So soon?

D and I were in the bath on Saturday, playing with his toys while I was surreptitiously trying to wash him and his hair (not his favourite thing).  Most of the bath toys are little animals that can squirt water.  He also has a traditional rubber ducky and a larger duck that suctions to the wall.

As he tends to do,  he began a skit where a baby is looking for its mommy (a common theme from Dora the Explorer).  The rubber duck was looking for its mommy.  It would ask the other animals and they would reply (through me) with “is that your mommy?” pointing to the duck on the wall.

After ten or so repetitions, it changed from “mommy” to “daddy”.  The duck would ask the animal “where’s my daddy” and the animals would reply (through me) “is that your daddy?” and point to the duck on the wall, but he would say “no”.  So the animals began to reply (through me) ”I don’t know where your daddy is”, or in later iterations “are you sure you have a daddy?  Maybe you have two mommies.”   After a few repetitions, when I replied to the duck (on behalf of the animals) he looked at the animals and said ” no, where’s MY daddy”  and pointed to himself.

My heart broke just a bit as I explained to him that he had two mommies instead of a mommy and a daddy.  I asked him what he would do with a daddy. He thought for a bit and said “play toys”.  ”Like you’re doing right now?” I asked but he had no answer for me.

I really didn’t expect this so soon, but I guess it would have come up within the next six months or so anyway.  I blame the fact that he likes to watch Finding Nemo – which is all about Nemo’s daddy trying to find him.  Thanks a lot, Disney.

 

 

 

 

Bah, Humbug – Xmas rant 2011

Another Christmas.  My enjoyment of Christmas varies.  And now that I’m in a generally negative period in my life, Christmas is even less of an enjoyment.

I get irritated by people saying “Jesus is the reason for the season”.  The season is winter.  The holiday is a coalescence of pagan and ancient rituals that took place at generally the same time — midwinter.  Which, seasonally, isn’t when the Christ child was born anyway. Plus, try as I might, I don’t see reference to three wise men attending at the birth of christ with a christmas tree  and mistletoe in hand.  In fact, I can’t find anywhere in the bible that they were at the birth of christ at all, like all those nativity scenes depict.  They don’t show up until later, when Mary was in a house and Jesus was a young child.  Which kind of explains why Herod was offing all the boy childs under 2 years old – the wise men knew the birth had already happened by the time they got there, and shared that with Herod.

We’re generally celebrating solstice:  the  the longest night and the return to the light.  At this time we’ve completed our preparations for the long winter ahead, and are happy to celebrate the return of the sun.  We bring light and life into our houses.  We’re generous with each other.

I find it odd that Christians chose this time of year to celebrate the birth of their messiah, and that most modern north american Christians do it in a way that touches on many of Catholicism’s cardinal sins.  Gluttony, greed, pride, lust, sloth.. and the inevitable envy and wrath that creeps in.  Oh sure, there’s charity – but while the stereotypical christmas involves and often celebrates the deadly sins, charity is often displaced (“I can’t afford to give right now because I have all these christmas bills I’ll have to pay in January”).

I was watching a Dora the Explorer Christmas show where Swiper is on the naughty list because he swipes at Christmas.  He has to learn the true meaning of Christmas to get off the naughty list. In the show, apparently the meaning of Christmas is to be nice to one another… at Christmas.  It kind of reinforced the sense that generosity, charity, love, kindness and good cheer is necessary only at Christmas.  And after that, it’s back to the same old, same old.

Father Christmas has somehow become Santa Claus, who was really St Nicholas until the Coca-Cola advertising team took over.  Some say Father Christmas was originally Woden, who didn’t have the marketing behind him that Coke or Christ had – so much of the myth of Woden is long forgotten as heathenism was displaced in Anglo and Germanic Europe. Displaced, but not eradicated.  Which is why you have Christmas carols like “the Holly and the Ivy” which reeks of a time before Christ was born.  A time of cold, dark winter evenings, where the only things that were still green were holly and ivy.

I have to admit I do like the harsh Sinterklaas myth (and of course, Sinterklaas rides heavily on the tails of Odin*).  He comes to town with his little black helper and a sack.  Good children get tossed some candy from the sack.  Bad children get carried off in the sack, never to be seen again.  You better watch out!

*And Odin comes on the tails of others.  People have always built religious scaffolding around events like solstice.  But that doesn’t mean they’re the reason for the season.

The lazy bicycler

I’ve been looking for the solution to the problem of how to bicycle with my family.  I suppose for most people, that solution would be “get a bike”.  But peddling around up grades makes me tired, sweaty and bitchy.

My sister has convinced me that electric bikes may be just that solution.  Except I don’t want a scooter like hers  (it’s not quite “bicycling with the family”).  Instead, I’d rather have a bicycle that gives a little help from an electric motor.  I’m not infirm – I can still pedal a bike.  I just want the effortlessness a middle aged north american comes to expect.

The problem – they ebikes tend to look like shit.  Bulky franken-cycles with massive ugly batteries.  And they’re heavy (50 or 60 lbs heavy) because of the electric add ons.  I absolutely do not want to have to deal with storing one of those in the house.

Much research later, I decided an electric Brompton folding bicycle would do the trick.  A nice small fold that I could leave in the front hall without it getting in anyone’s way.  The battery in a bag – so not obvious or ugly.  Something like the ones NYCe Wheels will put together.  Stupidly expensive however.

But then I heard that Brompton would be coming out with their own eBrompton.  I was curious to see their solution so I’ve been holding on, waiting for announcements.  Eurobike?  Nope.  Interbike?  Nope.  Finally they gave a teaser announcement (no prices, no specs) that the bike will be available in limited numbers in the UK and Germany in 2012, with full-roll out everywhere else expected in 2013 – including a retrofit kit.

2013?  Aw come on!

 

 

Story time

We went for our regular drive to visit my mother on Sunday.  She lives almost 2 hours away – it makes for a long day: 2 hours there, lunch and playtime for D, 2 hours back (or longer if we’re running errands).  In the back seat we keep a couple of books and small toys, to keep the boy entertained (he finds the iPhone more entertaining, though).  He wanted me to hand him the tiny version of Angela’s Airplane we have back ther.  He normally isn’t that interested in the book, other than to hold it.  Too few pictures, too many words. But this time, he let me read the whole thing to him.  It was great! Maybe now we can move to a more focussed storytime.

On the back of the little book were headshots of the author and the illustrator. To my surprise he said “Mine daddy” (he talks like a little German boy lately).  I explained that, no, these were pictures of the guy who wrote the words and the guy who drew the pictures. He replied with “no, this mine daddy”.  I’m not sure if it was the young bearded Munsch or the clean shaven Martchenko that was the “daddy”, but it wasn’t me.

Every time I watch tv shows or see books that talk about Mommy and Daddy, I get irritated.  Why can’t we just call them “Parents”? How about “Johnnie went to the park with his parents”. ( It goes hand in hand with my peeve related to people who say stuff like “the brave men and women who serve in our armed forces”. Why not brave people or brave soldiers? Why do we have to talk about their perceived gender?).  Why can’t daycares and schools drop the mommy and daddy talk and refer to parents as “parents”.  And as disappointing as it is for me to hear D pointing out pictures of his “daddy”, I can’t imagine how shitty it must be for single parents to hear the same type of thing.

Rambling Thoughts on Death

When I learned of Stella’s tumour I thought about D and the possibility of cancer – but this voice, this other voice in the back of my head said “drowning”.  The voice tends to be right about things. But it’s not psychic – it’s just intuitive.  So I’m not sure where “drowning” came from but I don’t really think I predicted how my son will die.  Instead, it might be based in the fact that I can’t swim – so if anything happens to D in the water on my watch, then it’s likely he will die – with great potential that I die trying to save him, or just stop living after having watched him die and been utterly impotent to do anything to change it.

But that’s just blink-of-the-eye stuff.  That’s being in a position to save him and failing.

My father had cancer – terminal cancer.  Small cell lung cancer.  The average life span after diagnosis is 13 months.  Dad lasted a little longer than 2 years.  For most of it, he had hope that he’d live.  Misplaced hope.  This was probably based on how good he felt when he first received treatment.  It inspired him to quit smoking, buy and use a juicer and drink Essiac tea.  He fought.  But the tumours came back, like they were supposed to.  And the next round of treatment kicked him on his ass and kept kicking.  He was what I thought to be utterly emaciated (I later learned what utterly emaciated would look like).  Putting his coat and boots on exhausted him when I was visiting and the well stopped pumping (meaning the toilet stopped flushing) I found him on the couch in his coat and boots, apologizing that he couldn’t get up to help me.

A little while later was palliative care, brain tumours disorienting him in every way — making him fall, not understand where he was or why, ultimately sending him back in time, taking away his language.  The last time I saw him, two days before he died, I thought I was in the wrong room.  The man gasping on the bed was impossibly skinnier, his eyes a vivid pale blue (my dad’s eyes were dark blue).  But it was him.  Still fighting but maybe by now just reflexively fighting for breath.

Once there was nothing left of him, he died.

I never thought my dad should fight the cancer.  The cancer was a 6’3″, 285 lb mass of angry muscle in the ring.  The cancer was a gun in a knife fight.  The cancer was the atom bomb.  There was no hope of winning this fight, or even coming out of it with dignity (not in this society where you’re sneered at if you don’t put your ailing cat down because it’s the “humane thing to do”, but we have to force our family members to suffer through every last inhumane second of their illness).

I don’t know what Dad really thought of the whole thing.  We talked often, but not about things of substance.  I don’t know at what point he realized he wouldn’t win his fight, or if he ever wondered if he was fighting for the wrong thing.  Instead of getting the most out of today he seemed to waste it fighting for tomorrow.  I don’t know if at any point he ever wished someone would end the fight for him.

Stella’s moms are fighting for Stella to have the best life she can in her remaining days.  They aren’t fighting to add to those days (unless ice-cream has cancer fighting properties).  And I expect I’d want to do the same thing in their position.

Well, on that cheerful end: if anyone is reading this, it would be lovely if you would go to stellabrunermethven.com and donate by selecting “send Support” from the right hand menu.  They’ve taken leaves of absence from their jobs to do all they can to have Stella’s remaining days be the best they can be.

To bike or not to bike

I sold my bike on the weekend.

I bought it last spring, and have ridden it exactly twice.  Once on the way home from the store, the second time was  around 5 months later.  During those 5 months I was at home with D during my parental leave. The atrophy of my leg muscles resulting from those 5 months made that late summer ride extra brutal.

We drive everywhere these days.  Especially since D started daycare.  So I doubt my legs are significantly more sound.  It seemed to make the most sense to send the bike off to a good home, in exchange for some cash.   I guess I could have given it another ride to reevaluate, but I didn’t care to.  Which further reinforced that it made sense to sell.   I lost some money, the buyer saved some money, the bike will get ridden and fulfill its greater purpose…

Now the question is:  a pedal assist electric bike to make biking easier/fun again – so I can still try to participate in family rides – or pack it in and get no bike at all?

Can biking be fun again, here in Toronto?  The assault of heat and humidity, the aggressive traffic,  having to lock the bike up 20 different ways just to go into a store to buy some water… vs when I was a kid and we had 2 humid days at most in any given summer,  no traffic, and I don’t remember having to lock my bike at all.  Ah, my CCM Targa 10 speed.  Good times.  Too bad I never could work the gears.

Parental Leave

I was away from work for 5 months while I stayed home with the boy.  It was an interesting experience lived, largely, in 2 or 3 hour increments.  I lost track of time, I was unable to plan for anything that would take place more than 4 hours into the future.   Looking back, I can’t remember much of it – mostly because it was all pretty much the same.  He changed – got bigger, crawled then walked.  But it still pretty much felt like the same day lived over and over again.

That said, I’m very grateful that I had the opportunity to do it.   It was all a blur for me, but if you include the month I spent with him and S when he was born, I’ve been with him for half a lifetime.   It feels like a good foundation to build on.

I can’t say that I feel equally his mother (relative to S) because I still consider S his mother (because of the giving birth aspect).  But I definitely feel equally his parent.

Earlier, when someone would refer to me as his mother I’d have to stop myself from saying “no – S is his mother”.   Now I feel a similar reaction but it’s less strong.  I refer to myself as his mother when talking to daycare : “hi, I’m D’s mother – how’s his day today?”.  We decided that I’ll  go with Mama and S will go with Mommy – but more out of having to come up with something to go by.

At Pride I saw a woman wearing a t-shirt that said “Lesbian Dad” and thought that ya, that’s more of an apt description.  But I just don’t want to take up the crusade of referring to myself as his Dad or his Papa. I imagine conversations like:

Me:  ”Hi, I’m D’s Dad.”

Them: “You’re what??”

Me: “I’m D’s Dad.  Nice to meet you.”

Them: “You’re what?”

Me: “His Dad”

Breukelen Calling

A few years ago I bought a bicycle – a 21 speed mountain bike type thing.  I had tried a few similar bikes and liked the fit and ride of this one.  It’s a great bike, and I amazed myself at being able to ride it up a steep hill at my crappy fitness level – the only thing that stopped me from reaching the summit was S pooping out on her bike in front of me. But I didn’t like riding it to work (I got to work sweaty and angry) and didn’t like riding it on weekends (I’d have sweaty helmet head, and whenever I got where I was going I had to bring my seat and light with me after locking my bike up two ways).  Plus, that style of bike has the rider resting her weight on her wrists and girl parts.  Overtime, riding the bike became a generally unpleasant experience.  So – for the past year or so I haven’t touched the bike.

The thing is, S loves going for bike rides and would love it if we could go bike riding together.  So I examined my options — I could try to retrofit my bike so it would have a more upright  sitting posture, or I could find a bike that was built that way from the start.  I surfed a bit and saw that the granny bike was alive and well, and going by the title Omafiets.

A couple of days ago I stopped off at curbside cycle, which predominantly stocks this type of bicycle (and was having a sale!), and took a couple of bikes for a test drive.  I chose the Pashley Sovereign and the Batavus Fryslan – both 5 speeds to help me deal with small hills (vs the more common single speed or 3 speed).  The Pashley has all you could ever want including a lovely Brooks sprung saddle.  The Fryslan has a similar look, white tires, and a cheaper price tag.  Reading cycling blogs online – people love their Pashley and Batavus bikes.  Unfortunately, neither of the two I tried did anything for me.  The upright posture was definitely an improvement, but neither had a sweet spot for me in those 5 gears.  I hadn’t used a coaster brake in almost 40 years, so there was a learning curve with the Fryslan.  The Pashley felt more familiar, but left me flat — which was a shame because I really wanted to like it.

There was one other bike they suggested, but I didn’t have time to try it out, so I went back today.  It’s the Batavus Breukelen – and it’s a more modern looking version of the classic Omafiets.  It has 7 speeds and drum brakes on both front and rear (like the Pashley)- so no coaster brake to get used to.  I took it for a spin and it felt remarkably better.  Just to be sure, I tried the Fryslan again.  And to be doubly sure I tried the Breukelen again.  Yep – definitely more to my liking.  The fit was good (but the handlebars are narrower than the Fryslan – and felt almost too narrow, but I’m not sure if that was only in comparison),  the ride was nice, and the gear ratios had more of a sweet spot for me.

So I bought it.  They’re going to assemble a new one for me for pick up on Thursday.  Let’s hope I can now make S’s dream of taking bike rides together a reality.

The end is near

I’m a week and a half away from starting my parental leave. I can’t believe it’s coming up so quickly. I’ve been so busy at work, a week and a half doesn’t seem like enough time to get my files ready for someone else to take them over for a few months. Maybe I will need to pop in to work for an afternoon on the weekend before I leave – take a stab at getting stuff organized. Yikes.

Not that I’ll truly be done work, because I will have to keep working on the LEADS final project. Graduation in May! Woo! It will be sweeeet to be done with that program.

Not management material

S and I were visiting friends and I was asked how I like my temporary gig as acting manager.  When I laughed and said I didn’t, I was asked what about it I didn’t like.  I gave the example of being told we had a briefing at 5:30, so staying late for it, then being told it’ s moved to 6:15, the 6:30, then 7, then we go up for the meeting at 7:30 and after sitting there for 10 minutes are told the guy we needed to meet with can’t make it.   Not only is there no overtime, but this is taking up valuable time I could be spending with my family – especially knowing that S has been with the Li’l Peanut all day and probably could really benefit from another set of hands.

Although it’s a great example of why my job sucks, it’s not necessarily a good example of why I don’t like  being a manager.  T mentioned a few managerial concepts like delegation and coaching.  And I offered that the manager I’m filling in for is very hands on.  She’s able to  see the bigger picture, but also has a great understanding at a practitioner level.  Unfortunately her style may have encouraged people to do half-assed jobs because she’d be there to fix any problems.  I know I have written briefing notes any old way for her in the past, knowing she would just rewrite large chunks of it anyway, regardless of the effort I put into it.

So, I wondered if staff are accustomed to having someone go over their work and fix any problems.  And I just don’t have the energy to redo people’s work.  I want to be able to trust that when they’re fact checking something, they’ve actually done it right.  I don’t want to have to second guess them and go back and ask if they’ve done the work.  I don’t want to read their briefing material and ask how they came up with the estimates, or whether what they say is the treatment in other jurisdictions is thorough and factual.  I don’t want to already have to know the answers myself.

Basically, I want to make sure they’ve addressed the issue and as long as the note makes sense – then I’m happy. But then my boss reads it (the one I’m replacing, who is now my Director) and asks questions.  And I feel like a failure because I hadn’t asked for this extra information.

And that’s the crux of it: I feel like a failure because I have the mindset of a worker, not a manager.  Plus, I really don’t deal well with being jerked around by my higher ups (i.e having to stay at work for no good reason). Overall, though, I think I have to make note of things when they occur to me, so that when asked if I want to be a manager again, I can review and remind myself of why I think the job isn’t for me.