even saw his young son or grand son with him in the later years, giving his Robber Talk to the crowd on Carnival Monday and Tuesday, keeping the tradition alive.  I tell you Daddy, I have so many moments of my childhood in Trinidad, frozen in time in my mind that it doesn’t really seem like I have lived abroad longer than I lived at home.

When I am looking to connect with what is going on for Carnival, I find the best time is at night when while the boys sleep.  The cold of winter stays outside as I surf the net, curious as to what is going on now at home for carnival, ever so grateful for Panorama clips and soca videos looking for anything to remedy this homesickness. Tonight, my mind took me back to every Carnival Sunday drifting into J’ouvert when the music trucks and steel bands from the fete at the Chinese Association would take to the streets, heading down St. Ann’s Road and into Port of Spain.  Curled up in my current bed tucked under a heavy comforter to keep me warm, I am taken back to a time when all I needed was a thin, multi-coloured striped cotton blanket to cover me, fan blasting on hi-speed 3 in a too-warm-to-sleep room, listening to the revelers and the music, longing for the day when it would be my turn to chip in the streets J’ouvert morning from a fete.

The only problem with remembering all that I do, Dad, is that it’s Carnival and this is when I miss you the most.  This is when Sui Yen and Meiling miss Uncle Kit Sang and this is where Dominique and Gabrielle miss Uncle Nicky.  Daddies like you were our original connection to Carnival and all things in our culture.  Daddies like you made your children appreciate what it is to be Trinidadian.

Like I said in your eulogy, not many parents would put their kids in the car late for so on a school night and drive them to a pan yard in Lavantille, Woodbrook or Belmont.  You took us to mas camps to see how mas was made; took us back stage at the Savannah during the King, Queen (and back in the day Individual) preliminaries, semi finals and Dimanche Gras competitions.  I remember being so small and the costumes being so big, beautiful and at times frightening but I loved the atmosphere and the lights, the smell and the sound of the casters at the bottom of the costumes.  I remember the names of the winning costumes through the years and who portrayed them and what band they were from. I remember one of the last costumes Uncle Archie worked on – it was an individual and he was part of what looked like a French Cafe.  It was a small mas compared to the others but it was so well made and wonderfully decorated and the colours were this rich emerald green, gold and purple and though I knew he was not going to win, I hoped that he did.  I remember the calypso/soca monarchs from years and years ago AND I remember what they wore, the skits performed while they sang, the political satire and I remember lyrics from way too long ago.  Chalk Dust, Sparrow, Kitchener, Crazy, Rose, Rudder, Brigo, Scrunter, Penguin, Gypsy, Denise, Super Blue when he was Blue boy and Explainer and those are just a few.  I remember going with you to each mas camp to pre-interview each band leader, gathering all the info you could before you and the other announcers broadcast the shows, me feeling lucky to see the inside of a mas camp, staring at the sketches of all the costumes in the various sections and always happy to head home with a flawed headpiece or standard or a piece of a costume every time.

I remember the rivalry between the uncles when it came to whether Despers, your beloved Tokyo (because you worked at Carib), Invaders or All Stars were the best steel bands and I remember EVERY year you would tell us about what Carnival was like when you played as a young man and yes, they gave you a lot of cloth for your money when Sally brought Imperial Rome …What was it?…ah yes…gold lame AND you got mas boots as part of your costume.  You took me to my first J ‘Ouvert and dropped me to my last and put Adam on your shoulders when he was a baby and chipped through my band in Woodbrook with him so he could see his mummy in her costume. When I brought Tom and friends home, you made sure we had a Carnival experience to remember, making sure everybody tasted all the food, made sure everybody had their costume and drove us everywhere at anytime teaching everybody that they were indeed taking part in the Greatest Show on Earth.  Carnival has changed over the years, and some say it isn’t what it used to be but what I was exposed to as a child has created those frozen in time memories I spoke about earlier.  Memories that make me smile.  They are nice reminders of who I am now that I am so far away and have been for quite some time.  One thing is for sure, no matter how Carnival has changed, the atmosphere is the same, as is the vibe that brews from deep inside our bellies and allows us all (every creed and race) to find that rhythm that was fused into our being way back in 1838.  Rhythm from tamboo bamboo, biscuit tins, tassa and the mighty oil barrel that dictates the movement of the hips of every Trinbagonian baby.

In my mind, there is book learning and then there is cultural awakening and I have you to thank, Dad, for making me a Carnival Baby, a Savannah Chile … a true Trinidadian.  I have lived in three different countries, one state and three provinces and I have always been as Mr. Rudder says, “Trini to de Bone”.  Drop me anywhere and I will still be Daniella from St. Ann’s because of you.   If you could take us, Daddy, you did; anywhere, anytime.  From parking behind the rails at the horse races at the Savannah to all things carnival, to kite flying, to cricket, to going for  coconut water and jelly and oysters and roast corn, to football, to look at the boats race in Caranege – you took us everywhere all the time and you populated my mind with treasures that I will take to my grave.  I tell the boys about all this but it is not their experience because they are Canadian and that is fine.  They know about it and appreciate it as much as they can but this is mine to share with Reina and Mummy and the cousins and that’s kind of nice, having this thing that is unique to us. Thank you for being our teacher and our tour guide through the most important trails of our culture.  Thank you for the stories and the experiences, the tastes, sights, smells and sounds that will stay with me forever.  What you gave to me is worth more than precious metals, more than gems, more than money. You gave me my Trini soul.  It was an honour to have you as a father.  It go be waxin’ warm from tonight,Dad and I can’.t wait to see Maria’s photos.  Maybe you have a stadium seat in the great beyond and you are seeing it all.  Maybe you are back and in the midst of it, if resurrection or re-incarnation is a thing,,,either way, I miss you and I wish we were there together like old times.

And so I end this letter to you, knowing maybe you are not watching us from some great beyond but in case you are, here are some calypsos we used to sing in the car on the way to school back in the day and a couple I remember you holding on to Mummy and “taking a lil chip” with her at at Uncle Mike’s  and Uncle Nicky’s house fetes. 

XOXOXO your first girl…your Danie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8Bm11vZDG8  (For Reina ) Look the Devil – Penguin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-roUT3G5Bq0  (For you and Me and Mom) The Sinking Ship – Gypsy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKNrCUHIPnM  (Again for Reina) Tiney Winey – Byron Lee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VCYlLG8VR8 (For All of Us) Trini to De Bone – David Rudder

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYkqMT6HKD0   (For You and Me) King Liar – Lord Nelson

Christmas has just gone by and tomorrow a new year begins.  As usual I’m sitting here checking out what is going on with Ryan Seacrest at Time Square in New York, wishing I was there because it looks like quite the good time.  As I watch, I’m thinking about the year I have had; about what I have learned and what I would change and do differently. Perhaps I will try once again to make New Year’s resolutions and perhaps like every year since I was able to understand what a resolution was, they will fade away –  but like my body, my hair and my mind, the way I do things will change yielding both good and poor results and life will go on.  I will make many new mistakes but I think I shall not make old ones.  I will have to be forgiven, I will have to forgive but I will not forget and as usual, I will live and learn with eyes and mind wide open and hope that so too will my sons.

I have been blessed to have all that I have – the good, the bad, the painful, the stressful and the maddening as all of it is a component of who I am. Every emotion, every situation and experience is the fibre of my life and this journey that is the most intriguing story. If life was a book, it would be the most perfect book filled with great mystery with endless twists and turns and around every other corner, a surprise for the main character.  Whether the story be a long one or short, how fortunate we are each day to open our eyes with an opportunity to  see a new episode of “the show”…our show and even on the most mundane of days there is something miraculous that happens with every breath, every sight, every step…most of which we take for granted. But that’s okay because all of us have moments when we stop and realize just how good our life is …because we have all tasted the bitterness.  Yet, as sure as the sun will rise we also know the darkest days are always redeemed by days of light…we just have to pay close attention and we will all see that there is indeed good in everything.

With my 50th birthday just over a year away, I’ve  been settling into the next-phase-of- life Daniella and I love her more than I ever did  between the ages of 25 and 35.  The numbers vary from person to person but we all can recall those flying blind, confusing, career chasing, home building, family life balancing, ever so busy and ever so-tired-from-taking-care-of the-the-babies- you -could-just-puke years between ages of 25 and 35.  After all the growth and knowledge I gained during those years, I find the growth and knowledge that happens between the ages of 40 and 50 pleasant and comforting.  Thanks to my mother, when I was quite young, I learned the importance of being comfortable in my own skin and confident in my choices .  She always said, “If you can’t live with yourself, you can’t be happy living in this world,”.   Over the years, on the days where my confidence was shaken or a difficult decision had to be made, that one sentence of my mother’s sometimes was all I needed to move forward and in the last ten years, more specifically the last three, I made a concerted effort to discover and re-discover the things I wanted to do that filled my soul and simply made me feel good.  Absolutely, Tom and the children and all the things we did together and all the places we visited made me happy and satisfied but when you are juggling raising a family, working whenever you could, raising a kid like Adam, driving kids, encouraging kids, being that shoulder to lean on for your husband, keeping people properly fed and healthy, staying on top of what goes on at school, sports, tutoring, and therapies and funding, it is easy to lose a chunk of who you are and for me I put a part of myself on hold, mostly because when you are a wife and mother sometimes, it’s what one must do.  So for a while, I put that Daniella on hold – the girl who always had time to do the things that made her heart smile  … the girl with the imagination that ran wild with ideas and stories that stretched out the days and now that my boys are older and finding their paths and at work Tom and I are entering that fifth year of business that is a nice somewhat settled place to be, the opportunity to nudge that girl on hold and get her back in action again.

With age 50 approaching, I started looking at the way I did the “everyday ” things I thought were in order.  Stupid little things that were a part of my life that had become stale and un-enjoyable. So, I started to re-evaluate them and made changes that changed my life and brought that dormant part of Daniella back to life. It started with the silliest of things like quitting the gym three years ago, to play my sports and to take up yoga which I love and now crave.  But as I moved through the postures, I realized that something else was missing, something that yoga and my sports did not give me so I signed up for adult ballet classes and moved my body in ways it had not in what seemed like a hundred years.  And in spite of the agony of retraining my body to move in a balletic and graceful way, I smile from that first pique at the barre to the final courtesy and applause for the pianist and I am bursting with joy.

Re-vamping the simple things started me on a path of slowly learning to re-vamp other areas of my life.  On a friend’s suggestion, I started this blog.  She knew I always wanted to write novels and articles and  she knew even though I had a taste of being published  a few times, I loved it and hated it equally.  With our sons having autism she and I have a busy and unique lives compared to typical mothers and she understood why I always found it a struggle to find the time to write.  I put a lot of pressure on myself to get manuscripts in on time, always checking and re-checking publishing requirements, tweaking and re-tweaking formats and praying and crossing my fingers and toes that I wouldn’t get a rejection letter. But this blog allowed me to start writing when I could find the time.  With no deadlines or pressure, I could hit the keyboard and say what I had to say.  It was a neat way to write for myself in a format and style that was perfect for me while sharing my thoughts with readers around the world.  Taking her  advice was the best damned decision I made with regards to my writing.  While I feel that it is important to continue to learn how to write well, I  cherish the no pressure outlet that is my blog, the freedom it affords me and the endless and priceless joy it brings me. It is all mine. I don’t have to change my words or phrases to please anyone and for the first time in years, I feel and smell and breathe this  love of words once again.  Perhaps when my boys step out on their own in a few years, I will buckle down in front of the computer and write my novel(s) but until then I shall blog to my heart’s content.

2015 was also a turning point for me as a parent.  Raising a family today is quite different from when my parents raised our family and quite different from when Adam and Logan were children.  I had to learn and learn to change in order to be everything I need to be while I walk beside my boys’ two very different journeys through puberty on their way to manhood.  Raising young people is a fascinating privilege but it can be worrying and draining too.  You have to be firm enough, authoritative enough with the right amount of trust,  gentleness, support and understanding with a generous sense of humour and copious amounts of patience all wrapped up with reams and reams of love.  I have found it more important now to take the time to step away from dealing with them (especially Adam) than I did when they were little because there is a whole lot more to worry about now than when they were small.  Happily, Logan is on the right path so far and hopefully, Adam will find his way back to the peace he used to have before puberty.

Looking at the last 10 years of our life like a rollercoaster ride, our cars were filled with moving back to Ontario and establishing ourselves, raising little boys who are now teenage boys, my father’s illness and ultimate death, my mother’s life without him, new jobs, old jobs, Tom’s parents’ health, our growing businesses, perimenopause, school,religion, work relationships, friendships and Adam’s autism.  And as these very full and heavy cars approached the top of the track Tom and I worked very hard and hoped and prayed that on the long steep  decent that preceded all the twists and turns to come, we could keep everything and everyone securely and safely fastened in the cars.  But like any ride, not everyone survives all the twists, turns and loops and in 2015 some of our shit in the form of friendship, flew out of it’s car and blew away in the wind forever and though I did grieve that loss somewhat, I have come to realize it was for the better.  I’m too busy with my family and my life to waste my time on insignificant, vapid people who simply cannot grow up  and see beyond the superficial bubble they share with their equally defective peers.  This year was the first time I ever had to verbally end a friendship.  There was some sadness, some anger and bitterness over what I felt was a waste of my time and effort and then there was relief followed by gratitude; I was grateful to have had this experience because it re-affirmed what I knew in the first place…I had enough amazing friends not to mention an awesome family that includes my sister, my mom and my dozens of cousins no matter how near or far away they may be.  As this year comes to a close, I embrace the people and things that make me feel good, even closer and I abandon the trite, toxic and the ignorant to the past.

Barry Neil Kaufman wrote a book which he simply called “Happiness is a Choice”.  I remember reading it when I was trying to navigate Adam and our family through the initial stages of his autism.  Everyone chooses whether or not to be happy.  I am guilty of sometimes choosing the thing that can bring me down.  I’m not one for resolutions but in 2016 and beyond, I’m going to try and choose the things that lift me up. If it doesn’t feel good; if it’s inconvenient,  out it goes.   Life is wonderful but its hard and sometimes upsetting and frustrating and sad and it is also damn short so but I’m going to try and make those not so great moments as short lived as I possibly can.  Maybe I’m onto something by choosing to remind myself of all that I’d read in that short simple book by Kaufman.  I’m going to keep on with  finding the simple things that make my heart feel full.  I’m going to try and choose happiness over the nonsense and put myself and my feelings first in certain situations and see where it takes me.  I have a feeling it’s the right choice.  Here’s to choice in 2016 … choices that make you happy.

To Tom and Logan you are my pillars of strength and I love you to the ends of the universe and back. May 2016 bring us all everything we hope for and may the four of us be together, safe and happy for years to come.  And to Adam – all I can say is we love you.  You are talented and you make us proud but you are difficult to live with at times.  You did turn it around somewhat this year but there are still some important lessons you need to learn.   I hope in 2016 you can see the consequences of your actions.  I hope in 2016 you can understand that positive attention is better than negative attention and I hope in 2016 you can bring us all to a place of peace.  Happy New Year, my son.

Lastly, to my dear friends here in Canada and around the world, to my SJC sisters who tether me to who I really am, you mean so much to me… to my sister Reina and my mother and all my relatives wherever you may be, I love you and wish you peace, joy and a happy new year.