I Almost Forgot: Ask And Ye Shall Receive!

I posted last week about feeling the need to purchase a dryer, but I wasn't quite committed yet, mostly for financial reasons, but also because of all the heavy metals and things that are in dryers that eventually end up in landfills and watersheds.

Well, I wasn't quite committed, but I was kinda hoping and praying to find one cheap. I browsed kijiji for one, but soon gave up the idea for two reasons. First, because the dryers within my price range are really old and I'm afraid they would consume too much energy. Second, because I realized I could never get the thing home, and most people want you to pick the item up. They don't deliver.

Well, great was my surprise - and joy! - when my sons' old teacher dropped by with a bag of clothes that her children had outgrown, and wouldn't I like a dryer because the one she has is just too small for her needs? All I had to do was say yes, because she knew someone who was moving to their new place next (this) week and they could bring it to me since they would have a truck to move with anyway? It was almost too good to be true, but it WASN'T too good to be true!

Today at around 10 AM I got a call to see if I was home, and here is a beautiful, clean dryer in my living room. (Not taking up as much place as I had feared either!)

It that isn't divine providence, I don't know what is! :o)

I'm quite excited to be the owner of my very own dryer for the first time in my life. I can't wait to use it, but I am not going to go overboard: I only really intend to use it for First Son's bedding, so that he can sleep without his dust and dust-mite allergies making him snore. The heat of the dryer kills those suckers dead.

I leave you with a picture:

The place where the dryer is used to be occupied by a rather large filing cabinet, so the space it occupies isn't making much of a change in the grand scheme of things. :o)

No Regrets (So this post won't be called "Why I Never Should Have Gotten Married.")

This morning, after about 17 months on the waiting list, I finally got to speak with a therapist from my local CLSC. I haven't much to report because 1) this was just our first meeting, so we basically just chatted and got to know each other, and 2) therapy is confidential anyway! :p So there!

It did get me thinking about some things, though, while I was driving to the appointment. What do I want to talk about? What do I need to talk about? What outcome am I hoping for? Not surprisingly, it all pretty much led back to my marriage.

I don't believe in talking about people behind their back, so I won't get into all the nasty stuff I have gone through. Instead, I will share a bit of wisdom I learned from my Bahai friend. At the same time, this can kind of make up for the fact that I didn't write my usual Sunday post yesterday. (Too busy with the kids, and that's not an excuse, that's a reason.)

One day over a picnic lunch in Confederation Park, my Bahai Friend and I were talking about marriage. He asked me what marriage was. By the time I met Friend, I had been married for seven years and had a daughter who was over a year and a half. I had already gone through some difficulty in my marriage. In fact, the first time I seriously thought about divorce was when my daughter was born. I was that disappointed in my husband as a father. All this to say, I thought I knew what marriage was and proceeded to give Friend a definition involving such big words as partnership and commitment.

Friend listened to what I had to say, then gave me his version, that is to say, the version of the Bahai Faith. Marriage is a law. I was a bit surprised by this. I had, of course, "heard of the go forth and multiply" bit in the Bible, but I never thought of marriage as an actual law. Being the open-minded person I was and am, I asked Friend to tell me about the Bahai view of marriage. Since friend in these circumstances was also Teacher to me, and a very good one at that, he complied.

One of the things that really struck me in what Friend told me was that for Bahais, if the parents of the bride and groom didn't agree to the marriage union, the marriage could not take place. Now, for most of us, we of course want our parents' blessing, but how many of us will actually refrain from getting married if we don't get it? I would guess most people would decide for themselves if they want to get married, despite parental objections. (I fell into this category myself.)

If you think about it, though, getting parental approval makes sense. Besides the fact that it literally lets you practice Honor thy father and thy mother, making sure that parents agree with their child's choice for a spouse also ensures harmony after the marriage. I think of it like a miracle potion for getting along with your in-laws. If I look back on my own experiences, life could have been so much more pleasant if my parents and my husband had gotten along. Unfortunately, they disliked him, and he disliked them (that's putting it mildly!) with a vengeance. This was not only an issue when we all got together, but was also a problem even when my family wasn't around, since my husband continued to badmouth them. For years and years, I tried to make him understand that when he put them down, he was also putting a part of me down. He never got it. Unfortunately, even though I was aware of it, being conscious of the fact still didn't help me protect my own self-esteem from Husband's continuous verbal put-downs.

I think the Bahai faith has a very intelligent view of marriage. Had I known about their way of thinking, and had I thought seriously about it before, I probably would never have gotten married to the man who became my Husband. Of course, the previous sentence uses the conditional; I also know that given the chance to do it over again, and knowing the outcome, I still would have married him. The reason is that we have three super-dee-duper kids, and I would not give them up for anything. So, no regrets. 

Now, a funny short story:

I have thought to myself in the past that had I met my Friend earlier in life, I never would have gotten married to Husband. I once told my sister this, but without filling her in as to WHY I felt this way. (i.e. I didn't tell her about the Bahai views on marriage and about how the parents had to agree to the marriage.) So, great was her surprise when we met him in the street one day and I introduced her to my Bahai Friend. I think she was expecting to see some twenty-year-old hunk. Instead, she met a man in his late fifties, balding and with a bit of a beer belly. Shorter than me, to boot. Great was her surprise!  She thought I meant that I wouldn't have married Husband because I would have married Friend instead! Obviously, I had some 'splainin' to do! lol So I set things straight and explained that Friend was Friend and Teacher to me, and nothing more. (And I told her to get her mind out of the gutter! :p  )

The End   (See? It was so short, it's practically just an anecdote!)

Busy Day... But we've had our little chat.

Amazingly, I slept until 9 am this morning, and I was the first one to wake. I went right to the kitchen to feed our kitty and just then First Son also came to have breakfast. We were both in a good, relaxed mood, and it was a blessing that it was just the two of us, so I made him breakfast and we sat down to eat together. First Son had Dino Eggs Oatmeal and I had a garlic naan with greek yoghurt on it.

I brought up, very gently, what happened yesterday. I told him that the lady had said that she didn't feel he respected her, and that she had had difficulty in getting him to listen and to behave. His response? "I didn't know she worked there." (In my head I'm thinking, "Wrong answer!")

I assumed that First Son was playing innocent, and that he was making this up, but it turns out that he really didn't realize she was working there. He thought she was just there to pick up her daughter. As to who First Son thought was in charge? He didn't realize that his regular caregiver wasn't there that day! Honestly? I can't understand it, but apparently he never noticed that it was this new lady who was taking roll and taking them to the gym to play.

Well, of course I asked him to pay more attention, and I told him that no matter who was taking care of him, or even just talking to him "from the sidelines," he should always pay attention and be respectful.

First Son has a bit of a stubborn streak, and he kept insisting that he didn't know that the lady worked there, but I insisted that it was irrelevant, and that his motto should be to love and respect everybody.

I think in the end we reached some sort of agreement. At any rate, we were able to agree and we had a very nice day afterwards. We all had a very nice day, as a matter of fact. I got a bit of one-on-one time with all three of the kids, which is quite an accomplishment. I am grateful to have pulled it off today.

Ouch! That hurts.

Today the lady who usually looks after First Son at school was absent, and a classmate's mom was substituting. They were in the gymnasium and they were climbing the wall bars and jumping down onto a mattress. They were supposed to go one at a time, but suddenly there were five kids up on the wall. The lady asked them to come down because it wasn't safe to go more than one at a time, and everyone obeyed except First Son. The lady had to repeat herself several times and when First Son finally came down, he said to the girl, "It's just your mom." 

This is wrong in so many ways, I almost jumped out of my skin when I heard it. First of all, First Son was disobedient when he wouldn't climb down from the wall bars. Secondly, he was disrespectful to both his classmate and to her mother, when he should have obeyed her, as she was the responsible adult looking after him. Last but not least, he basically said that it wasn't important to listen to the woman because she was just a mom, and that hurts me right down to the core. 

If life is a rollercoaster, I certainly plumetted down when I heard what First Son had said. Is this really what he feels and where did he get this idea? Does a mother not deserve respect? I feel about two inches tall right now. :o(

I know I have to speak to him about it, but right now I just sent him to his room because if I open my mouth now, I will either cry or whine. I have to be calm to talk to him, and right now I don't even know what I would say. I am also angry and if I talk to him in anger he will only be angry back and counterattack, whether it is relevant or not.

What a lovely way to start the weekend. :/

Eating Crow

I don't have a clothes dryer. I consider them a luxury and I have always taken a firm position on getting one for my family: No way, Jose!

Apart from the fact that they eat up electricity the same way a Hummer guzzles gas, (that is, uselessly!), I am Hungarian and in Hungary we never had dryers before. We would always hang our clothes to dry, usually on a really nifty hanger that pulleyed down from the ceiling in the bathroom. I don't know what these things are called but they are awesome.

Other people would hang them on plain foldable clothes drying racks and the luckiest people would hang them out on their balconies or back yards. No dryers in Hungary. Of course, this is my 7-year-old impression of Hungary because that is how old I was when I left. Nowadays driers are slowly making their way into the homes of people who can afford them. But I digress...

There is not really any room in my present apartment for a dryer, as even the washing machine is in the living room. This is a house that was converted into three apartments, so there isn't the usual laundry cabinet to hide the washer in. It's right there, in plain sight, in my living room. Hideous, to tell you the truth. In Hungary, the washing machines are also smaller than our behemoth North American models, and there is always room for them in the bathroom. But, again, I digress...

A few years ago, a friend of mine's washer broke and to replace it she bought a washer-dryer set. She wanted me to buy her old dryer so she could have the space for the new one. I refused, saying how I didn't need a dryer and didn't want the added electricity consumption, besides which I dried my clothes quite nicely on my drying racks and didn't feel the need to buy a machine. I probably mentioned that dryers are not good for the environment because of the energy they consume and because of the amount of metal, etc. that goes into them and eventually into our landfills. Long story short, I didn't want to buy her drier, but there was also the fact that I sometimes got the feeling she was trying to make money off me. I had bought a few things from her before, like lots of children's clothes. (To be fair, though, she also did give me a lot of hand-me-downs for free.) So I did not want her dryer.

She tried to convince me that a family with three children needed a dryer, and she gave me examples, like if a child is sick and vomiting a lot and you have to wash the sheets and need to dry them quickly before he vomits again and you need fresh sheets for the bed again. In my case, I had of course been in such situations, but had always managed without having to resort to running out and buying clean sheets. Or a dryer. This was pretty stressful to me because I didn't want to refute her arguments by making her feel incompetent. Perhaps she deemed a dryer a necessity, but I could manage very well without one. The situation got to be so bad, that in the end I ended the friendship. Not JUST over the dryer, over other things also, but the dryer was a thorn on my side among others.

Lately, though, I have come to be a little impatient about drying clothes on racks in the living room. I always feel better when the laundry is folded and put away in its place. The living room just seems more livable like that. Also, since I found out that Second Son is allergic to dust and dust mites (among numerous other things!) I have to wash his sheets once a week, and the allergist recommends washing them in hot water and then drying them in a machine. The heat kills the dust mites.

So lately I have been thinking about swallowing my pride and actually starting to look for a dryer. I'm not 100% committed, since I really can't afford to buy one, and I am afraid of my electricity bill skyrocketing, not to mention that I couldn't fit one into my car and I don't want to pay for shipping, but I am thinking about it more and more. The last little nudge in this direction came from Daughter, who was upset that I had washed her beach towel - the new one she had gotten from her grandparents! - because now it was rough from air-drying and she had liked it soft.

So I am starting to cave to the pressure. You might in the not-too-distant future see a rare sight: the high and mighty Airdry Snob eating crow.

Back To Reality (Homework Wars)

First Son is in grade two, and he hates homework. I don't want to generalize and say that it is because he is a boy, but he certainly is less accepting of it that Daughter, who gets it all done very independently, and who has always been good at getting it done, ever since grade one.

First Son doesn't think it's fair that he has to do homework while Second Son, who is in kindergarten, gets to play. So getting him to do his homework and lessons has become a nightly battle - The Homework Wars.

First Son has any number of excuses or ploys to get out of doing homework. He forgets his agenda at school, where he has written down what needs to be done. He forgets his binder at school, the one that has all the homework sheets and lessons in it. He can't find a pencil. He can't find an eraser. He can't concentrate because the neighbor is playing his music too loud. He can't concentrate because he can only think about playing, like Second Son gets to do.

I do try to be understanding at first. I mean, what can I do when he doesn't have his agenda in his bag on Monday night? But as the week goes on and the pressure rises, I start to lose my patience, to which anger is a very good defense mechanism. First Son's defense is a angry offense. 

When First Son gets angry, there is no way he can do homework. He gets so mad, and then when I tell him he didn't get the right answer to the word problem in math, he starts to cry. For my part, it is really frustrating, especially because I don't know if he is truly sad or angry, or if he is just playing me to get out of doing homework.

This morning I found two sheets of paper on the living room floor, one of them badly chewed by our pet bunny, who we don't keep caged. They are obviously sheets of homework paper, and I got very angry at First Son for not taking better care of his school things. How is he supposed to hand this in now?

Finding it strange that I have yet to receive a single note about First Son's homework assignments, I wrote his teacher an email. I mentioned that I was wondering why she hadn't sent any notes home, since First Son still has homework assignments from EASTER(!!!) unfinished in his desk in his room. He obviously doesn't hand his homework in on time, and he doesn't do his lessons either, since he is not well-practiced enough in his multiplications, which again causes a problem with the homework.

I also mentioned in my email that First Son has been playing the victim of late, saying how everyone at school is against him and how no one wants to play with him at recess.

I was very surprised when the teacher responded to my email within less than an hour to say that everything was fine at school. First Son is happy, well-adjusted, always smiling. (It is true that it has been some time since he brought home a written reprimand... a few weeks, I'd say.) It appears that First Son's only problem is sticking to the truth. He keeps telling me how bad things are at school, and he keeps telling the teacher that he is so tired at the end of the day that he can't do homework, so she has told him just to hand everything in whenever he can. I nearly fell out of my chair when I read that. My son is a little manipulator!

Needless to say, I replied to the teacher's email and set her straight. First Son is not tired at night. He can play, he can fight with his little brother and argue with me without even batting an eyelid. I am happy to hear that things are going well at school, but he has a little talking-to waiting for him tonight, about diligence and schoolwork, with a little lecture about honesty, while I'm at it.

Ooooooh! I am so frustrated! I had better find a way to calm down so I can talk to him without turning it into an argument. *sigh* The joys of parenting...

Yoga... aaah!

I finally got back to doing yoga today, after waaaaay too long. I think the last time I went was on my birthday, (Prana Shanti gives you a free yoga class on your birthday), but that was just one class. Before that, I don't think I've been since last fall.

Today I eased into it with a Kundalini And Meditation class. I freely admit that I mostly went for the meditation. I have taken this class before and I must say, there is nothing like meditating to a gong. Its vibrations fill up the spaces inside you and allow you to completely surrender to nothingness. It is such an amazing experience. There are no grocery lists being written in my head when I meditate to a gong, that's for sure! And to think that I almost didn't go!

A already canceled yoga with my sister yesterday, and this morning I was fairly certain that I would do the same today. I woke up with a throat ache that made it painful to swallow. I was tired, grumpy and very pessimistic. I was in an "I hate life and life hates me" sort of mood. To tell you the truth, I don't even know why I ended up going. I have no clue at all...

When I did show up for class, I was feeling very apprehensive. I was feeling heavy and sluggish and basically too fat to get off my butt and do anything. Well, for a person who was feeling apprehensive, pessimistic and grumpy, I was feeling energized, (relieved!) and determined by the end of class. I am now determined to go back, and to make a habit of yoga instead of slipping back down into inertia's clutches.

The lucky thing about this class was that it moved at a good pace. We moved from one exercise to the next at just the right rhythm.  More than once, I was just about to give up because my muscles couldn't take it any more, when the teacher moved us on to another exercise. It was perfect. I did feel some muscle pain, but managed to keep up.

It feels like a big accomplishment to have gone today. I went with my sister, and we have promised each other that we would go again. Also, I am determined to get back into regular practice, and that includes practicing at home. I am putting it in writing here to force myself not to back out. It's official.

Another possible benefit of having gone today is that I might repeat one of the meditations we did, Sat (truth) Nam (self), with First Son. It is a silent meditation. You inhale on the Sat (say it in your head) and exhale on the Nam. It is such a relaxing exercise, I think it might help him go to sleep at night. I'm glad I went to yoga, for First Son, and also for me as a nice time out from the endless worries of life.

So, what are you going to do for yourself today? :o)

Calling In The Big Guns

First Son suffers from insomnia. It takes him an insane amount of time to get settled and go to sleep each night. Bedtime is at 8:30. He is allowed to read in bed until lights-out at 9:00. He is usually still awake at 11 o'clock, often much later than that.

He has to be up at 7 in the morning to have time to eat breakfast and be at school by 8. He is often late, and even when he isn't, the morning is often unpleasant because I have to force him out of bed and we end up arguing.

We have tried a lot of things to try and help him get to sleep. Reading before lights-out is one way to relax before trying to sleep. He also has a relaxation CD, as well as some other calm CDs that he can listen to. He has to stay in bed until Second Son falls asleep (which usually takes about three seconds or two winks of an eye, whichever is shortest), then First Son can come sit on my bed with me and tell me about his day. We have also tried stretching, a warm glass of milk with honey, etc. etc. etc.

Yesterday, I decided to call in the big guns: I took First Son to a homeopathic clinic. The lady at the reception had only one thing to offer us, a product called Quiétude. Unfortunately, it says on the box that it is meant for children from 6 months to 6 years of age, so I didn't buy it. Instead, I asked for an appointment with the homeopathic doctor. So we have to go back next Tuesday for the appointment. I hope it helps. We'll see...

It occurs to me that calling in a homeopath is not necessarily calling in the big guns. For me, the big guns would be something like sleeping pills. But those are in no way appropriate for a child of 8, so I'm not even going there. So, the homeopath is the second-biggest gun I can think of, since First Son's pediatrician was unable to help us. "Give him more vitamins." That didn't work.  :/

I Must Admit This Weekend Was Both Physically and Emotionally Draining

Besides attending some activities with the children and chauffeuring them to others, I did attempt to clean the apartment a bit and cook too. On Saturday night I really enjoyed it when we all sat down and had fajitas together. Not because of the fajitas, but because everyone was relaxed. Even me.

So Saturday night was a gift, an "up" on my life's rollercoaster. I'm glad that I got to have it, because Saturday afternoon my feelings had been genuinely hurt.

It was Saturday afternoon after Second Son's gymnastics. We had just dropped Daughter off at my sister's and I was driving home with the boys. We had been supposed to stay a while too and plant flowers, but with all the rain we just dropped her off and headed home.

I had packed a small box of crispy rice squares that First Son and I had managed to whip up between that morning's volunteering and the gymnastics. I had meant them as a snack for when we were at my sister's but on the way home Second Son opened the box to have some. I asked him to hand me one too. That was the moment First Son decided he didn't want me to have any. He said, "No! Don't give her any!" in a loud whisper. I told him don't be kidding and reached my hand back so Second Son could place a square in it, and First Son hit his hand away from mine and then hit my hand too.

Understandably, I was upset. "What are you thinking," I asked, "after I helped you make those?"

"I made them myself and you can't have any."

Oh! That nasty voice! Where did that come from?

"I can't believe you said that."

"I made them and you can't have any."

My feelings were so hurt, but I was also angered. I pulled over and asked for the box. I put it in the front seat and drove home. I was hurt, but also fuming. I almost threw the whole batch in the garbage. I bit my tongue to keep from saying something vindictive, like that I would never make anything with him in the kitchen again. (I'm glad I bit my tongue. Saying that would have been a very bad idea!)

What had gotten into him? I felt like a little kid in elementary school, who is excluded from a treat that someone shares at recess. It hurt. And from my own son!

At home, Second Son acted as if nothing had happened. He was about to put on a DVD when I sent him upstairs while I made supper. He eventually came downstairs and hugged me and said that he loved me, but when I said, "And what was that all about," he didn't answer. I was too tired, so I let it go, but I think that was a mistake. I think I should have told him how lousy he made me feel, like I wasn't accepted by my own son. I think I just wanted to avoid guilt-tripping him, but maybe I should have. I really don't think he learned any lesson here, except that it was a-okay to walk all over Mommy's feelings. I think I missed a valuable opportunity to parent, but I was just too drained to act. I still had to go pick Daughter up before supper, and by the time we got home I just wanted everyone at the table before they got so hungry they went looking for snacks for themselves.

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On Sunday, it was Daughter's turn to hurt my feelings. (You'd think I'd be used to it by now, but no, it still hurts.)

We were at her cake decorating class at Michael's that afternoon. She had learned to make carnation roses out of gumpaste. A lady was passing around some coloring powder that we could dry brush onto the carnations, and daughter decided she wanted to try it out. She brushed the powder on, but onto the whole petal, whereas the lady had showed us just to brush the petal edges. I told daughter this and she said she didn't see the difference, so I took another carnation rose that she had made so I could show her. About a second after I started applying the powder to the petal edges, she all but grabbed the flower out of my hand. "Don't do that," she said! I was very taken aback by her the tone and volume of her voice. I said, "What? I can't try just one flower?" "No," came the reply! Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I couldn't believe it. She had such a nasty look on her face and she set her teeth and worked on doggedly with her gumpaste. Needless to say, my feelings were really hurt. I mean, forget about the fact that she was at her third cake decorating class, after I had paid for her Basic and Tall Cakes classes, and now this one. Forget about the fact that I paid for all her materials. What about the fact that I took her to each and every one of those classes, a good half-hour's drive from our house, to spend time with her and try to give her a go at something that interests her? I mean, it isn't cheap and it is very time-consuming and I just sit there and watch what she does most of the time. This is how she thanks me? I can't remember the last time I felt so frustrated! -oh! yes I do: the day before, with Second Son.

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You know, I am not one of those people who seek attention and gratitude for every little thing. But once in a while, a kind gesture would be nice. With both of my kids this weekend, I felt hurt, and that pain knocked any parenting skills I might have clear out of me. If the children had acted in the opposite way, I would be posting now about how proud I am of them, of their generosity and goodwill. Instead, I am just sitting here so disappointed.

Again, it comes down to this: why am I unable to transmit my values of love and generosity (and thankfulness!) to my children. I feel like a complete failure.

Take what lessons you will from this post. I'm off to bed.

I Know My Place

It's Here.

In Canada.

Where it snows on April 23rd.

Pictures courtesy of Daughter, taken on my cameraphone.

And that, for the moment, is all I know.

Two Religions, and Two Kinds of Religion

Seeing as it is Sunday, I am allowing myself to continue with the posts I have been writing that describe my spiritual journey, that winding road that has lead my in and out and all about, so to speak.

I had mentioned that when I started working, I met a colleague who was a Bahai. Because he was very easy to talk to and because religion was such a very big part of his life, I asked him a lot of questions and in essence became his student. I wanted to know about the Bahai faith and everything I learned made me respect it more and more. For example, Bahais believe that all religions are valid. They believe that all the religious figures of the different religions (like Moses, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad), were messengers of God, each arriving on earth when and where they were needed. The Bahais believe that the latest of these messengers was Baha'u'llah, who lived in the early 1800's, making the Bahai faith the youngest of the world's religions. I think it is true that all religions are valid and I really like the fact that there is a religion that actually forwards this idea. The Bahai religion teaches tolerance, not prejudice. It also teaches equality between men and women. Bahais wish to educate, to eliminate extremes between the rich and the poor, and they preach harmony between nations (and between religion and science!) as a way to world peace.

My friend also lent me a very interesting book called Baha'u'llah and The New Era that had some very interesting ideas in it, which I had suspected or intuned before, but had never been able to put into words.

The reason I was able to access this information with an open mind was thanks to the university courses I had taken a couple of years previous, which opened my eyes to the fact that although some people, like my grandmother, interpreted the Bible literally, others read it more pragmatically, to learn its lessons, while not taking everything at face value, or on faith, if you will. Knowing this, I was more at ease with the way of speaking about God that I had imagined to be "blind faith," for lack of a better expression. It helped me understand that if someone said that God wanted us to love each other, I could agree because I recognized that the good in all of us was God, and I recognize the need of humanity to love and to live in peace. Maybe we weren't both talking about exactly the same thing, but our jargon was similar enough that I think we were able to converse on the same wave length.

There was something that happened in university that opened my mind to the fact that there existed two kinds of religious beliefs in the world, so I will leave off talking about the Bahai faith for a moment and tell you what happened to me when my university class visited a Buddhist pagoda in Ottawa.

We were guided through our visit of the pagoda by a man, perhaps in his forties, who told us a bit about his religion, which, he specified, was Buddhism, but not the same Buddhism as his mother practiced. He illustrated this with a comical example:

When he was young, the man's mother would take him to the temple and he had to pray for good grades. The way he did this was that he had to pray while shaking a small cup that had many sticks in it, and each stick had a poem written on it. He had to pray and shake the cup, and when a stick fell out of the cup, the poem that was written on the stick would be meaningful and could be interpreted as a sign that his prayer would be answered, (or not.) The man recounted laughingly that while he was praying, his mother would gossip with the other ladies in the temple, and that, while she wasn't looking, he would shake the cup, quickly read the stick that fell out of it and, if the poem did not presage a good outcome, he would quickly stick it back in the cup and keep praying before his mother could see. In this way, he eventually stopped praying when he got a poem that essentially told him that he would get good results in school. He would then show his mother and she would be satisfied that his prayers would be answered.

The man went on to explain that when he was young, he didn't really believe in any of this, which is why he felt justified in manipulating the poems in the cup. But, as he grew up and read the teachings of Buddha, he saw that there was a lot of wisdom to be learned from Buddha's teachings. Although he didn't consider, as his mother did, that Buddha became a deity when he died, the man DID see that it was good to study Buddha's teaching to see what he could learn from them in order to live a good life. He would say that his is a pragmatic Buddhism, whereas his mother's is a superstitious Buddhism. In the end, though, it all amounts to the same thing because they both learned Buddha's wisdom and live by what they learned.

I recognize that talking about pragmatic and superstitious religion paints religion in a very black and white scheme. But I had to be able to differentiate the two before I could go on to understand that the world is not black and white, and neither is religion. This is how I was able to broach the idea of faith and of the mystery of religion. Still, whereas pragmatic religion made it easy for me to interpret that, for example, when Jesus cured a blind man, he had in essence opened the blind man's eyes to religion and to God, I still had a huge leap to make in order to really accept God's existence and to be able to talk about Jesus' miracles as true miracles instead of just stories whose meaning I was meant to search for. That, for me, would have been true faith, but I was not there yet. But, as I said, it was a step in that direction.

Gatineau Spring Cleaning

This morning the children and I participated as volunteers in our city's spring cleanup. We arrived at Parc Moussette at nine o'clock, where we received rubber gloves, a trash bag and a recycling bag. A girl showed us on the map where we were to work and we set off to clean up our neighborhood park. We picked trash from a bit past the mesh fence by the playground all the way up the trail to Brébeuf Park.

It was quite fun doing this with the children, despite the chill temperature, the rain and the wind. I am proud that they participated willingly. No one complained about having to get up early on a Saturday. No one pointed out that we weren't the ones who had thrown all this trash on the ground in the first place. Daughter took the job very seriously. Second Son regarded it as kind of a treasure hunt. He kept running ahead to see if he could find some really big piece of trash like a styrofoam cup or a plastic bag. First Son also worked very hard, climbing under bushes to get at the trash that the wind had blown under there. As for me, I was happy to have the kids outside and doing something for their community. It is true that Second Son asked when we were going to get paid, (ha! ha! the innocent six-year-old!) but he didn't react at all when I said that we were doing this for free. I would like to think that today's activity strengthened their community values.

A few words about what we found out there: most of what we picked up along the bicycle trail were cigarette butts and gum wrappers. The cigarette butts were pretty steady all along the river, with a larger concentration by the railings at the rapids. I myself like to stand at the railings and stare at the rushing water, and I can understand how this might be a relaxing place to light up for someone who smokes. Unfortunately, there is no trash can right at that spot. Although there is one not too far away beside a park bench, I guess smokers are just not going to walk the 20 steps there to toss their butts. As many of the butts were past the railing, I guess some people may have intended to toss them into the river, but their toss was short. It would be a good idea for the city to install a Butt-Out on the railing. I don't think this would be conducive to smoking. I think people smoke anyway. They could at least throw their butts into a container meant for that purpose instead of into the river.

There were only a few coffee cups, but there were quite a few beer cans and bottles. I was pleased to see that we didn't find a single syringe or condom. (Don't forget: this is our neighborhood park!) We also came across some houseplants and soil that had been dumped in the bushes by the river, and a little further on there were quite a few granola and chocolate bar wrappers. Most of these were concentrated around benches or blown under the bushes by the wind.

At 10:20 the boys had had enough. They were cold and tired, and daughter was complaining of a headache, so we headed back to the community centre to let them know we were heading home.

I front of the community center, we noticed that the ground was covered with cigarette butts, and that no one had picked them up because everyone was picking litter down at the beach and along the river. It's too bad, because it was just gross. The city uses this place for children's day camps during spring break and summer vacation. The rooms are used for many activities, like seniors' bridge night and other meetings. People also book the community center for weddings. Imagine showing up for your wedding reception with cigarette butts lining both sides of the walkway from the parking lot to the door.

Gross. First Son took this picture after we had started cleaning up, so this doesn't even represent what was really on the ground.

Despite how we were on our way home, Daughter started picking up the cigarette butts. I was very proud of her. It was a lot of work, but she was willing to do it. So I pitched in too while the boys went inside to warm up.

It was amazing how many cigarette butts were on the ground, especially considering that there was a Butt-Out right by the door, as well as a trash can. :/ When we were done, you could hardly see any of the trash we had collected by the river, there were so many butts:

Now, if you ask me, it is a person's own decision if they want to smoke, but it really is rude to litter so carelessly in public places. I wouldn't have let the children pick any of this stuff up if it hadn't been for the plastic gloves like the ones I'm wearing in the picture above. I wouldn't want my children handling anything with so much poison in it. Here is a close-up, to drive the point home:

You can't even see all the styrofoam trays, tissues and other trash that we had spent almost an hour and a half picking before we tackled the cigarette butts in front of the community center. And it took us 45 minutes to pick up the butts, between Daughter, myself, and the two boys who occasionally popped out to help when they had gotten warm enough inside.

All in all, an enriching experience for everybody. As a bonus, there was a BBQ at another community centre for all the volunteers, so once we had changed out of our muddy clothes, we headed there for hot dogs, juice and apples courtesy of the city of Gatineau and the Alymer Optimist Club.

Finally Made It To Loblaws

It is amazing how little energy I have had this week. It has just been draining. I've been so tired, alternating between bad dreams and insomnia. I have needed to go grocery shopping all week, and only just made it today, Friday. We have been depleting our canned goods and I made one small run to the local dépanneur for hot dogs and buns, but other than that, we were in dire need of milk, vegetables, etc. Thank goodness it is done!

I don't doubt that the fatigue I feel is emotional. So much has happened, between the meeting with the social worker, Daughter getting so sick that we ended up going to the ER with her, and Second Son's troubles at school. Not to mention First Son's anger and indignation at having to do so much homework - I will permit myself a silent chuckle over that last one.

The weekend promises to be really busy too. Tomorrow morning we are all volunteering for the city's spring cleanup at our local playground. Then we grab a quick lunch and head over to Ottawa where Second Son's gymnastics center is holding a gym-a-thon. He has sponsors that made donations for him to do some gymnastics skill that are on a sheet of paper. His coach will check off the skills that he can manage so he can show his sponsors.

During the gym-a-thon I will sneak away to a nearby Second Cup for some Doctor Who tapes that I found on kijiji. The boys are going to love them! (And so am I, it goes without saying.) After the gymnastics we are all going over to my brother's house to plant some flowers by his front door. Daughter will also go inside and help my sister with her spring cleaning. They are going to tackle her bedroom and I have been asked not to forget to bring the shredder.

Sunday morning First Son is going to a friend's house to play. In the afternoon my sister will stay with the boys while I take Daughter to her newest class (gumpaste and fondant for cake decorating.)

It is going to be a looooong weekend. My one culinary goal is to make fajitas, since Second Son has been asking for chicken and I bought all the necessary fresh ingredients, plus the fajita kit. The chicken is good until early next week so I want to prepare it this weekend before it goes bad. Hopefully I will manage a few minutes' rest in there somewhere. I am tired just thinking about it, but if I look on the bright side, at least I don't have to do groceries. :o)

Again with the brain...

This morning the plan was to come online and complain that my brain wouldn't leave well enough alone. Something happened and instead of getting past it, it won't let me forget. This morning, it was just frustrating but, in light of what just happened, I have to wonder what is going on?

Yesterday, Second Son forgot his lunch bag at home. I didn't notice that he wasn't carrying it when we walked to school, and I didn't notice it in the front hall either. But it was the beginning of my frustrations.

Normally, when a child forgets his lunch bag, I would expect the school to telephone the parents. But that is not when Second Son's school did. Instead, they gave him a hot lunch from the catering service. Then, the catering service called me and left me the bill number, saying that I had to send five dollars in the next day to pay for Second Son's lunch. Now, if I were to keep things in perspective, I would say that at least Second Son had gotten a warm lunch in his tummy and all's well that ends well. But, I am not in a frame of mind to keep things in perspective.

When I went to get the boys at school, I made a complaint about the way things had been handled. I told them that if this happens again, I expect the school to call me. While I recognize that sometimes calling the parents in the middle of the day doesn't help because they may be waaaaaay across town at work and won't make it to the school before the end of lunch period, I maintain that you never know until you try. The school didn't try.

I should also add here that I could easily have brought Second Son his lunch bag and, most frustratingly, that I intentionally did not sign the boys up for hot lunches this month because it just would way exceed my budget. Now, I find myself having to pay for a hot lunch anyway, AND at a higher price than if I had prepaid. Really frustrating.

The frustration doesn't end there though. Last night, I had this terrible dream that I was at home in the afternoon, and was just about to take a nap because I was really tired from cleaning, and Second Son walked in the door. In the dream, it was 3 pm and school wasn't finished yet. I was desperately frustrated that I couldn't take a nap, to the point where I was almost crying. I picked up my phone to call the school and berate them about letting a six-year-old leave the premises unsupervised, and to ask how they were keeping an eye on him if they didn't even realize that he was gone. But, it was one of those dreams where no matter how hard you try, you can't dial the correct number and you have to start over again and again. In my case, I was unable to find the school in my contact list and I had to keep looking and looking. I woke up very frustrated and upset.

This is what I had planned to post about, ending with a frustrated rant about how yesterday was yesterday and there is no point dwelling on it. But my brain IS dwelling on it. Why won't it let well enough alone. Obviously, it has something it needs to work out. I can't imagine what it is. I just want to forget about this. It is bloody frustrating and there is nothing I can do about it any more, so why not just let it go?

Why not? Well, because of what happened this afternoon. 

When I arrived this afternoon, one of the after-school care ladies wanted a word. I thought that she wanted to talk about the complaint I had made yesterday, but it was something entirely different.

Apparently, Second Son had been playing LEGOs this afternoon; he had been building a gun out of LEGO. This might be overlooked, but when he was finished, he started "shooting" at the other kids, who complained to the teacher. When she asked him to stop, he just "shot" at her. When she TOLD him to stop, he dumped all the LEGOs across the floor and stomped away. She made him pick up the LEGOs. He started to, then she went back to what she was doing, but a moment later the other kids informed her that Second Son had run off. She looked for him everywhere, in the halls, the washrooms, anywhere he could have gone. Finally, she wondered if he hadn't run home. She put a call out to all the teachers and everyone started looking, and finally she was about to call the police, when someone found him, locked in a shower stall with his feet pulled up. (The shower has a little ledge so the water won't run out, so they couldn't see his feet when they looked under.)

When they got him out of the shower stall, the teacher told him to sit down and he wasn't allowed to move. He kicked her! I can't believe it. I just can't believe it. Needless to say, he is gonna be punished. (Right after he gets off Skype - he is very busy now telling his father how he hates school. Then I will get an email from Daddy asking why I didn't tell him about it, when it just happened and the kids aren't even in bed yet. But yes, I prefer to blog about it first because I am trying to channel my frustrations into something other than going upstairs and yelling at my son. I very much want to deal with him in a calm manner.)

I guess what I was getting at when I started typing is this: was my brain trying to warn me that something would happen today? Is that what the dream was about? Would Second Son have run all the way home if he could have gotten out of the school? Honestly, after the dream, I was seriously considering taking him out of after-school care, although that would mean I have to be home for him to come eat lunch at 11:30, and I couldn't accept doctor's appointments in the afternoon any more, for fear that if the wait was too long I wouldn't be home by the time Second Son finished school. And I do have quite a lot of doctor's appointments to try to figure out what exactly is causing my health problems. Among other things, I am waiting to have a bone marrow biopsy. In the meantime, I have to have doctor's appointments, iron shots and blood tests. (Meetings with the social worker, etc., etc.)

Having Second Son come straight home from school might cause some scheduling conflicts with my daytime activities, but I was so frustrated with his school yesterday (and this morning, after the dream), that I was seriously considering it. Not to mention that it would save me a lot of money. Quebec prides itself on its $7 a day daycare, but when you have three kids it becomes $21 a day and I am always living in fear of my check bouncing when I have to pay at the beginning of the month.

I recognize that pulling Second Son out of school is not the answer. He - as most other boys his age - is obsessed with violence. Their favorite games are war, their favorite toys are weapons. I draw the line at guns, but they do have quite a few swords and light sabers at home to play with. I am always talking with them about how bad and sad war is, about how violence will not solve the problems of the world. But there is something about boys that I don't understand. The testosterone and the thirst for violence. I worry that when they get older and reach the age where it is no longer cool to be seen in public with Mommy, I will lose any chance of redeeming them as peaceable beings. I want boys that I can be proud of. I fervently hope that as they grow, they will mature into wisdom and peace. In the meantime, I will do my best, but setbacks like today's are really disheartening. 

Where was I going with this?

- I have been disappointed with our neighborhood school,

- I have been disappointed with Second Son's behavior,

- I have been frustrated by my brain and its mysterious ways. (Seriously, we are one body, can it not be a little clearer when trying to send me a message?!)

OVER AND OUT

--------------------------------------------

Executive Decisions

I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be a mom. I had my first child at 24 and I like to joke that I waited 23 long years to get pregnant. I always knew I wanted kids. I could see it all at a very early age. I didn't know if I would ever marry and have a husband, but I knew that I would adopt about 15 kids and live with them on a farm and I would be Supermom. :D

Childish dreams aside, I have been thinking about (and practicing) parenting for many, many years now. Along the way, I have of course gotten some rude wake-up calls and I am constantly humbled by how much I have to learn. I have always wanted to be a good mother and teach my children everything I possibly could to best prepare them for life and the real world.

One of my ideas, inspired by the Montessori Program that Daughter was enrolled in, was to have my children experience everything they can of life. Montessori called this apprentissage à la vie, life learning. Basically, the Montessori program had kids manipulate everyday objects and practice everyday activities. There were real telephones for the kids to play with, little plastic bottles and boxes with different kinds of lids that the kids had to learn to unscrew to open (to develop fine motor skills) and many other interesting toys, which took the place of the traditional LEGO and other toys you would usually see in a daycare.

Apprentissage à la vie meant that the children had a potted plant at daycare that they would clean off with a wet sponge. It meant that they prepared their own snacks, like cutting cucumber slices, done by a different child each day under the supervision of the caregiver. They gave a doll a real bath with water and a sponge, and they ran water from the tap into a pitcher and then poured from the pitcher into a cup when they were thirsty. They did the dishes.

I thought all of this was just super and I created the same kind of learning atmosphere at home. The rude awakening came when I realized that besides working full-time and changing the baby's diapers, I would eventually have to stop doing things this way with Daughter because it was a very time-consuming method and things didn't always get done. Although we were still doing pretty well when First Son was born, thanks to the fact that he napped two hours in the morning and two hours every afternoon, the life learning eventually disappeared when Second Son was born. I just couldn't juggle it all any more.

I have recently, although reluctantly, let go of another practice that I have maintained ever since the kids were born: I have decided that I won't necessarily consult them on every decision that I make regarding their activities.

As I have mentioned, it is important to me to transmit my life values to my children. One example is generosity. I try to do some volunteer work when my schedule permits, and I want the children to be aware of this so I can serve as a model to them. A big thing in transmitting one's values is communication, not only modeling the behavior, but also discussing it.

This weekend the city of Gatineau is organizing the annual Grand ménage du printemps (Spring Cleaning), where citizens pitch in to clean up our municipal parks. I have been wanting to discuss it with the children for days, so that we can sign up as a family, but we just haven't gotten around to it. Yesterday morning, I saw that it was the registration deadline, so I made an executive decision: I don't have to consult the children every time I want to plan an activity. I'm the mom, I'm the boss. (Wow! That sounds so authoritarian!) I registered us on-line to clean our neighborhood park, without consulting the kids. My way of looking at it is this: maybe they won't want to go pick up litter in the park from 9 to 12 on Saturday morning, but I have decided it will be a good experience for them. They will give to their community, and I hope that they will be proud to do it. As for me, I am relieved to have taken the decision. We are signed up, we didn't miss the deadline, it is one thing I can cross off my to-do list. I think I will try to be more proactive and take more decisions and get things done more often starting now.

The Next Hurdle

Although the decision to allow Daughter to eventually go live with her father was a difficult one, it is only the beginning in a long series of hurdles that the decision puts in my path. The social worker mentioned one thing which won't be easy at all, and in my head another hurdle popped up immediately.

The issue is with telling the boys that their sister has decided that she doesn't want to live with us and that I have decided to allow her to leave. They love their big sister, a fact which is often illustrated by their natural gravitation towards one another when the camera makes its appearance. They want pictures of themselves together. Another thing that is very obvious in these pictures is that Daughter is very big, and that the boys are very tiny beside her. She is their Big Sister and they love her. She loves them too.

I don't know how the boys will feel about Daughter moving away. I am sure they will not be happy about it. I am not anticipating any requests to have her room or her computer. I am anticipating tears. These kids have been through a lot and they have been through it together. They were moved across the Atlantic no less than four times between 2005 and 2010. All of the moves except the first one involved moving away from one parent or the other. That's a lot to deal with. And they dealt with it together. Separating them now seems so terrible. I mean, separating siblings is sad to begin with, but even more so for me because of what the children have been through.

For now, I have not thought about how to break the news to the boys. I feel I need some professional advice in order to be able to do it properly. I am sure the social worker and I will talk about this.

Another huge hurdle, even scarier for me than the one just described, is telling my family, especially my sister. It would be an understatement to say that my sister and the children's father have a history, and a nasty history at that. They have a mutual dislike of one anther. Neither of them are ever willing to forget anything, so their dislike is based on the cumulative shortcomings they see in each other. Bottom line, my sister sees him as a bad person and a bad father. She doesn't want to see him within ten miles of the kids, and when she finds out I am letting Daughter go live with him, she is going to blow a gasket. I wonder if she will disown me as a sister.

Granted, my sister is right. I don't know who in their right mind would allow that man to raise a child. Obviously, I am not in my right mind. For reasons I have exposed in previous posts, I am very nervous about what will come of Daughter. I am trying to be positive and trust in her inner goodness to prevail, but I do wonder which of her values will be compromised as a result of living with him. I know this makes me seem high and mighty. I don't mean to come off as trying to say that I am a perfect parent, but I do believe I have a clearer idea of how a child's spirit needs to be nurtured. As I have said before, I felt trapped into this decision. I could almost say it is not my own. I just don't see any other way out of this situation.

Telling the rest of my family will not be a picnic either. Generally, I avoid discussing the children's father with them because that results in immediate anger and outrage. They are so quick to jump to the worst conclusions and are quick to judge. I'm not saying they are far from the mark when they behave this way, but it is still hard to hear and puts me into a very difficult position because I don't want the children to hear anyone talk about their father in this way. Sometimes I think I am the only one in this family who recognizes that a child needs to have a positive image of both parents in order to have a positive self-image. I learned this the hard way when my husband kept putting my family down to me after we got married. I tried to explain to him that every time he said something bad about them, he was putting a part of me down and that hurt. He just didn't get it. He is a very opinionated person and is not in the habit of keeping quiet about his opinions. It is the same way with my family. I hate to see the nastiness and hatred surface when the subject of my ex comes up. It's not nice to see.

I will have to tell them, though, and sooner than later, because Daughter feels no compunction to keep quiet about her victory over me, about the fact that she will soon get to move away. If my family finds out from her, it will be worse. Also, if they argue with her that there is no way I would let her go, they may turn nasty about her father and say things she doesn't need to hear. Not to mention they will be that much harder on me for not having told them in the first place. So I will have to tell them soon. I just have no idea how to go about it.

It is quite exhausting even to think about all this. I have been on sick leave for so long, I am in no shape for jumping such hurdles right now, but I am going to have to do it, and soon.

This Was Not The Solution I Was Expecting To Find

As I have mentioned before, my relationship with my daughter has been strained, at best, since she came back to Canada after having spent a year overseas when her father kidnapped her and her two younger brothers. After the year she spent there, she came back a different person. She had received a thorough brainwashing and was convinced that nothing that was in any way, shape or form related to me was any good. She was like a horse with blinders on, like someone who has tunnel vision. All she wanted was to get away from me and get back to Hungary.

Understandably, this was heartbreaking, but at first I thought that all she needed was time. I thought that all I had to do was to be myself and she would remember that I was her mother and the love would return. The relationship would be all right. I just had to show her that everything she had heard about me over a year was untrue. I was convinced that the difficulty would pass and that she would become my daughter again.

Little did I know how deep the brainwashing went. Daughter wanted absolutely nothing to do with me. She ignored my existence. She locked herself up in her room. When she absolutely had to, she answered me in one-word sentences. No matter what I tried, it was no good. I knew deep down I had lost her and I didn't know how to get her back. In the process, I was losing myself, too. My self-esteem plummeted. I had thought that I was a good mother. Now, I didn't feel like a good mother at all. I felt like a failure. I felt myself regressing to the person I had been before I left her dad, the person who had plastered on a happy face and smiled even though her heart was breaking. I was good at that. No matter what their father did to me, I smiled and made sure the kids felt that everything was all right. I wanted them to feel secure in who they were, in their family. For a long time I kept up these appearances until one day I realized, I was raising them by myself anyway, why should I stick around and live with all this stress? That is when I moved out, and found that I could raise them myself, as I had done before, but now the stress and tension were gone from my life. I flourished. I was the happiest mom in the world. My smile wasn't fake any more.

When I finally got Daughter and my two sons back after a year of court procedures, I was so ecstatic that it took me a while to realize that Daughter was not the same. So I was stuck plastering on the smile for the boys again, while I racked my brain for a solution to regain my relationship with Daughter, who seemed to be waging a cold war against me.

How can I not have made a good enough impression during the first nine years of her life that none of it stayed with her? She didn't show an ounce of emotion or attachment to me. I tried everything I could to let her know how much I loved her. I tried to plan all kinds of activities based on her interests. I remember when we traveled to different cities, how she had been so happy to go up the CN Tower in Toronto, to walk in the Vieux Quartier du Québec, to visit beautiful churches and eat in the revolving restaurant in Montréal. Sure, she was happy, but it had nothing to do with me. She was enjoying herself with her brothers, but she never once thanked me. I felt like she was using me and I felt like such a loser.

Meanwhile, her father brought out the big guns. I can't even get into all the manipulation that went on when he talked with her. So many times I wanted to put an end to it. My lawyer said that I had every right to limit their telephone conversations because even though Daughter was living with me, she was always on the phone with him. She would withdraw to her room, out of earshot. But I wanted to be a good mother. I didn't want to cut her off from her father. After all, I left him because I couldn't stand to live with him. I brought the children with me because I couldn't stand to live without them. It wasn't because I wanted to take them away from him, even though essentially that is what I did. I just wanted MY freedom, and I sincerely believed that the children would be better off away from all the friction and conflict.

But although he was half a world away, her father still influenced Daughter immensely. Essentially, she became his informant. Every little thing that happened in our home was reported to him. He blew everything out of proportion, magnified it a hundredfold, then sent the child welfare people to look in on us. Eventually, I relented and had internet installed at home so instead of talking to her father privately on the phone, Daughter could only Skype with him on the computer in our kitchen. It seemed like a good solution, but it was actually so much worse. In essence, I had him here in my kitchen every time he Skyped with her. I found myself tiptoeing around so he wouldn't hear me. I didn't speak. I waited for them to finish talking before I took out a pot or a pan or anything that could make noise that would tell him what I was doing. It was a terrible feeling.

No matter how badly I wanted to have a good relationship with Daughter, she was unresponsive. I would spend hours at night staring at pictures of her, of her beautiful smile, and it broke my heart because I knew that her smile had nothing to do with me. It had to do with anything BUT me. She wasn't smiling at me, she was smiling at the camera so she would have the pictures as souvenirs of the things she had done and the places she had seen.

The thing that broke my heart the most is thinking of how Daughter was living here while she wanted to be elsewhere with all of her being. It pained me so much to think of her stuck in a place that she didn't consider her home, living only for the day she could escape. She often cried in her room because she was homesick for a home that wasn't mine. She probably felt like she was living with a stranger because she didn't ever take a step in my direction. I wondered if she wasn't lonely for the mother that she wasn't letting me be. It broke my heart and in the end I conceded that I would have to let her go.

Eventually, she would be old enough to choose for herself where she wanted to live, and if she left like that, there was no way she was ever going to come back, not even to visit. Despite all my misgivings, like what kind of person she would grow up to be without my guidance, without my modeling good values for her, without my being there to influence her to be open, loving and accepting of people, I came to see that even if she didn't turn out to be the lover of her fellow man who I had wished to help her become, she would at least be happy. And that is all that, as a mother, I really want for her right now. If my daughter is happy, why should I gripe over the fact that she only wants to wear brand-name clothes or turns into an uncharitable snob? (Because I really do fear for who she will grow into in her father's custody.)

Working with our social worker hasn't brought us any closer together, not until the social worker said it was time to think about letting her go (something I have been secretly admitting to myself, but had been terrified to voice out loud.) This week, we had our first session where we tried to talk to each other. I must say that Daughter didn't have much to say. She did have questions, mostly about why I left her dad. We both came out of the meeting with tear-stained eyes and I had a migraine headache for the rest of the day, I had cried so hard. But, ultimately, I communicated to Daughter that I would let her go, not because I wanted her to go, but because I didn't want to continue to hurt her by forcing her to live with someone who she didn't feel she loved.

I must say that I am rather proud of how I handled yesterday's meeting. Daughter had a lot of questions about her father, and a lot of the answers to those questions would have forced me to say bad things about him. I replied as generally as I could, without going too much into the specifics, and sometimes I outright said that I was not going to tell her what she wanted to know because it would force me to say bad things about her father. I have always told my children that one of my values was to not talk about someone behind their back, especially since they were not there to defend themselves, and I was rather glad to have a chance to show Daughter that I actually practice what I preach. I told her that I thought it was wonderful that she loved her dad, that it was important for her to do so, and that I didn't want to mess with that. And I also made it clear to her that I was letting her go because she wanted to go, not because I wanted to be rid of her, and that she could always, always come back. It was probably pointless to say this since she has no intention of coming back to live with me, but I wanted her to know this just the same.

Daughter's departure is still a ways off, but it is looming over me like a big, black cloud. I have asked her to at least finish off the school year here, but I recognize that she will have to be in Hungary by September for the beginning of school. I want to at least have the summer with her, which is important for the boys too. But she wants to be in Hungary by her birthday, which is at the beginning of July. I hate to think about it. I wish time would slow down.

Despite my growing feeling of doom and failure, I do have one positive thing to report. Since I told daughter that I would let her go, she has begun to open up to me a little. Today she was downright chatty, and whereas in the past she would clam up the instant she realized that she was actually talking to me, today she went right on talking. It's almost as if she had years and years' worth of stuff she had to say. It was actually kind of funny, and heartwarming in a bittersweet way. I hate to think that I have to lose her if I want to find her, but I am trying hard to think of this as something to be thankful for.

Insomnia

Why is it some people can't drag themselves out of bed in the morning, while others are unable, despite an in credible amount of fatigue, to fall asleep? How is it that I can program myself to get out of bed every morning at six am and make three school lunches (a chore that I dislike with a passion), but I can't program my brain to shut down for the night and let me rest? And believe me, I am tired.

Today was a very long, full day. Daughter and I even managed to squeeze in that appointment with the social worker that hadn't taken place last week due to a mixup about location. We finally had our first talk together with the social worker. (Whereas before, she had taken appointments with us, but separately.) Believe me, today's meeting was no picnic. we both came away with tear-stained eyes. I have had a headache since, I cried so hard. Now, all three children are asleep, even First Son, surprise! surprise! But I can't get any shut-eye.

Is it Daughter's ever-looming departure to go live with her dad that is keeping me awake?

Am I just too tired to sleep? Does that even make any sense?

It's probably some stressful issue that is gnawing at me. Lord knows I have enough of those! What will happen to my kids if I don't get back to normal health? What if I can never work full-time? What if I can't even find part-time work? What if I don't get accepted to the university of my choice? What about my finances? When am I ever going to get this place cleaned up? The kids have been home sick and the laundry has been piling up. I have to pick up the floor so I can vacuum. Groceries need to be done, but I keep procrastinating about that because I'm too tired to deal with it.

I've been considering starting a whole other blog to devote to matters of the heart, because that is an area I have completely neglected in my inventory of needs. This blog is about life with the kids, but somewhere along the way I am also going to have to sift through all the trash that has accumulated over the past 18 years or so, during which I have progressively lost or stifled my own identity - who I am, who I want to be, how I want to be.

Last night for the third time, (perhaps yesterday morning would be a more accurate description, since this happened at around 1:30 am), I asked someone to stay out of my life once and for all. It seems to be part of my annual spring cleaning. The ironic thing is that every time we establish contact again, it is I who initiate it. I am more than willing to admit that I am messed up. Agonizing over that is probably what has kept me awake past two am for the past three nights. It would be so good to sleep!

I am rather frustrated by the fact that one can program one's mind to wake up five minutes before the alarm clock goes off - I have done it myself, and have witnessed it second-hand from many of my students - yet I am unable to tell my brain to go to sleep for a few hours, on a schedule. What happened to all my yoga training? Clear your mind and all that...

I have no miracle cure for insomnia. But I am really tired. Perhaps this bit of typing has tipped the scales sufficiently to allow me to finally go to sleep when I get back to bed. I am nodding off in front of the computer. It think the trick will be to get back to bed without waking up again completely.

Please forgive me any type-o that may have slipped into this post. I'll come back tomorrow to proof-read. My eyes are having trouble staying open at this point. Hopefully that's a good sign...

Hopefully I can get some zzzz's now, or at least soon. I usually need at least nine hours of sleep to be fully rested. Tomorrow's gonna be a killer day on less than six. *sigh*

It's 12:17 am here. Wish me luck.

Health Care (Rant)

Daughter has been sick for five days. She is coughing and her throat hurts. After having tried numerous medicines, syrups, soups, teas, supplements and of course lots of sleep, she is still no better. I think it is time to admit defeat. It is time to take her to see a doctor. Easier said than done, even here in what is supposedly the "best country in the world."

Daughter doesn't have a doctor. That means that when she gets sick, we have to go over our options, none of which are very practical.

Most orphans (people who don't have family doctors) go to the Emergency Room (ER) when they get sick. There, a person can wait anywhere from 12 to over 24 hours to see a doctor, on a good day. On a bad day, you would add about an hour or so of wait time every time you see an ambulance pull up. But you can't even complain about this. The ER staff are doing the best that they can with their limited resources. And, let's face it, a sore throat is at the bottom of the list when people with heart attacks, broken arms, allergy attacks, overdoses and other serious emergency situations are also waiting. So, the ER is not the option of choice for someone who is "just sick."

The second option is to go to a walk-in clinic. There are several of these in our city, but I have never had much luck with them. In order to be seen by a doctor, one has to get there and stand in line super early. Whenever I have attempted it, by the time I got to the clinic I was told that the waiting list was full for the day. So a walk-in clinic is a doable option when people are able to get in line before 7 am, but I usually have three kids to drop off at school before I am free to queue. With Daughter sick, the earliest we can drop the boys off at school is 7 am, so I think the clinic option is out. We won't even attempt it.

Option number three is to go to a clinic in Ontario, where our Québec health insurance card is not accepted so we have to pay up-front, but we do get a partial refund from Québec if we send in our receipt and the proper forms. Also, the wait time is measured in few hours, giving us the hope that we will be in and out before the boys' after school care closes at 5:45. I have gone this route before. It was handy once when I had an ear infection and needed antibiotics. But the second time I went in, complaining of shortness of breath, coughing, fever and generally feeling icky, the doctor sent me home and told me to get plenty of rest and fluids. Four days later I was in the ER with a severe pneumonia that kept me hospitalized for ten days, followed by months of convalescence. So I vowed never to go to one of those clinics again. The doctor never even listened to my lungs. He just wanted me in and out as quickly as possible so he could collect my $65 and go on to the next patient. I want Daughter to have better care than that, so that clinic is out of the question. (I should mention that I don't think all Ontario clinics are this bad, but the ones I have access to - the Appletree Medical Center group - are more about profits than they are about health care, in my opinion.)

The last option, which is the one I finally opted for when I had that very severe pneumonia, is the one that I choose today for Daughter. We will go to an ER, but not here in Gatineau, where all the hospitals have notoriously long waiting lists. Instead, I will drive Daughter 30 minutes out of town to the city of Wakefield, where there is a small regional hospital whose staff took very good care of me when I was sick. If we are lucky, we will only have to wait a few hours before Daughter gets seen.

There has been debate in Canada about privatizing health care, while in the US they have moved in the opposite direction, offering free health care to low-income people who can't afford the private facilities. As far as I am concerned, I can't rely on our government to give my family free health care. The only reason I have a doctor is that the hospital got me one (helping me circumvent the usual waiting lists) because they simply couldn't discharge me without assuring me some follow-up care. And the doctor I got, although he does more or less follow my progress, won't agree to treat my daughter.

If I could afford to, I would go to a private doctor's clinic. I wouldn't mind paying extra for quality care. I understand that doctors would rather work in private clinics than go to work in public ones for less pay and even worse working conditions. The problem is, I am low-income and I can't afford to take my kids to a private clinic. And, frankly, I shouldn't have to. We have free health care in Canada. We just don't have enough of it. I wish we had political leaders who are able to better prioritize what is needed. The Canadian public service is facing huge budget cuts right now. In my humble opinion, nothing is going to result from these layoffs except more unemployed public servants. I really doubt it will make a difference in the long run. Then the government will use unemployment as a reason to not invest in health care, because the funds will be needed to create jobs. I am just one little person. I am not a politician. I do vote, but honestly I wonder if we will ever climb out of this hole our health care services are in. In my opinion, we won't get anywhere while our politicians' decisions are based on influential big corporations' "needs."

Rant over. Forgive me. I just had to let my frustration out somewhere. It is a terrible feeling to feel so helpless in trying to get my daughter in to see a doctor. And I live in Canada, a country that touts itself as "the best in the world." I truly feel for people in third-world countries who do not have access to health care. I remain convinced that in Canada this is all a question of priorities.

Open-Minded Agnosticism

It occurs to me that while I have decided to write down my journey towards faith in this blog, the blog itself is supposed to be about a single mother and how she faces life's ups and downs. In an effort not to forget about that original intention, although I am continuing with the spiritual posts today, I will try in the future to keep up with the rest of my mission: to write about parenting. For today, I will however keep to the spiritual posts. I hope you will forgive me, seeing as it is Sunday. :o)

In my early twenties, I was an agnostic with an ever-opening mind. My previous doubts about religion had been based on my inability to accept that people could believe in God based on the Bible, which they took literally.

I have always loved reading and had pretty high marks in English literature. I liked to look for clues that foreshadowed a story's dénouement and I liked to look for deeper meanings. I found that once I learned to do this properly in English class, even my enjoyment of movies was increased, as I paid more attention to dialogue, setting and circumstances to see if I could guess the end.

After that famous discussion about the story of the loaves and the fishes, I came to realize that it was not necessary to read and believe in the Bible literally. I came to see the value of looking for the underlying message. While I did not yet claim to be a Christian, I was very curious about religion. At the same time, there were things about religion that turned me off.

Although I did not claim the title of Christian for a long time, I knew since the age of about 15 that my family was religious. My maternal grandmother was a devout Catholic her whole life and my paternal grandmother was also religious, although I must say I never knew it by being around her. When I got married at age 19, my cousin asked why we weren't having a church wedding. My answer at the time was that we weren't religious enough. But when I think back, we weren't religious at all. I considered myself a Christian not by belief, but by heritage, seeing as I came from a Christian family. I think I probably said that we weren't Christian enough because the cousin who asked me the question was very religious and I guess I succumbed to a bit of something like peer pressure. Truth be told, though, I didn't believe in God when I got married. I hadn't taken those life-changing courses in university yet. My husband was even less religious than I, despite his Isten, Haza, Csalàd! (God, Country, Family!) motto. I came to understand that he only said that because he was a big (true) Hungarian and that is a Hungarian motto. But I came to see that he knew very little of the Bible. I mean, when we saw the Disney film The Prince of Egypt, he had no idea that it was based on the Bible. Yet, that is very basic Bible knowledge, it seems to me...

Anyway, like I said, I was open to the idea of religion, but had yet to really come into contact with it. My grandmother did try to teach me a few things, but I saw her so seldom because I lived in North America and she in Europe, that her influence wasn't very permanent. Mostly, I think I played the role of The Good Girl for her, but none of her teachings really stuck, apart from my seeing that religion really did give her peace of mind.

I remember one day when I went swimming in a lake with my great-aunt and she told me a Bible story as we were swimming along. I remember being really annoyed because her whole point was that homosexuality was a sin - something I did not and do not agree with - and I felt like she was trying to stuff her beliefs down my throat. Don't get me wrong. She is a very nice old lady, but very strict when it comes to her beliefs. I do love her very much. 

Another thing that made me hesitant about religion is what I heard when I went to church, (because after my daughter was born I started taking her to church when she was about a year old.) I was curious and mostly I didn't want Daughter to miss out on what I had missed as a child, so I took her to church, if only to better her chances at understanding English Literature when she went to high school. I thought it would be to her advantage to know the basics. I was also hoping to land a teaching job in a religious school, and so going to church couldn't hurt. If you are thinking right now that those have to be the WORST reasons for a person to go to church, I won't argue. :o)  Anyway, although I was open-minded and curious, I didn't really like the sermons. It sounded to me like the priest was preaching that the Bible should be taken literally. I didn't see him trying to get at the message of the Word. I have since been to other masses that I have really enjoyed so I guess this had to do with that one particular priest at that one particular church. In the end, I stopped going to church, but I did buy picture Bibles so Daughter could still get her initial education.

When Daughter started daycare and I started working, I met someone at work with whom I had some very interesting conversations about religion over some very spicy cups of tea. This person was of the Bahai faith and he made me think about a lot of things that I hadn't thought about before. But that will be a story for a different chapter. That's enough for today, I think, except of course for some Supermom Words of Wisdom that I will leave you with:

One conviction I have arrived at somewhere along the way is that all religions are valid, and that includes atheism, or lack of religion. If you look at any religion, you will see the same underlying guiding principle: love. Religions are a kind of code for how to live one's life, and it always comes down to love. Love thy fellow man. Love thyself. Love God, if you believe in him. Love the good you can find in everyone even if you don't believe.

As for parenting, I will leave you with an example:

I have mentioned previously the value of teaching children about the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes to teach them about generosity and sharing, but if you do not believe in God or if you have an aversion to using Bible stories as parenting tools, you can achieve the very same goal by telling your children the  Stone Soup story.


The basic point is this: decide on your values. Find the tools you need in order to transmit your values to your children. I believe everyone is born good. In fact, I believe that everyone is born noble. Nevertheless, children aren't born knowing everything about life. They learn many things from what they see and observe. It is up to us parents to make sure they see and observe our values so that they have a good foundation on which to build the values that they will eventually adopt and live by. They are little. They can't do it alone. That is what parents are for. :o)