21 days

21 days ago, I came home and cried.  The man that was sitting in the chair beside me at dinner was not the man that I knew as my father.  21 days ago, I knew that my dad was dying.  I hoped that what I had recognised in my father was his mortality and merely the markers of the journey we all begin upon our birth. What I feared was that the tendrils of mortality had already encroached and begun to tighten – choking his vitality.

21 days have passed and now I sit, watching his body deteriorate around him, waiting for the day it will completely loosen its hold on his spirit..  Each morning when I wake, I have a reprieve, the blissfulness of forgetfulness and then I remember, and a moan escapes my lips while the tears come. It is hard not to begin to grieve, to mourn even though his body still exists.  And yet, as painful and heart-breaking as this is, I am grateful.  I am grateful that even though this has happened so suddenly it has happened in this way.  There has been no long drawn out process of dying, no painful interventions, no tainting of special occasions.  Instead we got to live. We got to be together as a family.  We got to laugh freely.  And when he was diagnosed two weeks ago, he was still lucid and had the time to say and do what he needed.  We spent one last weekend together at home, where we laughed and loved and hoped.  When the hope was taken, we still had the laughter and the love.

My father’s dying has been a celebration of life and of love and though my heart is breaking and a moan escapes my lips – as I write this I am smiling through the tears.

Bad Week

I have been having a bad week.  Much of my time has been spent moving through the house breathing deeply and chanting, “this will pass.”  I’m exhausted and am feeling emotionally drained.  Imogen has been decidedly off and there have been a couple of nights where sleep has been non-existent.  My thighs, arms and breasts are bruised from her pinches and kicks.  The mottled green and brown skin would be good if I was trying for the role of Grendel’s mom- oh wait I am not Angelina Jolie.

Tuesday night, after hours of trying to put Imogen to sleep, I found myself sitting in the middle of the bed, trying to nurse and sobbing.  It didn’t help that at the end of the tears, I had a daughter sleeping in my arms.   I was too tired to see the humour.  This was followed up with last night’s mess of miscommunication between Ryan and I.

I went to Oakridge (never again) to buy a swim suit for myself.  I wanted something with full coverage.  If I could buy a 1920’s bathing suit that would be perfect.  I tried to explain to the salesperson that bikini waxes were a little difficult to do on a regular basis with a 7 month old and did they have something more like shorts.  I found out that I needed a ’specialty’ bathing suit because of my large chest.  When I explained that I did not want to spend much more than the $50 gift certificate as I was not planning on breast feeding forever and therefore would likely need to buy a new bathing suit in the near future, she looked at me as though I had asked her for her kidney.  If I thought that the trauma of having to see myself in a bathing suit would be bad enough, Imogen decided to turn it up a notch by deciding to go in a screaming fit while I was half dressed.  In the end, I left with nothing but the screaming child, and my self esteem trailing behind me.

There are half written posts that I have no energy to finish as I am trying to save it up to clean the house.  Laundry seems endless.  As soon as the basket is empty it is filled up again.  I finally put away the last of the stuff from Christmas.  I know that it seems ridiculous to worry about a clean house but I am uncomfortable when the house is messy.  I can’t relax until it is clean.

I think I am also lonely.  Visiting the school yesterday, was bittersweet.  The world has moved on without me.  I have not spoken to people that I thought were friends for months.  That hurts.  I want to say something to them but then question whether or not I am going to sound whiny.  Sort of like this post.  Maybe this will have done some good and released the poison.

Waking up to ‘Gang Wars’

I listen to CBC. It is almost always on in the car and it is what I wake up to in the morning and usually listen to as I go to sleep at night. The past couple of months, I have rolled over in the morning and as I doze in and out of sleep have been aware of a nagging sense of dissatisfaction and disengagement from the The Early Edition. I can’t stand the political panel with most of my venom directed to Erin Airton who I find to be whiny and reactionary in her comments. This has little to do with her political leanings as I don’t hold the same political views as Rafe Mair but I find his comments, even when I disagree with them, to be thought out and well-argued.

This morning my discomfort all made sense when I woke up to hear the morning show which was all about Metro Vancouver’s Gang Wars. I found the commentary, interviews and questions asked of the interviewees to be one-sided and inflammatory. I also never thought that a Province headline would be used as supportive material for CBC programming. I waited patiently for the ‘other side’, the discussion about how crime rates in Metro Vancouver have declined, a discussion as to who joins gangs and why, a discussion of the history of gangs in Vancouver, anything that would stem the tide of ‘are you scared to go outside because you might be shot.’ As a side note – I am not afraid to go outside, I don’t feel anymore threatened than I ever did and when the ‘Balcony Rapist’ moved to New Westminster, I didn’t lock myself into the apartment.

I think that where my dissatisfaction with the morning show, comes not from my disagreeing with what is being said (I revel in yelling at the radio) but in the direction that it is taking. Everything that has been touched in the last month has turned into ‘AN ISSUE’ that we should be scared about. I think that today it was made worse by the fact that all that was on the local news was discussion about the various shootings. Apparently nothing else is going on in our city that is considered newsworthy.

All of this is happening at a time that our Federal Government is wanting to pass a crime bill and are quietly preparing the way for capital punishment. Harper may say that he is not planning on opening the debate on capital punishment but then gave this ,”The reality in this particular case is, were we to intervene, it would quickly become a question of whether we were willing to repatriate a double murderer to Canada,” Harper told reporters. “In light of this government’s strong initiatives on tackling violent crime I think that would send the wrong signal to the Canadian public.”, as his reasoning as to not bring Ronald Allen Smith back to Canada to serve a prison term instead of being executed. At the same time, Canada is also not standing in the forefront of the UN call to end capital punishment.

I expect a lot from CBC, more than what I do from The Province or The Sun and definitely more than all of the other news casts on T.V.. However, the morning show today made me want to tune into CNN.  I’m not saying that there isn’t something going on obviously there is.  I just don’t thinking that instilling fear is the best way to go about dealing with the issue.  I turned off the radio this morning when I listened to someone phone in and talk about how we should “just send those  people(Asians) back to their home.”  Pretty presumptive to assume that ‘those’ people are landed immigrants and not people whose families have lived here for generations.  What about the Hell’s Angels bigoted caller?  Last time I checked, they were all Caucasian.

I will continue to listen to CBC because there isn’t really another alternative.  In the meantime I’ll continue to listen to exemplary programming such as learning about the latest dog parks  and cross  my fingers that someone takes over the programming for the Early Edition sooner than later.

Branding the Baby

We decided before Miss Pumpkin was born that we were going to use cloth diapers. We have in suite laundry, are concerned about the environment and its what good parents are supposed to do. However, we also looked at the cloth diapers and knew that they were going to be bigger than her when we brought her home so we picked up some Huggies for newborns. We were appalled to realise that they were decorated with lovely pictures of Winnie the Pooh a la Disney, Pampers were no better with the Sesame baby Elmo and other ‘baby’ Sesame Street characters.

Since then, Miss Pumpkin has voiced her opinion over cloth diapers and it isn’t positive. When we are at home and I am feeling up to it, we will use them during the day. What it has meant is that I have to forage for disposable diapers that do not have advertising directed at my daughter’s subconscious and that don’t make me shudder when I touch them because they feel too much like foam. We buy Simply Kids and Seventh Generation chlorine free diapers. The Simply Kids are awesome and cheaper than Huggies or Pampers but are decorated with some sort of kid friendly characters. The Seventh Generation are equally fantastic and have no decoration on them, they are definitely more expensive. Which ones we buy is determined by where I am shopping when I need to pick up diapers.

Why the long post about diapers? I think it is a perfect example of how branding our children occurs without us really noticing. Winnie the Pooh is cute, adorable and how could Tigger be a bad thing for a baby. It isn’t – except that I am putting this on my child every day, several times a day for most likely 2-3 years. By the time, the toilet training is done and the diapers are gone my child has been fully indoctrinated into Disney’s version of Winnie the Pooh and/or Sesame Street characters. (When we were kids did Sesame Street have all of the dolls, clothing and stuff that they do now? I can’t remember)

Ryan and I had already decided that we wanted to limit the toys that Miss Pumpkin would own. It is amazing how quickly the toys can accumulate and most kids I know don’t really play with all of them. I have always been an aware viewer when it comes to advertising and media in general, in the past 4 months I have become hyper aware. I almost went into an apoleptic fit when I saw the ad for the Dora Explorer cash register which includes a charge card and other great add ons. Bratz dolls are another group of commercials that make me want to throw away the tv and move to the middle of nowhere. What bothers me most about these ads and all of the marketing that is directed to kids is that it creates whiny, mini consumers whose only way of getting what they want is to nag at their parents. Yes, it is the parents responsibility to say “no” but in a culture that is so commodified and where love is more often represented through things as opposed to time, I think this is easier to say than do.

What I find most difficult now is to not simply react to the things that I see, read and hear. It has become harder to step back and analyse my reactions. To ask myself the questions: “what is it that I find offensive?”, “what makes this appealing to children?” and so on.  It doesn’t help that I have read too many articles and books on the marketing to and commodification of children and teens in my past.  More often than not, what I am reacting to is the feeling that we are being controlled by corporations and conglomerates.  Children are being trained to be mindless cogs in the economic wheel of cheap labour and cheap products that make the rich richer and the rest of us and the environment poorer and sicker.

More and more we are becoming removed from what it actually means to make or grow something.  Our sense of what something is worth has been twisted so that items that should be discussed in terms of its quality have been reduced to measurements of quantity.   We process our food so extensively that we have to add back nutrients that are found naturally in it.  We talk about good food being expensive and yet we think nothing of buying Kraft Dinner because it can feed us cheaply and yet the $1 price tag doesn’t truly factor in the cost to the environment not to mention that the processed food is heavily subsidized by governments.  Furthermore, the actual nutritional value of kraft dinner is nonexistent, in that sense it is vastly overpriced.   When asked, I want my children to know what foods are in season, where they come from and more importantly how to prepare them.  We are luckier than most as there is the family farm that they will be able to visit and work on.  I want them to understand that everybody deserves to be paid for their labour, that the environment isn’t something to be pillaged.

In the end it will be about balance and our willingness to say  “no” when so many other people are going to be saying “yes.”  I just hope that Miss Pumpkin and any other squashes we find in the vegetable patch understand that there was a reason behind their parents’ madness.

E-mail to Transit – Updated

To Whom It May Concern,

It came to my attention last week that there will be no elevator service at the New Westminster Skytrain. As a result I went to Columbia station where it turns out the elevator to get to the platform is not working. This was after I had to wrestle with the door to get into the station as there is no button to open the door. Fortunately, I need the elevators not because I am in a wheelchair but because I have a stroller. There have been no postings on the elevator about the Columbia elevator and none about New Westminster until last week when it was on the radio.

It was while I was lugging my stroller down the stairs that I realised Sapperton’s elevators are also out of service. This means that every skytrain station in New Westminster except for 22^nd street is no longer wheelchair accessible. Did you not think that this would be problematic? I can at least pick up my stroller and my daughter (grocery shopping is obviously no longer going to be possible) but people in wheelchairs do not have this luxury, they are in wheelchairs because they can’t walk down stairs.

I realise that luxury condos are obviously more important than the transit users, so I am assuming that there won’t be a stop work order on Plaza 88 or the condos at Sapperton. A simple solution would be to build a ramp in the Columbia station so that no elevator is needed and install a door to make the building wheelchair accessible.

Thank-you for your time,

Me

Update:  Translink did get back to me and explained that they are not the owners of the building at Columbia Skytrain Station though they have been negotiating with them to get the elevator fixed.  Apparently the Eastbound elevator is still accessible at New Westminster Station and then you have to cross at the concourse level.  Sapperton is just out of luck until the building is finished.  I am assuming that the new plan does include wheelchair accessibility, especially as it is the station right beside the hospital.  Translink responded in less than 24 hours; New Westminster who approved all of the building has still not responded.

Sometimes it’s just so hard

I have been drinking fair trade coffee for a number of years now.  I had decided that it was one very small thing that I could do to make the world a better place.  It also assuaged the middle class guilt that I was feeling about slurping my coffee on my way to work to teach kids knowing that the people who were providing my morning fix likely didn’t have the opportunity to send their own children to school.  It is expensive, sure, but we can afford it and I have never been a big fan of the big tins of coffee that you can buy in the grocery store, so it really isn’t much more expensive than what I was buying previously.  (It really is shameful how snobby I can be.)

Since then I have also tried to buy other fair trade products; chocolate, sugar and other baking goods.  My latest attempt at being socially conscious in my eating habits is the desire to purchase fair trade tea.  This is when more of the snobbery comes out.  I don’t like tea bags.  I’ll do it if I have to but it is not my preferred method of tea drinking.  I was raised by parents who have their own traditions and rituals around the art of brewing of tea that may not be on the same level as the Japanese Tea Ceremony but it is close.  Also, we have begun to drink tea in the evening at home.  A tea bag is something you use when you are running off somewhere, not something that you put into the teapot so that you can enjoy a leisurely cup and let the day wind down.  So hence the problem.

It is impossible to find loose black (blended or unblended) fair trade tea!  I have spent a number of hours on the internet and various specialty food stores looking for loose fair trade tea.  I don’t know why I thought I would find loose fair trade tea at the grocery store as it is rare to find any loose tea on the shelves.  My mother, who also drinks fair trade coffee that she mixes coffee from a local roaster because she believes that you also have to support the local small businesses, buys her tea at Murchies and a store on Main street.  Now Murchies says that they only purchase their coffees and teas from growers that pay good wages and provide medical and educational facilities but I prefer to have a bit more proof than that, especially since there is a body that certifies fair trade products.

So on the internet I go, where I search and find a couple of places but usually there is a lot of green tea or rooibus and not the strong black teas that I like.  I also have a penchant for Earl Grey, as there is something so lovely and calming about sipping on bergamot. Furthermore, everything is sold in ounces so I am constantly getting up to compare quantities with whatever I can find in my cupboard that is measured in ounces.  The common quantity that the tea is sold is 2  or 4 ounces.  That would hardly keep us in tea for a month.  It is also considerably more expensive than fair trade coffee but I have already decided to put my money where my mouth is.  Of course, if I also include the amount of time that I have put into locating the tea, the price is jacked up even more.  Thank goodness for long naps in the afternoon.

I also am frustrated by the lack of Canadian companies selling loose fair trade tea.  It kills me that I am going to have to buy tea from a company in the States.  I approached the Salt Spring Coffee Co. but they only have tea bags.  So, I think that I have narrowed down my choices between two companies.  They are Brown’s Coffee located in Seattle and Choice Organics also located in Seattle.  I have decided to bring Seattle into my own sphere of local geography and so don’t feel as badly as I would if I was purchasing from companies in New York.  I am leaning towards Choice simply because they also purchase renewable energy certificates to offset 100% of the energy used at their plant.  Maybe I’ll buy from both and then do a comparison.

I’ll keep you posted.

Helicopters & Confetti

Awhile ago we had heard rumors of Toronto finance firms receiving memos from their Human Resources offices on how to deal with parents who come to interviews with their children. That is correct, adults who had graduated from university and wanted jobs in finance were coming to job interviews with their parents. At the time I laughed, because it was so ludicrous and figured it must be an urban myth. Not so. In last week’s Province there was an article in the Finance section dealing with this very topic. (‘Helicopter’ parents breathing down hirers’ necks). What has happened to our society that this is seen not only as ok but concessions are made to meet these parents’ and their children’s demands. A couple of pages over was another article bemoaning the fact that the new crop of 20- something employees are needing constant praise and when not given it fall apart. (“Sadly it Might Be Too Late For The Confetti Generation” I can’t find the link but have the article as a JPG file if you want to read it.)

Does anyone else see the relationship between these two events? We have created insecure, dependent adults that are emotionally stunted. We have infantalised a generation and are on our way to creating more ‘adults’ like this. I am sure that the ‘helicopter parents’ are the extremes but in an educational system where there are no natural consequences for actions (or inactions) we are well on our way to a society that is run by teenagers in adult bodies. This may seem harsh but the time for niceties is long over.

I have seen first hand the results of allowing children continual ‘outs’. We are so paranoid about hurting their self-esteem that rather than helping them build confidence in themselves we teach them that they don’t really need to do anything at all. We no longer fail students because studies show that it does more harm than good. I agree, for the students who aren’t able to do the work because they have a learning disability. However, I have seen more and more kids realise that they don’t have to do anything and they will continue to move on. What lesson are we teaching these students? Worse, what happens when they reach high school or the ‘real’ world where they can fail or be fired? I agree, children should not be berated or belittled. They should not be made to feel ashamed. Doing these things will result in a lower sense of self. But so too, does not having expectations, never being challenged and never failing. How can a person have a true sense of self pride if they have never had to achieve anything on their own merit?  When we lower our expectations, we are telling them that they can not do better. In not having expectations WE are failing our children and our society as a whole.

I also have to question the motivation of parents who are still fighting their children’s battles for them. They may think that they are doing the right thing but in fact it is one of the most selfish acts I can imagine. What happens when the parents have gone and their children have to do it alone? What happens when their children want to establish themselves in a relationship? Have children of their own? How will they ever be successful in these areas of their lives if their parents are still sweeping in to save the day? What need is being fulfilled for the parent?