Leave a comment Posted on September 6, 2016September 6, 2016 Uncategorized

Five Months to Fifty: Me, My Mother,Myself.

In May, I took trip to Vancouver with my mother. Neither of us had been there before and considering she is 76 and retired, she’s healthy and has the time to spare and I could make it happen so off we went. We did all we could in four rainy days and I am glad she is a trooper because we could have easily been sidetracked and stuck indoors with the constant down-pouring. Armed with our umbrellas (like everyone in Vancouver) and raincoats, we got to Stanley Park, to Gastown, to the Art Gallery, the Olympic torch at Canada place, the harbour, The Classical Chinese Gardens … we crammed everything we could into our time together including catching up with my cousin, Natasha, whom we don’t get to see very often.

I live about an hour and 15 minutes away from my mother and sister, so anytime I can spend with them … with her …has to be planned and is very valuable to me. Like anyone with a family, there are many things about our loved ones that make us sigh, or shake our head and roll our eyes but the love we have for each other is fierce and glues together the fragments of our frustrations with each other to keep us whole. My mother is a unique character. She is very much the verbal martyr and tends to be very defensive. She is stubborn, does not always pay attention and talks while you are talking. She over-packs because of the “you never know” and “just in case” scenarios she has in her head and she just does not understand how I travel so light and how nonchalant I am about not having an oversupply of band aids in my purse or sample sizes of Advil, Tylenol, Gravol and Immodium.

“Why put yourself in a situation where you would have to buy these things?” she would ask, astonished.

“Because on every block there is a pharmacy and all these things are like 2 to 3 bucks”, I would reply, casually, sometimes cheekily.

I hate bulk. I hate having excess shit and as annoyed as she is about my empty handbag, I am annoyed by her incredibly overstuffed one that she has to dig into every five minutes. Still, she is my mother and I do have a lot of her in me, although to toot my own horn, with help over the years from being married to Tom, I have it under control. From Lumlin (her Chinese name), I got my sense of organization. Rare are the occasions when I leave something to the last minute. When I travel, I am packed about a week ahead of time because a week before that, I made certain everything that needs to come with us was clean and pressed. I get my need for order from her as well. I like and have to have a clean kitchen. If you want me to cook, the kitchen has got to be clean and tidy and I insist on a clean bathroom and made beds. After a long day at work, or a long day on the road, my eyes need to fall on certain things that are ordered and neat so that my brain does not go into visual overload (hmm…a little Adam-like I suppose). Unlike my mother, I can leave the dishes for later if I want to leave and go do something fun on a nice day. I have never let the traits I have, distract me from having a good time and I am okay leaving things for later when I have something else to do. My mother also passed onto me some very old school lessons in etiquette which I am proud to say I have been able to pass onto my sons. They know which fork to start with first when we are out for a meal; know when they need to wear a tie and dress shoes, shirt and pants and when to dress down. They often remember to stand when a woman joins the table and they open and hold the door in public and are polite with their actions and words. In a world so adamant about not doing things the way our parents did when it comes to raising our children, I am proud to say (while I understand why some people feel their parent’s way is archaic), I raised Adam and Logan pretty much the way my mother and father raised my sister and me and I am not sorry I did.

Like my mother, I adore my children and would kill for them as any parent would but I also believe there is a time and place for them and that they should not always be the centre of attention. I spend a lot of time with my boys to the point where, as they separate themselves from me as they get older, I am not sad to think that one day they will move on with their own lives, on their own path – I am actually proud that they are moving on and I am happy for Tom and me because it means that our uninterrupted time together is approaching. Children are wonderful but they can be draining if we let them be. Like my mother towards us , I have no guilt when it comes to Adam and Logan but respect for the men I am watching them become. I also have bought into her take on marriage, considering she had 43 great years with my father. My mother always made time for Dad. She was his greatest listener, advisor, friend and love. That time when they were sitting together, was their time and unless we were bleeding or near death, we NEVER interrupted them. Neither one of them contradicted the other when it came to the rules and expectations of our family and our home and the other thing that has stuck in my mind about their marriage was trust. When they were together, nothing could phase them – not money, not friends, not mauvais langue, not sickness, not death. I feel that way about my own marriage. I feel that with Tom in my corner, there is nothing that can harm me. We have this saying between us “It’s you and me. It’s always been you and me and we’re still here”.

From Lumlin, I have inherited a strong sense of loyalty. When I am your friend, I am a good one, to the point of being taken for granted sometimes and then if it gets past a certain level of tolerance, I end the friendship. Like her, I may be an ex-pat but I am a “Trini to de bone” because as we say in Trinidad, “one must never damn the bridge they cross”. When you move away from the land of your birth, it is imperative to stay true to your roots to help you meander through the culture you have chosen or rather, have suddenly found yourself. Like her, I feel one of my biggest obligations to my children is to make them confident in themselves and to teach them that they can do anything if they work hard. Like her, I am teaching them to dream and to reach and to know that even if they fall, they won’t fall far and like her, I have learned to give them these skills even on the days when I don’t feel 100% confident in myself. Mom raised me to be accountable for myself and my actions. She trusted me to do the right things and for the most part I did because I could always hear her voice whenever I was in a tricky situation, guiding me to make the right choices. She had a confidence in me that I never wanted to betray or let down and I see that in both my sons. They know that I know I gave them the right tools that they need for society and I know they work very hard to do the right thing. That being said, I have inherited a not so sweet side from my mother as well. Mine I think is a little darker than hers, lol, but it is in check. Let’s face it, my mother, like everyone on the planet has her “bad ways” too. My girl ain’t a perfect angel by any means. She can sting you with words when she’s ready and because I learned by observation, so can I and so can my sister but one discovers how to rein that shit in and release only when necessary – and in this world we live in where selfishness (most times) trumps selflessness and when people are just downright asinine, you might get a little venom from our direction … oops.

These skills (hopefully only the good ones, right? lol) my mother gave to me, are the skills I am giving to Adam and Logan because they need to be strong to face every single day in this world. They need to be strong to handle the dark times life will throw their way and I know that because I have lived through some dark days and I’m still here, in one piece, dependent on nothing more than my own will power because I was not raised to be weak or give up but rather raised to keep getting up and keep trying and keep moving on to the next day, next thing, next opportunity … just like my mom.

This trip gave me a chance to see Mummy. To see what makes her, her now and what has changed about her as she has gotten older. Her tech confidence isn’t what it used to be since she stopped working and she likes to lean on us for the simplest things regarding the computer and her phone, but we remain patient and we teach her and she comes around as we know she can. I think she has just decided there are some things she does not want to give too much of her attention to anymore and that is okay. She is still a busy body around the house, always cooking something (you never leave her home without a container of something tasty) or she is always cleaning something and though she does not have to, I understand the need to feel useful, so we let her (within reason – moving things in our house to suit her short stature does not work when the shortest person living here is 5’7″ and the tallest is 6’2″).

Mummy and I are extremely different. We are not besties. We are mother and daughter. I call her to chat and occasionally for advice or just a listening ear (as long as she does not talk over top of me lol) and we go places together. We cook together when we can, drive around together when we can and it’s nice. It’s comfortable. There are times I feel sorry that her all time love has passed away and I get frustrated when we talk about things Dad might have done that made me shake my head, and she jumps all over me defending him – but then I know it is her grief that’s talking. As an adult, I lost a father but she lost the man she loved and I have no idea how she feels, so now, we only reminisce about good things and that is fine because that is what she needs. There are things I prefer not to discuss with Mom because a) sometimes I don’t want her to worry about my stuff at her stage in life, and b) there is a strong generational difference of opinion regarding some things but I respect where she is coming from although I don’t think she respects where I’m coming from sometimes – oh well – old dogs, new tricks. She speaks like a 76 year old and is often politically incorrect – again – old dog, new tricks – and those are the times when she talks like she knows all about the topic and is right as right can be – so I take her comments with a pinch of salt, right? But the bottom line is, she is my mother and she has her moments of wisdom when she speaks to me from her heart. I admire the strong faith she has that buttresses my wavering one and when I am in doubt, when I need support; a confidence boost; when I worry about something; when I am faced with a tough decision, when I need prayer, she is there. I can count on her to always be there and I hope when she is gone, I can close my eyes and hear her voice and hear what she would have said to me so that I can right myself. She gave me the strength that so many admire and some, deep down inside themselves hate about me all at once. She told me from the moment I could understand words, that I was beautiful on the outside and exquisite on the inside. She is the reason I have so much compassion and the reason I have no fear of the stuff of life. There are things that make me scared but nothing that scares me enough to quit. She is me. I am her, I am Dad. I already see myself in my children. I know like me, their mother frustrates the hell out of them and I see them roll their eyes and I notice when my opinions bounce off of them because they are too strong. I might see myself as a watered down version of my 5 foot maybe 2 inch powerhouse mother but to my children, I am her.

I can do a better job of being a daughter – we can all be better adult children to our adult parents. If you think you are a perfect adult child, you are a hypocrite. If your adult parent does not make you sigh and shake your head, you are a hypocrite. If you think you are drastically different from your parents, you are in denial – wake up. And if you think you do things better as a parent than your own parents did because you have read some new age bull-shit parenting books, you’re a damn fool. If you are lucky to have one or both of your folks around, put your arms around them and be thankful for them and in some way show them how much you appreciate them and all they did for you. If your folks were a disaster and they messed you up royally, find a way to forgive them, if you can, for your own salvation and sanity. Forgive and free your soul. Remember, you are going to be an adult parent to adult children before you know it. What treatment would you want from your adult son or daughter?

So … thank you Mom, for irritating me, harping on me from the time I could talk, showing me how to do everything from run a house, mix a drink for your guests from the time I was 4, to holding a job, and being amazing at the best job, in a cynical world that views being a good wife, mother and life partner as an underachievement, even though we all know that the problem with the world is that work takes way too much precedence over family and many people have no choice but to let it. Thank you, Mom for banning me, for vexing me; punishing me; kissing me and hugging me; thank you for telling me when I was being an ass and telling me when I was wonderful. Thanks for the confidence and bravery you instilled in me and the pride I see in your eyes when you look at me and mine. Thank you for what you still are able to do for me. You drive me crazy and you make me laugh. Thanks for coming on this trip with me and being so game to do whatever came up next. That was very cool of you and I will never forget that. Thank you for still ever so subtly showing me the way. I am you in so many ways and you know what? Nothin’ wrong with that at all.

~ For my mother, Angela – Thank you. Love you. ~

Leave a comment Posted on July 30, 2016July 30, 2016 autism, Uncategorized

Seven Months to Fifty: Lone Rider.

I need a new mountain bike. I went for a ride yesterday and I could hear and feel that it is time for a new one. It’s been a faithful friend over the years though. I have had her since I lived in Brockville, well before kids were even a thought in my head. But second the boys were old enough to ride without training wheels, that was the bike I used to teach first, Adam, then Logan, how to ride in the street and along the trails. Yesterday was the first time since they were born that I have ridden alone. They still do these sort of activities with me if they feel like it but they are teenagers now; a far cry from the ages where this sort of thing was part of our day to keep them active, teach them things and to make them nice and tired by the end of the day.

As I rode along the route, I remember stopping at the bridge with them, taking the time to look at the people fishing and looking at the large heron we used to see perched on this massive rock in the middle of the river (Wonder where he’s gone to? Wonder if he is still alive?)

I remember Logan’s endless questions and non-stop chatter and Adam’s intense stare as he quietly took in everything, building a massive vocabulary in his head without uttering a word until of course, we rode under the bridge where he would join Logan and yell “ECHO” and laugh until we were clear of it. I yelled “ECHO” yesterday too, for old time’s sake irregardless of the stares. As luck would have it, I rode under the bridge while the train was crossing and I remembered how fast Logan would pedal from under there because he was always scared of the loud noise of the wheels on the track above and was concerned that the bridge would collapse under the weight of the train (“and fall and qwash our heads Mummy!”). Then, because we had Adam with us, if a train was crossing, we had to stop in the pothole laden parking lot of the yacht club to watch each car go by until they were out of sight. Autistic people are flabbergasted by trains while their younger “regular” brothers like messing around with the gravel and mud in the potholes much to my disgust (there was never anyone dirtier than our”Pig Pen”, Logan James).

Closer to the marina’s boat launches we would often stop at the Duffer’s counter for an ice cream or a freezie in spite of the dead-fishy smell.

Logan had an eye for locating dead fish and depending on the time of year, he had an eye for large mating fish who’s bodies would emerge out of the water, splashing wildly as their bodies tumbled around like laundry in a clothes dryer. This caught the attention of every child on the path which led once again to Logan’s most frequent question “How come those fish are fighting? What are they doing then if they not fighting Momma?” followed by “But why?” At the middle of the trail, there’s another bridge which is a perfect spot for watching the turtles dive off the rocks and into the mossy water and on the other side you could look out onto the bay and see a family of swans as they swam by marveling each time we rode down there at how quickly the babies grew.

A few steps away is the playground where I always promised them we would stop so they could play on our way back from the end of the trail where they would practice skipping stones at the rocky beach near the rowing club. After the thousandth rock was skipped and they exhausted themselves at the playground, they would gripe about having to ride home, but they did anyway.

Our bike rides to the waterfront would take about two hours when all was said and done, three if I ran and they took their roller blades or scooters instead of their bikes. Yesterday the ride was part of my exercise program. I was able to ride in high gear the whole way there and back in an hour. For the first time in a long time, I only had to look out for myself on a ride. I didn’t have to shout out directions, or reminders to look both ways before walking our bikes across the street. I did not have to worry about drivers seeing them or them paying attention to the traffic signals. (And to think I sometimes took other people’s children with us. I must have been some kind of sucker for punishment!) For the first time, I did not have to yell at 8 year old Adam to slow down or tween Adam to keep up. I did not have to sandwich a highly distracted Logan (at every age until he was 11) between his brother and me as we rode along the path. I did not have to remind anyone to stay to the right and watch for pedestrians (though I did have a chuckle as I recalled a very blunt Adam not using his bike horn but preferring to yell, “Move out of the way, old people” as he rode past them on the path, hands behind his head like a circus act …and me with the disclaimer “Sorry…he’s autistic”) Yes, for the first time since I became their mother, it was just me on my bike and it was kind of strange but nice … and it was relaxing and it was freeing, yet quite nostalgic now that I think about it. I was alone but not lonely because as I rode past each of our “spots” I could see them with their big colourful bike helmets on,

their Hot Wheels sunglasses and their Ninja Turtle water bottles, I could hear them too, “Look at this Mom!” “Whoo hoo! I jumped it. and I didn’t die!”

“Push me harder mom! Want swing higher, please, Mom!” “Mom, come quick, Adam fell down!” “Mom….Logan…it’s crying. It has a bleed!”

Were all these moments that long ago?

They are young men now and so much has changed and they have changed me in many ways. I remember feeling so tired just keeping them busy, teaching them, raising them and more specifically trying to enhance Adam’s life and give Logan the most “normal” life we could give him. I remember wondering how long it would be before they could do more for themselves, be more independent and of course, if Adam ever would be independent enough to do anything on his own. It felt sometimes their childhood and their helplessness would last forever yet once they reached their milestones I never noticed right away because I was caught up in the next issue or phase I had to get them through. But suddenly here they are now; capable, independent, happy (with the most interesting personalities and senses of humour) and I don’t know where the time went or when they got so big and tall. It was hard raising these two, and it was joyful, it was tiring but it was and still is worth it.

When Adam was diagnosed Tom and I made the decision to do all we could to help Adam and keep our family whole. I sacrificed my career to stay home with my children for as long as I could. Even when I went back to work, it was on a part time basis and even now that Tom has established his own business, I still work very flexible, part-time hours. It has been and still is my pleasure to have made the decision I did. I was here for every first, I was here for every tear, every bloody nose, skinned knee, very lump, bump, fight and every triumph. If Adam was not autistic, I might have very well missed out on all of what are now the most cherished moments of my life. I was here for them then as I am now because I believe it was and is important and worth the sacrifice. I still feel that they need me to be available. Not that I want to micro manage them, but I want to be here to lend my support during these teen years on the days that are absolutely shite and to be there to high five them on the days when something awesome happens. Conversations in a day or a week occur less frequently now, but when they do, they are long and in depth because there is an openness among all of us. Logan is comfortable speaking to both Tom and me and he trusts what we have to say even when he feels he has to be objectionable. Adam is still a man of few words, but over the years he has learned in all his independence that he needs our help from time to time and seeks it whenever he can in the best way that he can. He does not like long conversations, and the three of us respect that but still do find ways to bring him out of his shell verbally.

Logan is a typical 14 year old guy and is the best teacher Adam has ever had when it comes to him fitting in and has been so crucial in helping us recognize what in Adam’s demeanor can be classed as puberty and what is autism. Looking at these photos, and many that we have taken over the years, makes me realize how much they have done together and how close they are in their unique way…Logan, the mouthy self proclaimed big brother, Adam, the silent, thinker who adores his brother and sees him as a best friend. I used to worry that the autism would alienate them but they spend a great deal of time together and I think there is nothing they would not do for each other. And as Adam gets older, he is showing more compassion for others especially Logan, and does not like it and actually feels badly when something has upset his brother. It is the sweetest thing I have ever seen from Adam, whose condition makes regular and appropriate human emotion almost impossible for him to understand or display.

Adam has given the rest of us in this family a special ability. He has taught us how to speak in ways that he could understand, do things in a way that he might be included and to think outside of the box pretty much for everything we need to accomplish with him. He has taught us how to help him be successful while challenging him with the same high expectations we have of ourselves. Knowing it is important to speak to people, Adam has been practicing the arts of texting and conversation and he has some rehearsed phrases and sentences that he knows are effective in helping him get what he wants. Lately, he has taken to coming up with great ideas and usually they are great ideas that benefit him. Every week when we go for our ice cream treat, he is insisting we go inside the store to practice placing his order and paying for it.

He’d say, “Hey, Mother! I know! How about we go inside the store and get the ice cream there. We don’t have to do the drive through today!”

He is so insistent and so passionate about this that it is a joy to watch him at the counter, his bank card in hand, shouting his order to the cashier who might come away a little bit deaf after being exposed to his loud deep voice but hey, we’ll work on volume in the fall.

Now that he is a teenager, Adam and I have a musical bond. He is my in car DJ, switching between Hits 1, The Pulse, and Pop 2K finding all his favourite tunes. We chat briefly about the song, who sings it and why we like or dislike a song. On long drives, I get a kick out of looking at him out of the corner of my eye as he air drums or when we both start giggling when we catch ourselves miming and bobbing our heads to the beat of song we enjoy. When I sing he tells me how terrible I am and when he sings I tell him how wonderful he is to which he promptly replies, “Thanks, I know,”.

I have not been perfect with them by any means. I have made many mistakes as a mother and I am just as flawed as the next person but I do have and appreciate my special connection with each of my boys. Now, I think a proverbial torch has been passed from me to their father. They like going to the movies with him, they like going to Canadian Tire (a hardware store and then some) with him, like going fishing with him and Grampa when he is feeling well (Adam mostly likes to drive the boat)

and they like going to the gym with their dad too. It’s absolutely a man thing because I am politely not included and it’s perfectly fine. When it comes to getting their uniforms for school, they want to go with him because they are more comfortable fitting on the different sizes with him there as opposed to MOM being there and making it awkward much like how they prefer to go underwear and razor shopping with him too. It’s nice to see their man bond with their dad but I will admit I do miss their little feet, their little shoes, their

scabby elbows and knees, all things Thomas, Star Wars Clone Wars, WWE,

YTV, Teletoons and when Spider Man and Superman were like God to them.

I miss finding them asleep in their tent; I miss the stuff in their pockets like a toy car, a rock or some dead bug. I miss dirty hands and faces and their over-sized heads … sometimes …. many times…. all the time.

Their childhood went by quickly in my opinion but they still have some time for old Mom and they have their memories that’s for sure and it’s really nice when we look back at the photos Adam remembers because we often wondered if he did at all. They are almost men now and as bittersweet as it is to say goodbye to their childhood, I get to watch the best part now. Where will their path lead them? Whatever will they become? Time will tell and hopefully their father and I will be here to see it all unfold for years to come. But for now, maybe I’ll start looking up bikes on line…see what’s out there that this Mom of almost 50 will enjoy riding … alone.

Leave a comment Posted on June 26, 2016 Uncategorized

Eight Months to Fifty: The Significance of the Cirque Bag.

The thought provoking bag.

This is my bag.

I like this bag and I hate this bag. I got it at the Cirque du Soleil store in Downtown Disney a few years ago. My Cirque bag looks like it has many compartments because the artist used zippers to create this design illusion. It isn’t the kind of bag one would use if you need to carry a lot of things with you. With two very small and rather shallow pockets in the front, the only useful parts of the bag are the two compartments on either side of it.

Even then, because the bag is a triangle there really is only enough room to hold a small wallet, my phone, a tube of lip gloss, a small tube of hand cream and a pen. Looking at the bag on the outside, I guess I love it’s soft smooth texture. I still find it quite interesting to look at and that I see something new pop out at me every time I take in the artist’s zany, whimsical use of colours and patterns. And while it truly captures the beauty and mystique of Cirque, it can also frustrate me if I happen to have it when I go grocery shopping and have to get in and out of it to retrieve my wallet. Those are the times the look of the bag is deceiving and I curse myself for not having the good sense to have chosen a more practical bag to take with me when I run errands.

The bag was intended as a gift for someone who was a close friend at the time. She was house and pet sitting for us while we were on our trip because she wanted to use the time away from her “normal” to sort out some stuff in her life. Of all the cool stuff in the store, the bag stood out and I considered it a good gift for her as, like me, she enjoyed unique, artsy and funky things. There was a blue one as well and I was going to buy it so I could have one too but (a) I didn’t want to do the “bestie” twin thing, (b) the blue one was not as bold and (c) the bag wasn’t cheap. You might be thinking I did a not-so-nice thing when I decided to keep the bag but as you read on you will see this bag is more than the story of me not giving a gift intended for a friend. To me, the bag is a beautiful piece of art that captures the essence of Cirque du Soleil which has a special place in my heart from the days when we lived in Montreal and they still performed there. It is a reminder of a great family vacation, a wonderful tropical night and is a symbol of a disappointing friendship that was doomed to fail, now that I think about it. It is a reminder of hurt, forgiveness and inner peace and is a grounding reminder to always listen to that inner voice of mine.

Rose Kennedy once said, “It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting it’s sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”

If anyone knew pain, it was Miss Rose and as an admirer of hers, I too have subscribed to her observation because let’s face it, the old adage forgive and forget is so far from the truth because while quite difficult when someone has wronged you and hurt you deeply to forgive them, I believe that forgiveness is possible but forgetting is not only impossible but pretending to is foolish. I rather lean toward the saying “live and learn“.

So why was this woman my friend? Fair question. When I moved from Calgary, my focus was on getting Adam’s in-home therapy underway, managing our nutrition and getting Logan into school for the first time and basically raising my family and running a household while Tom worked. He met her at work and thought she and I would hit it off as friends. With the headway I was making with Adam, I didn’t really want to allow anyone new in my life, let alone get close to them but my mother thought it would be nice to have a break from my daily stay-at-home-mom-and-therapist-and-teacher routine. Taking my well-meaning family’s good intentions and against my instincts, I made a new friend and as it turned out, we did have many things in common and did enjoy spending time together. She introduced me to running, I got her practicing yoga. We shared a birthday and a love of the arts but there was always something that I couldn’t really put my finger on at first that made me question if we really were suitable as friends. As time went on, I realized it was her false sense of confidence and her inability to be comfortable in her own skin that never sat well with me. She found the silliest things “cool” and was a self-professed “whatever” girl who was “carefree”, “kooky”, “wild” and “dark”, glorifying herself as a crazy, haphazard mess, much like one might be at age 15. I always thought after age 24, the “cool” thing was working to get your act together as a grounded, well-rounded adult. It was frustrating watching her avoid grown-up life – basic things like being accountable for her work or standing her ground as a parent or not showing up at an event she’d committed to, not caring she was becoming notorious for backing out of things at the last second. She would rather appear helpless than face reality and with all that my family and I dealt with on a daily basis, I was disappointed in her childishness and lost a measure of respect for her because I knew if she made an effort to be a strong independent woman, she could own her world and not have to lean on anyone. I saw her weakness and I was amazed as I was annoyed by it, because she clearly found a way around seeing things through in her life. I blame myself for not cutting the friendship to an acquaintanceship at that moment. It was the right move to make but when I mentioned it to my mother in passing, she suggested perhaps I was being judgmental and that sometimes, though we have our own troubles and struggles, we do have room to be there for someone else. She ended her thought the way she always does with a simple sentence that makes me think – looking at me with those ashy grey eyes she said, “It’s okay to be nice Danie. It’s nice to have a close friend.” So, I kept on.

Unfortunately, I discovered like my Cirque bag, my friend was lovely on the outside and often shallow on the inside. Her sweet and at times convenient naiveté drew people to her and made them want to help her. To be fair, she wasn’t an ogre. I mean, she could be compassionate, kind and generous and she certainly preferred to laugh than sulk even though she had a lot weighing on her soul. But instead of doing something about her life, she chose to sweep every issue, conflict, responsibility and problem under a rug and as things built up and up and up, it spilled onto her children as well. She never cleaned up her messes because she never learned how nor did she want to learn. That took strength and guts and hard work. What she did learn was how to draw attention by portraying herself as a damsel in distress. She would proverbially throw her arms in the air and I would watch in awe as people would flock to her and wrap their proverbial arms around her, giving her advice, lending her their ear (whether sincerely or not) and assisting her in any way they could in the moment because her helplessness made them want to rescue her while giving them a feeling of being superior to her at the same time. Some people tend to like the misery of others deep down inside especially when “the other” has a tinier waist, a flatter tummy and an upright, firm, albeit artificial bust line. When “pretty people” flounder or fail, in some bizarre way it arouses a sense of comfort in some people who are less so. When a proclaimed “goddess” is knocked off a pedestal, suddenly it’s okay for the lowly mortals to not have the prettiest face or sexiest body, allowing the little devil sitting on their left shoulder to smirk once in a while. I was different with her. I wasn’t competing with her; wasn’t looking to have her at my side to be popular nor did I want to rescue her. I like strong, confident and hard working and lighthearted people around me. I wanted her to grow up and take charge. I was taking my mom’s suggestion and trying to be a friend but I made a major mistake. I did not accept her for who she was and when I recognized that she couldn’t take the advice she sought from me because it entailed hard work on her part; when she could not get herself to where she needed to be on her own, I needed to take a step back from the relationship we had much sooner than I did. But much like how I would make my bag work for me; stuffing all the important things I needed in there, ditching all the unnecessary receipts, pens and junk that was taking up way too much space, I made her ditch her habit of putting stuff off or not dealing with issues. I made her step up and be accountable for herself and her family and for a while it worked. But in the end, she was like my bag, nice to look at and only able to hold the bare necessities and not much more. I was wrong in thinking she could be more. I was wrong to think that she was going to turn into a strong independent woman, mother, worker and reliable friend. People can try to change. They can try to turn things around, be resilient and do the very best with what they have and strive for better. We can all dig deeper and rise higher if we want to. Not everyone wants to. Not everyone can. In the end, I learned my friend couldn’t be something she was not and I should not have encouraged her because she failed and did not know how to try again.

In the last year as the flame slowly went out on our friendship, I watched quietly as she frantically tried to preserve her youth dabbling in this, experimenting in that. I watched quietly as her work and things at home unravelled. I said nothing when I heard the rumours then saw the evidence of promiscuity and her unprofessional behaviour among colleagues which included her attempts to poach work. Who she was, that unsure, wild teenager who never grew up, rose to the surface and she was considered by many to be nothing more than a vapid, waste of time and a disappointment to the workplace. The “whatever girl” had nothing left to grasp and in the end all she could do was attach herself to a man (whom she admitted was not her type and one whom she and I agreed was not someone to get involved with until she had her life figured out) and “get the hell out of Dodge”.

When important contents are removed from my Cirque bag, it is mostly an empty vessel. There might be a receipt or two left in it, maybe a pen and a tube of lip gloss but nothing I would be concerned about if it were lost. My former friend and I did share some good times and I miss having someone nearby to do stuff in town with. Many of my friends live in cities an hour or more away from me and it was nice to have company at yoga occasionally or someone to have an impromptu breakfast out with on a weekend but now, in her absence, I’m back to doing what I do when I have the opportunity. I’m back to jumping in my car (mostly in the summer when the roads are better) and going to spend time with women who don’t need propping or fixing. They have their shit together and are worth the drive and my time. In a million years, I never would have thought a friend would give up her family and her friendships for a man. It was kind of like the girl or guy in high school who separated themselves from their friends because they were going steady with someone who was the be all and end all of their lives. There was no goodbye when she left and I have since heard that she’s been back to visit her children? or family? once? …I am not sure. I have had people mention to me and try to show me some of her social media posts (which I politely declined to view) that to them, seem dark and sexual and more in tune with the vibe of an angst-filled 18 year old. I don’t know anything about what she is doing now and I can’t comment on what she is posting and I have no intention of reaching out to re-kindle anything with her. The last communication we had was via text and I let her know then how I felt, that I was verbally ending our friendship and I wished her well wherever her journey would take her. She responded that she did not know what to do or say about my text. She admitted that she was avoiding me because, and I quote, “it’s what I do. I avoid things that are hard to deal with. I’m just an avoider” and she didn’t know what to say to me. Hmm… upon writing that just now, I realize the only thing I really regret is the amount of time I wasted with her. So much had taken place in the 7 or 8 years we had been close – mostly things with her because after a while, it’s apparent that all the relationships she’s had with friends were rosiest when things, ever so subtly, were about her. It makes me wonder if all the times she stayed here, ate here, cried here in my house…the amount of times I fed her children, made them get their homework done, drove them from school only to have her reciprocate a few times in comparison then distance herself and disappear…I wonder if she was my friend at all or if I was just another really convenient pit-stop for her like so many of her past friends were? Where was she when her family and friends needed her? This is why I did not want to open up my life to someone new. This is why I wanted to go with my gut instinct and not get close to anyone else. I can’t blame Tom or my mom for wanting me to not be lonely in this small and boring place but the only good that came of my experience with this friendship was the affirmation that I am best following my instincts every time. I have my friends I am happy to drive to Toronto to see and one I have recently promised to fly to a different province to see. I have my friends abroad – my SJC “sisters” I keep in touch with on line after a 30 year reunion that reminded me that everything I know to be true, everything I was, I am and am yet to be was created during my life in Trinidad and the years we spent together – years that transformed us into the incredibly admirable, strong and courageous women we all are today. I have my dear sister, my mother and my girlfriend in Trinidad with whom I am able to Skype when life here gets on my nerves. I have my wonderful cousins and friends from Calgary and Montreal and a few people I have come to know and enjoy in the area where I live as well. We are not “besties” but people – women who enjoy each other’s company. No drama, no issues no bull shit. That’s how it was before and how I’d like to keep it. No more wasted time on wasteful people.

But as my mother has said to me about all this – we all have experiences in life that help us grow and remind us of who we are. Nothing, she says is a waste of time (I ain’t so sure about that, but okay). She told me not all of my friendship was bad and what is most important for me to remember, is even though what happened hurt and at times made me angry and frustrated, she was my friend, and I did help her and she very much knows that.

I told my friend when I returned from my trip that I got her a box of amazing chocolates in lieu of the bag (why lie?). Though she really liked it, we both agreed that it was the better move as it may have ended up in the trunk of her car with the zippers broken and the material stained. I never told her this but worse yet, because of her “whatever” and “kooky” nature, I might have found the bag strewn on the shelf at yoga just like the way the shirt (one she really wanted) that I gave her for her birthday along with her worn underpants were left there for God know’s how many days (I shake my head thinking of the poor custodian who had to remove her nasty bits). Hmm…birthday present you really wanted carelessly left with your underwear on a shelf…kind of like the friendship I suppose that she tossed aside and let fade. I am aware you can always point a finger at someone but you will always have 3 pointing right back at you. No one is perfect. We are all hopelessly flawed and I have some blame in the failure of this friendship. As I head towards age 50, I have learned many valuable lessons from this relationship. I have gone through the anger and the bitterness where I really wanted to hear that she fell flat on her face. But then there was the lingering of a tiny shred of hurt that has been finally been replaced by forgiveness. When you forgive someone you can’t wish bad things upon them. I don’t want her to fail. I didn’t want her to fail when we were friends and I don’t want her to fail now. I truly hope her “re-do” is a success because she is entering the second half of her life and at some point, she has to make it a better one. That tiny shred of hurt has been the affirmation that the best advice for me will always come from my intuition. I have all I need and there is nothing I am seeking; no thing I want. This experience with this former friend in the end, I suppose, simply confirms I’m good.

For my friend and “word sister” Helen ~ Reading your words about your disappointments and triumphs with regards to your own relationships with others made me realize that admitting I too have experienced the hurt of a failed friendship, doesn’t make me weak. No matter where you are there are people who are great friends and others who are not. Your brave candor made me realize that I’m not above having unsuccessful relationships and that I am not too tough or strong to feel that kind of pain they bring because in life it is better to open oneself to all things ( even the not so good ones) in order to truly live.~

2 Comments Posted on June 21, 2016June 21, 2016 Uncategorized

Gesture of Goodwill Leaves Bitter Taste Behind

As many of you know, we started Adam’s Hope almost 10 years ago. With creative ideas and a lot of time and hard work (in addition to raising autistic son Adam and his younger brother Logan) we have had the honour of helping families in our community affected by autism, help themselves and get what they needed for their sons and daughters. Since March, I have gradually passed the torch to three mothers who have the energy and the drive and the enthusiasm among themselves to keep the charity alive and well so it can continue to service our community. I also have to tip my hat to the families who regularly put on fundraisers to give back to Adam’s Hope and each other time and again, and I hope they continue to do so. While Tom, Adam, Logan and I will still be involved with raising funds and helping out however and whenever we can, it is time for us to enjoy this new phase of our life. Our boys are older, more mature and capable and Adam is going to be just fine and we are now allowed to have a more “normal” family life.

In all the years of putting on events and raising awareness, we have encountered the most wonderful people and while every gesture of kindness has been appreciated, one of the more recent and bigger ones, has been a downright fiasco that has unfortunately left a sour taste in our mouths. The level of disorganization, the lack of proper communication, the insult and rudeness we have been shown by a particular organizing member of a local chapter of The 100 Men Who Care Quinte, has forced me to tell people what really happened. I believe the members – the men who show up to the meetings are very well intended. I believe the organizing committee, (including the one very rude individual), is well intended but they were far too disorganized to get things done in the efficient manner of their counterparts, The 100 Women Who Care Quinte. Now that I have been told that the 100 Men Who Care Quinte is blaming their tardiness and shoddiness on the charity I created with my husband for this community, I am going to tell you and the members of the !00 Men who Care Quinte what REALLY happened.

In late February, Tom and I accompanied our Adam to the National Special Olympic Winter Games where he competed as part of Team Ontario in Speed Skating where he won 2 bronze medals. Adam’s Hope was represented at the 100 Men Who Care Quinte meeting by someone who was a member of our charity at the time, and after a brief presentation, we were the fortunate recipients of $11,800.00. We would have preferred if Tom made the presentation at the 100 Men Who Care Quinte meeting but this particular and now former member of Adam’s Hope was over zealous and adamant that we should present in the winter meeting. Anyway, we were chosen and we were happy and very grateful as this money would help get autistic kids to camp, help parents pay for respite and therapy and many other things in the summer which is a hard time for parents, as the kids are home from school and finding activities that they are able to do is difficult and expensive. This donation also freed us from having to put on numerous fundraising events in a summer when we were changing hands in the charity. So this all started off as a really good thing. Because we were away, I am not sure how the news got to the local paper as quickly as it did ( I am not a fan of immediate publicity until things are settled) but I started getting calls from families, putting in their request for assistance. I assured them as soon as the money was received (and I told them to give it at least 3 weeks) I would happily help them out.

Tom began corresponding with the organizer by e mail (as there is no contact phone number) shortly after we heard the good news, thanking the 100 Men Who Care Quinte for their generosity. Knowing families would need to make down payments for summer camps and services etc., Tom asked when Adam’s Hope could expect the money. He was told to give it a week or so and that he (the organizer) was on top of it. March became April and I not only had calls from families but from 100 Men Who Care Quinte members who wrote their cheques to Adam’s Hope and wanted to know why we have not cashed them as yet. We explained that we did not have any cheques in our possession and that we were still waiting. I also had calls from members wondering if I would write them a receipt, again for donations I did not yet have.

Since it was taking a long time to receive the funds and any real information from the 100 Men Who Care Quinte, and we were receiving all these phone calls, we were concerned that something had gone wrong. Tom had sent several e mails that were not responded to by the 100 Men Who Care Quinte. He has also received a couple very terse ones that say “I’m on it!” and suddenly we began to feel like we were badgering them and that we did something wrong, when all I had been doing was fielding calls from people looking for assistance because they saw the article on the news paper. I was fielding calls from people who wanted me to cash cheques I did not have, and people who wanted to know when they would receive a receipt from our organisation. As you can see, we had very little feedback from the 100 Men Who Care Quinte and nothing to offer the families and no answer for donors. We were waiting. And Waiting…and WAITING. Charities don’t function on promised money. The money Adam’s Hope raises is immediately distributed and used to help people with autism because the alternative is endlessly long waiting lists. There was nothing we could do so to stop my phone from ringing, so I posted on Facebook in May (yes we had already drifted into the month of May) that I had not yet received the money from 100 Men Who Care Quinte and as soon as I did I would be able to give people the answers they were seeking.

Soon after the post, one of the organizers finally gets in touch with Tom at 9:30 pm. He calls our house and got into a screaming match with Tom to the point that Adam could pick up on the tension. He started acting out asking “What’s wrong?” and “Why is the man in Dad’s phone yelling?” This man kept going on and on how he told us we were going to get the money soon and was angry because my post made them look bad. Well, Sir, don’t do things to make yourself look bad. He kept yelling “You’ll get your money!” Well, Sir, it’s not our money, it’s money the 100 Men Who Care Quinte was highlighted for in the newspaper that they were donating to Adam’s Hope. Because they could not collect all the cheques in a timely fashion, because they did not have a list of the donors names and addresses so that Adam’s Hope could write receipts, because of their lack of organization, The 100 Men Who Care Quinte is the only entity to be blamed for making themselves look bad. This man would not let Tom get a word in edgewise on the phone and when Tom was able to, he reminded him very firmly that we were the ones trying to communicate with him and he did so extremely politely every time. The organizer said we were badgering them (only after just 3 polite e mails in 2 and a half months and getting no response). So Tom told him if he addressed our concerns with proper communication there would not be a situation where there would be a shouting match over the phone.

Since this gong show of an experience, I have been told by 100 Men Who Care Quinte members that they still don’t have receipts from the first 4 donations they made to other charities who received their assistance. Some members who paid cash also do not have receipts from 4 separate donations. Why is that? (Disorganization…that’s why) Charitable receipts should be given promptly to donors as they can use them for income tax purposes. Some members told me they had to keep making sure they had the funds in their spending account to make sure the cheques they wrote (not just to Adam’s Hope but to other charities) through the 100 Men Who Care Quinte organization, would not bounce. After any fundraiser I have ever had, I deposit cheques within 3 days of receiving them and I issue receipts quickly and any receipts I might have missed I e mail to the donors the day I get the reminder that they are still waiting.

Now I have been told that The 100 Men Who Care Quinte is telling their members that because we were re-structuring a new committee, we caused the delay for the receipt of funds. That, I assure you is not true! The new Adam’s Hope Committee member was called by the organizers of the 100 Men Who Care Quinte on the day she was at the bank assuming control of the charity’s finances. She told him she was not able to take the cheques from him that day but would within the the next few days (we planned earlier in the year to transfer the account control in early June). Considering we’d been waiting since March, a few days really made no difference at this point. The organizer also told her that they had not received all the cheques and the was still short about $1000.00. Incredible, isn’t it? After all that time, they did not have all the cheques?

So to be very clear. Control of the account regarding the old and new committee for Adam’s Hope happened in early June as planned. The account was always open and able to receive donations as it had always been since 2007 so it posed no involvement in the delay of the receipt of funds. The 100 Men Who Care Quinte had from the month March to gather the cheques, give them to our charity, along with a list of names and addresses so that Adam’s Hope could issue receipts, at which time the cheques would have been deposited. It would have been nice to get the cheques in a timely fashion, so that families would have been able to secure their spots for their kids in the out of town overnight special needs camps, but even if we couldn’t and they communicated to us that they were having problems collecting the cheques I would have been able to communicate that to the people who were phoning me and our charity would have made arrangements to raise the money needed for security deposits for camp. Communication was VERY POOR.

In closing I would like the very rude organizing member of the 100 Men Who Care Quinte to know this – While I thank your organization for the kind gesture, I will not tolerate your rudeness quietly. You did not gather the cheques in an efficient manner. You did not communicate well with us (we have all the e mails to prove it). You did not give us a list of donors and their addresses so that at least we could mail their receipts. You had no right to call my home and get into a shouting match with my husband when you were the one who was disorganized and wrong. Sir, you actually were raising your voice and arguing with a charity… a charity you raised funds for. You created a tension in my household with your phone call that put my autistic son out of sorts. You had no right to be disrespectful to us. Why should I field all the upset calls you generated by your disorganization? I had no choice but to let people know I did not have anything from your organization and until I did, I could not help them. You Sir, made the 100 Men Who Care Quinte look bad by your disorganization. Perhaps your chapter needs to look to the 100 Men Who Care Kingston, who delivered a cheque to a charity they raised money for last December within 3 weeks of the event. Look to your female counterparts the 100 Women Who Care Quinte to see how efficient they are. Adam’s Hope is not ungrateful for the generosity but we did not ask to be chosen and we certainly did not have anything to do with your inability to organize things efficiently. Do not blame your shortcomings on our charity which has helped this community for almost 10 years with the simplest of fundraisers put on by parents and family and friends of autistic persons. This has nothing to do with our restructuring and EVERYTHING to do with your chapter being well intended and trying to do good in the community without having the organizational skills to pull it off. When organizations get popular and grow suddenly as yours has, being efficient is imperative. Looking good for doing good, is always a popular attraction but the true do-gooders do it right by being organized and efficient and apologetic when things do not go as planned. While the money will not be able to help our campers this year, we still will use it all to assist families affected by autism in our community in many other ways. Unfortunately what started out as a warm feeling in our hearts has turned into disappointment. I want you, the very rude organizing member of the 100 Men Who Care Quinte to apologize to my husband for your discourteous phone call and poor communication skills. I hope you step down from the organizing committee of 100 Men Who Care Quinte before you ruin it . You are certainly in the wrong role. No one speaks to my family like that and gets away with it. I will never go quietly when insulted and as much as this money will help others who really need it, I sometimes wish we never chosen as recipients. Do not try to tarnish the good name of the charity we founded and named in honour of our son. Adam’s Hope may be a small charitable organization but it has done and will continue to do good work in this community. I suggest your organization re-group and get organized so that you can do the same. All you had to do was tell us you were having a delay in collecting all the cheques and we would have been able to give people answers. All you had to do was communicate with us and this would have not become unpleasant.

This is my blog. This is where I state my opinion and where I get to state clearly what I know happened.

2 Comments Posted on June 5, 2016June 5, 2016 Uncategorized

Eight Months to Fifty: The Ballet Recital

After seven months of rehearsal, today was my ballet recital. Rewind now to the beginning of what I like to call “the gap” – the space that separates the you you were as a youth and the you you had to become as an adult once you started being responsible, organized and paying for things yourself. This is a little piece about finding the time to fill in “the gap” before the chance escapes you.

Tom and I moved around a lot when he was getting his then career in radio going and we found ourselves at times living in some hokey places where, as the tag along, I had to find something to do with my spare time. This was of course before children came along and there were many hours in the day. In Brockville, for example, I took a sailing class and by the end of my 2 years there I had achieved my introductory level “White Sail”. I also took a fitness instructors course and took it again in French when I moved to Montreal and I was known for teaching lively classes with a Caribbean flare. It was not easy moving from place to place but I always believed in making the most of whatever situation we found ourselves and now Tom and I have a repertoire of things we have dabbled in and hundreds of memories of each and every stop we made along our journey.

Now with 2 sons who have become busy young men, we are fearful that we are going to lose ourselves or put ourselves on pause as we drive them around to their activities. When you have been a participant all your life, it is really hard to be a spectator and as much as we love watching these highly competitive and talented athletes of ours, we started feeling that we needed to have something that belonged solely to us. I found myself wanting something more than my Wednesday “Ladies Night” tennis or the extremely occasional 9 holes of golf. I wanted something I could commit to – something that moved me. I wanted something I could work hard at and be passionate about and so, after joining my sister in Toronto, on her birthday for an Adult Master Class at the National Ballet of Canada, I knew I had to wake up the sleeping ballerina inside me. I had tried other dance classes before and it seems, especially in smaller towns, every “Soccer Mom” wanting to dance whether for fun or exercise, always sign up for hip hop which is too bad for three reasons :-

1) mothers with no rhythm who think that “Fifty Shades of Grey” is porn are absolutely horrible at Hip Hop and any form of movement. (It boggles my mind they were able to conceive children at all)

2) if you have ever danced and are looking for a challenge for your mind and your body, being in class with these women make you think murderous thoughts

and

3) because these mothers want to be in something they can dabble in and be mediocre at, all anyone can find in the line of Adult dance classes in a small town is Adult Hip Hop (it would be one thing if the classes were good but damn….they just aren’t)

So over the course of the years when I was desperately looking for a class I would readily find in a large city, I actually found it in Belleville (who knew?) and now I dance at the Quinte Ballet School of Canada and while it is not The National Ballet of Canada (which is an impossible commute for me), I have found something very close to what I had been seeking.

After months of learning choreography and perfecting the timing and the steps, it was time for the four Adult Ballet 2 students to perform in front of a bunch of people there to see their young sons and daughters. I was going to be dancing before the three most important men in my life who were thrilled for me from the day I told them I was thinking about performing. This afternoon was an intimate thing between them and me as this was a moment where I was able to show them a piece of myself they had never seen before and a chance to get them to understand who I was and what moved me. I had always felt I knew everything about the three of them but they had only ever seen pictures or heard me speak of the things I was passionate about and today they got to see the rest of what Mom is made of.

At 11:30 this morning, I did my stage makeup, wound my hair tightly in a bun and made my way to the school. I took two Advil (because that is where the wear and tear from all the sports has me now), warmed up at the barre, stretching my limbs as far as they could before putting on my costume and doing my final dress rehearsal. When it was time for our performance, I was waiting in the wings and in those brief seconds, every moment I performed at Queens Hall, at Bishops Anestey High School Stage, the hall at Chinese Association and at Dance Works at Syracuse University came rushing back to me. I felt that exhilaration over the pride and joy of being able to dance in front of an audience and just enjoy what I have always loved to do. My leg does not go high enough to have my foot by my ear anymore and Christ Almighty, everything hurts but the four of us did that choreography without a hitch and hopefully it looked as good as it felt. Ballet is a beautiful deception. It is a commitment at any level and age and it is as gentle and serene as it is difficult and athletic, so you have to work hard to make your body do what your mind wants it to do and it can only come from a place of love for the art, otherwise you are just doing moves. It isn’t for everyone, but if you have a sleeping ballerina inside you and you are able to find the right classes, go wake her up and get moving not just for your body but for your mind and your soul. My ballerina is awake again and she is going to dance right to the end of her days.

Today, eight months before my 50th birthday, I had the first ballet recital I have had in what seems like a hundred years and it felt good and I felt alive!

Leave a comment Posted on May 18, 2016May 19, 2016 Uncategorized

One Year to Fifty: This Faith of Mine.

There is no secret that at times in my life, I have struggled with my faith. I make no excuses or apologies for it and at the same time I am not one to be angry at God, nor am I cynical towards those who are unwavering in their faith. In fact, except for the ones who are clearly in the “blind faith category” who dwell in the “fire and brimstone”department, I really admire people who have a strong connection with God or Yahweh, Jah, Allah, etc., you know, the people where their faith just flows through and out of them. They are people at peace who have the utmost patience for the trials and tribulations of life.

I share a difficult life with my family. It’s not a bad life and we are generally happy but we are pretty much always “on”, even on vacation and shit is just never easy in any aspect of our lives and I suppose the good out of this all is that we take nothing for granted. All Tom and I ever wanted were love and happiness and happy, healthy and independent children. I was happy to just sail under the radar with very little drama but as fate would have it, our life together turned out to be absolutely 100 percent on the radar every day, pretty much all the time and there is not a day when something is not an obstacle. In spite of a textbook pregnancy, one of our boys has autism and that is the constant difficulty we live through each and every day. I remember one New Year’s Eve when Adam, our firstborn was about to have his first birthday. I woke up to find Dick Clark”s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve Countdown watching me and I remember looking over to where Tom was on the computer and listening to the baby monitor that was broadcasting the little sniffs and snorts of my almost 1 year old as he slept. This is far too perfect, I remember thinking, as I looked about our cozy Montreal apartment. When will the other shoe drop? Well, shortly after that, it dropped 30 feet from the sky like a cement block when Adam was diagnosed with autism and pretty much everything from that time on was not simple, but it is the life we have and it has shown me just how remarkable my family is; shown me just what we can do when we put out minds to it and think outside every damn box we have found ourselves in. We are the most resilient and brave people I know. This family has had more downs and laterals and back pedals than ups but my oh my, are the ups ever so sweet. My children (with a special nod to Adam) have accomplished things I could only imagine and admire and everything they have achieved has been done in spite of the walls we have come up against time and again.

Have I been angry and frustrated by my life? Yes. Have I wondered “why me?…why us?” Absolutely. I was raised to be a good Catholic girl. I prayed and I went to church and I trusted that my prayer and faith would be there for me and boost me in my times of strife or even shield me from terrible things. Did I wonder what I did to offend the almighty when I led the same kind of faithful life as my cousins? Of course, I did. I just didn’t understand why my child was chosen to be the one with autism and that kind of thinking puts you in a tail spin I cannot even begin to describe.

So with regards to my faith, I have gone through times when I felt sorry for myself and decided my family and I were betrayed by God but I never felt punished and I will explain why shortly. I have gone through times when I have taken a deep breath and re-grouped and made a concerted effort to devoted prayer. I have had periods when I have gone to mass without fail (pretty much during my boys’ childhood) and I have periods when I just don’t want to set foot in a Church. However, in spite of my struggles with this faith of mine, I passed on what I had learned as a child through my young adult life as a Roman Catholic to my sons. You can call me hypocrite, but one can certainly pass on and explain the meaning of doctrine and catechism to children so that they understand what lessons their religion is trying to teach them. It is much like explaining to them what a passage from a book they are reading means. During their childhood, they learned the Mass. Adam loved the music and loved to read out the prayers and learned many of them by heart in spite of his autism and he got many positive things out of having to sit fairly quietly in a church for an hour each week. Both boys prepared for and made First Communion ( which I think Adam perceives as a snack break – but whatever – he likes going to church most times) and right after his First Communion, Logan decided to be an altar server and did so for about 5 years. They both chose to make Confirmation as Adam decided he wanted to continue going to mass and enjoying the aspects of it he preferred and Logan wanted to continue his Catholic faith into his adult life. While Adam prays by rote, Logan is a very spiritual person and while he does not really like going to church all the time, he does pray …A LOT. They both go to Catholic schools and actively and voluntarily participate in many activities and outings that involve Catholicism. I just did not see a reason to dash their feelings about their religion because of my own waxing and waning faith. They (especially Logan) deserved to be taught about being Catholic and about God in a way that will allow them to understand why it is they choose to have this connection in their lives and to be honest, if religion can teach them to be loving, kind, selfless and understanding, it isn’t a horrible thing for them to be involved in it.

While I was inundated with catechism from the age of about 6, (I remember the blue and then the green paperback text/workbook from my grade school days) and I could recite every prayer and knew how to say the Rosary and knew the format of the mass and all the responses and when to genuflect and when to bow and kneel and stand, Adam and Logan were taught about it differently. Having started off in the public school system, then home schooled, then having a stint in private school, I taught them about God and religion. I explained what Christmas and Easter were in a way they could understand. I never told them when they did something wrong that it was a sin because I dwell mostly on the positive side of religion and I took the misunderstood “fear” out of God-faring. I did not want to brain wash them but rather teach them about what religion should stand for and show them how many people are able to draw strength and courage from their faith and maybe they would be able to as well. I have always been honest with them, even when the question of my own faith arose and even now in adolescence, when Adam prefers not to work at sitting still for an hour, or Logan sours about faith when things don’t always go his way, I still am honest in the way I teach them and encourage them to sort through what it is that has put them off.

Now, here is my explanation about why I never felt punished by God. In all my struggles and heartache as a mother that came along with raising Adam and going to battle and getting through days when I would rather hide under my bed, I have at times felt betrayed or overlooked by God. However I am smart enough to know never to say if there was a God, or if God was so good there would be no pain or illness or suffering. God is not a magician. He cannot be blamed for everything bad. As humans we have done our share of nonsense that jeopardizes our health and well being. God does not make us eat poorly, be reckless or spend more than we can afford. God does not put the cigarettes in our mouth, pills under our tongue or shoot needles in our veins or put the cigarettes in our mouths. Sometimes we do stupid things and sometimes things just happen and they are not nice, or fair or good …that’s life. Everybody’s got something and we just have to deal with it the best we can and everyone has a choice to do something intelligent or something idiotic. I suppose where my skepticism lies and my wavering faith occurs is the justification of a god. Is there an entity or force out there (or up there as you know, we’ve been taught that heaven is up and hell is down) that creates a path for us? Or is it simply fate? Looking at our lives, I see things happening in blocks or stages and the next two stages that occur have different outcomes and the journey of life is really dictated by the choices we make and how we react to various situations. For instance, along the lines of my previous piece about proverbial doors opening and closing along the path of our lives, I see Tom’s opportunity to accept a job in Calgary back in 2002 as one which led to us being in the best possible place to have Adam diagnosed and treated in the early years of his autism. However, had we bought a house in Lasalle, Quebec, I would have still gotten Adam diagnosed and would still have read to him and constantly talked to him and home schooled him….I would have done nothing differently. I would have still moved mountains to get him the funding he needed and honestly all the challenges we faced with him anywhere we lived would have been the same. So in my mind I am not sure if God had anything to do with the different opportunities that were presented to us because we decided to either take advantage of them or not.

I also don’t believe that you can pray to God to have conditions or diseases cured or taken away. The human mind and body is unique to each person and you are either susceptible to certain things or not. You can’t put that onus on God to perform miracles just because you prayed for him to do so. My father smoked most of his life. He got cancer and he died. It was not God’s fault and there was no reason to pray for a miracle. He had a deadly disease and he died. I miss him and I remember him mostly in the good times and sometimes I remember him sick and I remember him lying in a coffin but that hurt and pain was not caused by God. God didn’t make Adam autistic and neither did I. For crying out loud, how many babies are born condition and illness free to mothers who smoked and ate poorly during their pregnancy? I was so careful with everything I did and consumed while I was pregnant that there is not way Adam should be inflicted with this puzzling and difficult neurological condition that he will have for the rest of his life. But… as he has and will continue to do, he will learn with lots of support and encouragement to cope with this world and to handle his sensory needs to live his life to the fullest.

I don’t believe in blaming God; I don’t believe he is a puppeteer and I don’t believe in outlandishly praising him or scandalously cursing him. The stories of miracles are difficult for me to believe because I was not there to see the Red Sea part or witness Noah hustle each gender of every species of animal onto an arc. What I do believe is the history of my religion. I believe there was man who walked the earth and he was a good man. I believe he had a vision and a plan to share that was based on everyone showing love for one another. I believe he saw that kindness and compassion were the keys for human co-existence and that greed and slack morals were the things that could tear us apart. I believe that people knew that he was right and that his idea of us being responsible for ourselves and our actions was one that was complex and difficult. I believe people choose the wrong things because it is easier to not have accountability and easier to be selfish and greedy than it is to give of ourselves, our money and our time. I believe the bible and various other books of worship and religious history are filled with brilliant and worthwhile messages we could apply to our lives but we must learn to read between the lines and look for the underlying meaning of the words and not take them literally.

No religion preaches violence and cruelty. Misinterpretation of good words have proven to be so dangerous, especially to impressionable minds. I believe that those in religious authority have a responsibility to explain the word of God properly and to live a life that reflects the goodness they preach. I am dying to be moved by a proper sermon. I was tired of being part of a religious community with members who only reach out to the causes that are comfortable to them. For almost 10 years, my boys and I have attended the same church. For almost 10 years the congregation has seen Adam and his oddities and must have noticed when (2 years ago when puberty hit) Logan and I went to church alone. Never once in 2 years did anyone, including our priest and deacon ask where he was or if something was wrong. They used to chat with us all the time and then when he was obviously absent, they were silent. My mother said it is not my faith in God that is uncertain, it is my faith in those who dare represent him in the church and do a poor job of it. Perhaps she is right. There are at least 3 autistic kids in our parish and while there were at one time special masses for families like ours no one else from the parish ever came, only the families and their guests. There were more people turned out to have their pets, hockey sticks and motorcycles blessed than there were at the mass for families with autistic children. No one wants to get involved with these strange creatures we call our children. The ironic thing is that most of the people in Adam’s lifetime (in all the places we have lived) who volunteered their time to work with Adam were not religious people. Some were spiritual and not linked to any one religion yet all of them had one thing in common – they all wanted to help Adam out of the goodness of their hearts. Were they sent by God? Hmm…not sure about that. I think our paths crossed because I was purposefully looking for a staff of people who were willing to help him reach the next levels of his development. That was the human kindness that was overflowing onto my family and it didn’t come from my church community.

In my quest to find the answers to my questions about this faith of mine, I get chills thinking of the days when I lived in Montreal in walking distance to the Oratoire de Sainte Joseph. I remember putting baby Adam in the stroller and walking up the hill that led to the old sacristy and boarding house of Brother Andre who was the parish priest all those years ago. I remember the smell of the place, the walls etched in history and the “candle room” as Tom used to call it,

which was so inviting in the cooler months because of the warmth of hundreds of burning candles lit by the faithful from all around the world. You could feel the strength of their faith and the belief that their intentions would be granted and I too, was part of that crowd. I lit my candle for the safety ofmy family members and the health and well being of my new baby. Hmm…ironic as it seems now, I am glad I lit a candle every time I visited the Oratory. Back then, I suppose with no knowledge of what was to come, my faith stood firm and this beautiful house of God brought me such peace. I attended mass there often and albeit celebrated in French, (some of which I did not understand) I remember being moved to tears by the sheer beauty of the ritual of the mass. I wish I could feel that again. Maybe I need to visit my old Montreal neighbourhood.

For now, I am enjoying my return to simple silent prayers of thanks that I say randomly throughout my day after what seemed to be an natural hiatus from going to mass or even praying. The words didn’t come for a while but now they are back and it is well with me. I think I will make good on the promise to myself to go to the Oratory again …sooner rather than later…It’s never a bad thing to shake it up from time to time and get out of the town where I live.

I suppose in this year before I turn 50, as I look inward and reflect on my adult life, where I have been, all that has happened and where I hope to go, it was logical that I would look at my stance with my faith and my relationship with God and religion. I think in the grand scheme of things humans are very small and there is so much that is greater than us. The universe is infinite and maybe there is a God out there and there is a heaven and a hell and maybe we are arrogant enough to think that we are the only form of life in the universe….there are no answers to the things we don’t know now and may never know, but what we need to do is find peace in whatever we do and believe and maybe one day there will be peace wherever we go. In questioning my ideas about God and faith and circumstance, I struggled with my stance on it all but I was never lost or angry or condemning. I think I was maybe in a transition stage of some sort where I pitted what I knew and what I had experienced against what I had been taught, I think I can describe myself as spiritual and hopeful because I do take responsibility for righting the wrongs in my life by being proactive, doing my best and never giving up …because with the reality of my life…how can I? I cannot control everything and some things I have to leave up to chance or sometimes God. And while I have been known to say novenas in my time, I like my quiet connection with my faith and the prayers that leave my lips as whispers to God. I may have halted the subscription from time to time but I never stopped believing in the content and so with regards to this faith of mine, as I approach 50…I am finding I am at peace with myself .

1 Comment Posted on May 14, 2016May 15, 2016 Uncategorized

One Year to Fifty: Dealing with Disappointment Using Love, Doors and Trini Sayings.

One thing I cherish about growing up in Trinidad and Tobago is how much we rely on proverbs or our sayings. Some only we Trinbagonians understand, like “Monkey know what tree to climb“and “Cockroach have no right in fowl party” and others are plain and simple to everyone. I love how we lean so heavily on sayings to pass on sage advice. One saying my mother uses often is “One door close; ‘nother one open”. This is the theme of my life (and the lives of all we Barsotti’s coming to think of it) and the lives in the players of this family of 4, Tom and I created. I see it all the time, in our jobs, in opportunities, in the kid’s school life, their sporting life and in our relationships with people. Sometimes, it is hard to see so many doors closing for us when we look around at all the easy avenues others are able to take but it is in times of disappointment I am able to reflect on all of it; every single thing we have gone through and I feel a warm and uplifting sense of satisfaction and accomplishment because in this family of four we have walked through many doors, tripped and fallen down the stairs and climbed back up again, albeit with a little limp now and again and the best part is. through a strong binding love, we walk through a wider door that leads to new possibilities, things that are more suitable and beneficial to us.

You can’t worry about what you didn’t get. You can only hope to be ready for what is to come. This is a hard and harsh world. It is filled with beautiful places, people and things that dangle before us and we reach out time and again, arms open wide, fingers outstretched hoping to touch what we want just a little, because if we do, just maybe we can grab onto it and have what we want to make us feel good. But sometimes, what we want so badly slips through our fingers and is once more just ever so slightly out of our reach. We are hurt and we become sad, disappointed, angry and sometimes bitter and jaded. What we must always be aware of is what we do with the pain of disappointment. We can allow it to fester and consume us and eventually have it cut us down and destroy us or we can remember the powerful sting of that pain and use it to fuel us to pick ourselves up and persist. When we get up, and get out of bed and realize we are upright and breathing, we’ve already won another chance at life. Each morning you are alive and well is another step closer to achieving anything. Being alive gives us another opportunity to do good, pursue a dream and make a difference in the life of someone else.

I belong to a unique and unofficial club of people. If anyone should be on Valium and booze to get through a day, it should be the parents of children with special needs. Sweet Jesus, wanna talk about closed doors? We live in a world of doors slamming shut every single week and instead of a drink, most of us choose to take a minute to breathe before going to the drawing board and starting again because we have to – for our children, our families, for ourselves. There is no time to wallow in self pity or dwell in disappointment. There is only time for thinking, analyzing, re-starting, doing things differently and re-directing because if we don’t, everything and everyone in the family will come to a halt and most certainly will crumble. This is why I have very little patience for bull shit. I often see it a mile away and I am prepared for it most of the time and I am trying to teach my sons how to do the same. I have even less patience for people who shield themselves and their families from disappointment because when those people have the shit hit the fan, they throw their arms in the air and look to more prepared and realistic folk to help them out. They will talk to anyone who will listen as their mole hill becomes an epic tail of the most treacherous and difficult mountain ever climbed. Call me cynical, but over the years I have had more people come to me for help for the most trivial of things, never mind I was trying to keep my sanity while I raised an autistic child and tried to raise another child in an environment that was not solely about his brother’s condition. I find these people to be selfish,weak, attention seekers. I don’t mind giving advice or listening to someone, (after all, I have had people do the same for me) but don’t like when people waste my time with nonsense they absolutely can sort through and rectify with a little effort.

We live in a time where some of us who are parents try to shield our children from disappointment at all costs. Creating a perfect world for children and spoiling them beyond belief are two gigantic steps towards their world shattering into millions of pieces the first time they feel the sting of disappointment. Today, so few young people know what to do with themselves when they do not get what they want because they feel they deserve everything. Parents today want to be so unlike their own parents, they remove hard work, effort and accountability from their children’s lives and so we have created a couple generations who have a remarkable and detrimental sense of entitlement. No one deserves anything until they have earned it. The fulfillment of hard work as is purer and greater than the temporary satisfaction of buying your way through life or having things handed to you only to mishandle them and eventually lose them. Nothing can take the place of achievement through effort and so many young people are missing out on such bliss. Instead, for our youth, their world ends about 80 times a day, much like that of a toddler, and when it does their parents do whatever it takes to make it better.

The way the parents in my extended family have chosen to parent our children through the disappointment they sometimes face is simple and perhaps may seem archaic to some. When they get hurt, we embrace them and comfort them with our words (the proverbial band aid if you will). We listen, we explain what we can and what we cannot, we chalk up to being out of anyone’s control, bad luck and well…the roller coaster that is life. Once the pain settles in, we observe them day to day and once some time has passed we check in and find out how they are doing. We find out what they have decided to do with it the pain and then once their confidence seems boosted we rip off the band aid by not feeling sorry for them and telling them to get to their feet and walk towards a new door.

They may not find the new door right away, but with one year to fifty, in my experience, IT WILL BE REVEALED and when it is, they are encouraged to kick that door open and bravely walk through. People need to realize that nothing that is easily given to you will ever be as fulfilling as the the thing you worked hard to achieve. Nothing can compare to the spoils of grinding it out and leaving all of yourself out there. I think there is a satisfying sweetness when you discover for yourself how great you really are at something and on the contrary there is something unsettling and icky about having your life handed to you gift wrapped with a big red bow because when the bow is untied, everything it kept together comes apart and shatters to the ground. If you are not used to picking up the pieces and putting them together again, then you just end up disappointing yourself.

While another saying I use to help me deal with disappointment is, “This too shall pass” my husband prefers using “The best is yet to come.” A natural optimist, I know in his darkest moments he is always able to pull positivity out of any situation and he moves forward, every time. He’s better than I am because while I too have the ability to move forward, I tend to pull out bitterness and anger as side dishes to my positivity (it’s quite convoluted and I’m working on remedying that – lol). From time to time, I read the words Tom said to me when we renewed our vows on our 10th wedding anniversary. They are words of truth and strength and of course love. They are words that came about because of the unexpected adversity that hit us with Adam’s diagnosis and words that remind me that with love there is strength and courage and there is nothing we cannot overcome especially when faced with the pain of disappointment.

“This is an incredible ride we’ve been on. Ups, downs, fast, slow and even derailing once or twice. But I believe a ride isn’t worth it if you know what’s coming. The only way to truly enjoy a ride is to NOT know what is coming and to be able to ride it out when it becomes chaotic and random. I promise I will love and raise our children to drive us crazy as they push every boundary they can and that I will raise them with the intention that nothing will hold them back, and if anything tries to hold them back they must fight it relentlessly.”

Tom said many things in his vows that night and they were beautiful and strong and just … solid and believable. He promised us that in spite of all the hard times we have had and are still to have, our lives would be based on integrity and hard work, failure and success and never would we be able to say our journey was boring. With one year to fifty, I can safely say we have had bad times but the best times were the moments after things went awry; moments when we took the time to do nothing but breathe and the moments when we regrouped and started over.

So to my children who may read this at some time, I say this as the Trini mother that I am (dialect and all) :-

My dear sons, Adam and Logan, remember, “Laugh and cry does live in the same house” (what you love can also bring you pain) but you are both resilient and “all crab does find they hole,” (everyone find’s their way and their passion along life’s journey) remember “goat doh make sheep” (you are our children through and through) and just like us, you have what it takes to draw from your experiences and right yourselves. Embrace life all of it, the bitter and the sweet and you will be fulfilled by the things that were the hardest to come by. I promise you. ~ Love you forever, my kind, generous, strong and fearless sons ~ Mom.

1 Comment Posted on April 23, 2016April 24, 2016 Uncategorized

One Year to Fifty: Suddenly, Things have Changed Around Here.

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.~

Leave a comment Posted on March 9, 2016 Uncategorized

One Year to Fifty: International Women’s Day – a Thought About it’s Significance.

I don’t run around making it clear to every man that today is International Women’s Day but I sure do appreciate the people who remember it’s significance. Let’s face it, the minute we were seen as the “weaker sex” we were doomed to fighting off second place forever. Maybe some of us don’t have the physical strength of our male counterparts but God damn I defy any man to handle the pain of labour and birth especially since I pushed out a couple large 10 pounders with very little drugs and no surgery. Yes, I went there because since then I’ve taken some serious pain with a serious fracture and dislocation and surgeries and still had to get the lunches made, tend to children and get stuff done around here because my husband had to work and we were down to one income while I healed … oh yeah and even though we worked at the same place, I didn’t qualify for health benefits because they were only able to hire me part time even though I worked full time hours. Yeah….those were just awesome days! But, being feminine allows us to take our knocks when we are down, re evaluate the situation and figure out how to get up on our feet and ride out the tough time so that we can bring ourselves and our family in a better place. Ever noticed when a man has the stomach flu and the kids have the stomach flu, Mom is the one cleaning the puke, gagging the whole time AND tending to everyone’s ailments? Just saying … men lie down when they are sick. Many of us (women) do suck it up and get things done because we have to and yeah, we may gripe about it from time to time but why not? It’s not easy to do everything all the time but 9 times out of 10 we pull it off and pull it off well but unfortunately sometimes all some people want to see is the whining.

I am not a feminist but I am feminine and that does not mean lesser, or weaker. I am not in the princess* category and I know what hard work is and I know how to fix a problem with and without help. To me, feminine is beautiful and gritty even ugly and dirty. It is graceful and clumsy, emotional and stubborn but it has always meant extremely strong and capable. I love men and I don’t have a problem with penises. I have a husband and two sons and I am ever so grateful. I never felt the need to keep trying for a girl as I’m good with what I’ve got. There are many things some men do better than me but I get a little irate when some men don’t really value what I am really good at.

There is great importance in running a household like a well oiled machine. Knowing what you can manage better than your husband and what he can handle better than you. In my world, it’s all about being on top of all things children from doctors, dentists, school, forms (in the world of special children, it’s all about the forms), food, supplements, endless driving, setting appointments, preparing meals, keeping a tidy and sanitary house and helping out at the office and pulling my 25% of the work load there. I know some people find my situation archaic – I mean, right now, and for the past few years, it was clear that my strengths were clearly centred around the domestic and his role (which is filled with it’s own pressures) is to mostly be concerned with keeping the money coming in. It works well but it was not easy to establish at first. Was it hard to feel like the lesser individual? Of course it was. I never asked for a child with special needs but I got one and I pushed aside going for a career to help our son and salvage our family but deep in my heart, it has always been the right thing to do and until both my boys are off and independent, this is how it is going to be. Turns out, I had to work through my feelings about being “just a mother and wife” to realize just how fulfilled I actually am. I am freaking great at what I do and it is so significant and so rewarding that I really don’t mind being looked upon by others (including other women) as “just” anything. I figure if I don’t see your name with mine on our cheque book and I don’t roll over and see you in the morning, I really could care less what you think about me.

I don’t expect a parade or constant praise and recognition for being a woman but to those of you who don’t see us as equals, you are correct as we are far superior in many ways. To those of you who say you see us as equals yet feel the need to diminish what we do by constantly counteracting our deeds with yours, playing “even Stephen”, you may as well side with those who see us as inferior. I can’t imagine a world without either men or women. Each gender is equally important and should be respected and cherished and honoured. We have our day and we deserve it and yeah its a bigger deal than International Men’s Day (November 19th) but remember, we’re still trying to this day to fight off second place and show the world that there should be no struggle for recognition for anyone. Success for our world would be the day we all celebrate International Person’s Day signifying we have truly and finally learned to live with each other inspired by peace and love.

*(princesses – the current definition – those obsessed with looking young with the nips and tucks and the obvious boob job who throw their hands and mini skirts up in the air and have people come running to their rescue at the slightest sign of hardship….those women are not even close to being real women and I wish they would stop talking about girl power…in fact they should stop talking altogether)

2 Comments Posted on February 27, 2016February 27, 2016 Uncategorized

On the Eve of One Year to Fifty.

Tomorrow is my 49th birthday. When I was in my twenties, I was so concerned about the “plan”, you know, what job I would have to do to get the best jump start on a career in a field, that somewhere inside of me, buried deeply, I knew I didn’t like. Am I ever glad life took a course that steered me away from that plan of mine. Looking at what I have now, with all its oddities and imperfections, hardships, worries, pain and joy, laughter, absurdities, madness and true and deep love, I am certain that plan of mine might have taken me down a path of earlier success but I would have been miserable. It is amazing the logic that occurs as we advance in age, helps us shed the trite shit in life. It allows us to shed the fake skin of youth where we think we know what we want and we think we are so savvy when in reality, all we are is young and gathering experience along the road that is our life.

This month is a special month for me, not because it is my birthday but because I am Adam’s and Logan’s mother. This month there is a lot to be proud of with regards to these two. Adam, at just 16, is going to the National Special Olympic Winter games to represent our province in Speed Skating. This guy with so many daily challenges skates so fast, he looks like he’s flying. He smiles the entire time he’s on the track and it is then I see just how truly freeing this sport is for him. It is heart warming to see him find avenues of freedom because it must be so difficult for him to be himself as he navigates his way about this world with autism on his shoulders everyday. The smile on the ice is the same smile when he sings with Karen, plays the drums, draws or when he is running in a marathon. Win or lose this week, my husband and I are proud of him and happy that we had the confidence and good sense to try different things and situations with him so that he could find his niche(s). So with our bags packed to go on a separate flight from him, we will sit in the stands, the nervous yet happy and proud parents there to love him and cheer him on.

This month was also special because of Logan – “the baby”. The baby is going into high school and all month with the transition meetings, parent nights and orientations, I found myself remembering him as a baby, as a toddler, his first day of school, first hockey game, first everything and I have to admit, I was a little sad. In spite of how grown up he’s had to be because of the unique nature of our family, he has always been and always will be my baby. I was happy and excited for Adam to go to high school but in his case there is the usual concern about the unknown. Things like, how will he fit into the environment, what strategies need to be implemented into the class room to help him in his daily school routine and the joy of him going to the next level is superseded by the job of getting him to the next level followed by (sometimes) a sigh of relief. With Logan, it was “normal” to the point of it being abnormal to us. There were all the meetings and open houses and information nights but it was not a job. It was a step towards the stage of life he is moving into now and it is exciting and filled with new adventures and opportunities for him. And today as I sat beside him and listened to him speak to his teachers and principal to be, and listened to what his course selections were, I caught my breath as I was sitting beside not “the baby” but the young man who has a better idea of what he likes and who he is than I was at his age. My heart is full of joy yet breaking at the same time because this is it! There are no more babies here; there haven’t been for sometime but with Logan going into high school and Adam a seasoned Special Olympian who travels with his team without his parents, this is the beginning of a new phase in Tom’s and my life. Our children are quickly growing into men and yet it seems like we just had them. It has gone by so quickly that I had to ask them if they felt they had a good childhood, to which the response was “yes, of course, Mom”. (Big sigh of relief) I know we got it wrong a lot of the time but looking at the way they are turning out, we got some of it right at least.

So as our sons venture into what will be the most exciting time of their lives, I will look on with their father and support and encourage and lend an ear, but in a different way this time. I hope they will continue to have confidence. I hope they will use good judgement. I hope they continue to work hard and I hope they get lucky breaks from time to time. I hope they soar and if we are so blessed, I will stand beside their father, hand in hand watching “the show” that is their lives play out before our eyes.

On the eve of my birthday, I feel blessed, lucky and loved and in awe of this road of life I have traveled thus far. There is nothing wrong with planning but there is something raw and wild, pure and fabulous about taking a deep breath, throwing caution to the wind and taking life as it comes. I never thought things would have played out as they have, but at 49, what I considered regrets were simply lessons learned; failures were just an indication that things needed to be done differently in order to succeed. I made a lot of mistakes, especially as a parent, and acknowledging them because of ego was hard sometimes but as I look at my boys now, I am happy that they saw I never gave up or gave in. I showed them how to find different ways of attaining the end result they wanted because with drive and desire nothing is impossible. I work hard, parent hard and play hard and I am freaking tired but I am happy. Happiness wasn’t always apparent to me, especially when the boys were young and we lived far away from our family, working in an unsteady industry and trying to provide for the family and running the household was a bit of a whirlwind roller coaster ride. Its hard to embrace or recognize happiness when you are trying to climb up a hill with a heavy sack on your back. You see snippets of it, of course but with the next scream or cry, the next bill you open, the next visit to the doctor, the next bout of vomit, the next diaper change, the next sleepless night, the next note from school, the pressure at work, the next realization that you have nothing thawed to make dinner….(argh) all these things, these next not-so-nice things make the sensation of happiness short lived and masked by tiredness and frustration. Now, I feel like we’ve made it over a proverbial hump. There is still a lot to do and a lot to worry about, and sure, shit may still hit the fan but there’s more clarity, more hope, more patience, and a nice sense of anticipation of what may come.

Tomorrow, I will celebrate quietly with my husband, kids, mom, sister and her family and I hope for more of the contentment I feel now for years to come.

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IsleChile … All B.S Aside

IsleChile … All B.S Aside

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On the Eve of One Year to Fifty.

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