Month: September 2005

This is a hypothetical situation. Wouldn’t it be cool if a blogger you knew, no one in particular, was asked to do something really fun, like say, author a blog for her organization?

Of course, if something like that happened, the blogger probably shouldn’t be talking about it on her personal blog. It’s possible, in fact, that management might have suggested in plain language that she don’t mention anything on her personal blog. And since the blogger might have become aware in the same conversation that management had already been reading her blog (right about the time a blogger might have been discussing such credibility-enhancing issues as toilet habits of stubborn three year olds and Flying Spaghetti Monsters) it would probably be in that blogger’s best interests to keep her mouth shut for once.

I’m just sayin’.

On a completely unrelated note, I’ll be doing some business travel in the next little while, and I’m completely freaked out about it. Not so much the travel, but the traveling while leaving Beloved behind with the Wee Beasties. While he’s more than proven his mettle as a capable stay-at-home dad, three days without backup is a long stretch. The Wee Beasties will be in daycare for two of the three days, which helps, and my folks are just around the corner.

I’ll try not to fret too much as I order room service, stretch out in the crisp sheets of a bed I don’t have to share and leave my wet towels on the bathroom floor for someone else to pick up and put away. (Okay, I’ll be leaving a big tip for the maid, too, but it will be worth it!!)

We spent the long weekend with my brother’s family. He and his wife have added to my mother’s collection of grandsons with an absolutely adorable 8 month old named Noah.

On Saturday afternoon while Simon was napping, Tristan and I made our way over to my mother’s house for a visit, and I finally had a chance to play with Noah for a while. (Before that, if Simon caught sight of me with Noah in my arms, he’d break into instant and heart-rendering sobs. Cast another vote in the ‘con’ column of the great third-baby debate.)

My mom was holding Noah when we got there, and as she handed him to me she said, “Go see your Auntie Danielle.” It rang in my ears for a minute, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

For one thing, although I’m “Auntie Dani” to a posse of kids, nobody has ever called me “Auntie Danielle” before. People have been calling me Dani since I was in grade school, and it’s the only name most of my friends and family use. The only hold outs are my mother, and up until recently, people I work with.

These days even my work friends are starting to call me Dani and while I enjoy the affection with which it is used, there’s a part of me that’s beginning to miss my formal name. I’m grateful that my mother still calls me Danielle. Sometimes I wonder if there will be a time in my life when Dani becomes too young a name for a woman of a certain age and I’ll have to pack it away with my mini-skirts and neon t-shirts. Not today, at least.

But as if that weren’t introspection enough from two simple words, “Auntie Danielle”, there’s more.

I come from a very small family. I have one brother. My father was an only child, and my mother had one sister. My one aunt and uncle had a son, so I have one cousin, but they lived on the west coast for a lot of my childhood. So I wonder if it’s being from a small family that makes me weird about who my kids call aunt and uncle. To me, it’s a title imbued with significance, and only actual blood relatives are called Aunt and Uncle.

Friends of mine had their son quite a few years before Beloved and I were ready to procreate, and although they were more like family than friends, I was still surprised when they handed the baby to me and introduced me as “Auntie Dani”. I was genuinely touched – but also uncomfortable. I was proud that they loved me enough to include me as part of their family, but knew in my heart that I would feel uncomfortable extending the same courtesy on a future day when I had kids.

With the grace of a herd of startled cattle, I tried to explain my feelings to them at the time, and succeeded only in sullying a lovely gesture of friendship. We haven’t really spoken about it since, and to their credit, their kids still call Beloved and I aunt and uncle to this day. But my kids don’t reciprocate. I pretty much try to avoid using names at all when talking about them to my kids, referring instead to “so and so’s daddy” or “so and so’s mommy”. When I can’t get around it, I use their first names – and each time, I flinch a little bit at the absence of the “aunt” or “uncle”.

Recently, another close set of friends brought a beautiful baby girl into our lives, and they have honoured Beloved and I by bestowing us with the title of Aunt and Uncle as well, and once again, I just can’t bring myself to return the courtesy.

Now that I think of it, I was never able to call any of my in-laws “mom” or “dad” either, nor would I expect Beloved to call my parents that, even though we’re as close as family can be.

Insignificant though it may seem (when will I be able to think a thought without an echo in my head that asks, “Given everything that’s going on in the world right now, you’re worried about that?), it’s been weighing heavily on me lately. I am honoured and touched that our friends think enough of Beloved and I to include us as family, and I’m not quite sure how to demonstrate that we feel the same way – but we just don’t want to commit to it with labels.

What’s it like in your family? Do your kids call your friends Mr and Mrs Friend, or Auntie and Uncle Friend, or something else?

I’ve had tears in my eyes for days, reading and watching the coverage of the disaster in Louisiana and Mississipi. I am simply flummoxed that a storm, no matter how powerful, could rend such damage. As I did for 9/11 and the tsunami, I pulled out my credit card and made a donation to the Red Cross… but it just doesn’t seem like enough.

Then I read this incredible post from my friends (and I use that term with sincerity and respect and affection) over at Been There. They’re taking real action by acting as a clearing house to link people starting over with people who might have clothes, supplies, books or toys to donate. There’s another post showing how ordinary Americans are opening up their homes to take in people who have lost everything, people who have to start their lives over again.

Edited September 2 to add: Suzanne at Mimilou posted a link to Hurricane Housing, another way those who have can help those who need.

Edited September 3 to add: And if you think your little contribution won’t make a difference, you MUST read this beautiful story on Been There. Warning: you’ll need kleenex.

I want to pin this post at the top for a while, so scroll down for new posts.

Do what you can. There but for the grace of God go I – or you.

I wish I could stop thinking about this whole hurricane crisis, but I can’t. And it’s my blog, so if it’s on my mind, it’s on the blog.

Phantom Scribbler has some really horrific stuff on the political mismanagement of this whole thing. I won’t pretend to know enough about American politics to be able to comment, but I’m finding her posts both illuminating and terrifying. I am still naive enough to hope half – just half – of the things she has noted are not true.

I work in government communications, and yet I swear I’d slit my wrists before setting up a photo opportunity for a politician and then dismantling it, leaving suffering people behind. As much as I think George Bush is an asshole, and a stupid asshole at that, I still don’t want to believe that this story is true.

Edited September 7 to add: Phantom Scribbler has since added a note that the second link, about the food distribution rumour, is no more than a rumour. Funny, though, it hasn’t much changed how I feel about George Bush.

I can’t stay sad for long. No matter how horrible, I have this irrepressible need to smile. So although I continue to choke up with every new article, post and link I read about the Katrina aftermath, I need to find some happier things to think about.

And what is funnier than the things that come out of our blessedly innocent kids’ mouths?

For example, the one and only Snack Mommy is expecting a baby boy in December. In trying to give her son Tristan (great name, eh?) a little bit of perspective on the coming arrival, she has somehow stumbled into explaining that the baby will be making an entrance through the “Baby Door.”

Having thought about it for a while, Tristan has posed these questions of his beleaguered mother:

“How does the doctor close the baby door?”

“I think the baby door will stay open for six months after the baby is born.”

“Who let me out of the baby door, you, daddy, or the doctor?”

“Is there a handle on the door or does it just swing open like a gate? Or maybe there is a button like an elevator?”

“Did you and daddy build me before or after I came out of the baby door?”

“Why did the doctor need to clean me up before you saw me, I wasn’t dirty!”

“Do you pee so much because the baby is peeing inside you and it’s coming out your pee pee?”

“I think you have that sharp bump in your tummy because the baby is wearing a crown. You know, those sharp jewels they have on top. I think your tummy will feel better when the baby is born… with a crown on it’s head.”

“I think I should get up during the night to feed the baby mommy OK!?! The only problem, is I’m a little scared of walking down the dark hallway to get the baby some Cheerios so maybe you could come with me?”

Adorable, eh? Not even four years old yet and he’ll make a fine scientist someday. Makes me quite relieved that my ownTristan was barely verbal when Simon arrived!

Heard this morning as I left for work: “Goodbye crocodile.”

A few days ago, Nancy was talking about heroes. As the scenario in Louisiana and Mississippi gets increasingly nightmarish, I think we need to be reminded that there are genuine heroes in the world.

Every Canadian knows the story of Terry Fox, but I often wonder if he is the same cultural icon to our cousins in the States. Are you familiar with his story? It is the definition of tenacity, and of heroism. Terry Fox is just a guy, a young guy, who lost his right leg to cancer. He wanted to raise funds and awareness for the Canadian Cancer Society, so he set off to run across Canada, from St John’s, Newfoundland to Vancouver, British Columbia in 1980. I was ten years old, and Terry Fox was my first hero.

I’m thinking of Terry Fox today because it was 25 years ago yesterday that he had to stop running near Thunder Bay, only half way through his journey at a spectacular 5,565 km, because his cancer had returned. To mark the occasion, yesterday Adidas released 6,500 pairs of a special edition replica of the trainers he used – he went through nine of them, one for his prosthetic foot and eight for his real foot – and they sold out in a day. A day.

Terry Fox was 22 years old, and he ran the equivalent of a marathon every single day for 143 days. The shoes he wore in 1980 didn’t have custom gel supports or cushioned soles of today’s trainers; they were just plain nylon runners, in navy blue with the trademark three white stripes.

To paraphrase many quoted in the Citizen article I read this morning, you could buy these shoes, but you could never fill them. But we should try.

It’s been a long week.

Maybe this is just a thing that 19-month-old kids do. Maybe it’s a genetic tendency in our family. But I can’t help taking it personally.

Simon calls both Beloved and I “mama” interchangeably.

Now, I must admit straight out that I’ve called him by his brother’s name possibly more often than I’ve used his name correctly. I’m most likely to call him “Trst-Simon!” and his brother “Si-Tristan!” Why the right child’s name is never on the tip of my tongue I have no idea. And although my Granny only had three grandchildren, I don’t think she once got the right name out of her mouth the first time. Even Tristan exhibits signs of this odd disorder, often calling out “Daddy! um — Mommy!” as he processes who is most likely to be within hearing range. It’s obviously a familial tendency to misname the people we love.

So it hardly seems surprising that Simon has come up with his own solution to the problem and calls both Beloved and I “mama”. But it bugs me. I put in a lot of effort eliciting those couple of syllables. After I spent months and months of suggesting “Mama” to each of his happily babbled “Da-da-da”s, it seems he is now overcompensating.

I’d like to think that Beloved staying home with the boys all summer while I worked had nothing to do with this, but of course it has everything to do with it. I’m quite sure the only reason it bothers me is that I’m already insecure about my role in the family. Simon’s got it figured out that the one who spends the day at home with the children gets to be Mummy.

So do I at least get to be Daddy? Nope, that’s what he calls Tristan. He is one confused toddler. At least he gets the dog’s name right on a regular basis.