Saturday, September 26, 2009

Family is a mystery to me

Families are complex things. I know this - my own family is a mess of complexity and I have had enough therapy over the years, at different times in my life, to begin to become somewhat accomodating to the messiness that is my family. For the last seven months I have also had my spouse's family living in - well, my living room. And complex is the least of the adjectives I can find to describe this situation.

Tonight, after seven months, they are gone - back to Africa. And I miss his parents deeply already, while at the same time I am also finally exhaling for the first time in a long, long time. With their being gone now also comes the possible end of any real familial closeness with the other part of his family here in our city....and although I care deeply for the two small off-spring that come with this package, their parents, my spouse's brother and wife, well, I hope for an at least temporary reprieve from their seeming need for drama, complaints and complications.

But while tonight has finally afforded Spouse and I a chance to compare notes on the he-said, she-said aspects of the past seven months, I am still struck by the complexity, the bizarreness of familial relationship. What it is that actually binds us together in families? In the case of my own brother and I - different as we are - it is a spoken understanding that no matter what, the bottom line is that we will always be there for each other. That doesn't mean we always get along, doesn't mean that we approve of how the other lives, that we always feel some kind of Hallmark card kind of love for each other - it seems to be, as he and I have worked it out over the years, that we will not need the other's approval yet we will back each other up when needed, no matter who or what the opponent may be. And we don't talk all that often, although we live in the same city; we don't live similar lives at all; we don't even see the same way on alot of things that with anyone else would be non-negotiables. But when we are together we manage to say more without words than with - we are, no matter what, no matter who, a united front, and would be if circumstances had been different, friends if we met. God help anyone who tries to bring the other one down - because there is a second wave lined up and ready to attack if necessary.

It is not merely DNA, not merely genetics, not merely environment or a shared history and background that binds my brother and I together....except all of these contributes to an often unspoken understanding when needed. At the base of it all, we just like each other even when we don't (something only siblings may be able to understand) - as people and accept each other for who, what, and how we have become. Neither needs the others approval. What we have together is deeper than that. So familial relationship is the tie that the public see, and is the tie that brought us together - but it is not all that there is.

Without that simple yet oh-so-difficult aspect, how do siblings get along in adult life? How do you begin to accomodate vast differences in morality, in responsibility, in daily actions and choices? And how do the parents caught in this vortext cope? I have seen my in-laws' hearts broken over the divisions between their children and at the same time seen my own parents frustrated at the unquestioning wall my own brother and I can draw between them and us.

How will my boys be when they are older? Will they be friends not only because they are brothers but because they genuinely enjoy each other? Or will they be at odds - not because of birth order or any other environmental factor....but just because?

I hope I will not one day be as my my mother-in-law has been, in tears over the wide gulf between my children that nothing or no one can bridge. My spouse admits he will always, no matter what, be there for his brother. But I think it is not for the same reasons that my own brother and I say the same thing. Acceptance versus duty-by-DNA. My brother and I are an unquestionable team because we choose to be, not because we must be. Which way will my own two boys go? And what is my role in the outcome?

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Don't fret....Fan the dog got fed in the end

I am at a loss. Wait, no I am not. Just had a brilliant idea. Will deal with brilliance in a moment...

Spouse is doing his neuroscience thing in California this week while in-laws and I keep the home fires burning...the boys are shattered with missing their father, I am in sore need of his calm, rational, normal view of life, and the Fan the dog, well, suffice to say we hit an emergency tonight when we realized she was out of food - and trust me, with a hungry labrador that constitutes an emergency.

How I will manage all of this once my in-laws return to South Africa is beyond me. Our new nanny is lovely and fits in beautifully, but still there is so much to do, remember and manage...I am terrified of what is to come. Topher is a gorgeous boy, but so intense, so demanding emotionally that it is hard to keep up with is needs - and Winston, well he is so easy, so compliant that he is easy to get lost in the shuffle of life and business.

I know everyone else manages this work-family thing with aplomb and grace. But I seem to be falling short.

Will get back to focusing on flash of brilliance, that of course, had nothing at all to do with what is really bothering me.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Garbage, garbage, who's got garbage....

I live in a house obsessed by garbage. Or, more accurately, I live in a house with people obsessed by garbage. Spouse's obsession is expressed by expending an unbelievable amount of energy in avoiding taking out the garbage. MIL on the other hand can’t wait for the night before garbage day - she begins before dinner to scratch through the recycle bins, eyeing the neighbours ‘curb-sides for evidence of blue or black boxes, and packing up every stray bit of tissue, newspaper and flotsam into the bins. Topher, however, makes her look like an amateur. He is obsessed beyond all proportion with garbage and garbage trucks. We have, at last count, 5 toy garbage trucks – a virtual fleet – complete with toy garbage cans, bins and skips. And toy garbage. Yes, that’s right, toy garbage. My life is not complex enough, not full of enough crap, that I can’t find myself on a regular bases twisting bits of tissue, newsprint, cotton balls and foil into little teeny tiny crumpled up balls for Topher to use to fill up the toy garbage cans, bins and skips, which are then lined up on the living room floor for the fleet of toy garbage trucks to drive by and empty. And we aren’t done yet. No, despite having the afore mentioned fleet of toy garbage trucks, my eldest is bereft, deprived, crippled even, or so he tells me, by the fact that he does not possess a side-lifter garbage truck.

And this is not all. No, not by a long shot. In addition to the fleet of trucks, the crumpled up bits of pretend garbage and the various miniature bins, cans, and skips, he also must PLAY garbage. This entails loading up his boy-sized blue recycle bins and his boy-sized trash cans – all of which are housed IN MY LIVING ROOM – with sofa pillows, the morning’s newspaper, toast crusts and anything else that isn’t nailed down and then the show really begins. He “drives” the garbage truck (aka the sofa) complete with terrifyingly realistic sound effects, climbs down out of the “truck” to pick up a bin and toss it into the “hopper” (aka the other end of the sofa) before climbing back into the truck, starting up the compressor and the hopper, and then “driving on” to the next stop on his route. And god help any of us if we want to either sit on the sofa during this time, read the paper, or have a cushion to perch on.

As if this wasn’t enough of a zoo, now Winston has joined in. The other morning I found him sitting on the sofa, arms held out in front of him as though gripping a steering wheel and heard from his mouth the unmistakable sounds of vrrroooooommmm, errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrtttt, sshhhhhhhhhhhhhht beeepbeeeepbeeep – the sounds of the garbage truck on its route – while Topher tossed the contents of bins out onto the sofa next to Winston. HE IS ONLY 17 MONTHS OLD FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!!

So you can well imagine the excitement this morning when the garbage and recycling trucks lumbered down the street. There, sitting on our front porch still in their jammies and munching on toast, were my two blond haired obsessive compulsive angels (and their Ouma), waiting and watching the trucks going about their business. The boys shouted and waved at their heroes and were rewarded by honking horns and return salutes...life for my boys will never again be the same, for surely, in their minds, it can’t get any better than the day the garbage men honked the truck’s horn and waved at them.

Ah well. I console myself with the idea that winter will soon be upon us and it will be too cold for the boys to sit on the porch waiting anxiously for their heroes to ride up the road....but by then they will have a new hero......the snow plow driver. For the record, I am drawing the line at making pretend snow.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Heigh ho, Heigh ho, it's off to school we go....

Topher just had his first day of school today. Wow. Amazing wow. He went off with a hug and a kiss and just one backwards glance and then bang. It was done. School. My first baby just went off to school. Wow.

His Ouma was with us - she cried buckets. Me, typically, I didn't. Well, not exactly. Instead, true to form I waited until I had taken him to the kindergarten drop off, driven MIL back home with Winston, then drove into work, fought with the parking attendants at the office, got coffee, rode two elevators and then, once safely embedded in my office with the door closed, I cried.

My beautiful, complex, complicated, smart, frustrating boy just started junior kindergarten. He has started his lifelong journey of education, good teachers, bad teachers, indifferent teachers. Started his life of days that I will know next to nothing about except that which he chooses to tell me...or that the school sends home in a tersely worded typed message - let us not get too rose-coloured-glasses here after all...this is Topher about whom I write....

But wow. Holy cow. Mercy Mother of God. School. Eeek.

Despite spending a huge portion of our adult lives in school, neither Spouse or I are a huge fan of school. He is a product of truly bizarre apartheid South Africa private schooling complete corporal punishment in high school, etc. I, well suffice to say I have yet to meet a school system or administration that I didn't want to bring to its knees for one reason or another. But spouse has his PhD from Cambridge and I, well there again I just had to go against the grain as well as adhere to that life-long tendancy to NOT finish things and am ABD (that is sooooo cheesy to even say, let alone write...) in History from Queen's, so I guess we have somehow along the way been co-opted into the school thing/hegemony. God help Topher. Given that combined background he is going to need every prayer that his Canadian-Irish Catholic relatives can throw at us .

I hope he likes school. He did today. Especially as there is a toy car transporter truck to play with and the toilet doesn't have a loud flush. He checked. And as long as he wasn't trying to flush the toy car transporter down the school toilet, I'm happy. Consider it a successful start to school. Well done, Topher. Mama loves you.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Honestly, I do

- Mama?
- Yes pet?
- MAAAMMMMA?
- Sigh. Yes pet?
- What are you doing?
- Getting ready for bed. Now go to sleep
- But what are you doing?
- Getting ready for bed.
- Are you in your jammies?
- No, not yet.
- What are you doing?
- Sigh heavily. Never you mind.
- What MAAAMMMA? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
- I’m going to the bathroom.
- Are you having a pee or a poo?
- Never you mind. It doesn’t matter.
- Is it a pee Mama or a poo?

Now, none of you, including Topher need to know this. But he is like a dog with a bone, so after debating with myself the evils of lying versus the evils of telling him the truth, I tell the truth. Suffice to say, you don’t really need to know.
- Now Mama? Right now you are?
- Well, no, unfortunately, not right now.
- When Mama?

Apparently, never again, or only once you have left home for university. Suffice to say during the last week we have had Topher into the children’s hospital twice, once for surgery and then back to emergency when he spent 3 hours clutching his side and telling us how it hurt inside. Upon arrival at the emergency room, he announced he was going to hop all the rest of the way and spent his time in triage catapulting over the filthy furniture. Needless to say, we called it a night shortly after. We’ve also gone through one antique chair, two toy school buses, one pair of size 4 boy jeans, and about 27 litres of milk.

I lovemyboysIlovemyboysIlovemyboysIlovemyboys. Really.