Friends

     Friends are important to life; vital to feeling at peace and one with the world. Friendship is not easy for all of us. Being of a quieter, more solitary type, I find the pursuit of friendships and the time and effort involved in the care and maintenance of them can be arduous. Others like my husband make friends on a daily basis. These relationships are sometimes not long lasting or of a profound nature but the gift of connecting with others is certainly his and others like him.    

     When you are socially awkward like my daughter, friendship can be a mystery. One day someone can be totally warm and welcoming, the next, not so much... The up and down nature of some people's manner and moods is just the beginning of the puzzle for my daughter. She also struggles with the difficulty folks honest-to-a-fault can have getting along in our society. It does not reward the brutal honesty which is a feature of Non-Verbal Learning Disorder.  And then there are things like voice tone, expressions, hand gestures, body language and eye contact which further complicate the issue. 

     Good friends can be amazing. They can make you feel like someone actually gets who you are, accepts who you are, and even likes you after all that. Wow! What could be better than that? We all want to belong, to feel like we are part of something bigger than ourselves. They say that your child’s friends’ parents usually end up being your friends. This seems true to some extent. Most of the mums and dads at my daughters’ school are young enough to be my kids, which is great, because it keeps me young--- as if my kids weren’t keeping me young already!

Graduation

     My almost-a-teenager daughter graduated from elementary school on Friday. For most kids it is not that big a deal: you leave elementary school, then you go to high school; grade 7 is over, grade 8 begins soon. For a girl like my daughter however, this is a much more important transition.
     Elementary school has not been easy for my daughter. She came late to reading; really only in this past year has she felt able to read on her own. Writing is and will probably always be a labourious process for her. She prints like a much younger child, holding the pencil and writing with deliberate and tiring ferocity. Despite her unusual memory, basic math skills such as multiplication elude her with counting still done on fingers and in the air. The answer she produces after this exercise is rarely correct. And then there are the social differences: she does not lie, takes everything at face value, rarely understands non-verbal communication and more. It probably sounds as though she is not ready to leave elementary school--- that may well be. However children are rarely kept back these days as the social ramifications of "failing" a child are thought to outweigh the benefits.
     We had thought that we would do an extra year at elementary school but when it came time, my daughter was ready to move ahead. She physically appears older than her grade six and even some of her grade 7 classmates (at a school population of 92, every division is a split) and in so many ways except scholastically, was appropriate for high school. As it appears now, she will be in a class of about 2 dozen kids who are all at a similar place academically. There we hope she will go through high school at her own pace, learning the basic skills needed to become an independent young adult. She will not be doing calculus, PowerPoint projects on the life cycle of Gypsy moths or writing papers about Shakespeare's plays; rather she will be learning to tell time, how to handle money and what basic hygiene is expected of her.
     One chapter ending, another beginning: all part of the rhythm of life. As one of my daughter's heroes Temple Grandin wrote to her in a short but wise note: "Work hard and you can achieve your dreams." That's what my daughter will be doing. It is all hard work for her but she will do it and we will be right beside her. And there is no place that we would rather be.

Animals

     We are like Noah’s Ark. We have at least two of way too many animals: 2 horses, 3 dogs, 2 cats, 2 rabbits, a few fish, almost a dozen ducks and dozens of chickens. Still my youngest daughter would like a hamster and insists that Santa bring her one next year. Hamsters are not my favourite animal. I once looked after my sister’s pets while she and her family were out of town. I was in charge of feeding the hamster and also the fish in the small aquarium. The hamster was usually busy sleeping when I filled his dish but on the one day that he wasn’t napping, he bit me! And it hurt! To make matters worse, I had to get a tetanus shot--- for a hamster bite. When she got home my sister made me feel better by giving me the address of a web site called “When Good Hamsters Go Bad” or something like that. To top it off, I also found out that the frog that I been so proud of feeding everyday and keeping alive was just plastic. I could not win. Last year Santa brought my younger daughter a stuffed hamster. Do you think he can get away with that again this year? I sure hope so.

Clothes

     Fortunately for us, hand-me-downs no longer have the social stigma they had when I was a child (which was a very long time ago, by the way).When I was young and the oldest of five children, clothes were not a big priority in my family’s budget. Fortunately, uniforms were worn in public elementary schools where I grew up in Quebec, so that alleviated a lot of pressure on our family budget. In those good old days, my mother was allotted a certain amount of cash money and had to make that money stretch as far as she could. She called it her housekeeping money. It seems a far cry from the way people manage money these days, with credit and debit cards. No wonder many of us now live beyond our means. Now my girls get clothes from friends and cousins--- even a much anticipated box of clothes from a well-to-do cousin who lives in Dallas, Texas, several times a year. When we are done with our clothes we pass them on to younger cousins or sometimes friends. It’s a great system. In our case, it involved the one-time purchase of quite a few of those big blue Rubbermaid tubs; one season’s clothes are put away and the appropriate ones brought out. Sometimes they still fit the following year, and sometimes they get passed on. Sometimes they are greeted like old friends with great memories attached to them and sometimes they end up as a rag in Dad’s workshop. Either way, this has saved us a great deal of money and my kids have had plenty of clothes, for which we are eternally grateful.

Hello?

     Did you know that I am your neighbour?  I have a couple of kids, one of whom is learning disabled and a husband who works too much. We have money troubles like everyone else and struggle with a lot of the same things that you struggle with: the HST, the environment, the cost of living, our health, our wealth, what will become of where we live. Will we dance at our children’s weddings, are they getting the best education, where is all that garbage going, will the Canucks win? In the big scheme of things of course these are all small concerns, but they seem important to us now, in this moment and therefore they are significant. Our search for meaning has always been a unifying human issue. Whether we are smart or unskilled, young or old, hippies or rednecks, we all care about what we care about--- me too. I suppose the issue becomes, what do we then do with that desire to ask the big questions and to get some even bigger answers. For some of us there is no time for navel gazing--- sometimes it’s just difficult to get some time alone in the shower. And answers are not a simple thing. There are too many variables; so much uncertainty. There is no black and white. This is what I know: you can’t know it all and if you say that you do, you’re either a liar or my father.

Children

     My kids are amazing to me, of course.  They are way more work than I imagined and a lot more fun than I could ever have forseen. They aggravate and energize me. Because of them I am so much more but also feel so small and fragile at times. I cannot imagine life without them. They complete me and also undo me.

    Enough of the poetry: my life is my children. From the second I wake up and struggle into my bathrobe & slippers to the second that I crawl, almost literally, into bed at night, my day is their day. Even when they are at school, I am cleaning, shopping, picking up, washing, and working for their benefit. That’s life with children. A blessing, a drain, a blessing.

     My girls have said some very funny things over the years and I have tried to write them all down but that’s hard to do. I have a book of their funnier comments, when I can remember to write in it. Here's one: my older daughter (who is 12) recently told my husband and I that her policy will be not to date anyone with long hair, piercings or anyone who smokes. I think that sounds like a good policy. I just wonder if that will still be her policy when she’s actually dating (hopefully, not for 10 years or so).
    Sometimes I find that when you're living with kids, you are sometimes so busy living that you don't have time to jot down the funny remarks or take all the photographs or videos that you'd like to.  I gave up feeling guilty about that... we are here to live life and record it if we can. I am learning to be present with my girls and to really listen to them while they are still talking to me.

PAC

     Over the course of the 8 years that my eldest daughter has gone to elementary school, I have been involved with the PAC (Parent Advisory Council) or Parent's Group as we are now calling it for 7 of them. It has been one of the best parts of being at our school. I have met lots of parents, children, teachers and staff and have enjoyed the experience immensely. Sure there were differences of opinion, other approaches and even problems at the school and district level but there were always folks here who wanted to make a difference.
     I wanted to be close to the school because of my daughter's learning and seizure disorders. I ended up drinking some coffee, listening to some stories, having some laughs but most importantly making friends and feeling a connection to the place where my children have spent most of their waking hours from September to June. That has been enormously important to me over these 8 years and I want to say how much I have appreciated getting to know these folks.  I will not name them here...there are so many of them but here are a few of the places we connected:
      There were fundraisers, hot lunches, field trips, parent teas, talent shows, family dances, barbeques, assemblies and Country Markets, movie nights, open houses, meet the teachers, garage sales, stocking sewing, gingerbread and move the bleachers. There was plants planted, posters painted, bottles refunded, stuff donated, burgers cooked, pictures hung, cupcakes baked, raffles won, hampers filled, water given, presents wrapped, places driven....I could go on and on but you get the picture!  None of these things would be possible if not for these unselfish individuals.
    Thank you to everyone who made these last eight years so fulfilling for me. My older daughter is off to high school in September but my younger one will be here for four more years. And as she wrote in one of the little thank you notes placed on the tables at the Parent Tea: "Thank you for driving us. We would go nowhere without you." That's the truth;)

Loss

     There are all kinds of loss; loss through death of course being the most final. But there are lots of other kinds of loss that can be just as hard to deal with; loss through divorce, moving, illness, dementia, pet loss, relationship breakup or breakdown, betrayal, and so on--- the list is endless. Losing a passport is not like having your dog die which is not like losing a parent. There are degrees of intensity in the experience of the loss and the length of time it takes to adjust to the new reality of life.
     My husband and I experienced several pregnancy losses which, when you are trying to conceive, are devastating. The relationship with an unborn child is tender and tentative but the loss of that life along with all the associated hopes and dreams can be monumental.The loss of someone you know and love can be inconceivable, both in the magnitude of the grief and in the adjustment to life on earth without them. I cannot fathom how parents of a child who has died can go on. Somehow, some do --- most do. Comparing losses is never helpful however. Each of us have our own experience of loss which cannot be rated against another's; it is personal, individual and totally unique.
    I think that it is important that children understand early that there are circumstances beyond their control; loss being one of them. At our house, we have always had funerals for pets who have died; we sometimes have released balloons for losses in our lives. Books like Lifetimes or The Tenth Good Thing About Barney can help children understand life and death and how it affects others. I think that often children have much to teach us about grieving; in their straightforward, uncomplicated ways of addressing their losses, using art or play to tell their story, they often show us the healthiest ways to mourn.     
     Loss is change and change is hard--- harder for some than others. There is security in the way we've always had it....changing that changes everything and then we have to change too. For those of us who like to plan and look forward, loss is the game changer. Finally, young or old, we all have to realize that death and change are a part of life. It's what we do with those experiences that can move us forward or keep us stuck in a mire of grief.