Tag Archives: birthday

THIRTEEN

My first-born son is now a teenager. This has both he and I spinning. I HAVE A TEENAGE SON. How this happened I don’t know because I still feel like a teenager myself.

My sweet boy has resisted growing older every step of the way. He has always told us he does not want to grow up – even as young as 3 years old he knew that childhood was the best of times. I guess maybe his father and I have not made adulthood seem like much fun.

In his observation at skate parks and out in the world, teenagers have been both extremely annoying and also terrifying to him. He did not want to become a teenager. He was truly sad about the inevitability of it. Did I mention that neither of us can believe it actually happened? Here we are. With the growth spurts and puberty and cracking voice and big feet and interest in girls and changing vocabulary and eye rolling and everything.

I asked him on his birthday if he felt any different and he actually sat and contemplated this for a few minutes and finally told me the he did feel different. He said he feels SAFER.

SAFER! I mean…WOW. And obviously I asked him why and he told me that he is not a child any more so he is safer. He is a teenager. More responsible and equipped to take care of himself.

God, I could just cry my face off. Why does this seem so profound to me? This recognition that he has reached a new level of independence and it is so real to him? It has always been my job to keep him safe, and of course still is, but he also feels that he has a role to play in is own safety and he is up for the task.

How can he be so self-aware?

And why don’t I ever feel safer? I mean, safer because of my own self and not external forces like a police officer is standing nearby or I have a life jacket on.  If anything I feel less safe as time goes on. More vulnerable. More fragile. More mortal.

Part of me wants to open the can of worms about gender – is feeling safe a right of passage for boys? A natural state? So many questions beg to be asked but I am tired. I am busy. I don’t have the capacity to got there right now and I also wonder if that is a fundamental issue in our society. All of us women are too tapped out to rail against a modern civilized world in which being a female is still considered a weakness. The older I get the clearer it is to me, the more I see it and hear it. This pervasive tone of sexism here in our own very progressive country. AND how to describe the outrage I feel on behalf of all women who are living under total oppression all around the world, and I would go so far as to say hated in their societies. Unable to drive, receive an education, have independence. Made to cover themselves. Made to feel shame. I am ashamed. Ashamed that I do nothing to fight it but feel pissed off and blow off steam in what is essentially a secret blog.

Well, not nothing. I am a Mother to boys. I have a very serious and real responsibility to raise them to understand and respect the differences between women and men, and to shatter every myth that exists in our society about women and their inferiority. It overwhelms me at times. Like now.

I guess what is sinking in for me is that I don’t have much time. Childhood is so FLEETING. Life is a blink of an eye. I feel very urgent right now about reorganizing my priorities and where I put my energy and thoughts and effort. I am working on it.

For now, I take every chance I get to hug that kid as hard as I can AND he lets me. He has never been a particularly huggy kid, but I think he knows our hugging days are numbered, or maybe he knows I need it right now, or maybe someone gave him a stern lecture but I get to hug him and I do not take that for granted.

Holy Shit. Thirteen.

 

 

 

 

All That We Need

So when my sister asked me at dinner last night how I spent my birthday, I told her all of the truth.

Spectacular breakfast in bed. I mean really. The door burst open and a pile of balloons filled the room. There was a tray with a beautiful hydrangea, and this cupcake…it had candles, it had a sparkler, it had a giant swirly pile of icing, it was elaborate. The boys were singing.  I am so truly blessed.

Then we went to tour the Princess Margaret Home Lottery Grand Prize Showhome to decide if we wanted to buy a ticket.  The best part about having a ticket is daydreaming that you live in the house and knowing that you just might be able to. It is a spectacular house. I mean, any 3.7 million dollar home is going to be. This particular one was not for us. It had a mini hockey rink in the basement – come off it!! I might be the only Canadian, besides my kids, that don’t even know the rules of the game. Plus, the decor was not to my taste. There were these giant gold statues that looked like Oscar’s doing yoga poses. There were so many useless rooms. It totally grossed our younger son out. He is 9. He said “I think we should leave. This is making me SICK”. Sick because of the excess. Sick because this house was the smallest house in a subdivision. Row upon row of 8, 10, 12 thousand square foot homes. (How come there are so many super rich people? Where did they come from? What are they doing for a living?)

We were just in Mexico where we visited a 2 room school house that would have easily fit in master bathroom of this house. Where we met a family of 17 lovely happy people that live together in small apartment without hot water or an indoor toilet. Where our kids finally realized that all the times we have said “you don’t know how lucky you are!!” it was a real thing that we weren’t making up.

We all agreed that this was not the neighbourhood for us and that we are not the kind of family that wants to live in a mansion. We bought a ticket anyways, because, well, charity. We can just sell the house if we win.

Anyways, all if this is totally beside the point of what I am writing about. Because after telling her all that junk, I told her I started a blog and that I did it because I think I am having a midlife crisis, or maybe just a plain old garden variety crisis. Because I there are things I need (or maybe just want) to change and I need the accountability. Because maybe other people are going through it and this will help us all. Because I have things to say and why not say them to the entire world wide web?

Of course my sister demanded to see it right away and to my horror my mother read over her shoulder. Didn’t think that possibility through when I published the post. They both audibly gasped at the same time. I think it was during the part when I say I was doing drugs. My mother peaced out right then and walked away (So, that is a good sign right?) but my sister read on. At the end she said, it is relatable, but I really think you have much more to say. Then she pointed at my left boob and said “that is the bigger one right?”

Right. And also… I do have more to say. But I am going from the outside in with this. It is a bit safer and maybe easier for me to start on the surface and peel back the layers. Not to diminish the surface…there is a lot that starts there. Body image stuff. Self esteem stuff. How we present ourselves to the world. I, like most people, have a lot of insecurities tied to how I look and how I want to look.

Not 20 minutes ago I impulse bought a product that promises (I know it is a lie, but I can’t stop hoping) to diminish the look of my pores. I have ridiculous gaping craterish pores on my face, and have battled acne on and off since puberty. I always kinda worried about these pores of mine and secretly hoped I was the only one who noticed, but 20 years ago I met a tourist in Toronto (who was here from what country in Africa I can’t recall but one where they do not hold back what they are thinking and tell you what they observe in a really benign and non judgy way) and he studied my face for a while and kindly said “you have very large pores”.  So there you have it. I legit have crazy ass pores. What I wish, and what I hope for, is that I can come to a place where I don’t fucking care. Caring about my pores is not knowing how lucky I am. It is living in a beautiful house but wanting to win a sickening mansion, while 17 lovely people are perfectly happy to sleep three to a hammock and go outside to use the toilet.

Look. Do me a favour. Next time you see me please don’t stare at my pores –  or my boobs for that matter. Just gaze over my shoulder or something.

 

42

Happy Birthday to me!

All signs indicate that I am in the throws of a classic midlife crisis. Those signs being my 12 year old son and the internet telling me so (because 12 year old boys know everything and those buzzfeed quizzes are never wrong). And probably other people might agree if I asked them. (Question, how do you close comments on this thing?)

My hours of research for a cure have been simultaneously reassuring and terrifying. Reassuring is the fact that I am NOT crazy, even though I feel a little bonkers, restless, and reckless. Even though I have spent several hours on the internet looking at full torso tattoos of cherry blossoms and pricing them out, or googling shit like “How to disappear without a trace and start a new life”. Just kidding. I didn’t do that last one. But I did start doing drugs again. Sort of.

By doing drugs, I don’t actually mean I have been doing real drugs. I was being dramatic so you would be more intrigued.  I mean I have been eating these pot laced lollipops (not technically drugs, at least here in Canada) someone gave me that were made for cancer patients and hardly have any THC and instead of being fun and enlightening it makes me either obsessively reorganize my cupboards, or lie in bed slightly paranoid and very drowsily hiding from everyone. Yup, crashing and burning in a spectacular fashion over here folks.

Back to NOT being crazy. It turns out all of those classic symptoms are a really healthy signal from the soul that I am not “living my personal truth” and it is time to get real. Which brings me to the terrifying part. What is my personal truth? And how do I live it without blowing our lives up to smithereens? And where do I get the courage to do that?

So now, on my 42nd birthday I am going to start a list of things that are true about me, but I don’t live them. Yet.

***Spoiler alert. Not starting off too deep here. That will come later. I think.

1/ I want to sing Karaoke but never have because am completely ashamed of my singing voice which is truly awful. But fuck it. I want to do it.

2/ I don’t want to wear bras anymore. I have tiny boobs and they are holding up ok. Not great, but ok. One is visibly larger the other, but still, technically I don’t need a bra. I have been wearing stupid push up bras my whole bra wearing life, that make me appear to have super nice symmetrical boobs two cup sizes bigger than they actually are. Like, I feel so stupid!!! Make my boobs look terrific, so a dude will want me, only to discover the great deception, and not actually care. I locked Chuck in to the situation 15 years ago, and so who is the push up bra really for? I wear metal and padding on my chest for society in general? It is so fucked up. I just feel like if I stopped now people would be shocked by the real me and it might be scandalous. Plus nipples. They aren’t in right now. UG.

3/ Speaking of wearing things… I want to wear clothes I actually like every day of the week. I am a business woman with corporate clients, and even though business is fairly casual these days…still. I can’t wear yoga pants or ripped jeans to work. Doc martens don’t work with a dress the way they used to back in the day.  And flip flops. Am I right?

4/ Coffee. I want to drink coffee anytime of the day or night instead of just one in the morning because if I have more than one or drink it after noon I am awake all night long freaking out and counting down the hours I have left to sleep and then I don’t and I can’t function and do my job the next day. Friday is my favourite day for many reasons but a biggie is that I can drink coffee in the afternoon. This needs to not feel so special. It is just sad. I guess the bigger issue here is that I have a bedtime. I HAVE A BEDTIME. I don’t want to have a bedtime guys.

5/ I hate winter. Like a lot. My whole life. It is soul destroying for me. Enough with this shit!

Today however the weather is GORGEOUS. Like perfection. So I am leaving it here for now and going outside. My goal is to keep adding to this list and hopefully start making some good progress towards living my personal truth. Stay tuned!