obsession

You know how, no matter what else may be going on in your life, there are certain things that occupy your thoughts on a fairly constant basis. You wake up and think about them, you unload the dishwasher thinking about them, you play trains and make lunches and read Sandra Boynton books (and by the way, Sandra, I want to take this moment to thank you for teaching my children that it's a good idea to exercise before bed...and invite you to my house tomorrow at around 8:00 to convince my four year old that the natural follow-up to jumping jacks and somersaults is of course SLEEP!) and all the time that you're doing those things you're thinking about one or two things.

For me those things happen to be coffee and sugar. Or, when there is no sugar, frozen concentrated orange juice straight from the can. (Seriously, have you tried that? It's like sherbet only way better, like sherbet made from ground up orange zingy zaps...candy? from the 80's? come on, you remember zingy zaps.)

Aidan thinks about pokemon. He walks to school thinking about pokemon, he eats dinner thinking about pokemon and he even talks about pokemon through the bathroom door. Leo thinks about being super: a superhero, a super athlete, a super cool dancer/singer/ninja assassin. And Russell? He thinks about hockey.

You wouldn't know it at first. He wakes up like a normal one and a half year old, quiet and cuddly and wanting to be carried downstairs. He wonders where his daddy is and if he's going to see his 'gappa' (grandpa) today and then, as soon as he sees the front door, he becomes maniacal. He hurls himself at the door yelling "Hockey!" "Hockey!" "Hockey!" "Hockey!"...yeah. It doesn't stop. All through breakfast, "Hockey!" "Hockey!", while we walk the kids to school "Hockey!" "Hockey!" and as soon as we get back to the house he'll leap out of the wagon, grab a hockey stick from the driveway and start whacking away at the ball. There is no reasoning with my child. I can't go inside for a cup of coffee. I can't stop to chat with the neighbours. I can't put my stick down for even a moment or the screaming starts.

"HOCKEY! HOCKEY!"

I can't even describe what he was like at the arena during Leo's hockey practices this past winter. He spent most of his time with eyes glued to the door to the ice, watching like a hawk for any sign of weakness. Whenever the door actually opened, he took off like a shot towards the rink, shrieking and crying if I dared to stop him.

"No! Hockey! Hockey!"

Of course, Kurtis laps it up like frozen orange juice concentrate on a hot day. Not me. Regardless of how cute it is that Russell stops the play every time his stick touches the ball in order to raise his arms above his head and yell

"YAY! HE SCORES!"

I'm still not impressed.

On a recent summer sandal hunting excursion to Kiddie Kobbler (during which I discovered that Aidan is no longer a child in the eyes of shoe sales people but rather an extremely skinny young adult masquerading as a ten year old) I attempted to direct the attention of my sons towards the ballet shoes.

Aidan stared at me blankly and mumbled something about the ability to evolve according to environment and grass types versus fire types. Don't be fooled, it's not science. It's pokemon.

Leo was vaguely intrigued by the mirror next to the ballet display. I thought I had him, until he realized that the shoes in question did not light up or shoot rocket flames out of the back. He then went back to practicing his moves in front of the mirror, a common pastime that involves striking various threatening and mysterious poses at a rate that would rival the best of Madonna's back-up vogue-ers.

Russell, on the other hand, came running right over.

"Mommy" he said.

When I leaned down to his level, he took my face between his hands and stared lovingly into my eyes.

"Go home."

"Hockey!"

Leo's best friend has a new princess umbrella (Yes, his best friend is a neighbourhood girl and not a four or five year old boy with a father who is astonishingly comfortable with his own sexuality.) and in a four year old attempt to keep up with the Jones'es, Leo's been demanding one too. For two and a half weeks. Well, I finally gave way and bought him one. It was not, however, a princess one. Kurtis isn't that secure.





Funny how it never takes long for a four year old to turn an umbrella into a weapon...or anything, for that matter.

response to a facebook status

This month
every observation becomes
accidental haiku


Happy Poetry Month!

"...memory brushes the same years..."

I had the intense pleasure of spending an afternoon with an old friend today. You know the kind of friend that you've known for so many years you've actually lost count? Someone who knows everything about you without having to ask you awkward questions, who picks up broken conversations from the last time you spoke, following threads that you've been discussing for years. Someone who has seen you through a million bad decisions, a broken heart or two, a myriad of hair colours and a terrible pleather jacket. Someone who likes her rice krispie squares just as gooey as you do and who will always have some on hand when you come to visit. Everyone needs friends like that and I'm lucky enough to have a few.

My friend, Julie, just got married last fall, to a man who almost deserves her. He comes as close as any man can, which is a fairly phenomenal accomplishment. Julie and her husband Bryan hosted us (and all three of the boys) for a barbecue and marathon games session on their giant projector wall of video game joy in the basement. It was an amazing afternoon, not only because we played 4 person Mario kart on a split-screen where each person's quadrant was far, far bigger than our television at home, not only because I got to relax and fall back into company that I have loved for years but, best of all, because I got to watch my kids come to realize how truly funny and special my friend is. She made them laugh, she made them comfortable, she made them forget about winning or losing, she helped them to make fast friends with her puppy and she may have become my ten year old son's first crush.

On the way home, Aidan asked me how long I had known Julie. I couldn't remember the exact number of years but it was more than a decade...which is, of course, a life-time to him.

"Was she always just the way she is now?" he asked.

"Pretty much, yes."

"You're so lucky, mom. She must have been a really good friend to have."

"Yeah. She was."

She still is.

Does this look right to you?

Last Friday, during one of the many wrestling matches that take place in my house on a daily basis, Russell fell off the bed. I took him to emergency right away but they sent us home with no real answers to our questions, just some vague instructions to observe and monitor him for a few days. Well, he had a lump on his shoulder that persisted for the next few days and felt a lot harder than typical swelling would feel. As soon as my doctor's office re-opened after Easter, early Tuesday morning, I took him back in to be seen and x-rayed.

Even I can tell that that doesn't look the way it's supposed to look.

So off we went to the emergency room again, this time for a diagnosis of a fractured and displaced clavicle. We have an appointment with the fracture clinic specialist tomorrow morning and I'm left wondering why I couldn't have girls? Lovely girls who would like to sit around and braid each other's hair and play clapping games with one another in the mornings rather than wrestle and roar?

Aches and pains

In this rain, my knees and wrists hurt. I injured my knee a long time ago in a car accident and the rain makes it twinge and ache. Just like my wrists, which I crack when I'm nervous or bored and have done since I was a kid, that now rebel on wet days, demanding to be wrapped in warm compresses and given ibuprofen. Old pains made sharp again. Old habits rubbing me raw today.

Some days, rainy days like today, this is what it's like to have kids. All my old insecurities, all the failures I feared so much and felt so much as a kid suddenly rear their ugly heads again. And, yes, I'm older and I've learned my way around them. I've got confidence and a much harder shell. I could take them on. Except I can't. They're not my battles anymore, not in the same way. I have to stand there feeling frustrated and helpless and guilty while people I love, little people I love more than anything, fumble and fight them all by themselves.

I worry about my kids a lot. I admit it. I watch them on the playground and worry. I worry about Leo, who is always talking to himself. I worry about Aidan, who follows the other kids around, wanting to be a part of the game but never quite knowing how. I worry and I feel it, that sense of loneliness and separation, like it was yesterday. Like I'm still out on a playground, talking to trees or putting on acts for other kids, being silly, crazy, because I'm not sure how to be myself.

My kids are disorganized, like me. They lose their homework and their library books. just like I did. It's causing Aidan no end of grief with his teacher this year because he doesn't go over his work, because he's always in a rush to get his ideas out and he can't slow down and be clear and concise, because he can't sit still, because he's capable of brilliant work but he just isn't (according to his teacher) living up to his potential. Because he's gifted and he's hard to deal with. His marks are dropping and he's starting to dislike school. He's gifted and he's lonely and his peers don't really get him and he feel ostracized sometimes and like the one thing that he used to be good at, school, he can't succeed at anymore. I remember that feeling. Feeling it again, so helplessly, is making me crazy.

And Leo, well, Leo is just starting down his road. And I don't want to paint him into a corner, not even here, in a blog. I'm pretending that it isn't indicative of anything when he comes home from j.k. sighing that the other kids don't listen to him, that they don't like his ideas, the way he tells them things, stories, the way he reads the words that the senior kindergarten kids are reading. It doesn't mean a thing.

I understand my role. I've arranged for the third parent teacher interview. I've called the school's head of special education. I'm learning how to advocate and fight for Aidan, every year, with every new teacher. But as much as I advocate, as much effort as I put in to helping the teachers, the special ed department, the principal, to understand what it's like to be gifted and what the challenges are (because there are many), I still can't help them. They're my kids and I can't help them feel like they're the same as the kids around them, like they're understood and liked for the very things that make them different. I just hope they find people. Please let them find people who understand them, who make them feel like it's okay to be them. I think about it all the time. It aches in me. Even when it isn't raining.