Take the challenge
I think I’ll take this blogger up on his challenge. It’s a good one.
Anyone have their eye on any of my stuff? Let me know and I’ll see if I have the guts to give it up.
Signs of sadness
I arrived at work late this morning, and just before I dashed over to the meeting I had to attend at the hotel next door, I glanced down at my shirt. There it was – the telltale sign of sadness. Snot on my shoulder. Little four-year-old snot from a sad little girl who cried on my shoulder while I tried to pry myself away and make it to my bus on time.
She’s sad these days, my normally cheery little extroverted video-producer. She’s sad because for the first time in her life, she has to spend her days away from her buddy, Daddy. Yesterday, I got a call that her tummy hurt and she was crying. Turns out, she was missing us. She cried several times last night, and then again this morning. It was horrible leaving her there this morning. I had to fight the tears as I rode the bus downtown.
It’s caught us by surprise. She was so excited about daycare. The first few days, she was having so much fun being surrounded by new friends every day. But now the novelty has worn off, and she doesn’t want to go anymore. “I have an idea,” she said plaintively, “maybe I can go to Taylor and Noah’s house.” Nope, honey, that doesn’t really work. “Well, then maybe Auntie Cyndi could look after me.” Nope, I’m afraid not. You’ll just have to try to be brave and get used to going to daycare.
I know this will get easier, but right now my heart is breaking.
Maddie’s directorial debut
This is what happens when a four-year-old learns to use a video camera.
Videography: Maddie
Direction: Maddie
Camera-person: Maddie
Script: Maddie
Starring: Maddie
Songwriting: Maddie
Remembering
All over the internet, people are remembering 9/11. Though I’m a country away, and may not have been impacted as much as our neighbours to the south, I remember too.
It was Nikki’s first day of kindergarten. Few thoughts were on my mind that morning, other than the milestone of sending our first child to school. I don’t have a strong recollection of seeing her off at school, but I’m sure that she was stoic and composed. Beneath the exterior, though, she was probably stressing about whether she’d put her shoes in the right place, whether she had the “right” kind of backpack, and whether she’d know how to follow all the teacher’s instructions correctly. Few things worry her more than staying within the framework of the rules.
I left her there and jumped in the van to head downtown to my office. On the radio, the first hint that there was something seriously wrong was the unmasked emotion in the voice of the radio announcer. She was fighting tears as she relayed the story of the plane hitting one of the towers. In retrospect, I suppose she wasn’t one of the more experienced announcers – she hadn’t learned to mask her own connection to a story.
As I drove, I had the eerie feeling that the world had just changed. An office tower had been hit by a plane. This meant that there was no safety anywhere anymore. A plane could drop out of the sky and hit my van. I could step out of the elevator in the office tower where I worked, and watch a plane fly through the window. I, along with every other person in North America (or anywhere else, for that matter), was vulnerable.
I arrived at work late, and few people had heard the news yet. Once in my office, I turned on the TV (yes, I had a TV in my office because I worked in media relations and had to watch the news now and then), and people started congregating around me. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing. As we watched, the second tower was hit. This was no longer a random accident.
Throughout the day, the TV stayed on in my office. I tried to work, but was constantly interrupted by people stopping by to catch glimpses of what was going on. There was a subdued air in the office. No one knew what to say.
On the way home from work that day, I wrestled with what to tell the children. Though Nikki was only 5 at the time, she was incredibly perceptive and I knew that she would hear about this and would worry. I had to tell her at least some portion of the truth so that she would be prepared when she heard about it through a classmate or teacher. When I picked her up at daycare, I explained what happened in simple terms. “Some bad people flew planes into some very tall buildings. A lot of people died in those buildings.” “But why mommy? Why would bad people do that?” “I’m not sure, honey. Sometimes people get angry at other people and they want to hurt them because of their anger.”
Shortly after we got home, I noticed her at the front window, watching a fire truck go by. “Mommy,” she said, “are those fire trucks going to the towers?” Hmmm… I guess I forgot to tell her that the tall buildings were in a city far away from here. The questions didn’t stop there. They never do. Throughout the following week, she pestered me again and again, especially when she caught sight of the news reports. She needed some understanding of why something like this could happen. Did the bad people have families? Where did the bad people live? Did they rescue anyone alive from the towers? If it happened THERE, could it happen HERE?
Around the same time, my sister and I were planning a trip to New York City. Our initial plans, in fact, would have meant that we’d have been there around the time the towers came down. I didn’t want to miss the start of kindergarten, though, so we delayed our plans. Now we didn’t know whether we could go through with it or not. With planes grounded all over North America, it wasn’t clear when or if our trip would happen.
A lot of people thought we were crazy for still considering a trip to New York City, but we decided to go through with our plans anyway. We were not about to let fear diminish our lives. After all, didn’t Rudolph Guiliani and the President tell people to keep visiting, keep shopping, and keep attending the theatre? And wouldn’t New York City be one of the safest places in the world in the aftermath of the tragedy?
At the end of October, we visited NYC as planned. We were greeted at the airport by soldiers with machine guns, something I’d never seen in a North American airport before. Times had changed.
We went to the theatre, we shopped, we took tours on a double-decker bus and a boat, and we wandered around Central Park. We did all the things tourists do. We enjoyed ourselves, and we fell in love with a big beautiful city whose heart still beat with a bold, indomitable pulse. We listened to people’s stories of the New York that was, we saw the memorials in front of fire stations, and we honoured the hurt all around us. We saw the smoke rise from the gaping sore in the city’s centre. We smelled the faint scent of death and destruction. We didn’t get very close to ground zero (I was pregnant at the time and had doctor’s orders not to walk too far), but through the surrounding towers, we glimpsed those infamous remaining beams marking its place.
After visiting New York City, it wasn’t hard to understand why that city had been targeted by the terrorists. If you want to hurt someone, you aim for the heart. NYC has a lot of heart. It’s a vibrant, pulsing city, and its pain would (and did) reverberate across the country and beyond.
Today, five years after the fact, I don’t want to forget, but at the same time, I can’t help thinking it’s time to move forward. Although the loss of 2996 lives is tragic beyond measure, I find it even more tragic that, in the 5 years since, a culture of fear has been used by political heavyweights to justify hatred and the abuse of power. I’m sick and tired of hearing about the “axis of evil”. We all know that words are powerful things, and if we are continuosly reminded of the evil threats against our countries, we can’t help but start to believe it. On this, the fifth anniversary of 9/11, I sincerely wish that old language could be set aside for a new language – one that builds on hope, justice, and compassion instead of fear, evil, and hatred.
Some of the random bits floating around in my brain
– Although I’m not a very orderly person, I love order. I love it when all the pieces are lined up and fitted into their designated slots. I spent a little bit of time finding order in our lives this weekend – lining up the budget, cleaning house, doing laundry. I get a burst of pleasure when the pieces line up. It makes me wish I could convince myself on a daily basis that the pleasure is worth the pain of maintaining order. But I’m way too lazy for that.
– I’m not very fond of our backyard. By this time of year, it shows. It’s gotten overgrown and unkempt and looks nearly abandoned. In the Spring, before the bugs arrive, we spend a fair bit of time back there, eating suppers on the deck, etc. But as the summer heats up and the bugs arrive, we spend less and less time there. It feels much too closed in (the only way to get there is through the garage or through a narrow pathway beside the garage, and it’s surrounded by fences and overgrown shrubs), and therefore kind of claustrophobic and bug-infested. This year we inherited a wooden bench seat from a neighbour who moved away and we placed it in the front yard. We spend quite alot of time out there now, watching the world go by. A neighbour walked by yesterday as I was sipping my iced tea and said “you look relaxed”, and indeed I was. I’ve decided that I much prefer front yard living. It makes me feel more connected to the world. Maybe that’s the extrovert in me coming out.
– I don’t particularly like doing laundry, but I like folding towels. I learned the “right” way of folding towels when I spent a summer working as a chambermaid at a resort in Banff. It was a horrible job, cleaning the messes people left behind when their vacation ended. Vacationing people tend to be more sloppy than at-home people, because they aren’t responsible for their own messes (do you know how hard it is to scrape dried-on Cheerios off the floor?) Once in awhile, when we’d check our day’s duties in the morning, Allison-the-mean-boss would have selected one of us to be the “spare” person which meant you didn’t have to clean rooms, but instead spent most of the day in the large laundry room, folding towels and doing other odd jobs. I learned to fold a perfect towel (anything less than perfect risked the wrath of Allison), and I still take pride in my stack of neatly folded towels. The last weekend of that summer was the best because Allison-the-mean-boss learned that I was good at sewing, so I got to spend the busiest weekend of the year mending laundry bags, sheets, and towels. She wasn’t mean to me once all weekend. Instead, she raved to everyone about how well I sewed. It was a good way to end an otherwise horrible summer.
– It’s not a bad gig when your children grow old enough to be contributing members of the household. Yesterday, when Marcel was out, the living room and bathroom got cleaned without me having to set foot in either room! And they were an acceptable level of clean, not the kind you have to re-do when they’re done. And one daughter taught the other daughter how to clean the toilet! What’s not to like?
– Right now, Maddie is dancing around the basement with butterfly wings strapped to her back. She just said “I wish I was a REAL butterfly.” And then she thought about it for awhile, reconsidered the permanence of her wish, and said, “I wish I was a person who could turn into a butterfly whenever she wanted.” Me too. Wouldn’t it be fun to float around and watch people?