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March 12, 2002
17 months
Life rule: Weather is always safe. Don't talk about politics. Or religion.
And still I'll cut to the one topic which is sure to strum up action on the TTM board. A few weeks ago, the diary writers group got into a heated over a diary entry that was particularly heavily intonated with religion. To be very honest, I personally found it a little overwhelming. And actually, I think I started the debate when I admitted I'm not really sure how or what I believe. Or is it that I think I know, but to what extent. I was baptised Catholic, confirmed Lutheran, married Catholic and we baptised our children Catholic. My stance (to actually quote me) was this:
I think it was Nicole who said she appreciates that others may find comfort in whatever they believe in and I think that's exactly how I feel. Whether you worship in a mosque, a church, synagogue, a temple or a chocolate factory, I believe what's important is WHAT gives you strength. That you have something that gives you spirit, that provides you with hope, that brings you some degree of peace. You know those moments where you're king of the world? It should be whatever makes us get THAT. Imagine if we were all just good decent people? If we could scrap the animosity, lose the competiveness, quit being bitter, and just focus on being happy, on loving everyone in our lives like crazy and appreciating all the incredible things we have. When something goes wrong, just run and help. Every once in a while, I'm in the middle of something and it hits me, that I am ME. How did I get here? Where to next? It's then that I wonder about God and how I always just accepted that I have no answers.
Which leads us to a couple nights before our Godson's baptism. We went with Claudia and Karim and the other six babies' people, to an information session at the church. The most impressive (well only) Deacon I ever listened to, started off talking about where he got his faith. It took 12 years for he and his wife to ask themselves why it was again that they weren't having children, and after a little wheeling and dealing, they got on with it. Fast track to five years later, one Christmas Eve, when he's sitting in the back of a limo with his three sons, 5, 3, and 1. As he sat there a few moments watching all the people dash off to their celebrations, full of holiday hustle, bustle and cheer, he realized he had never been more alone in his entire life. They were just leaving the funeral of his wife, who died of breast cancer and now what was he going to do with his three babies?
As he talked about faith and how it gave him courage, I sobbed out of control. Then because I had no kleenex I just sniffed. So brokenhearted was I by this story, so moved was I by his strength, I understood what it means to believe. I was truly touched.
One of the best parts I've taken from this diary, besides that unbelievable support, is the incredible diversity. We're a bunch of women from a whack of different walks of life, different races, different ages and with different ideas about what we should do with our time and yet we bond. In real life, I think I probably seek people like me. You guys came along and stole my show and I'm going out of my circle now. When Jeanette said hearing one of them was atheist was like discovering she was blond, it felt so right. Am I doomed because I can't sing my devotion to God? I think not! It's not about my black and white thinking or yours. My decisions are different, but my right. By the end of our debate, I think we hit on it. Acceptance. I'd hate if someone tried to save me by changing me. We've got to think out of our squares and appreciate that we're different.
I read something this week and remember a smidgen of it. Life is what we let it be: an impromptu hug from your child. Laughing so hard your face hurts. No lines at the supermarket. Discovering the sweater you want is on sale for half price. Giggling. Finding twenty dollars in your coat from last winter. Friends. Chocolate. Road trips. Wrapping presents under the Christmas tree while eating cookies and drinking your favourite drink. Getting out of bed every morning and being grateful for another beautiful day.
How ironic that I can be so philosophical after falling apart when it took us five hours to put up the drapes in my living room where by the end of it, we were furious with each other and I hated the drapes. I was actually crushed! Since I started decorating the house, I was happy because so many things turned out exactly like I imagined, but when we started winding down the last projects a few things are askew, am I an idiot to take it personally? Tell me again. It's only stupid drapes. It's funny because one of the last projects we had left was finishing off the family room fireplace. I wanted it to be stone like our last one, but Remo said we could either have a stone fireplace or a stone driveway and then he proceeded to measure the wood mouldings he bought already. I futilely continued with my arguments, insisting I would rather leave it alone than finish it and be miserable. He started cutting. Though I was close to admitting defeat, it was Brandan who had been busy with his legos, who stood up with his hand on hips with the last word. "Annabel has a brick fireplace so you can't have one, because you can't have everything everyone else has". They won. And may I sheepishly admit, the fireplace looks great.
I'm thinking I must have hormones out of whack.
Since I last left off, when did I last leave off anyway, the kids all landed doozie colds. And just when the noses started running cloudy (transparent to me is the beginning), they started another one. It worked well for us given that I'm in a hibernating mood and I LOVE being able to say we're sick and need to stay home.
The last few weeks are a little fuzzy. Golf is going well although I spend an awful lot of time thinking about how I may never in fact get it. And I wonder whether it's a sport I'm too impatient for. Brandan is really getting amazing at skating. While I can't say he's skating for real and making real stops, he goes so fast they bumped him up with the older kids. There's no doubt he's athletic and he'll do well in sports. I wonder what else the part of the brain in charge of coordination, controls. The kid beats us at pick-up-sticks by a long shot.
Kaillan is a riot. I'm not sure if it's because I walk fast, but she doesn't actually walk, she literally, physically runs from room to room. And she goes so fast, her body is at some sort of angle, and at the speeds she's moving, we're constantly sucking in our breath. For the record, even if I hypothetically pondered where she gets that energy from and even if I went so far as to adamantly insist I was a very calm child, people still say she's like me. So if I started out calm, but as I age, the speed on my treadmill goes faster and faster, heaven help me when my daughter gets older.
It's cute because Kaillan started calling us Mommee and Daddee and I find it fascinating that she knows me by five different names; Al, Allie, Allisun, Ma Ma, Mommy and she'll use them depending on how charming she needs to be at any given moment. I wonder if she easily accepts that things have multiple names because her vocabulary thus far is bilingual. For every English word she speaks, she knows the French equivalent. To ensure I can hold a proactive place in their education, I'm going to be sending the kids to English school, which in Quebec means 80% French, 20% English and I know she'll have an easier time with the transition than Brandan. He has had limited French exposure and he has a tougher time annunciating some letters (l and r). I'm prepared to ship them off to speech therapists, tutors, whatever it takes to make learning easier but I can't help but feel a little sad that we're so close to such a turning point in life. School. Brandan will soon be in school. It goes way too fast.
It was so exciting last week because a girlfriend I've known since I was twelve years old, called to say her husband had a business meeting in Montreal and she was going to come too. I was so excited, partly because I love when someone comes to visit and mostly because it's an old friend I think highly of. The night before never really ended for me because Remo and I stayed up almost all of it trying to declutter the house and prepare a nice meal. I know she said not to go to any trouble but there was no way in hell she was going back home to say I was a slob, so we hustled like maniacs. Everyone, even Kaillan, had jobs to do. Michelle met me at my office and I took her on a quick tour of the underground city. Montreal is infamous for it's shopping and all the shopping centers and department stores and office towers downtown are connected by tunnels for miles and miles, you never actually have to step outside. We did a couple of hours of that before we headed back to the van so I could take her home the long touristy way. While I constantly dug in my bag for my work pass, parking ticket and keys and frantically searched twice for my wallet, she mentioned I would never change. There's nothing more wonderful than a friend who's known you forever. We gossiped about as many people as we could remember and I have to be honest, I make a crappy tour guide, I know the history of nothing. We got home and both our husbands showed up and we felt like we'd been hanging out with them all these years.
Next thing you know it was tomorrow, the eve of the great gingerbread house building party. When we sent out the invitations, we were very clear, only the four to six years olds were allowed (we ended up getting ten of them), and I encouraged the parents to run and get some Christmas shopping done. The night before, Remo, Brandan and I waited desperately for Kaillan to show some signs of exhaustion so we could build the houses. It was after nine before she cracked and we went full force into construction. Maybe ten minutes later we were attacked by icing. It took a good two houses before we established a system and we never really mastered the icing bag. You could twist tie the end twice, fold the end over and then elastic it and still the icing would climb up your arm. Brandan's eyes would get as wide as whatever was oozing.
Since I had never had one of these parties before, I was making it up as I went along. I bought five houses so they would double up to decorate them and when I tried to figure out who should take them home, Remo suggested we should give them to the Children's hospital. We discussed it with the kids and they were all cool with it. But still, I wanted them to take something home for all their hard work. Initially, my plan was to make gingerbread men they could decorate and take with them but I ran out of time and went with plan B where I bought each of them a package of gingerbread men cookies. I got each of the kids a chocolate advent calendar and cute Christmas plates for them and the siblings who couldn't come and Martha would cringe, but I made cupcakes from a mix they could decorate and bring home.
There had to be a snow storm. Remo wasn't home and I was preoccupied with putting all the garland, ribbons and white lights on the banister when I should've been setting the table. Why can I never stay focussed unless I have a gun to my head? The kids started turning up and though I most want to say I'm not sure how daycare workers do it, there's no doubt these kids had a blast. Little Julia, at 3 ½, was the youngest and most shy. It took nearly an hour to get her to warm up to everyone enough to even come in the room with us. Dee Dee and Claudia stayed to help and basically saved my life because you need the man power to fuse any little crises. My aunt was trying to win Julia over with cheese sticks, candy, you name it and she would've tried it, but Julia would not budge. We decided we should maybe ignore her, see if she'd come around on her own. But her aunt and cousin still had to show up and I had visions of them getting there and Julia would be all by herself in another room. We set the kids up with pizza at the table and to loosen them up, I started interviewing them on the video camera. What do you want for Christmas? Who has blue socks? Who has a piggy bank? One person mentioned a scooter and they ALL wanted a scooter. Believe it or not, there were some even at the table with blue socks on their feet right now and those feet quickly flew on top of the table. Big Julia is saving all her money so she can buy her mom a plant and Brandan is still saving his so he can pay somebody to hire him to work. The back and forth banter continued till the battery ran out (more on that later) and then it was time to actually start creating.
A table full of candy screams eat me so I devised a plan where I would every ten minutes call out a colour and the kids could eat one candy in that colour. From a mile away you can spot the kids with candy as a diet staple. For them it was no big deal, their focus was on decorating the houses, should they make a row of skittles or smarties? The ones who had almost no exposure to candy could concentrate on little else. I'd call a colour and they couldn't stop eating it. Their eyes were wide, their faces were glowing and for sure they thought we were wonderful. What I liked best about the group is how well everyone went at it together. The big ones looked out for the little ones and everyone got a turn. Chloe, 6, surprised me because I had no idea she was a germ freak. When one of the kids would stick a finger in their mouth and then back into a bowl she'd keel over in shock. Nathan, who is a youngish four, would holler out "ha ha, we're winning you" every couple minutes. That the other kids were doing rows of mini M&M's while he was putting rows of worms was irrelevant. Damian, 6, and Philippe, a brand new 7, were sitting at the island, away from all the distraction and taking the whole thing very seriously, constantly plotting patterns. Little Julia could concentrate on little more than the gumballs she was chewing. Having never had gum before and having ignored my instructions whereby that was the one candy they were not allowed to pick, she kept picking them. Which only infuriated her cousin Alexander, because with all that chewing, he was convinced she kept eating candy. He spent the entire time after her about getting on with the house. Sabrina was prepared to throw things on as fast as possible so we could finish the project and play. Nina wanted the house to look like a princess house and big Julia just sat and ate candy. Every time I'd tell her she couldn't eat anymore, she'd shyly, adorably, nod her head in understanding and then go right back at it. If anyone was going to be ill, it was her.
Eventually, we wrapped up the works of art and would you look at the clock, we still had half an hour before any parents would come. We took some really cool pictures, please let them work, we had all the kids sit on each other's lap, I put them all on the floor with their heads touching and took an arial shot, group shots and they were all so cooperative about it. Then, because they had pure sugar running through their blood, I brought up a bin of musical instruments so the potential firecrackers could kick off a band. They were an absolute riot, playing their guts out to their own beats, their own songs. Chloe had a microphone and sang the line "I'm getting nuttin for Christmas cuz Mommy and Daddy are mad"over and over for twenty minutes till finally Nina asked if we could sing another song. They marched through the house playing their instruments till the doorbell started ringing and nobody wanted to leave. We had left Kaillan the destroyer with Andree and you had to see her face when Remo showed up. She was FURIOUS. She walked in with such a look of disgust, with pure contempt for all these loud, obnoxious people who had taken over her space. Get them out now Mom. With all the confusion of sending the kids with their bags, it was a good ten minutes before I realized I'd lost track of her and there she was, sitting on top of the dining room table in the dark, with cheeks full of candies and fists frantically trying to remove them from the shingles. It would take her the rest of the weekend to recover.
I'd like for a minute to discuss our electronic situation. We just recently bought a new VCR because the only way the old one would rewind is if you played the tape till the end. You can't imagine the pressure this created when I was smack in the middle of a season of shows that needed to be taped. We have three reasonably new 21" TV's but for some reason every single one of them has attitude. Picture this big-big family room with a little-little TV, that works reasonably well, except we lost the remote control and have no way to adjust the colour. Only when somebody questioned why our picture was SO orange did we accept it really is a problem. Another TV for some reason only starts at channel eight. Obviously we hooked the old VCR up to that one and you can't use it because the channel has to be set on three. I forget what's wrong with the other TV but I'm pretty sure there's something. Not long ago I bought a great camera. Then lost it. So when we went to buy another one a week after the insurance on the Gold Visa would've replaced it for free, I really, really wanted the same one, because I knew it already. They were sold out BUT someone had just returned one, and there wasn't anything wrong with it, would I be interested in that, she could probably get me a good discount. I love a bargain and grabbed it. A few rolls of film had some really crappy pictures and I, in my infinite wisdom, chalked it up to leaving the camera in the car, probably the film got too hot. Only when I developed all the ruined Halloween pictures and was loading in the film for the kids party did it hit me, the camera is probably screwed up.
Our washing machine sounds like it's about to take off and even though Remo had the laundry room walls soundproofed, anyone who enters our house while the machine is on spin, nearly leaps out of their skin. Apparently it's just a belt. Well if it's just a belt, fix it! We have central vacuuming but we panicked over features when we went to buy the machine, so I've been using the upright. For a couple months it had a weird smell, Remo said it was the powder I put on the carpets, then BANG, in the middle of a job, the thing flipped out. The belt blew, something else snapped and Remo, for fear of recourse, now uses the rug shampooer to vacuum our rugs. Our stereo, which I actually won on the radio, is the latest casualty. I think something called Kaillan happened to it and so what that it had the potential to play 25 CD's, now it won't play one. At the party, when I went to play Christmas carols and the machine wouldn't work, all of a sudden it made sense why Remo had been laying in front of it with a flashlight, I went to get the portable one. When I lifted Remo's gel off the top of it, I discovered the CD lid does not close. If it does not close, it will not play. I attempted to videotape the kids but the battery I had recharged forever has decided it'll only run four minutes at a time and then it wants to be recharged again. We just spent a fortune on brand new stainless steel appliances and the convection oven temperature is set at least a hundred degrees below what the number says, the soap won't come out of one of the soap dispensers on the dishwasher and if you want to warm something in the microwave for ten seconds it'll take 810. Oh and all of a sudden yesterday one of the garage door openers decided to start opening at random. It had to be the coldest night of the year (-23c), on the one day when the door on the stairs that go right from the garage into the basement was opened, the garage door stayed open all night long. Downstairs you could see your breath. What is it about us? Remo insists this winter he's going to have time to fix everything and for Christmas we're getting a complete home theatre package. I think we could spend all the money in the world and still have problems.
Just one more tidbit on Brandan, and mostly for my own historical benefit. When Brandan says he is a working man, you have to believe he really, truly is. His focus is incredible for a four year old. Our driveway and the retaining walls, took two days and we used different sized brick stones so it would look cobble stoney. On the second day, I kept Brandan home so he could spend a few hours working with the guys. It was a cold day, so damp and chilly and the ground was covered in snow and at seven o'clock in the morning he insisted he had to be out there. I bundled him up like crazy and hollered at least thirty times for him to put his gloves back on and do you know, that kid came in for a potty break once at 4:00p.m., when it was already starting to get dark? When I said he had to come in for supper at 6:00 he desperately insisted those guys needed him, he couldn't come in till they were done. Remo said when the guys had a break he'd eat faster than all of them and get right back to work. He hauled brick after brick till his hands were covered in blisters, and every fibre of him sparkled with pure joy. I gave him five dollars for all his work and he was thrilled beyond belief. When he finally collapsed in bed that night, through a smile so wide, he wanted me to know about what a good job he did. The guys really needed him.
And to be fair, if I talk about him, I should talk about her. We tried to have Daphne trim Kaillan's little bit of hair yesterday but she was very much not interested. And the business with her finger and toe nails is out of control. Ever since she had all those splinters she won't let you within a room of her. To anyone who wants to suggest we do it when she's sleeping, I'd like to extend an invitation to come and try. Her radar can pick up a hand movement in the middle of the night and her immediate closed eye reaction is to curl her hands and toes under her.
I just bought the DVD, The Natural, starring Robert Redford. It would have been worth adding to your list of Thanksgiving appreciations; be grateful you weren't in my life when he was the love of it.
I've really got to run. To the TTM gang, I'll catch up with you tomorrow.
By the way, the drapes grew on me.
Al, Allie, Allisun
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