Put It All Together, and Here’s What You’ve Got
Snow overnight. Turning to damp snow by dawn. And by the time I headed up the hill, pushing laden stroller, to meet and steer the walking school bus … well, the substance falling upon us was debatable. One child suggested it was “slush.” Yup, pretty much.
Pushing up the hill through thick unmoving ice-slush? Pretty good work-out. Yet I never seemed to achieve the endorphin rush one achieves following a work-out uninhibited by wailing toddlers trapped in their wet mittens and strapped into a slow-moving stroller for close to an hour. The children were essentially soaked to the bone by the time we reached our destination.
Came home and shovelled the sidewalk. My mitts were wring-able.
Thankfully, babysitter arrived and I got some desperately needed writing time. The new site I’m writing for was supposed to launch on Monday; now it’s scheduled to launch Dec. 17th.
Wrote another book review, this time of A Coyote Solstice by Tom King, with pictures by Gary Clement.
Kevin came home for lunch. Promised that next Wednesday, he’d stay home with CJ in order to spare him the misery of the slow moving bus.
More writing during naptime. Wrote a short piece on baking with children.
Re-read the last story I’ve added to my basically-completed and much-expanded collection. Made some quick edits. I’ve got one more story to write, and then I’m sending the MS to my agent, who has agreed to read it and make a gut judgement–does she think she can sell it, or not.
Decided to drive to school. CJ kept crying “cold, cold,” despite snow suit, mittens, and hat. The wind was sharp. Discovered vehicle was on empty. Dragged pile of children (extra friend included) to gas station for fill-up. Of course, there was a traffic jam. The howls from hungry sad exhausted children were deafening. Hm, this sucks, thought I. Inspiration: send the two big boys into the gas station to buy a snack. Cookies, I suggested, since CJ and chips are a combo that equal choking hazard. They ran in, and by the time I’d filled up, returned, beaming, thrilled, a bag of chips each, and three bags of M&M candies for the others. SIGH. Well. “There weren’t any cookies, so we thought this was a good alternative!” And, really, it was. Everyone was cheered and chocolated, and quieted.
Next up: an evening out with Kevin. Which seems almost unimaginable at this stage of the day, with supper still to make, and children underfoot, and my hair … oh my hair. The soddenness of the morning has taken its toll.
Sunday Cooking Experiment with Eldest Daughter
I wasn’t sure we were up for it. But it was on the calendar: AppleApple’s turn to make supper. We’d scheduled it for yesterday, on Sunday, because Kevin was away and working from Thursday night through Saturday evening, and this cooking experiment requires a second parent on hand to entertain those children whose turn it is not. We started with bread dough in the morning. AppleApple agreed to help. Truthfully, I was so lethargic and unfocused after that time alone with the kids, I wouldn’t have managed to bake bread otherwise–and that’s my new weekend goal: bake bread and bake cookies.
AppleApple is amazing at bread-baking. Has all kinds of opinions about what extras we should add in to make this batch different than the last one. When I told her that some people wouldn’t believe that a seven-year-old could bake bread that looks and tastes like her bread, she was flabbergasted. It seems so easy. Measure, mix, knead. (With help from mama). This bread has rye flakes, and sunflower and flax seeds. It rose up beautifully, and we made four loaves for the week.
While the bread was rising, I took Albus shopping for winter boots. We had to drive around a bit, and he ended up, at the second store, deciding that the only boot in the store that was in his size would do (seriously! And the first store had precisely zero boots in his size). We were home in time for me to deliver Fooey to her first friend birthday party, which had her thrilled with excitement for days leading up to the big event. While she was out, I baked piles of oatmeal choc chip cookies. Kev went to pick up Fooey with Albus and CJ, and Fooey ran through our front door shouting that her little friend “has a daddy! And he’s really nice!” I got all the details at bedtime: musical chairs, a treasure hunt, what her friend’s basement playroom looked like, and on and on. She has no difficulty separating from us and doing her own thing.
AppleApple and I started on our cooking around 3pm, and worked till almost 6. I finished the cookie-baking while she started prepping ingredients. She chose a seasonal menu that did not require us to leave the house to find ingredients. She used the Simply In Season Children’s Cookbook. On the menu: Tater Soup, Granny Apple Rice, and Secret Chocolate Cake. “Tatter soup,” was how she pronounced it. That required scraping and cleaning nine smallish potatoes and four large carrots (we doubled the recipe). I appreciated how straightforward she was about her desire and ability to do certain tasks: for example, she told me that she didn’t feel confident chopping some of the vegetables. She worked very hard. She scrapped and cleaned two large beets for the secret chocolate cake. She peeled four apples for the rice. It was all very labour-intensive, but I noticed something: I didn’t mind using extra pots and pans and kitchen implements with someone else around to appreciate and enjoy the labours, and I didn’t feel impatient at all.
Which I note because I’d felt very impatient when I was in the vehicle running errands that morning (not with Albus, mind you, but with the situation of sitting in the vehicle, waiting at stoplights, having to drive across town, etc.).
But as we worked together, and talked and planned, and measured and made decisions, it felt like we had all the time in the world at our disposal.
The meal was delicious. The soup was creamy and smooth. The rice was sweet and savoury. The bread was tall and chewy. The dessert was decadent.
Next up: Fooey. It will be interesting to see what my four-year-old brings to the table (literally as well as metaphorically). She says she’s already got her menu planned. I wonder whether it will resemble her favourite outfits, when she picks out her clothes in the morning: a skirt, a dress, a shirt, a, sweater, tights, and socks.
Solo Outings
And by solo, I mean one parent with four children. Pictured above is last night’s highly successful outing, wherein I silently basked in my children’s fine behavior. I didn’t put much thought into the outing, which was probably a good thing, because too much thinking and I might have thought better of it. We brainstormed places to go for supper, and agreed on a Thai restaurant within walking distance, as we had no vehicle at our disposal (Kevin is away for a few days; and this is what happens when you decide to be a one-vehicle family). Every kid chose a small entertainment item, I threw the diaper bag into the small stroller, and we headed merrily on our way. Since we arrived before 5pm on a Friday evening, we had the place to ourselves, and food arrived quickly (we are familiar with the menu and had made our meal choices beforehand). CJ is the real wild-card, but everyone was equally hungry, and we ate and talked and CJ pointed out animals in the artwork, including making loud dragon noises for the Chinese dragon (“why is a Chinese dragon at a Thai restaurant?” the older kids wondered). The photo above pictures him choking on a piece of Albus’s chicken. Awesome camera-work, Perfect Mom! Yes, he survived. We stopped at mains (no ice cream), and left the restaurant while everyone was still in happy spirits. I was one proud mama, and even got to hear an elderly woman who’d just arrived with her friends observe in an admiring voice: “Look at that woman, out all on her own with four children!”
:::
Then, today happened. I was tired. CJ woke four times last night, and though he agreed each time to go back to sleep without nursing, nevertheless that was four times I was up, giving him a hug and a kiss (“kiss, kiss,” he requested each time) and tucking him back in. Thankfully, we all slept in till 7:30. Then we hurried through breakfast, starting a crockpot supper, and organizing to go to a previously arranged dr’s appointment for Apple-Apple. By bus. Since we have no vehicle, as mentioned. You know, I just didn’t feel up to the task. Everyone else seemed grumpy, too, and didn’t appreciate being rushed on a Saturday morning. I tried phoning Kevin for commiseration, which resulted in a farcical game of phone tag. And did not help. There was a small meltdown. Mine. But. We made it to the bus stop, climbed aboard, stroller and all, made it to the dr’s office, all in good time. It was an up-and-down morning, I guess, now that I reflect on it. I was proud of the kids on the first bus ride, and in the dr’s office. We then headed to the Children’s Museum, and I was proud of them there, too. Mostly. But there were some definite rotten mothering moments. Such as when I texted Kevin while letting CJ glue and marker himself unattended at a craft station. And lunch was hairy. Though perhaps it was just exuberant and I’m being too hard on myself (and them). Lunch was followed by an entertaining session in the bathroom with CJ and a poopy diaper, while I left the other children unattended in the main room. I could hear Albus shouting directions all the way to the bathroom. When we finally emerged, CJ ran for the play area, climbed onto a wooden box and promptly fell off. I picked him up, howling, only to realize that my other children were being watched with some disapproval by parents in the snack-area. My unattended exuberent offspring were standing on top of another tall wooden box building a stool out of giant blocks of squishy Lego in order to climb up and make their CN-tower-sized structure even bigger. And then they crashed it down.
We could have gone home then, but we didn’t. We stayed till Santa arrived, whereupon AppleApple kept asking, in a loud voice, “Why would anyone want to sit on an old man’s lap who is wearing a fake beard and pretending to be Santa Claus?”
And then we left.
How Does She Do It?
The Zine
Above is the hard copy of my women’s studies project. Some of you were involved in it, having responded to my questionnaire on a separate blog created for the project, called Moms Are Feminists Too. Thanks for your participation. I continue to feel inspired to add content and thought to that blog, even though it feels like I’m formulating ideas even as I go along. The above zine was produced with a great deal of self-doubt, and I almost didn’t hand it in, despite the effort behind it. I almost handed in an alternative production that was tidy and pleasant and not very activist-y (yes–that is how much of a keener, I am–I actually completed this single project TWICE). The zine you see above was produced late at night in a fit of scissors-ing, pasting, and scrawling. The words came from the heart and were not exactly well-planned, and I lost a few marks for that, but the emotion and purpose must have come through because the prof liked it enough to keep it.
I confess that the project surprised me in a number of different ways. It surprised me that I felt this passionately about motherhood and work, and the value (or cultural undervaluing, to be more precise) of children and childcare. I was surprised by how hard it was for me to step out and declare a position. It was difficult even to declare myself a feminist, with all the negative connotations associated with that word, and because this blog, Obscure CanLit Mama, has never had much interest in politicizing family. It doesn’t seem the place for it. I wonder why not?
Here’s another tiny and rather ironic revelation that came over me on the drive home from my last class, tonight. I thought: gee, I kind of took this class to see whether my brain could still retain information and regurgitate it on command (which is what most educational testing schemes require of students). Apparently, I still can. Really, it stands to reason that I’d be much the same student now as then. So why the heck did I think my capacity to be a “good” student might have changed? Easy. Because in between the last time I was a student, and now, I gave birth to four children. Somewhere along the line, I must have bought into that theory about “motherbrain.” You know, how motherhood fuzzes our brains, how we become all leaky and exhausted and incapable of rational thought. Forever. Um. Damn! I cannot believe that some part of me actually believed that theory enough that I needed to test myself, to prove myself. Personally, I think motherbrain is probably the same as fatherbrain–caused by severe sleep deprivation, and, generally, passing post-infancy. This is just one small example of how insidious these messages are, how ever-present, how we tell them to ourselves, and pull them into ourselves, and how they have the potential to keep us from exploring wider possibilities, or pushing beyond what’s expected of us–and what we expect of ourselves.
This class has actually been something I never anticipated it being. It’s been consciousness-raising. (And I already considered myself a feminist). Oh, how I would like to push my children’s gender boundaries just a little bit more, how I would like for all of them to share those best qualities that shouldn’t be gendered at all. Kindness, gentleness, empathy, grace, ambition. To be thoughtful, hardworking, confident, open. To lead, to share, to cooperate, to give. To be creative, active, brave. Never to fear judgement. To develop job skills and domestic skills, and to be loving caregivers.
Imagine.