Thursday 28 May 2015

The Fallen - Poem



No longer do they
tower
over all that lies
below clothed in
shades of green, or red
or gold.

Weakened by storms
disease and time
they fall; some into
the outstretched
arms of the young
where suspended they wait
for whatever event will
allow their descent
to continue to the forest
floor where majestic limbs
which once
sheltered the wild
and bent in resistance
to the wind
lay hollowing,
full of air yet
breathless.

The tough bark
which protected will
slide to the ground.
Nakedly the fallen will beseech
the young to stand
guard and bear witness
to the growing moss and
fading glory; to
remember a time when
the fallen were the shelter
from the storm.

Some young will twist away
embarrassed by what
their elders have become
yet even as they pretend
the limbs they stretch toward
the sky are invincible, their
roots dig deep and deeper still
to feed on the nutrients which
the past offers to the present
and the future.

And I who walks
among the silence of
their cycle watching limbs
bare or full of leaves that dance
or fall, sit down upon the fallen
in awe and wonder how we so different
in our purpose and our structure
can be so very much alike.

- Vera


Friday 15 May 2015

The Mother of all Evils

While I wash my daughter's hair after swim lessons I listen to the mother/daughter exchange taking place in the shower next to ours.

"Do you want to wash your hair here or at home?" the mother asks.

I look at the child who can't be more than 4 and wonder why she's asking the question.  She is already in the shower, shampoo in hand and the mother has already taken off her footwear and sidled up to the young girl.

"Here," she says in her thin voice.

"Are you sure?" the mother asks even as she reaches for the shampoo and starts to squeeze it over the bowed head. "I think we can do a better job if we do it at home."

At the end of the row of showers, a baby buggy sits. It is being jiggled from within.  This mother has another child patiently waiting for them to leave the community centre.

"Here," the child says again.

I look at the woman who appears to be in her 30s.  She clearly has a command of the English language yet seems to have difficulty communicating her own desire to her daughter clearly.

Who gives a sh*t what the kid wants?

Then I remember.  She is where I used to be and where I am still struggling to leave. She is so used to putting what she wants and what she needs at the bottom of the list, so much so, that she is willing to do whatever her daughter decides.

And it clicks... The clarity of how I came to self-neglect.

When I was in my 20s and expecting my first child, I thought that learning how to take care of her was going to be the hardest thing I ever had to do.  I read non-stop the entire time I was pregnant and when that wasn't terrifying enough I sought out conversation with mothers and doctors and watched television shows which were more than happy to educate me on how hard having a newborn would be.  By the end of it all, it wasn't really the thought or the experience of the 24 hours of labour I went through but the thoughts of the hours and days and weeks and years during which I had to continue to make the right decisions so as not to mess up this perfect blank canvas I had been entrusted with.

It was a glorious journey.  It was also one which over the course of her first few hours, days, weeks and months, taught me how little my personal needs mattered compared to hers.  As many people who stay at home with a newborn know, those first weeks are spent blurry-eyed. Babies don't respect your need for sleep, your need for food or your need to practise a little hygiene.

For me, who nursed on demand, my daughter's sleep schedule dictated the limited scope of things I could allow into my life. Every time she fell asleep I was faced with the same choices.  Should I a) eat b) sleep or c) shower. Almost everything else ceased to exist and I focused on these three core needs.  Eating always seemed to make it to the top of the list.  It was necessary if I wanted to be able to keep nursing and necessary if I wanted to keep my addled brain from slipping further into it's sleep deprived state.

Everything else was optional. I adapted, eventually to cook, clean and use the toilet one-handed because there was a problem. When my daughter cried, my milk come rushing in making me uncomfortable and wet and making it more difficult for her to latch on for her feed.

And this, right here is where I pinpoint my cycle of self-neglect as having begun.

Before the habit which formed from necessity could be eradicated, I had another child which reinforced my habit of putting myself on the bottom of my own to-do list.  Throughout the ensuing 18 years, I had two more kids boosting my total to 4 but also repeatedly reinforcing my new habit.

To compound the situation, I chose to homeschool until 4 years ago when my oldest reached grade 9.  Against her wishes and over her loud protests, I packed her off to high school where she flourished. By the time she was in grade 11, I found myself at home without children. With one in JK, I was slowly learning how to navigate the elementary school system and how to become a before and after school parent.

I was also slowly beginning to realise how burnt out and lost I had become. When the kids were home I would cook whatever they liked. Left on my own I realized that somewhere along the way I had lost my sense of what  my personal preferences were.  Given the choice between fixing myself lunch and folding my kids clothes, I overwhelmingly chose the latter. I allowed habit, the need to compensate for having shipped them off  as well as the sudden shift in our living conditions to hijack my right to re-discover the joy of being me.

It took a little while for me to understand that I didn't have to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch; to learn that it is OK to cook shrimp even though I'm the only person in the house who likes them; to comprehend that the 6 hours a day that I am home alone can be spent doing something other than cleaning or laundry or shopping or cooking.  I can cook lunch for one and I can write, or read or sleep without guilt.

I joined the local YMCA to start moving my body and started cleaning out closets, not to feel organised but because not hanging on to ice skates that nobody has used in three years creates space for new and exciting things to enter into our lives.

Admittedly, I sometimes slip and find myself doing things for a friend or my partner or my mother when I have things on my own list to attend to. I'm tyring to take it easy on myself, however and trying to remember that I am still unlearning bad habits.

So, now in my 40s I know that taking care of kids is pretty simple. Their needs change as they grow and you simply fill them and move forward. The things we sweat over, like the potty training and when to take away the soother and whether or not to co-sleep are pretty innocuous.  At the end of the day I'm pretty sure they're going to blame me for all their problems and I'm going to hope they choose a college that's far enough away that I can visit when I miss them. When one by one they ship out I'm going to hug them while silently praying they have a child who challenges them as much as they have challenged me and that I live long enough and close enough to be able to witness it.

In the interim, my recovery continues.







Tuesday 12 May 2015

Fairy Tales - Poem

Princesses singing of
loves that will come,
godmother's granted to 
few lucky some;

Princes and knights
that slay all the dragons,
Horses that gallop
and pull forth the wagons;

Ships that set sail 
from the shore just in time,
Monsters get letters
written in rhyme;

Evil and apples
and stepmoms who kill,
hunchbacks and maidens
discover their will;

Wicked-y witches who fly
through the air,
children get captured
escape when they dare;

Fairies and magic and
carpets that glide,
trees that are willows with
grandma inside;

Ogres drink potions and
stones become soup,
arrogant emperors 
always get duped;

Mermaids want legs that
can stand up on land,
pumpkins are carriages
balls are all grand;

A daughter as small as
her mother's thumb,
A girl with long hair and
dwarves who are dumb...

Fairy tales ended with 
happy conclusions,
the writers, they suffered from
some grand delusions.

Life isn't like all 
the stories I read,
Endings are not like
the books in my head;

They're messy and painful
and when they are over,
Like Horton, we search
for that one lucky clover.

- Vera

Thursday 7 May 2015

Letting Go

Letting go is hard.  It's something that we all acknowledge and mostly agree upon. Even as adults, it can be tricky to pry open our hands and let hopes, dreams and aspirations fall from them.

Truth be told, holding on to what no longer serves us or to what will never be realized means that we prolong our own suffering. It also means that we lack the ability to grab ahold of new opportunities and possibilities and there are ALWAYS new opportunities; even when we have our eyes averted and our hands full.

In the early months of this year, we had the honour of helping one of our kids let go of the past; let go of some pain and loosen his grasp on hope. The sounds odd, having him let go of hope rather than helping him learn how to reach for and cherish it but sometimes this too is necessary.

Now, months later, freed from the need to hold so tightly to something with remote possiblities, his energy is being used to discover new interests and fulfill his desire to become a better athlete and healthier human.

I'm proud of this kid for learning that letting go doesn't mean you don't care and don't hurt. Rather, it means you acknowledge the pain and the possibility then let go of the responsibility of hoping. It means that you care about your life and your responsibility to yourself so much that you stop getting angry and frustrated at how ineffective you can be in forcefully creating what you want. It means you start being responsible enough for yourself that you invest in becoming healthy and strong and happy.

It also means that if and when the tides of the universe turn and the thing that you have longed for comes to you, you are equipped with the knowledge that you never really needed it at all.  That you were worthy of having it but you are strong enough without it.  That you have the ability to both embrace it and walk away from it at the same time. In that moment, if it ever comes to him, he will be able to remember, this is the thing that I hoped for and this is the thing that I let go of and now, after all this time, I can choose to grab it.

It also means that if the universe chooses to remain silent for the rest of his days, he can live with the knowledge that he let go.  That he moved on, moved past and grew strong without it.

Live long and prosper young one.