The Momoir Project

My head is spinning out of control. I feel like I’m on a tilt-a-whirl at the carnival and it’s not stopping. A wave of nausea hits me so hard, I have to edge my way along the wall in the direction of the bathroom. The antiseptic cleaners sting my nose, which makes the corridor spin harder. I open the bathroom door and drop on all fours, positioning my head over the white bright toilet bowl. The next wave of nausea convinces me that I am going throw up. But nothing happens. This position hurts my back so I sit my bum on the hard cement floor. What is wrong with me? I need to go back into the room to tell my Grandma I want to leave mom’s hospital room. Everyone is crying. My mom is not able to speak. I do not understand what is going on.

“Everything okay in there?” a man’s voice asks.

I realize I am not actually in that hospital room. I am in my own bathroom, in my own house. It’s twenty two years later and I am nauseous again, but for a very different reason. My big, swollen belly is making it hard for me to get up. My husband comes in and dabs a cold cloth on my forehead while I steady myself on the sink.

I cannot tell him what I just experienced. I do not understand it myself. He yawns as he asks me if I want to lie down on the couch or upstairs in our bedroom.

“The couch,” I mumble. “I can’t do more stairs.”

In the ten steps it takes to get to the couch, I stop twice for contractions. It is Day 2 of labour without any hope in sight. The contractions are now ten minutes apart. It’s been that way for thirty-six hours now. We have just gotten back from our second attempt to be admitted at the hospital.

After I am settled on the couch, I look at the clock. 2:30 am. I insist my husband go to bed. He hands me my cell phone so I can call him if anything happens. His will be beside him in bed.

The house is very still. I turn on the television in hopes of distraction. It does not help. I cannot get my mind off my bathroom flashback. I really could use my mom right now.

I was ten years old when she died of breast cancer. When I had that intense bout of nausea outside her hospital room, I did not know that four hours later she would pass away. Even though it has been over twenty years, I still miss her. I want to ask her about what she went through when she was in labour with my younger sister and I. One of my labour fears is that I will give birth to a big baby, as my sister and I were both over eleven pounds. I am uncertain if our births were natural or by c-section. I am almost ready to wake up Michael. The loneliness is too much to bear. It is my finally throwing up that wakes him.

After seventy hours of labour, we have a healthy baby girl named Alexa Patricia, weighing 8 pounds, 12 ounces. After one night in the hospital, we are released to go home. I could not wait to show Alexa her home, her new crib and our cats.

We arrive as a threesome to a quiet house and quickly realize we do not know what to do. Do we just hang out? Based on what the pregnancy and baby books recommend, I ask for no visitors until we are settled at home for a few days. I cuddle with Alexa, as Michael heats up a frozen entrée from our full fridge. Another tip from the books - stocking up your cupboards for the first few weeks. The books are my only resource with the exception of a few friends. What family we have are scattered across Canada. In my baby photo album, the photos show grandparents, aunts and uncles surrounding me in the house the day I came home. My mom is in a comfortable chair with her feet up, eating and socializing. I am passed around for photo opportunities, being the first grandchild and niece on my mom and dad’s side.

We eat our dinner with Alexa sleeping on my chest. I take the first night shift and let Michael go to bed for a few hours. The rest of the night, we take turns to feed and burp. We are proud of how we are doing this together as new parents. But my soul hurts that I cannot share this wonderful day with my mom.

During my 3am shift, I look at our little bundle in my arms. My next breath brings panic. What if I have the same fate as my mom? What if I am gone before I can tell my child about all these moments? I am thirty-three years old, the same age as my mom when she was diagnosed with cancer for the second time. My mom died at thirty-eight. I have taken care of myself as much as possible by having regular mammograms, watching my diet, exercising and fundraising for breast cancer. I yearn to record my history and Alexa’s stories, just in case.

I settle in the feeding chair with her. In my right hand, I grab a pencil and notepad. I pen my first children’s book about our aging cat, Harley. Pictures are all I have left of my mom and my childhood. It is not enough. My child may not remember our cat, so it excites me to put my love for him into a book. If my story ends early on earth, my child will know, in my words, how much I love them.

Two years later, I am in a birthing room at the same hospital. I am hunched over the table with my naked spine facing the anaesthetist who is prepping the epidural. I am one week early from my due date with my second girl, the gender already confirmed by many ultrasounds. It has been a half an hour of the drug doctor poking at my back and nothing is working. I overhear him tell the doctor who is to perform the caesarean that he will try a spinal tap.

My body is shaking, shivering so hard I can’t talk clearly. The hospital smells are making my head spin in a familiar way. In a room full of people, I feel so alone. Hospital rules say that my birthing partner (my husband) has to wait outside until the IV hook up is done. Two nurses are trying to hold me in position with a warm blanket draped over my shoulders to try to calm my nerves. Tears are racing down my face. I am thirty five years old and I want my mommy. I am scared that my fate is sealed and I will never make it to see my children.

Finally, the staff tell me that they need to put me under to get the baby out. I beg them to let me tell my husband. He will still have to stay outside for the birth. They let Michael in briefly. All I can get out of my mouth is that I am sorry he will miss the birth, and if anything happens save our child over me. I black out.

In a morphine haze, I open my eyes confused. I can hear my name being repeated, followed by questions about pain. Then, I hear my husband’s voice telling me we have another beautiful healthy baby girl. The fog clears, and my eyes focus on my Michael’s face. Relief washes over me like crashing ocean waves as I hear him say that Jessie Torianne is okay. She is 10 pounds and 13 ounces. She has all her fingers and toes. The staff tells me she has a great set of lungs. I am alive. I made it through the surgery.

Hospital procedure states that all post caesarean babies must remain in ICU for ninety minutes until being reunited with their mom. Michael shows me pictures of her on the digital camera.

Jessie arrives into our room right at the ninety minute mark. Michael passes her to me from the hospital bassinet. I introduce myself to her. She is fast asleep. I cannot take my eyes off of her. She is perfect. I want to show her to my mom. I ache to call her with the news and have her burst into the room in full grandma glory.

Jessie stirs and opens her hazel eyes to look at me. Her expression of joy to be here reminds me of how my mom looked every time she got to come home after chemotherapy. It is as if my mom is here. As a legacy gift to her, both of our girls carry her given names. They carry a piece of her always.

My gift to my girls and their children will be to write my momoir stories. This is but the first one.

“What is that?” my husband asked, as a look of disgust crossed his face.

We were standing in our bedroom and I was dressing for the day.

“What’s what?” I asked in my most casual voice.

I knew full well what he meant.  Hair. That’s what’s what. Not just any hair. Armpit hair. Lots of it. Under my arms.

“Aren’t you going to shave?”

“Nope. I’m not shaving my legs either.”

Not a big surprise. As a mother of six young children, I shaved my legs on rare occasions and Sundays if I remembered. And I was prepared for this moment. So, I began my spiel. If God had wanted me to have silky smooth pits and legs, hair would not grow there. It’s the way nature intended me to look. Women all over the world don’t shave. They’re regarded for their natural beauty. It’s a sign of respect to age naturally.

He looked a bit puzzled so I quickly turned to my backup argument - the money we would save. I chose my words carefully beginning by reminding him how lucky he was to have a low-maintenance wife. He had agreed on past occasions that he had it easy compared to other husbands. I didn’t wear make-up, didn’t enjoy shopping, didn’t wear jewelry and didn’t like him to waste cash on flowers. This made his life simpler and most of all saved him money. Now, we wouldn’t have to buy razors.

“Besides,” I stated with haughty confidence, “I don’t get sweaty pits as often when I don’t shave. I’ve been experimenting for awhile.”

This caught my husband by surprise but only for a moment. He shrugged and a look passed between us that caused us to chuckle. With six children under the age of eight, our days of frolicking in the nude were on hold. It’s no wonder he hadn’t noticed my little experiment.

“So is it going to bother you if I don’t shave anymore?”

“I guess as long as I don’t have to see it,” he replied, reluctantly.

A countenance suggesting superiority over other mothers continued its growth within me. I was a mother who didn’t need all that “stuff” to feel beautiful. I was beautiful just the way I was, hairy pits and all. With the matter resolved and a smirk of pride, I continued dressing in my no hassle jeans and T-shirt.

For 17 years, I embodied the crunchy granola mom. I was co-sleeping before it was cool and experienced in the art of attachment parenting before it was branded. Cloth diapering was a way of life. Breast is best was my mantra. I had given birth at home twice. This was who I was. For years, I had been comfortable living in my mother body. By the time my husband and I had the hairy pits conversation, I was deep in my role of the self-righteous earth mama.

But my self-righteous attitude was a cover. After nearly two decades, I began to realize I’d been living a lie. I wasn’t embracing the scars borne from the christening of motherhood eight times over. Truth be told: I hated my mother body. And I hated it more and more as it began to fall apart. Gone was the flat tummy - seven pregnancies resulting in eight children had warped it into an unrecognizable mass of wrinkled skin and deep craters which lacked a belly button for identification purposes. My size 32C breasts and all their perky goodness had long ago made their exit. As they exclusively fed those eight babies, they grew larger and longer and began resting atop that mess called my stomach.

Before I had children, my body was a source of self-esteem. When I was 20 years old, I was basking in the sunlight streaming through the windows of my boyfriend’s home. Lounging on the couch reading magazines, I thumbed to an article addressing the perceptions teenage girls had towards their breasts.

“What are you reading?” my boyfriend asked as he entered the room.

“About boobs,” I said.

“What about boobs?” he quickly took a seat next to me.

“Oh, that it’s okay if they’re lopsided, pointing in different directions and stuff. That they all look different and that you shouldn’t be upset when yours aren’t perfect.”

“So what about yours?” he asked, as if he didn’t already know.

“Mine are perfect. Perfectly matched, perfectly sized,” I said with a tinge of pride.

I was in love with my breasts. They were exquisite. Their symmetry was perfect. The areolas and nipples were centered just so and were the perfect color so they contrasted against my skin without being too dark. They stood straight at attention. I adored my breasts. Three years later, my body began the natural changes motherhood brings. It continued to change with each new life I carried and birthed and nursed. I no longer recognized its shape. My breasts and stomach were out of proportion with my stick thin legs and arms. Luckily, I had the needs of my large brood of young children to keep my mind off my looks.

Sometime after giving birth to most of my children, I happened upon a blog called The Shape of a Mother. I sat transfixed at my computer screen unaware of the chaos of my children running and playing just behind me. Here were dozens of incredible photos of mamas showing their stomachs and breasts to the world and the photos alone were a powerful statement. I had been attempting to accept my changed body for years. As I began to read the stories of these women who embraced their bodies – wrinkles, sag and flab – I gained a testimony of the importance of loving my mother body. They wanted the world to witness the body of real mothers. With the birth of each child, we gained a few more stretch marks, our skin tone became soft, and our breasts lost that youthful exuberance. These women were strong and I wanted to be one of them. After that day, I committed to become a mother who rejoiced in the changes her body had endured.

But more than three years after stumbling across that blog, I came to the end of an era in motherhood. I was finished birthing, nursing, and diapering babies. I was forty years old and my youngest child was weaned and toilet-trained. My oldest child was headed to college. Instead of feelings of sadness as this chapter in my life drew to a close, I was excited about the opportunities that awaited me. But I also felt unsettled. My earth mama body

and ideals seemed less important as I envisioned the second half of my life. As these thoughts of freedom began to permeate my consciousness, an awakening occurred.

On a visit to my parent’s home, I was confronted by the image I had invented for myself. As I yanked the shower curtain open, I saw reflected in the large bathroom mirror my nude brutalized body. I no longer wanted to embrace this body. It taunted me, disgusted me. My sagging breasts were swinging and pointing at the floor. I stared at my huge dark areolas with thick nipples that always choked my babies when they nursed. My eyes were drawn to my stomach. It had expanded and molded to each life it carried and after delivering those babies into my arms it retracted lifeless and empty not remembering its former self. I hated the way I looked. I was ugly. Voices of my children playing in the next room lulled me back to reality. Guilt exploded and reminded me that this body was a small price to pay for the unconditional love that was their gift to me on a daily basis.

The voice of shame began uttering its objections to thoughts about altering my appearance. A nip here. A tuck there. What I felt seemed almost sacrilegious,but vanity was creeping into my thoughts and I was imagining myself as a sexy hot mama – one with eight kids. I craved the possibility of having my body back like an alcoholic craves a drink, and that craving began to encompass my whole being. I felt driven to see what could be done to reverse what motherhood had done to my body.

I entered the plastic surgeon’s office for my consultation feeling a bit shameful. Luckily, there weren’t any other patients in the waiting room. My palms were sweating as I filled out the paperwork. The bubbling of the rather obtrusive saltwater fish tank filled the empty space in the room. Pamphlets surrounded me regarding every possible alteration one could imagine concerning their appearance.

“Stephanie,” a rather friendly nurse called my name and led me back to a small exam room.

“And what can Dr. Yates help you with today?” she asked.

“Um, I’m here to see about a breast reduction and a tummy tuck,” I answered.

“Great!” she seemed excited for me. “Remove all your clothing except your panties and put this gown on with the opening in the front. The doctor will be in shortly.”

She closed the door behind me and I quickly changed into the gown. I sat nearly naked and sweating under the paper thin gown awaiting the doctor’s arrival. The anticipation was grueling. Voices whispered that I was a traitor to who I was, who I had become over the years. I hushed them into the recesses of my mind. A slight knock on the door startled me back to reality.

“Come in,” I said timidly.

An extremely handsome doctor entered the room, causing me to perspire even more. He was followed by the nurse.

“Hello Stephanie. I’m Dr. Yates,” he said, shaking my hand.

I couldn’t believe I was going to show my mother body to this man.

“The nurse tells me you’re here to find out about a breast reduction and a tummy tuck.”

“Uh-huh,” was all I could utter. As he began his spiel about the two procedures, I forced myself to come to my senses.

“Hop up here on the table and let me examine you,” he said. The sweating increased once again.

“Open your gown and just drop it off your shoulders so I can see what we’ve got here.”

I could have told him what we had here – gargantuan boobs with pockets of sweat nestled under them.

He studied my breasts like a painter studies his canvas. He then took each breast individually in his hands and molded and twisted it while ticking off numbers of grams to the nurse who recorded them in my chart.

“The smallest I can probably get you in is a C cup while maintaining proper blood flow,” Dr. Yates explained.

A smile crossed my face. I was thrilled.

“Okay, now stand up here so we can take a look at that stomach,” he said. “Pull your underwear down a bit, there that’s good. Now, let me see here,” he said, pushing and stretching my flabby skin. He explained that I had diastasis recti which was a separation of my abdominal wall.

“I’ll stitch those muscles back together and we’ll pull this skin down and build you a new belly button,” he said.

“You mean you can really and truly get rid of this?” I questioned while grabbing the hunk of protruding skin and muscle just under my sternum – the part of my stomach I detested the most.

“Oh yeah,” he said confidently.

I was astounded. Those voices in my head preaching their opposition to my vain ambitions were forever silenced. I walked out of his office as if sailing on the wind. I suddenly understood that it was okay to want a version of that old body back. I didn’t have to have visible scars on my body to prove what kind of mother I was. My children and I knew what kind of mother I was and that was all that mattered. All the wrinkles, sag, and flab could be removed and I would still be the same mother – loving and carefree, only now with the addition of a confidence generated by feeling good about the way I looked. As I walked through the parking lot to my car, I made my decision – surgery would literally open me up to a new chapter in my life.

I remember the snow. How it slowly weaved its way down from the night sky and gracefully settled in between the coloured Christmas lights that flanked the balcony across the alley. I stood in a room filled with the warm glow of a small light that cast dream-like shadows onto the walls. In my arms lay my newborn son, softly breathing as we swayed to the gentle rhythm of a lullaby that played in the background. His little body snuggled into me as I softly kissed the top of his downy head and breathed in the splendor of his newborn scent. It was a moment of peace, a moment in life that you hold onto tightly for fear that it will disappear before you can bask fully in its beauty.
But sadly, it was not an accurate representation of what my life with my baby really looked like in those early months. Although I did try desperately to cling to this moment, it slipped from my fingers as quickly as it had appeared and I mourned its loss, my sobs drowning in the cries of my baby.
I did not think that there would be so many tears. I knew that the transition to parenthood would be challenging but I had no idea the extent to which my limits would be tested. I once had a yoga teacher who, prior to a meditation session, had asked us to think of a word that described what we wanted to cultivate in our lives. The word came to me quickly and easily - peace. It was something I had always been searching for. Perhaps it is because I feel I was cheated out of it too early in life. When I first realized I was pregnant, I was bathed in a feeling of calm. I felt like everything in my life was in alignment. I was balanced and all that had come before, both good and bad, had brought me to that moment. This was peace to me. I wanted that feeling to continue beyond my pregnancy and I had thought that through my baby I would finally find the sense of peace I had been searching for. But how do you cultivate peace when you are swimming in a sea of chaos? This was the question that challenged me in those early months as a mother.
In the beginning, we did not feel as though we were faced with anything unusual. As new parents, my husband and I were exhausted, elated, overwhelmed and hopelessly in love with this new little being that had been placed into our lives. But as the days passed, we began to see that things would not unfold according to our expectations. Our son, Jeffrey, was a strong baby, both in physique and temperament. He had a cry that could rock the entire city and had no qualms about using it. He hated his crib and placing him in there was like asking him to sleep on a hot bed of coals. It was a similar story with both the stroller and car seat. More than five minutes in either resulted in a cascade of thundering wails. His cries would vibrate through me like an electric shock as every inch of my body screamed at me to do something, anything to bring him comfort and make him stop. But we were lucky; he was easily consolable. As soon as I scooped him up and nestled him in close, his protesting cries would quickly downgrade into small whimpers that soon faded into soft, small breaths and calm would return to our lives.
He was considered a fussy baby and at times, the ferocity of his cries made me worry. But my arms had the power to calm him and this satisfied me, leaving the worries at bay. Then one night, three weeks after his birth, I was rendered powerless. Jeffrey had always been fussier in the evening so the onset of a potential crying episode was no surprise. But unlike previous times, I could not console him. I began to feel nervous. Was he sick? Was something horribly wrong? I nursed him, changed him, swaddled and rocked him, but to no avail. Nothing worked and his cries only escalated. Soon enough he was crying at a pitch I did not even think was possible. It went on like this for five hours and that night I went to bed shell-shocked with my ears ringing like I had just been to a rock concert.
Colic had set in and every evening for around five hours, Jeffrey would cry so intensely it was like he was being stabbed with a knife. I spent my evenings doing lunges and dancing to “Baby Beluga” in an effort to somehow soothe him. The exertion left me exhausted but the drive to help him and fix whatever was wrong was so strong that as long as my actions yielded even the tiniest of results I would not stop. I tried everything I could think of but I was told there was nothing I could do but to offer him as much comfort as possible and wait it out.
It was clear that I needed help. Despite an intense fear of flying, especially in winter, my mother arrived from her northern home to be by my side. She had given birth to five children and I felt that if anyone could understand what I was going through it would be her. When she walked through the door, an immense feeling of relief washed through me as I tried to hold back tears. Later that evening, when the colicky cries had finally subsided, I collapsed exhausted next to her on the couch. Was it just me or did the lines on her face look a little deeper? Probably a result of the flight I thought.
“So, which one of us cried like that?” I asked, trying to make it sound lighthearted, but seething with seriousness deep down inside. She hesitated.
“Well, I don’t really remember any of you crying like that.” She must have noticed the crestfallen look on my face and in an attempt to make me feel better quickly added, “But really it was so long ago that I probably don’t remember.” It didn’t work. Not remembering this is like not remembering going through labour. Unless you were knocked out there is no way that you could forget. Perhaps the edges might soften a little with time but you would definitely remember.
A few days later, I was standing in a grocery store aisle, cursing myself for not having written a list. Frantically, I tried to recall why I was there, knowing that at any moment Jeffrey would have a complete meltdown. His cries reverberated off the fluorescent lights overhead and filled the entire store. But it was hopeless. My frazzled mind could not focus and I took off in search of my mom.
I found her sitting by the blood pressure machine in the pharmacy. Her arm lay nestled in the machine’s cuff as she studied the small screen in front of her that held her results. My mother loved blood pressure machines. They gave her the freedom to test whenever she wanted without a visit to the doctor and she would pump out results faster than they could replace the tape. She did have a tendency towards high blood pressure, which warranted the testing, but I often wondered if her enthusiasm would be just as high if her blood pressure was normal. I think she just liked to know.
But today, she had a different look on her face. Her brow was furrowed as she reviewed her numbers and her expression exposed a touch of worry. “Is everything alright?” I asked, raising my voice so it could be heard above Jeffrey’s screams which had now elevated to their highest decibel. “Oh, fine, fine,” she replied, “It’s just a little high, probably still from the flight.” I looked over her shoulder at the small screen, 180/110. I closed my eyes. It was extremely high and I feared that I knew the reason why.
If I had any resilience within me it came from my mother. She was a woman who had escaped Communism with two suitcases, two children and a husband who yelled too much. She had gone from living in one of the most beautiful cities in Europe to rural northwestern British Columbia where the equivalent of an opera ticket is a bingo chip. But apparently, her strength, which had weathered her through many storms, was no match for the cries of my son. I looked into her eyes, blue like forget-me-nots. “I’m sorry,” the words came out in nearly a whisper. She looked at me and smiled. Her rough hands, etched with years of work, patted my arm. “Don’t worry,” she said and she bent down to kiss the top of her grandson’s head.
What had I done wrong? I had planned for everything to be so beautiful. I had anticipated some hardships but felt that the joy and splendor of my infant son would melt them away. Where was the peace that my baby was supposed to bring? Was God testing my strength and resilience through all this chaos or had he just forgotten about me? The thought made me feel guilty. I loved my son with such depth that it almost broke me. When he looked up into my eyes, I saw that I was his world. All he wanted was to be a part of me and was not yet ready to be physically separated. But I was exhausted. The wrap that I had bought to carry him became my uniform. It went on in the morning and came off late at night. He was 10 pounds at birth, a heavy baby. And so, the fifty pounds I had gained during my pregnancy all but melted off. I was a woman in perpetual motion and like the movement you continue to feel when you step off a boat, I didn’t think I would ever be able to stop. Peace felt like a long way off.
Shortly after my mom left, I was video conferencing with my father. He had entered a point in his life where he no longer wished to travel further than a 200 km radius from his home. As I was unwilling to travel by plane with Jeffrey - and a 17- hour winter drive in what would largely be isolated wilderness was out of the question - this had become a great way to stay in touch with his grandson.
“I hear he cries a lot,” my father bellowed with his thick Czech accent and a voice that was unable to sound like it was not yelling at you. I smiled wearily at him, “You could say that.” I paused, as the smile faded, “Dad, I just don’t know what to do.”
My father studied my face for a moment and shifted in his seat. “Well,” he said contemplatively, “what can you do? He wants to cry, so let him cry. And if all he wants is to be with you then let him be with you.” I laughed, my father had a way of simplifying what seemed like the most perplexing of dilemmas. “Thanks Dad.”
Before I signed off my father left me with one last message. “Don’t leave him to cry alone, he needs to be close to his mother and that’s as it should be.” I was not prepared to receive such tender advice from my father. He was often awkward with words of sentiment and not at all comfortable with affection. I did not know much about his life but I knew he had faced many challenges and the years of working at an aluminum smelter and living in a company town had not been kind. Although I adored him, I had always found it difficult to get close to him. Perhaps this is why his heartfelt words resonated within me. Just let him be, this was my father’s message.
Later that day, while my son nursed, I glanced over at a pile of books lying next to me on the couch. I reached over and grabbed one that caught my eye. 1001 Baby Names: Their Meanings and Origins, a book I had acquired during pregnancy. I had wanted to find a boys name with a strong meaning but was never satisfied with the ones I came across. We ended up naming Jeffrey after his great-grandfather, a man I never had the privilege to meet but for whom my husband had a deep love and respect. I loved hearing stories about him and often I felt like I could see parts of his spirit shining in the eyes of my husband. Although we did not officially name Jeffrey until several days after his birth, it was clear to us that he had always been Jeffrey. But I had never bothered to look up the meaning of his name. I flipped through to “J” my fingers skimming over the rows of names: Jeevan, Jefferson, Jeffrey. Origin: “English.” Meaning: “God’s Peace.” I stared dumbfounded at the words. “God’s Peace.” I looked down at my son, intoxicated with milk, a thin stream of the white liquid, dripping from the side of his mouth. I thought about the long evenings of crying and how lost and helpless it made me feel, how powerless I was because I could do nothing to make it stop. Then I thought about the way he clung to me during a fit of colic and how, during moments of calm, he would look at me with unconditional love. It dawned on me that the “peace” I had thought I lost and mourned for was actually lying in my arms. The wave of calm I had felt when I knew I was pregnant was the knowledge of him growing inside me. He was my peace, a gift from God. I had been just too preoccupied with fixing something that was never broken to notice.
That night as I held Jeffrey close, his small body convulsing with cries, I remembered the words of my father and just let him be.
The colic did eventually stop. One night, it just never came and as quickly as it had arrived, it left us for good. Winter soon gave way to spring and Jeffrey slowly became more comfortable with the world around him. I would take him to the park and underneath trees of brilliant greens, he would wiggle his legs in excitement, feeling the blades of grass tickle his chubby, round feet. There were still days filled with tears, but it was different now. I knew that with patience the challenges I faced would come to pass and life would move onwards. The resistance to accept things as they were had left me unbalanced. Only by letting go was I able to navigate through the sea of chaos and find the one thing I had been searching for: God’s peace.

Here’s a riddle: When is loading the dishwasher not really about doing dishes?
Answer: When your Romanian mother-in-law is in town.

Between my husband and me, doing dishes is about shared responsibility and about keeping a home and family in a reasonable state of chaos. For this reason, I don’t say anything when he loads the dishwasher – even when he puts crystal stemware where the pots should be. Even when he forgets to rinse and the next morning I find baked on porridge coating the inside of all my coffee cups.

For me, washing dishes is about keeping my head straight. The first time I owned being an adult was when I transformed a childhood punishment into a grown up pleasure. Doing the dishes has become valued meditative time. Now, each time I plunge my hands into hot water and breathe in lavender-scented dish soap, I become a little more grounded. I get my best ideas in front of the sink. This is the time when I hatch schemes, form arguments, practice apologies.

For me and my mother-in-law, Jana, doing the dishes became our way of communicating. Since she didn’t speak English, it took some time to learn that slamming cups into rows meant she was upset or angry. Eventually I guessed that when deep sighs or woeful looks accompanied rinsing plates, I’d done something to hurt her feelings and when she briskly rearranged cutlery I had just finished placing in respective holders, she was teaching me the proper way to run a kitchen. She was letting me know I had something to learn from her. The appropriate response should have been gratitude – my actual one was silent outrage and jaw clenching annoyance.

What I felt but didn’t consider at the time – doing dishes was loaded, an indicator of an unspoken, on-going battle for domestic supremacy. The battle between adult women, who due to marriage find themselves in a relationship, is one which is both ancient and primal. It spans every period of history and crosses every culture. What I now know is that for many females in this modern age, when we no longer dominate by sniffing bums or dry humping legs (as was common in cave-woman days) loading the dishwasher can be interpreted as a demonstration of alpha-ness.

Since I don’t speak Romanian, I can’t be sure if my husband invited his mother as a loving gesture or if she insisted on coming to “help” because she’d inadvertently been given the impression I wasn’t able to manage. At any rate, she was planning to stay for three months when my daughter was just four weeks old. Once the grand tour had been given and Jana had time to settle in – my mother-in-law and I began an awkward period of sizing one another up. From the rocking chair in the living room where I breast fed my daughter, I watched her busily scurrying in and out of the room, picking up dirty dishes, rearranging cushions on the sofa, straightening carelessly tossed magazines. The woman rarely stopped moving and my own relative stillness began to feel uncomfortable. This was our first meeting, but I already knew she was different from me in other ways as well: an understated, yet intimidating woman, she finished first in her high school class. During a communist regime when every able adult worked, she left her young boys to be an engineer in a factory and only turned her attention to domestic pursuits after retirement, which she now did enthusiastically. I know her husband and sons are devoted to her and always do what she asks. I’ve lived with her son for three years – he does what I ask when it suits him. Clearly this woman had some skills.

One day after lunch, I got a call from my husband.
“Maybe you should eat more,” he started by saying. When his suggestion was met with a stony silence, he changed the subject.
“All I’m saying is maybe it’s time you got on a schedule,” he remarked with a relaxed but practiced tone. Later he asked if I shouldn’t supplement feedings with formula. “It’s just maybe the baby would sleep longer that way. You don’t eat much; maybe you’re not making enough.”

Up until that moment I was willing to overlook some of Jana’s earlier infractions – like her gift of cellulite cream – because my husband assured me it was a well-intentioned gesture. But that ended once her son began to question my breastfeeding abilities. Was she trying to find my weak points? Could she tell I was already questioning myself and so moved in for the kill? Had she decided I was an unfit mother and partner and was now starting a subtle campaign to erode my husband’s confidence in me? My fears felt a little irrational, but none-the–less, Jana’s gestures started to feel less helpful and more menacing..

Like the morning Jana came into the bedroom while I was changing Naomi. She stood by the door as I peeled off her onesie and tossed her diaper in the pail. I self consciously selected a pair of cotton pants and a cute little sweater and laid them on the change table. As I bent over the laundry basket, trying to find a matching sock in a pile of socks, Jana reached over me, carefully lifted Naomi’s head off the change table and began to slide a little red dress over her head. I froze, disbelieving. Was I really being challenged so openly? I waited for my chance to let Jana know this was a line that could not be crossed, which came when Jana fished through a drawer looking for baby sized tights and shoes. I quickly scooped Naomi in my arms, pushed my way out the door, scurried to the bathroom and locked the door.

In this moment I knew my fighting style tends to lean towards the passive aggressive. In the wild, I would probably be one of those animals who, out of spite, breaks into another female’s den, pees in it and then runs like mad.

I sat in the bathroom for several long minutes, trying to calm myself by listening to Naomi’s cooing and gurgling. I wondered if I might be a little preconditioned to dislike my Mother-In-Law. After all, my own mother’s dislike of her mother-in-law was obvious and their battles every Christmas and Easter over seemingly insignificant things were legendary. At the playground, my announcement that Jana was coming to help was met with groans and sympathetic pats. No one is expected to like their mother-in-law. Jokes illustrating these tensions are widespread and timeless. The Internet is flooded with articles, surveys and support-group blogs with titles like – What to Do with Your Islamic Mother-In-Law, Get Help with Your Asian Mother-In-Law, How to Cope with Your Jewish Mother-In-Law, Share Your In-Law Horror Stories Here.

It seems MIL’s from every corner of the globe are saddled with the same stereotype: overbearing, overly opinionated, power hungry, nasty, and manipulative. Always the daughter-in-law is the victim until she gets a chance to become a mother-in-law herself so she can then terrorize the next generation.

Even with this possibility to look forward to, I still needed some help. Thank goodness people are so willing to offer up their opinions:
“You need to put her in her place right away,” Dana, whose MIL is also from Romania, said. “Pick something, anything and yell at her about it. She needs to know you can’t be pushed.”
Another friend offered helpfully: “She won’t listen to you, so tell her your doctor ordered you not to eat foods with so much oil or butter.” She added, “Women her age always listen to doctors, never to daughters.”
Interestingly, no one suggested I try to be nice or concede any territory. “She’ll just see you as weak,” they said. “Once she breaks you, you’re done for.”

There is endless advice about how to bear or even sooth in-law tensions, but none of it actually explains why generation after generation continues the same conflict. To get to the root and possibly a lasting solution, I chose not to turn to pages of Psychology Today, but rather to the Discovery Channel.

In the wild, the fiercest battles among female primates are those meant to establish or defend position in the family. Once the pecking order is clear, harmony is restored. That sounds about right in my family as well. When Jana arrived I was a new mom, and a new homeowner — kind of new to the whole domestic scene – and this newness brought with it a certain amount of insecurity. For starters, this was the first time since graduating from high school that I was financially dependent on another person. I wasn’t working – electing instead to stay home with my newborn - and uncertain of my contribution to the household. I didn’t know if I was doing it right, and so my need for approval coupled with extreme exhaustion compounded my vulnerable position. Add to this the fact that I’m not actually married to my husband. We’ve lived together long enough to be common-law, but I know from my own Eastern European family, culturally this is problematic. It’s a question of legitimacy, really. My husband doesn’t get this, but I know in the way women know things, that this is an issue for my mother-in-law. She’ll never say anything to us, of course. She’s a smart woman who would never intentionally ruffle her son’s feathers, but I can feel in her sideways looks and in some of her gestures that she doesn’t know how to be with me. So we sniff at one another, trying to figure out where we belong, how we fit, what space we’ll be willing to give to the other. And since this isn’t something to discuss, we figure it out by picking out clothes and watching for a reaction. Loading the dishwasher then watching to see how it’s received. Giving advice then waiting to see if it’s taken.

So maybe she is testing me to see how adversarial I’ll be. Maybe she’s trying to assess whether or not I’m a threat to her uncontested position of matriarch – whether I’ve got what it takes to be an Alpha female. As the toilet seat grew more uncomfortable and Naomi squirmed, getting bored, I imagine Discovery Channel-like commentary laid over that day’s interactions with Jana.

“The female of the species bristles as the new female approaches the pack…” I can begin to imagine primal stirrings, an instinctive wariness as one who doesn’t share language or customs shacks up with the favoured male then attempts to take on a dominant role as mother of a most valued commodity: a grandchild. When concerns about whether that grandchild may or may not be learning the same language, customs or manners in an acceptable or familiar way are added, it’s actually remarkable that relations between the two females is so restrained.

I actually give Jana some credit for trying through cleaning, cooking and picking out outfits to assert her value and establish her place in our new little family. Although I’d been feeling pretty powerless since Jana started rearranging my kitchen cupboards, I imagined how my silence and withdrawing could actually feel like I was shutting her out. I hate admitting this, but I’ve got a ways to go before I could successfully compete for top spot in this family. For starters, I need to learn to iron. I’ve watched enough Wild Kingdom to know it’s the younger primates who pose greater threats. So maybe I should just give Jana the kitchen to control as she likes. She can have the laundry too, if she wants it. I look down at the squirming, half dressed infant struggling to free herself from my grasp. I slide her other arm into the little red dress and zip up the back. Maybe Naomi is the one I should be watching….

Digger Land versus Princess Land. My children sit, one on the potty and one on the toilet, debating the merits of both. My five-year-old states that Princess Land is soft and gentle, with light colours – light pink and light blue and light purple. She waves her hands, gently undulating, indicating softness. “Not like boys. Boys are hard.”

“NO! Digger Land!” my three-year-old barks, “Bam, bang, shoot! I’m going to kill you! Poo poo!” He pushes it all into one long string. Then, “Eyeball, monster, I’m going to get you.” He laughs a bit manically, because he knows it will enrage his older sister.

My head clouds over and I’m paralyzed by what to say. They aren’t interested in me anyway; they continue to argue over which is better. “Princess, digger, princess, digger.” Where does this inanity come from? Please, make it stop. Why are they saying this? It’s so predictable. I feel myself being pulled into the camp that I so emotionally despise. The camp where I am tied to a tree and forced finally to recant all of my previous beliefs. “Yes, that’s right. Girls are sugar and spice and boys do only like lizards and puppy dog tails. There are differences, fundamental, genetic, predestined. I was wrong to fight it.”

I sometimes hear myself admitting to other mothers, “Yes, there are things that just seem to be more stereotypically ‘boy’ with my son.” His fascination with diggers and cement trucks; his desire to watch monster movies when his older sister is terrified of them; his interest in pirates and T-Rexes. I receive a knowing smile from the mothers, a conspiratorial look that says: “But of course. He’s a boy.” I feel like I’m betraying myself.

With my daughter, I was able to stave off this gender divide for a bit longer. I had her convinced, up until about 6 months ago, that she could be a paleontologist, that princesses weren’t really all that interesting, that she could wear a sweatshirt with a dinosaur on it, that trucks and race car stripes are meant for all kids. And it worked reasonably well. Until she started understanding the social code, and one by one these things vanished. She refused to wear her favourite dinosaur shirt, because a preschool classmate had asked why she was wearing boy’s clothes. She began to ask about Belle, Ariel, Cinderella, and Jasmine, telling me that on a scale of one to 10, she was at a one regarding how much she knew about princesses. She announced she was going to be a mother and a princess when she grew up and she no longer wanted to be a paleontologist. And she refused to ride her bike with racing stripes and said that trucks were only for boys. It all fell apart, all of my work.

Just last night she cried, racking desperate sobs, because her hair was short and it wasn’t long and beautiful. She said she hated her body, her hair. I held her not knowing how to comfort her, telling her over and over again how beautiful she was. “No, I’m not. I’m not beautiful. I have short, ugly hair. Everyone thinks I’m a boy. Everyone. I want people to think I’m a girl.”

I felt it inside of me, that piercing guilt, that this was of my making, that if only I had pigtailed her hair and dressed her in pink and skirts, that she wouldn’t be collapsed in a well of hurt on the floor in front of me.

Debates over girl and boy traits are polarized, ongoing and endlessly researched. There are a plethora of studies that chronicle the differences between girls and boys – what toys they choose to play with, what characteristics they lead with, what social and school environment they thrive best in, and what in all of this, is nature versus nurture.

When I was in my 20’s, I studied Women’s Studies and socialized with a feminist group. Not surprisingly, the literature that I read, and the discussions that I had, were strongly supportive of gender identities formed from socialization; that girls and boys were conditioned to be who they were and though biology played some role, it truly was a two-bit part. From a feminist perspective, the socialization of identities is critical, because it allows for an analysis which is not mired in biological certainties. It allows for a redefinition of ‘woman’ and ‘mother’ away from the elemental constraints of the physical. In other words, the fact that women have ovaries, ample amounts of estrogen, a uterus and can grow a child, does not predetermine her affinity for pink and princesses.

Back then, I was looking, in fact, hungering for an explanation to help me understand the greater truths of the world – why there was war and violence, why there was corruption and power struggles, why money and consumerism reigned supreme, and why our society was hell-bent on destroying our ecosystems. Feminism became my answer, and my mantra, because it laid bare the elemental underpinnings of society; that the imbalance of power exists because our culturally, traditional masculine characteristics are far more valued and regarded than the traditional feminine qualities. This imbalance became my lens for understanding everything.

Fast forward 15 years and I have left much of my feminist rhetoric behind. But I still hold some strong convictions from this time in my life. I still generally hold the belief that the world is in a bad state because there is an imbalance of power and that men are overwhelmingly the decision-makers, the rule-makers, and the harbingers of justice. But not a whole lot else remains of my former ideals, living, as I do, in my comfortable home in an affluent neighbourhood of Vancouver, where conversations tend to focus on house renovations, trips to Hawaii, private versus public school debates and the ‘slippery’ slope of allowing halfway houses into our well-heeled enclave.

At a recent playdate for my son, the other mother discreetly queried me about boy behavior. She expressed concern that her own three-year-old son tackled everybody he saw. “I know he’s a boy, but I can’t stand watching it. I want to tell him not to do it at all. But I just might need to accept it.” I hear my own son saying he learns about jail and guns and killing from the big boys at his preschool. I ask my son if I like those words and he shakes his head ‘no’ with a big mischevious grin on his face. It’s a losing battle.Why should a 3-year-old know about jails and guns? Why is it even a possibility? These are the questions that make me mad – that we live in a society where this is part of its lore.

Take my seemingly petty struggle with my five-year-old over her Hallowe’en costume. “Mommy, I want to be a princess,” she says.
“Ok.” I say “But there are many other things you can be as well. What about a cat, a ladybug, a pirate, a butterfly, a frog?”
“No, Mommy. I want to be a princess. All the girls are going to be princesses. Please, Mommy, please.”
“We’ll see,” I deflect. “Hallowe’en is still some time away.”

She’s on the princess thing for a good 2 weeks and my continual redirecting of her idea feels like a broken record.
“Mommy, when can we make my princess costume?”
A voice in my head says “Can’t you just say yes? Can’t you just let her be what she wants?” But she’s only five and she wants to be a princess because all of her friends are, because girls ‘should’ be princesses, because every store window - from the boutique toy shops to Zellers to Toys ‘R’ Us - tells her that she should be a princess.

“Not now,” I say, “We don’t have the fabric for a princess costume. ” I see grave disappointment.

Then suddenly, a few days before Hallowe’en, she changes her mind. “I want to be a good witch with a wand and a hat covered with stars and moons.”

I’m all over this one. My instant encouragement and praise are transparent and embarrassing for even me to listen to. “Excellent idea! Let’s get started right away.” We spend many happy hours discussing and creating: what we’ll make her cape out of and how we can cut stars out of black felt and glue them on a piece of purple velvet. She is engaged and happy, her face excited. I am relieved we’re not talking about princesses and that our focus is on something more complex in its meaning, the witch, a symbol of female power and magic. Of course, this definition is more for me than my daughter.

My daughter may very well have changed her mind on her own accord, or perhaps she changed her mind to get my approval. Is this small manipulation something I can defend? My inner voice cautions this will only garner anti-princess rebellion come adolesence. But another voice says that these small stances do matter and on this one, I proclaim success.

This decision of mine to relentlessly fight against gender stereotype is set in my bones, even if I drown more often than I swim. The Digger Land and Princess Land – I fight it so hard because I fight myself, for how much I’ve allowed the status quo to take over. It’s not petty, and despite my own contradictions, it is about something. It has to be. I see my children as a microcosm of the larger world, and it is my responsibility and my imperative to teach them wisely, authentically, and honestly. But oh, how complicated and difficult this is to do.

Laurie Davidson is a mother, writer and librarian. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her partner and 2 children.

Published in Island Parent Magazine, August 2009, as Part 1 in a four part series on motherhood, writing and healing.

I sat on a gray stone bench
ringed with the ingénue faces
of pink and white impatiens
and placed my grief
in the mouth of language,
the only thing that would grieve with me.
from “When I am Asked” by poet Lisel Mueller

The day before Mother’s Day, while walking through the farmer’s market under a May sun, I began miscarrying what would have been the second child with my husband and the third child from my body. I knew the six week old fetus inside my forty-one year old uterus was gone. I knew fourteen days earlier, getting ready for a scheduled ultrasound to determine the exact dates for my amniocentesis, there would be no baby.
For one thing I felt fine, a problem since I had been living on stoned wheat thins and apple juice for most of my mornings, but now the nausea was gone. Second was the air that seemed so heavy in our master bedroom. Outside the tall pines that line our property’s edge stood eerily motionless, even at the tops where the Little Qualicum winds rarely relent. My little boy was still asleep, my big boy long gone to the bus, my husband in the thick of things at work, so I had time to myself to shower and change. It was quiet….too quiet.
“Something’s wrong”, said my reflection in the mirror, mascara wand in hand. The breeze picked up finally with a gentle swoosh and it seemed to me the universe answered.
‘Yessss…” it hushed into my ear.
The ultra sound technician didn’t tell me what she saw on her screen that day and so the seven minute wait in the dim exam room ticked by in silence. Sitting on the papered table watching the shadow of the curtain against the glow off the equipment confirmed what instinct had already told me in my heart.
“There’s no activity,” the radiologist worded gently, his horrid pink-striped tie snaked into his crisp cotton shirt.
“I had a feeling this morning,” I answered flatly.
Pink- striped tie wasn’t surprised. “Most women do.”
My third baby dreams were over. However, my body took another two weeks to catch up with the ultrasound findings. Although the wait to miscarry was a tough one emotionally, some of my dreams were sad and dark in those fourteen days, I felt relief that nature was finally showing up to see it done. That she showed up on Mother’s Day weekend didn’t bother me so much despite the loss. I was still a mother after all. The two boys I’ve been blessed to mother are worthy of celebration on their own.
That Saturday at the farmer’s market I managed to get myself and my two year old son home safe and sound. Right before the turn-off to our road, at the top of the hill at the gas station, I had to pull over for just a moment but other than that I just took it slow and steady.
“What ya doin’ Mama? “my wee lad asked from his car seat as I brought the Mazda to a gentle stop on the shoulder.
“Just looking for something, honey,” I gasped doubled over into the steering wheel as a twisting cramp hit my belly. “Mommy dropped something and as soon as I find it we’ll keep going.”
Once home I popped a movie in the DVD player, grabbed the fleece blanket from the back of the couch, and snuggled up to my little boy to await the end of this brief pregnancy. After an hour it was clear I needed help, not for myself but for the two year old growing bored with movies in the middle of a sunny day. So I made the call my husband by this time thought might never come - l he was at the point of insisting on medical intervention if something didn’t happen soon.
“I think you need to get home as soon as you can,” I said shakily into my cell phone. “It’s happening.”
The pain in my belly was at its peak when I heard his truck rumble down the driveway followed by the pitter-patter of our little boy running across the hardwood to greet Daddy at the front door. As my husband entered the bathroom to check on me I felt his helplessness as clearly as I felt it the night our son was born two and a half years before. Except this time there was no joy in his concern just sadness and worry. Only when he spoke did the tears come to my eyes and their salty flow seemed to quicken my body’s efforts.
“Tell me what I can do to help you,” he said eyes wide and watery.
“Just keep Lyam out of here,” I managed. “I’ll be fine just keep him out of here.”
Roughly three hours later the worst was over and as I drifted off to sleep in our bed, hot water bottle nestled in the small of my back, ice cold water at my bedside, I felt my husband’s hand on my head now resting on the cool pillow.
“I’m so sorry you had to go through this,” he said quietly as I drifted off.
Me too, I wanted to say, but didn’t find the strength.
I woke as the sun was falling across a Mother’s Day eve sky and the mirror on our wall reflected the same tall pines that stood so still two weeks ago when I first felt something shift. A robin perched on one of the huge branches, its piercing good-night song urging me back to sleep, before it flew off leaving the swaying branch behind.
“It’s all over,” I said into the reflection and the soft cooling breeze drifting in the window answered….Yessss.
Following a solid sleep I woke in the wee hours of Mother’s Day with only one thought. I had to write. Before being ‘consumed by their own smoke’, as author L.M. Montgomery has described of her journal, my thoughts needed somewhere safe to land other than the corners of my mind where life, marriage and motherhood made things pretty crowded. I rose from my bed, sat down with pen and paper, and put my story down while the rest of the house slept.
The words that found their way out were, like the act of miscarrying itself, twisting, bloody and raw. Reading it through when I was finished was a bit unsettling. Some of the stuff I rambled on about, like the horrifying thought of my dead fetus ending up in our septic tank, was a tad too candid I thought. Even so I left nothing out and by the end I had a couple of thousand words.
For me, writing an experience down pins my thoughts to a page, clearing my head so I can keep my wits about me. Grief and happiness are just a few more pages of words, rearranged and placed together to form a story, of loss and love and moments of joy and sorrow and the life that no one said was going to be easy. More than just blood and tears flowed from me the morning after the miscarriage. Everything that left me that day; blood, tissue, tears and words, needed to be released for my own physical and mental good. Only then could I heal.
Looking back I’m glad I allowed nature to take its course rather than force the issue from my womb via medical intervention. I’m glad for those two weeks I had to prepare myself, to ensure the hot water bottle was always handy, to stock the bathroom and the car with the biggest maxi-pads known to woman-kind, and to write down how sad I was to lose a baby but how thankful I was for the two I have been blessed with. It was all an experience worth taking note of.
“Give yourself time to heal,” my doctor advised after calling me at home to check my progress.
“We’re sending warm healing thoughts your way so take your time,” a colleague wrote in an e-mail.
“Heal well and heal strong,” a good friend whispered in my ear as she hugged me close upon hearing the news.
I took their advice, the thing one should do with words from the wise after all, and gave myself the time, welcomed the healing thoughts from those who sent them, and wrote all about it to heal well and heal strong like I knew I could. My body would mend and the rest of me would as well – day by day and word by word.

If you think being the mother of a five-year-old, a two-year-old and newborn twins (all boys I might add) poses a challenge, try being a hockey mom on top of it all. When my twins were four-months-old and I was still a little green when it came to solo outings and putting on jock straps, I was charged with the task of getting my eldest, Justin, to his hockey practice. It was a task usually reserved for my husband Dave, but the night before, he told me he wouldn’t be able to get off work.

So before I go to bed, I take out my calculator to figure out how far in advance I need to start getting ready so I can get there on time. I factor in things like giving the older kids a snack before we leave, feeding and changing each of the babies, getting Justin dressed in his gear so that all 97 pieces stay on throughout the practice, changing a last minute poopy diaper–or two–putting both babies in their car seats, packing the diaper bag with enough diapers, wipes and outfits to last for 90 minutes, putting shoes on my two-year-old Aidan, finding coats and blankets to wear in the arena, loading the car with the hockey bag, diaper bag, toys for Aidan to play with, snacks to eat at the rink, stroller, two car seats (with babies in them), and two kids, driving to the arena, unpacking the stroller, car seats, two kids, diaper bag and hockey bag, maneuvering the entire ensemble of stuff and tiny humans from the parking lot through the doorway and into the dressing rooms, putting on Justin’s helmet and gloves, and getting Justin’s skates on so that they stay tied up for the whole practice.

I figure 85 minutes is enough time.

The next day I have my game plan all laid out. I am ready. I pack everything and everyone into the van, and get into the driver’s seat and look at the clock—right on time. We start on our way and I look around, noticing the beautiful, sunny September afternoon. The kids are all quiet in the car. I feel such a sense of mastery as I drive for ten minutes to the arena. At the rate I am going, we are actually going to be early.

Driving up to the arena, I score the parking spot closest to the rink doors. I get out of the van and unfold the stroller. I open one rear sliding door and heave one car seat out of the van and click it into the stroller. I walk around to the other side and open the door to let Justin and Aidan out. Then, I heave the other car seat out and click that into the stroller. I neatly hang the diaper bag onto the stroller’s handlebar. Justin drags his own hockey bag and Aidan begrudgingly walks beside the stroller. I have everything under control.

The stroller is long, longer even than some small cars. But Justin opens the door to the rink for me, and I manage to make the series of sharp right turns to get the stroller into the dressing room. Aidan sits beside Justin on the bench and plays with his little batman. I kneel down at Justin’s feet and tackle the skates. Tying up hockey skates is not my forte. I never tie them tight enough and I always struggle to find the right criss-cross pair of laces to pull to make them tighter. It takes me longer than most of the hockey dads that are there, but at last I am done. And we are still 5 minutes early.

“Okay, Justin,” I say, all chipper. “Get your hockey stick and go out there.”

“Where’s my stick, Mom?” he asks.

Where is his stick? I look inside his hockey bag as if the stick could defy the laws of physics and fit inside something that is clearly smaller than itself. Shit.

I look wildly around the room to see if there’s a spare stick that happens to be lying around. Nothing. I’m new to this hockey group and I don’t know anyone there I can ask for an extra stick. Shit.

I start to have that sinking feeling as I weigh my options. Justin can’t play hockey without a stick. The stick is at home. I just know it’s sitting right there on the porch. But there’s no one at home who can bring it to me. There’s no one but strangers with whom to leave my four kids, and while the thought does cross my mind, I realize that I have to go get the stick with all four kids in tow. This may seem a small and insignificant hurdle in the grand scheme of things, but at the time, it seems absolutely insurmountable.

I look down at Justin’s skates which took me at least 10 minutes to tie up. There’s no way in hell those things are coming off in order to get to the car. But Justin can’t walk on pavement in his skates–he’ll ruin them. I switch from despair to guerilla warfare mode and I can actually feel the adrenaline releasing into my blood stream. I have the strength of 10 hockey moms as I charge out of the arena with the incredibly long stroller, and with Justin and Aidan in tow.

“What are we doing, Mom?” Aidan asks.

“Just follow mommy!” I shout at him as I race down the hall.

We get to the end of the rubber-matted hallway and stand in front of the door.

“Get on my back,” I yell to Justin as I crouch down so that he can jump on from behind. With Justin on my back, I back up against the door to push it open, and I back out of the doorway dragging the stroller with me. With one hand holding Justin on my back and the other pushing the ridiculously long stroller, I storm through the parking lot. I can’t see Aidan in my peripherals. “Aidan, hold on to the stroller,” I command as I hunch over the stroller with Justin on my back. Luckily, we’re in the close parking spot. We get to the van and I open the door and shrug Justin off my back. I buckle all four kids back in the van. In goes the diaper bag and stroller. I race home and grab the stick from the porch, throw it in the van and race back. My dear husband, who has come straight from work to the hockey rink arrives in the parking lot just as I pull up. He rides up to the car to meet us. I step out wildly from the van and assault him with the details of the previous 15 minutes.

“Why didn’t you just let him play without his stick?” he asks.

I feel like throttling him. We’re 25 minutes late, with just twenty minutes left in the practice. So much for the calculator and the precision family outing.

A year later, hockey season is once again upon me and once again, I am faced with the task of getting to hockey practice with all four kids. But now, I am a seasoned hockey mom: I keep the stick in the van.

Words, Truth and Tears
By Christie Baker
Part 2 of a Series on Writing, Motherhood and Healing
Published in Island Parent Magazine
September/October 2009
http://www.islandparent.ca/userimages/menubar3_4a9eb2f69c5d4_Sept-Oct09.pdf

One letter at a time. This how my healing begins.

It is late and the house is quiet when I sit down at my computer. The heavy, slate coloured, West Coast sky is obscured by darkness and the only light in the room shines from the street lamp just outside my window. The glow is soft, muted by the filter of a slow, steady rain that makes me shiver.

“Just one letter at a time,” I remind myself as I set out to write a story about my loving relationship with my daughter, Alyssa—a story that, I hope, will be a treasured memento
for the day when she, too, is a mother. My fingers traverse the keyboard. But before
I make it past the first sentence, my topic has changed and I find myself writing about Ashley, the step-daughter I loved as my own for many years and lost, with the simple
swoosh of a pen, when I signed the divorce agreement that ended my marriage to her
father almost ten years ago.

“I want to be branded with the insignia of loss,” I type. “… I want people to know what
it feels like to lose a child, any child, even if she was never yours to begin with.” I am shocked. These words are deep and raw and completely unexpected. This is not the story I had planned. I met Ashley on my second date with her father, John. When I opened the door to greet him, she was the first thing I saw. He was holding her so that she faced me, her back against his chest, his arm encircling her ribs and looping snugly around her. She
was one-and-a-half years old and wearing a purple jumper that revealed her bouncing
legs. Half kewpie-doll, half imp, she had a cheeky little grin, her father’s brooding eyes and dark, heavy eyebrows. Her toes were jelly-bean perfect and the rhythmic cooing of her newly shaped words melted my heart. “This is my daughter” John said, “This
is Ashley.”

I fell in love with her in an instant. Not with him—that came later—but with her. And I have loved her ever since. The tale of my life with Ashley reads like that of any mom. Even though she was only with us part-time, sharing her life, as we did, with her mother who lived nearby, she and I bonded as surely as any woman and child conjoined by DNA. Images of our time together, preserved like snapshots from a former life, haunt my memories. I remember pacing the hallway outside her bedroom door, her small, limp body weary from struggle against the night-time wanderings of her own subconscious. Wrapped tightly in my arms, with teary eyes and hair smelling of sweet, little girl sweat, she settled as I walked her back and forth in the quiet of the night. Finally, sadness gave way to exhaustion and she found her way back to her angel’s slumber. And I remember the first time she slipped her warm, miniature hand into mine to cross the street. With her soft, baby flesh protectively encased within my 25-year-old palm, my hands felt coarse and knowing, the hands of a mother. Glancing upwards before venturing forward, she met my gaze with a conspiratorial grin. Our connection was the most natural thing on earth and we were both in on the secret.

It has been a year since I began to write. I often find myself writing about Ashley and I am still taken by surprise. I thought I had moved on, leaving the pain of loss in the past and creating a new, charmed life for myself in which Ashley still plays a small but meaningful role. For seven years, I have been happily remarried to a wonderful, supportive man. I had my own daughter, Alyssa, twelve years ago, and she makes me smile everyday, even on days when smiles seem unlikely. And I am surrounded by friends and family who are always willing to share a laugh, a glass of wine or lend a helping hand.

Had you asked me one year ago how I felt about Ashley, I would have responded, eyes
glazed over and pleasant smile plastered in place, “I am over it. I am fine.” But through
my writing, the truth is clear. My truth was jolted from darkness and flung into the spotlight through written snippets of subconscious thought, unearthed without design or preconception.

“I have seen the abyss,” I wrote. “It is black and vast and perfectly bottomless, and it lives within me. It is the void that remains where once there was Ashley.”

With the gentle stroke of fingers over keyboard, my carefully constructed cocoon of denial has been forever ruptured. Torn away are the gossamer strands of pretence, allowing a butterfly painted with acknowledgement and acceptance to emerge. I often cry when I write, but I am not sad. Shrouded in silence as words spill forth, tears of release escape through my eyes from hidden places deep within. With each word that I write,
another tear falls and I am cleansed. Even in writing this, I have cried tears of longing
for Ashley, and of compassion for myself, and I know that I am that much closer to
letting go.

Ashley, now 18 years old, is on the precipice of womanhood. She lives in residence at a post-secondary school in Northern California where she studies engineering and dates a baseball player. After my latest visit with her I came home to my computer, intending to dash off something light-hearted and inspirational about our time together.

This is what I wrote: “When it comes to Ashley, I am bulimic. I cannot get enough. I binge on her company, on the details of her life. Who are her friends? What does she do? What does she wish for? Is she happy? I try, unsuccessfully, to fill the emptiness within by gorging on the minutiae, shoving as much of her daily existence as I possibly can into brief, stolen moments. But I am never fully satisfied. At night, I lie awake in bed, injured physically. I purge my sadness through tears, sobbing long and hard, the deep growling sobs of a mother bear who has lost her cub.” I am not yet fully healed, but with time and few a more words written down, I know I will be, someday.

I’ve finally learned to forgive myself for the first two years of my daughter’s life. They say kids don’t remember too much about their first few years. Hopefully, that’s true.

When I first brought my daughter home, I envisioned relaxing hours in bed, snuggling her warm body close to mine, wrapped in our cozy cocoon and feeling as though we were the only two people in the world. I imagined brushing her tiny wrinkled fingers against my cheek. I would count her little pink toes and give her kisses all day until there was nothing left to give. We would spend hours discovering one another–I discovering how much she looked like her father, and she slowly discovering that I was the one person who would always love her unconditionally and protect her. I imagined our days and weeks to be filled with mommy and baby yoga classes. We would spend many days at the park, where she would peacefully sleep while I relaxed with my latte and caught up on some casual reading.

But all that didn’t quite match up with my reality. The rigorous demands of running two small coffee shops and being a loving mother proved to be the most challenging task of my life. And I found it difficult to separate my new identity as a nurturing mom and my old identity as a businesswoman.
After a 42 hour labor filled with surprises and complications that led to a serious back injury, I brought my daughter home and within a few days, the blissful stage of new motherhood abruptly came to an end. I had barely mastered the difficult art of breastfeeding, or changing a poopy diaper when my cell phone alerted me to numerous messages from staff who were giving their notice. Before my daughter was born, I’d spent countless hours training new staff to ensure my absence wouldn’t be missed. Now, not even weeks later, each were giving me different reasons for why they were leaving.

I was 27 when I purchased my first business, by age 30, I had already ventured into my second one. I worked anywhere between 60 to 70 hours per week to ensure the daily operations ran smoothly. My partner, who entered into the business at year two, was my partner both in life and in business. We split the daily operations of the shops fifty-fifty, with more occasionally falling on my shoulders because I had more experience. It had always taken all our efforts to run the shops, except now we had a daughter who required a hundred percent of our attention as well.

My role in the businesses, besides working behind the counter 40 plus hours a week, included scheduling 18 employees, payroll, rotating and finding local artists every 8 weeks, endless office work which racked up to about 20-25 plus hours a week, hiring and training new employees, quality control, charity events, banking, cleaning and keeping up with almost daily orders with different suppliers.

About a week after my daughter was born, I spent a morning going through a stack of resumes and calling some of the best applicants. I was wearing my tattered white cotton housecoat with Sophia draped over my arm, her face slightly over my wrist, belly on my forearm–her favorite position. I sat down at my desk and wrapped my blue and yellow moon-shaped breastfeeding pillow around my bulging belly and attempted to hire some people over the phone. I placed my hand behind Sophia’s tiny head and pressed her up against my breast to feed. My first thought was how many phone calls I could get away with before she began to fuss. As I began to make some headway with the applicants, I began to feel uneasy both physically and emotionally. I realized, though not consciously that in that moment, that I’d been more concerned about the applicants on the phone than I had been with ensuring Sophia was being properly being fed. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was just the beginning of many moments of guilt and conflict.

At just a few dollars above minimum wage, my employees are not using this job as a means to a better future. Our staff is almost always transient, which means I have my hands full hiring and training every few months. So every few weeks, I found myself lugging Sophia down to the shops, strapping her into the Baby Bjorn for hours at a time while I attempted another round of training new employees.

Sometimes in the middle of my training sessions, my mind would wander and I would think about how I should be at home with my daughter rocking her in her baby swing. Or how I should be organizing all her new pictures to put into frames, and setting aside the ones I wanted for her scrapbook (which never got started).

Somewhere around six months, before Sophia was mobile, I decided to check up on some inventory at one of the shops. With her in one hand and my briefcase and over-packed diaper bag in the other, I walk into the café and set her down in her carseat on a table in the back. Before long, a huge lineup formed and the staff called me to the front for assistance. The lineup had no end in sight but Sophia’s nap did. As I began to take an order for a sandwich, I heard a piercing cry. I got this sick feeling in the pit of my gut and somehow thought if I talked louder nobody would notice her crying. I lifted my head to see at least another dozen people in line, torn about what to do. It would look totally unprofessional to bring Sophia to the front and soothe her in my arms while I worked the cash, but I also couldn’t just casually walk away from a lineup of paying customers. Thankfully, one of my staff came back from their break and relieved me from having to make such a decision. But the guilt I felt from knowing which decision I would’ve made left me feeling devastated, and I realized all my hopes and dreams of days at the parks and mommy and baby yoga were slipping further away. And even if a day like that did manage to happen, it was never truly relaxing for me. As much as I tried to focus on my daughter, the businesses were never too far from my thoughts.

My partner’s mother was the only help we had with our daughter. She worked full-time but did her best to come by on some weeknights and the odd Saturday or Sunday. It’s not uncommon for grandkids to get overly excited when they see their grandparents. The grandparents don’t have to do the reprimanding, or “mean things” like washing their hair or saying no to a treat. They just get to play and laugh and do fun things while they’re together. There were times when I would watch my daughter with her grandma and feel jealous about how much fun my daughter had with her. At times, I wouldn’t want her to babysit because I didn’t want them getting any closer.

My breaking point came shortly after Sophia turned one. I was on my way home from a long day at the shop, which always left me feeling overly anxious to see Sophia. Her grandma had been with her for at least ten hours that day. On the long drive home, I thought about how much I longed to hold her and tell her how much I missed her. When I pulled into the driveway, I was so excited to see her, I left everything in the car and raced to the door.

Usually, when I got home after a long day, she wouldn’t come running. I would tell myself, with hopes of truly believing it, that she just wasn’t an affectionate baby. Each time I opened the door, I hoped the response would be different. On this particular day, most events unraveled the same. As I walked through the door, I shouted, “Mommy’s home,” and looked over to see my daughter disinterested in my presence. Her frandma (knowing what it’s like to be a mother) picked Sophia up and attempted to bring her close to me. Sophia would take a quick look at me, and though I sensed her love, she looked hurt. She turned towards her grandma to be picked up. I thought to myself, “I want to hold you. I’ve missed you so much.” But I didn’t want the embarrassing risk of having her shun me, and remind me how the last year had truly altered our relationship. Her grandma would always appease me by saying things like, “Oh she’s just tired,” or “She just loves her grandma.”

It was time for grandma to leave, and I was counting the seconds so I could finally be alone with my daughter. As she threw on her coat and headed for the door, Sophia shouted, “Gran, Gran,” and ran towards the door as if the thought of being alone with me was something so terrible. I had to use all my strength to keep from bursting into tears. Once she left, I clasped my hands over my face and cried uncontrollably. It felt like an entire year of emotions was surging from my heart and bursting through my eyes. Even though Sophia was just a baby, she understood every time I put her needs second. She couldn’t communicate it yet, but her actions spoke plenty.

Things are better now. By the time she turned two, we had sold one of the shops. I’m still a working mom, and occasionally struggle with keeping a healthy balance. I’ve dedicated this last year to repairing our relationship. We’re finally doing the things I’d imagined we would do, just a little bit later than we both wanted. I’ve made a conscious effort to do office work once she goes to sleep, or park the truck and make my phone calls if she’s having a nap in the back. When it’s our time to do something together, I either turn my phone off or leave it a home. It hasn’t been easy. I’ve had to work hard at regaining her trust and making her feel like she always comes first, even when I’m busy.

The process of forgiveness is a long one. I still find myself having moments where I reflect on the first year of my daughter’s life and wish things had been different. I try to forgive myself for my imperfections and believe I did the best I could, with what I knew at the time.

These days when I walk through the door, my daughter willingly comes to see me. She sometimes hesitates, but always manages to squeeze in a quick, loving hug. Now, her eyes tell me how much she missed me and that no one could replace her mother’s love.

BY LORRIE MILLER

Published in The Globe and Mail
Friday, Aug 07, 2009

My 15-year-old son is addicted to speed, and it scares me stiff. His fix: black pavement, smooth like butter, with serious vertical drop and hairpin turns.

These are easy to find in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, a virtual haven for longboard enthusiasts. But if speed - as in going really fast - is my son’s passion, it’s my bane. And I am struggling with being a good parent to this high-velocity child.

How could I ever have been prepared for the moment when Wolfgang dashed into the kitchen, kissed my cheek and announced, “Mom, I cracked 100!”

“One hundred kilometres an hour?” I asked.

“Yep!” he said with such enthusiasm you’d think he was telling me he was in love, that he’d won the lotto. He was

almost as happy as when he became sponsored by a long- board company.

“God!” I said, unable to hide my fear or feign excitement. “How do you know?”

“A lady in a Porsche clocked us!”

At first, my son’s sport, longboarding, appeared to be as safe as regular skateboarding. I thought it might even be safer as the boards are quite long and they aren’t the type used for doing rails and half-pipes. But the truth was soon revealed. Now my son dresses in super-hero-like motorcycle leathers with an aerodynamic full-face helmet. His jeans are held together with unravelling threads and duct tape. His shoes are melted smooth across the soles from foot braking.

It’s been more than a year since he started racing, and our home has become a warehouse of longboards, speedboards, mini-boards and wheels of every hue and finish - green, pink, black, shredded, pitted, coned and just plain burned out. I have spawned a rider, a racer. As his mother, I try to understand this compulsion to go fast, dangerously fast.

“Are you out of your mind?” my friends gasp when I tell them what he does. “Why do you let him do that?”

In all honesty, there is little letting going on. He has found a sport that keeps him fit and active. That’s a lot for a kid these days. He walks kilometre upon kilometre back up the road after each run, kind of like when I go skiing: a 20-minute chair-lift ride so I can have the pleasure of a gorgeous wintry run for all of five minutes.

After a year of fretting, patching jeans and purchasing assorted body armour to shield his knees, elbows and hands, I ventured to watch him race. Until then, I’d only seen him on YouTube. In May, our family of six ferried over to the Sunshine Coast to cheer for Wolf at the Attack of Danger Bay longboarding festival.

At the race site, a bucolic residential neighbourhood in Pender Harbour, B.C., 8:30 a.m. arrived with the shrill of an air horn. “Clear the course, the track is live,” the amplified voice of the MC announced over 1980s classic rock - tunes I knew by heart. “Riders on,” he said as the first round screamed past us and around the bend into what is known as Carnage Corner. Some made it through; others plowed into the stacked bales of hay that lined the track.

A series of pile-ups in the hay prepared me for Wolf’s first run. I watched and waited; my muscles cinched tighter around my heart with each rider that passed. Wolf came around the corner smoothly in a clean, tucked-over-one-knee style, with one hand down to take the corner, then he skidded into the hay. Before I could peek between my fingers he was up and heading down the next stretch of the track.

After the warm-up run, racers were grouped in sixes for the elimination round; only the top two of each heat would go on. The 192 racers would be cut by two-thirds in one fell swoop. Despite my fears, I hoped Wolf would get a second run in that day.

Two hours into the race Wolf was in heat 25. At the top of the run, he gave a single push to start and a radar gun set up along the track clocked him at 60 kilometres an hour. I became more at ease as each heat passed, even with the pile-ups. Riders dusted themselves off and carried on. It was surreal. I thought of the worst, looked at the parked ambulance and wiped the thought from my mind.

“The track is live - riders on,” the MC announced.

Wolf pursued the rider ahead of him, then that rider skidded into the bales. Wolf sailed into second. He’d made it to the next round.

In the second round, 10 minutes in, Wolf shot around the second corner in third spot, took the inside line, moved into second, cleared Carnage Corner and vanished down the track. When he returned he told us he’d been taken in the final stretch. His race was over.

Now that I’ve seen the action live I feel somewhat better, yet I still have mixed emotions about my son’s longboarding. Although I love him with every fibre of my being, as I do all four of my children, the risks he takes are so far from my nature I find it difficult to understand why he’s so into it.

I understand his drive and his desire for excellence, though. So his father and I have resolved to support him, to help him maintain a balance in his life, one that includes things that aren’t connected to racing. In the end, he will follow his heart, pursue his dreams. What more could we want?