It is odd what people remember of you, what footprint you have made in their memory. This struck me full in the face the other day when someone who had known me through elementary and high school heard that I had two boys…her comment was, “Oh, I’m so sorry. You always said you only wanted to have girls.” Now, this is someone that knew me well back in the day – very well – and whom I haven’t seen or had any contact with in a literal lifetime. And this is what she remembered about me – this casual, uninformed, youthful throw away comment that I wanted, if I had children, to have girls. And she held that opinion out to me as I had just uttered it yesterday. As though no time, growth, or maturing had occurred in the intervening years. And don’t get me started that her comment was one that tainted the joy I had felt in telling her that I had two beautiful, bright, engaging and unbelievably funny little boys.
This is the footprint that I had left. Not that we had spent hours at school, and later in the evening, on the phone, laughing and gossiping. Not the family camping trips I had been included on, or the insecurities and fears of adolescence that we had supported each other through. Not that we had managed to maintain a close friendship through a complete lack of shared interests, separations, different world views.
And that’s just the thing. What do friends we have fallen out of touch with over the years remember about us? And how is it that friends we had all throughout childhood and early adulthood can become people we don’t recognize, that we wouldn’t likely befriend now?
There are people from my past that I remember very fondly, whose footprints in my memory are warm, firm, and when taken out and looked at bring me back to a place where, even if I didn’t particularly like myself at the time, make me remember and reflect that there was someone else who did. But now I’m not sure that I want to re-encounter them, to reveal myself to them as I am now – for what if they too have captured a memory of me that rings false me, to who I am know, and who I know I really, truly was then.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Welch's sour grapes
Well thank you Jack Welch, for turning on the light bulb for us all…it seems we have been struggling in the dark looking for that ever elusive work-life balance until along came Jack to flick the switch and illuminate the situation once and for all. For according to General Electric’s former CEO, “There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.” Right. Just like there are consequences when I choose not to stop and get milk and bread on my way home from work. Or when I forget to stuff my purse with tiny dinosaurs, toy cars, and a diaper before heading to the office in the morning on days when I also have to “nip home” to take one of the boys to a doctor’s appointment. Or when work-related travel results in my 16 month old beginning to wean from nursing.
Sheesh, and I thought I was blithely going along balancing, choosing, hemming, hawing, advancing professionally while simultaneously mothering WITHOUT consequences. Silly me.
Mr. Welch has shown himself, in my opinion, to be not merely arcane and irrelevant in the 21st century corporate world but also in his latest cash cow adventure as a leadership development guru. He also reveals himself to be an insensitive, myopic and boorishly unsupportive husband and step-father to a wife who has her own successful career (albeit possibly helped along by an affair-then-marriage to Mr. Welch) and four children. And honestly, I’m not sure which one of these irks me the most – that he is so evidently insensitive as a father and a husband or that anyone will, after this, listen to what he has to say on corporate leadership development.
I'd get more het up about this but I am too busy pursuing my career before heading home to make spaghetti with my boys.
Sheesh, and I thought I was blithely going along balancing, choosing, hemming, hawing, advancing professionally while simultaneously mothering WITHOUT consequences. Silly me.
Mr. Welch has shown himself, in my opinion, to be not merely arcane and irrelevant in the 21st century corporate world but also in his latest cash cow adventure as a leadership development guru. He also reveals himself to be an insensitive, myopic and boorishly unsupportive husband and step-father to a wife who has her own successful career (albeit possibly helped along by an affair-then-marriage to Mr. Welch) and four children. And honestly, I’m not sure which one of these irks me the most – that he is so evidently insensitive as a father and a husband or that anyone will, after this, listen to what he has to say on corporate leadership development.
I'd get more het up about this but I am too busy pursuing my career before heading home to make spaghetti with my boys.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Ahh...home sweet home....
Typhus, typhoid, H1N1, cholera – god only knows what it is but disgusting sickness has descended on our chaotic home like a biblical plague. Winston has been spewing fluid from both ends for a week now and totters pathetically around on stick legs looking every inch like a poster child for a children’s charity serving the third world; Topher is leaking thick, viscous green snot from his nose like nothing I ever want to see or experience again in my lifetime and clutching his neck screaming “it hurts right to my bones!”; husband is snuffling and shuffling around the house like a dishevelled sanatorium in-patient; father-in-law is lumbering (barely) pathetically from room to room when he isn’t lying in bed groaning, while mother-in-law and I carry on, feeding, bathing, wiping, swiping, stripping beds, doing laundry….all the while popping any pill that even remotely promises to get us through another hour without collapsing in feverish heaps.
But I think we may just have begun the long climb out of this fetid darkness….this morning, after the carpenters arrived at 6:30 a.m to continue building the front porch following a two-week unexplained absence, after pulling the dog out of the tipped over trash bin where she was supplementing her scientifically approved diet with day old shrimp shells, rotting lemons and something that for the life of me I still can’t identify, after getting the sofa ready to be picked up and replaced due to leaching leather dye (sometime between 9 and 1 o’clock today – could they be any more vague?), after husband announced he had a flight booked to leave this afternoon and would be gone on business until the weekend, after emptying the dishwasher, making 3 breakfasts, organizing the day’s wash which in addition to the usual boy mess included the previous night’s fun and entertainment of feces-covered baby blankets and 2 quilts, after trying 4 times without success to have even one sip of my coffee, I surveyed the scene and realized: Topher was not gripping his neck in agony, Winston was actually eating some solid food and drinking again with real gusto, father-in-law was well enough to surface before noon to wait for his food to magically appear before him, mother-in-law was calm and in control, and the sun was actually shining. So I did what any self-respecting, intelligent, exhausted woman would do – raced for a shower, dressed, grabbed my car keys and headed to the office where at least I had the faint hope of getting to drink a cup of warm, if not hot, coffee. And here I will stay until duty forces me back to the little bit of hell that is my home to chauffer family members to doctor appointments and then make dinner, clean up toys, bath, nurse, sing to and cuddle two little boys into bed, and then pour myself the world’s biggest, coldest, driest martini on record.
Wish me well. It has already been a very, very long day.
But I think we may just have begun the long climb out of this fetid darkness….this morning, after the carpenters arrived at 6:30 a.m to continue building the front porch following a two-week unexplained absence, after pulling the dog out of the tipped over trash bin where she was supplementing her scientifically approved diet with day old shrimp shells, rotting lemons and something that for the life of me I still can’t identify, after getting the sofa ready to be picked up and replaced due to leaching leather dye (sometime between 9 and 1 o’clock today – could they be any more vague?), after husband announced he had a flight booked to leave this afternoon and would be gone on business until the weekend, after emptying the dishwasher, making 3 breakfasts, organizing the day’s wash which in addition to the usual boy mess included the previous night’s fun and entertainment of feces-covered baby blankets and 2 quilts, after trying 4 times without success to have even one sip of my coffee, I surveyed the scene and realized: Topher was not gripping his neck in agony, Winston was actually eating some solid food and drinking again with real gusto, father-in-law was well enough to surface before noon to wait for his food to magically appear before him, mother-in-law was calm and in control, and the sun was actually shining. So I did what any self-respecting, intelligent, exhausted woman would do – raced for a shower, dressed, grabbed my car keys and headed to the office where at least I had the faint hope of getting to drink a cup of warm, if not hot, coffee. And here I will stay until duty forces me back to the little bit of hell that is my home to chauffer family members to doctor appointments and then make dinner, clean up toys, bath, nurse, sing to and cuddle two little boys into bed, and then pour myself the world’s biggest, coldest, driest martini on record.
Wish me well. It has already been a very, very long day.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Are there any other trees out there?
I say this to the other trees in the forest who will, or will not, hear me as I fall:
This mothering gig is by far the hardest, most soul-wearing, most 24/7 thing I have ever tried to do in my life. Skip the whole artistry thing of my youth, the doctoral studies gig, the career driven to excess thingy - this momma gig is a killer.
And after a full weekend of gardening, organic marketing, cooking, cleaning (bums, boys, household, dog), wagon horse rides, laundry, meal planning for the week, story reading, and little boy shoe shopping, I am ready to cry uncle and defeat... if it wasn't still almost my turn for nighttime stories after nursing Winston, I'd crawl into a hole and cry.
And Monday awaits. Monday with its get-the-boys-ready-for-the-day-before-I-head out-the-door-to-work list of things that need to get done (including call the plumber as the entire basement stinks of human waste due to some unfortunate incident with the basement washroom about which I still haven't heard the whole story) before 8 a.m. Oh yes - and I need to begin the nanny search yet again. Loving grandparents due to return to South Africa soon. Unless I tie the boys to Fan as a reasonable handrawn facsimile for childcare, we are all doomed. And as good as labradors are with kids, this may be asking a bit too much, even of sweet Fan.
This mothering gig is by far the hardest, most soul-wearing, most 24/7 thing I have ever tried to do in my life. Skip the whole artistry thing of my youth, the doctoral studies gig, the career driven to excess thingy - this momma gig is a killer.
And after a full weekend of gardening, organic marketing, cooking, cleaning (bums, boys, household, dog), wagon horse rides, laundry, meal planning for the week, story reading, and little boy shoe shopping, I am ready to cry uncle and defeat... if it wasn't still almost my turn for nighttime stories after nursing Winston, I'd crawl into a hole and cry.
And Monday awaits. Monday with its get-the-boys-ready-for-the-day-before-I-head out-the-door-to-work list of things that need to get done (including call the plumber as the entire basement stinks of human waste due to some unfortunate incident with the basement washroom about which I still haven't heard the whole story) before 8 a.m. Oh yes - and I need to begin the nanny search yet again. Loving grandparents due to return to South Africa soon. Unless I tie the boys to Fan as a reasonable handrawn facsimile for childcare, we are all doomed. And as good as labradors are with kids, this may be asking a bit too much, even of sweet Fan.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
I just read the most recent post from http://notdrowning.wordpress.com/ and just about lost my dinner laughing. Oh my god, too funny for words and rang all too true, except for the black lacy underwear part as it has been far too long since that has been a staple of my wardrobe.
But it rang true otherwise, this whole too much information syndrome that infected me at motherhood..... I was actually was on a professional phone call today when I found myself launching into a story about how my preschool son likes to make his penis into shapes. As in “Look Momma, it’s a snowman” or “Look Momma, I made an angel with my "wikkkee” Personally, seeing my son discover his "wikkkee" has brought my pre-marriage dating history (like there is any other...well, actually....no seriously hon, that was just a joke....) into a stage of understanding that 10 years of therapy could not. Men and their “wikkkees”...it is a complete, compelling and non-replaceable relationship. But I digress. Point was that on a professional call I actually started talking about my son and his penis. Totally out of context to anyone else who doesn’t share my seriously and prolonged sleep deprived state of existence, with a baby still gnawing on my breasts twice a day, all sorts of bodily fluids splashed on me before my first cup of coffee in the morning, and oh my god where are my clean nylons for that interview, and why in god’s name is the baby wearing his brother’s underpants on his head kind of life.
It is a bit cliche to say "I don't remember signing up for this," but it is true. I don't. I don't remember other career moms showing up at work with peanut butter smears on their suit jackets, or pulling out Tonka toys and diapers instead of the required meeting notes from their purses as all sorts of on lookers smirked and shook their heads. Before motherhood I don't remember starting my day off at 5 a.m with someone with a near full set of teeth sucking on my breast as though life depended on it before then having to clean up in the following order: dog puke from the back door mat, brown and yellow "refuse" from a nappy, pee off the change pad, the baby, myself, then pick up dog shit from the river parkway walk as I try to loose the martini bulge that I conveniently choose to call the last five baby pounds, wipe another baby ass, help the three year old aim for the toilet with his wikkkee spraying merrily around the bathroom like a coked up fire hose....coffee still pending, I might add.
Nope, this isn't what I thought would be my lot when we decided to "give it a whirl and see what happens." Love my life but hate the associate body fluids. Too much information, I know.
But it rang true otherwise, this whole too much information syndrome that infected me at motherhood..... I was actually was on a professional phone call today when I found myself launching into a story about how my preschool son likes to make his penis into shapes. As in “Look Momma, it’s a snowman” or “Look Momma, I made an angel with my "wikkkee” Personally, seeing my son discover his "wikkkee" has brought my pre-marriage dating history (like there is any other...well, actually....no seriously hon, that was just a joke....) into a stage of understanding that 10 years of therapy could not. Men and their “wikkkees”...it is a complete, compelling and non-replaceable relationship. But I digress. Point was that on a professional call I actually started talking about my son and his penis. Totally out of context to anyone else who doesn’t share my seriously and prolonged sleep deprived state of existence, with a baby still gnawing on my breasts twice a day, all sorts of bodily fluids splashed on me before my first cup of coffee in the morning, and oh my god where are my clean nylons for that interview, and why in god’s name is the baby wearing his brother’s underpants on his head kind of life.
It is a bit cliche to say "I don't remember signing up for this," but it is true. I don't. I don't remember other career moms showing up at work with peanut butter smears on their suit jackets, or pulling out Tonka toys and diapers instead of the required meeting notes from their purses as all sorts of on lookers smirked and shook their heads. Before motherhood I don't remember starting my day off at 5 a.m with someone with a near full set of teeth sucking on my breast as though life depended on it before then having to clean up in the following order: dog puke from the back door mat, brown and yellow "refuse" from a nappy, pee off the change pad, the baby, myself, then pick up dog shit from the river parkway walk as I try to loose the martini bulge that I conveniently choose to call the last five baby pounds, wipe another baby ass, help the three year old aim for the toilet with his wikkkee spraying merrily around the bathroom like a coked up fire hose....coffee still pending, I might add.
Nope, this isn't what I thought would be my lot when we decided to "give it a whirl and see what happens." Love my life but hate the associate body fluids. Too much information, I know.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Wishing in vain upon a star....
I have the post-vacation blues in a really really bad way. Back now from a week at an isolated ocean front cottage on Nova Scotia’s North Shore all I can do as I sift through the mountain of laundry, mouldy vegetables in the refrigerator and slide back into the daily routine of finding reasonably clean clothes for work, is scheme up ways to get us all back to the North Shore – for good. All we’d have to do is sell our home, quit our lucrative jobs, unsettle the boys from the bosom of their extended family, and move half a country away....how hard could that be?
Maybe we could try goat farming...use the milk for making soap to sell at a roadside stand to tourists. Or start up a garlic farm and put aside various garlic jams, oils, spreads – and hell, why not – soaps, to sell at a roadside stand to the same passing tourists...or maybe we could move to the nearest Maritime big city where I could get a new job in a new office, husband could get a new job with a new evil empire pharmaceutical company, and we could retire each Friday evening to a seaside cottage and stop on our way to purchase goat milk soap and garlic chutney from little roadside stands set out in an effort to attract the few passing tourists...
Topher and Winston would grow up windswept, rosy cheeked and self-reliant. I would become relaxed, environmentally conscious and have real Wellingtons to wear, not Canadian Tire replicas. Husband would become relaxed, return to his love of painting, and develop a resistance to Canadian mosquitoes, deer flies and black flies (who knew South Africans were such babies when it came to bug bites!), actually have a good reason to wear his real Wellingtons, and we would all gather around the fire in the evening, watching the dog twitch her paws as she slept soundly nearby.
Or maybe I could just grow up and get back to the laundry....
gj8hdvzx49
Maybe we could try goat farming...use the milk for making soap to sell at a roadside stand to tourists. Or start up a garlic farm and put aside various garlic jams, oils, spreads – and hell, why not – soaps, to sell at a roadside stand to the same passing tourists...or maybe we could move to the nearest Maritime big city where I could get a new job in a new office, husband could get a new job with a new evil empire pharmaceutical company, and we could retire each Friday evening to a seaside cottage and stop on our way to purchase goat milk soap and garlic chutney from little roadside stands set out in an effort to attract the few passing tourists...
Topher and Winston would grow up windswept, rosy cheeked and self-reliant. I would become relaxed, environmentally conscious and have real Wellingtons to wear, not Canadian Tire replicas. Husband would become relaxed, return to his love of painting, and develop a resistance to Canadian mosquitoes, deer flies and black flies (who knew South Africans were such babies when it came to bug bites!), actually have a good reason to wear his real Wellingtons, and we would all gather around the fire in the evening, watching the dog twitch her paws as she slept soundly nearby.
Or maybe I could just grow up and get back to the laundry....
gj8hdvzx49
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