serendipity is santa’s friend

For my birthday in 2007, Jon gave me a camera. Until then I’d just been using my cellphone (which, for 2006/2007 wasn’t too bad, but now would be pretty horrible) and I had an upcoming dancing trip to Russia. It was a good little point-and-shoot, served me well in Russia*, took pictures of Wembley, took pictures of my knitting, pictures of the bump that would turn out to be Peanut, pictures of Peanut, pictures of bump 2.0 which turned out to be Bubby, pictures of Bubby…

The little door that holds the batteries in broke. It wouldn’t latch shut. I taped it together with electrical tape. After a while that didn’t work well enough, so I had to hold it oddly in order to press the heal of my hand against the door to keep the camera from losing power. The end was near.

Ten days ago I realized I hadn’t taken pictures of the girls in a few days and my immediate reaction was: ugh. “That’s not right,” I thought: “I should want to take pictures of my kids. Maybe I should check Kijiji, just in case there’s an affordable camera body listed…”

And there was.

With Christmas nearly here, I was also lucky enough that my father wanted to get me a lens to go with the body. Monday the lens was in my hands.

I’m still figuring it out, since graduating from a point-and-shoot to a DSLR is pretty significant, but it’s getting lots of love. You’ve already seen two shots taken with it on Monday and Tuesday’s Advent posts.

Peanut’s decided that she doesn’t want her picture taken. Ever. I’ll have to get some on the sly…

So now everyone is very happy: I’m happy to have such a fabulous new toy, Jon and my father are happy because I took the guesswork out of gift-buying this year, and we’re all happy that pictures of the girls, or at least one of them, are being taken again.

advent 2011: Wednesday of Hope

Today we’re reading from the prophet Isaiah, continuing the look back at why the people were waiting and who they were hoping would come. Having read about Zechariah and Elizabeth and the foretelling of the birth of John the Baptist, we’ll look at the role he would play. From Isaiah 40:

 ³ A voice cries out,

         Prepare in the wilderness a road for the Lord!
      Clear the way in the desert for our God!
 ⁴ Fill every valley;
      level every mountain.
   The hills will become a plain,
      and the rough country will be made smooth.
 ⁵ Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
      and all people will see it.
   The Lord himself has promised this.


Waiting in hope…for a Path Maker.

rainy errands

I had a strange evening.

We were out of toilet paper, of all things, so a walk to the drug store to restock was in order. Weather in Ottawa in November is often one of extremes: either beautiful and picturesque with fluffy, crystalline snow in mounds, or dismal, grey and perpetually rainy. The past week it’s been the latter and today was the worst yet. It has been pouring rain all day today, cold and wet and leaving enormous puddles all over the city. A good day to be inside with friends as we were midday. A good evening to stay inside, warm and safe, not ideal for blocks of walking.

I don’t mind the rain. I quite like it, provided I’m prepared for and expecting it and I don’t have to sit in wet clothes for too long afterward. I can’t imagine, however, sitting outside on the sidewalk in this weather. Dreadful and utterly depressing seems an apt description. So I felt a great deal of sympathy for the man sitting at a corner, hat on the ground in front of him, asking for change.

“I’m sorry,” I answered.

I rarely have change. I rarely have cash. I am entirely too reliant on debit, a trait which Jon finds particularly bothersome. So I apologized to the man in the wet, in the cold, in the dark, in the street, in the night, while everyone was rushing around, running errands, running to a bus, running home to a hot meal.

“Fuck off,” he responded.

And I walked on, waiting for the light to change as the man on the sidewalk behind me muttered curses at the people passing him by, continuing down the street in the wet, in the cold, in the dark, just as before. But it seemed wetter, colder, darker. Angrier.

My encounter has been weighing on me since then. I couldn’t stop thinking about it as I walked to the store, bought my few items (with debit, of course) and then started home again. I was thinking about it right until I was crossing a street and one of the on-coming cars suddenly turned and accelerated directly toward me. The woman driving the car had a cell phone pressed against her ear and she seemed distracted by the rain, by the dense traffic, by the darkness of the evening. I yelled to get her attention, to get her to stop. She narrowly avoided me as I ran across the street. I turned and waved my arms at her, hollering, “Get off your phone!” Other pedestrians turned and looked at me, curious. Now I can’t stop thinking about that encounter, either.

I felt justified in yelling at the driver of that car. Driving with a cell phone in rush hour traffic, in the core of the city, in the dark, in the pouring rain is a recipe for disaster, a disaster she and I narrowly avoided together. Next time she might not be so lucky. Some other pedestrian might not be so lucky. Put the phone down, I thought: drive safely. I felt justified. I don’t want anyone to be hurt.

I can count on one hand the number of times someone has told me, sincerely, to ‘fuck off’. Even fewer are the times that I have said it to someone. Those incredibly rare times that I did, though? I meant it. I felt justified. The man on the street corner felt justified. Justified by poverty, by discomfort, by rain, by cold, by anger, by sadness. Perhaps by loneliness. By desperation. And I find myself hurting, knowing that there is a man out there who feels that much anger, that much sadness or desperation or loneliness or coldness, a coldness that goes deeper than flesh, a coldness that aches into his spirit so that he mutters curses at strangers – at me – while huddled on the sidewalk.

In the rain. In the dark.

advent 2011: Tuesday of Hope

Today we went back, back to the prophet Micah, to read about why the people of Israel had been waiting for Jesus. Who were they expecting? What were they hoping for? A peacemaker. From Micah 4: 3-4:

 He will settle disputes among the nations,       among the great powers near and far.    They will hammer their swords into plows       and their spears into pruning knives.    Nations will never again go to war,       never prepare for battle again.  <sup class="xref" style="background-color: white; font-weight: bold; line-height: 0.5em; vertical-align: text-top;" value="(C)”>Everyone will live in peace       among their own vineyards and fig trees,       and no one will make them afraid.    The Lord Almighty has promised this. 

We wait in hope.

Advent 2011: Monday of Hope

This evening we’ll be talking about when waiting can be difficult, when waiting is even unpleasant for us and how, by holding on to HOPE the waiting is easier. We’ll be reading from Luke 1:

Zechariah said to the angel,  “How can this be so? I am an old man and my wife is old also.” I am Gabriel,” the angel answered. :I stand in the presence of God who sent me to speak to you and tell you this good news. But you have not believed my message which will come true at the right time. Because you have not believed, you will be unable to speak; you will remain silent until the day my promise to you comes true.” Zechariah went home. Some time later his wife Elizabeth became pregnant.

Have a blessed evening! 

Advent 2011: Sunday of Hope

Today was the first day of Advent. After dinner, we began our Advent family activity. We read verses from Luke 1:

There was a priest named Zechariah. His wife’s name was Elizabeth. They both lived good lives in God’s sight and obeyed fully all the Lord’s laws and commands. They had no children because Elizabeth could not have any, and she and Zechariah were both very old. One day Zechariah was doing his work as a priest in the Temple. An angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar where the incense was burned. When Zechariah saw him, he was alarmed and felt afraid. But the angel said to him, “Don’t be afraid, Zechariah! God has heard your prayer, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son. You are to name him John. How glad and happy you will be, and how happy many others will be when he is born!”

We talked about waiting, about how challenging it can be to wait for something we really want, like a baby, but that the good things that come after waiting are worth it. Peanut said it was just like having to wait for a chocolate cookie.

advent 2011

Last year I planned to do a daily Advent reading with Peanut. But then our apartment filled with mold, we temporarily evicted ourselves to a hotel and then my mother’s house, and I had some pretty horrendous nausea and fatigue on top off all that stress. We tried to stay focused on joy, but..well, it was hard. This year, though, I’m feeling extremely determined.

It took me a while to figure out precisely what I wanted to do to mark the progress of the Advent season every day, but after reading this and having a conversation over Facebook with Katie Munnik, I found my direction.

We start with the theme of Waiting. Advent is a season of waiting, of expectation and anticipation as well as preparation. We prepare ourselves for The Gift but we also acknowledge The Wait. The long wait for the sun. The long wait for a son. The long wait for a Saviour. Reading through Luke, there are scores of players in the story who are waiting. Zechariah and Elizabeth wait for a child. Zechariah waits to speak. Mary and Joseph wait to be married. Mary waits for her child to be born. Israel waits for the Messiah. The shepherds wait for the nightwatch to end. The Magi wait for the star to show them where to find Him. And of course there’s Herod, futilely, malevolently waiting for the Magi to return.

And we: we wait to celebrate again. We wait for the days to lengthen once again, for our Northern world to begin its turn back toward the sun. We wait to sing out joy to the world, the LORD is come! I can understand waiting. Moreover, a 3 year old can understand waiting. She can understand anticipation: she is, in fact, a master.

Here’s what we’ll be doing: we start with a branch and some yarn. I happened to have a branch painted gold from a long-ago dance recital, so I used that. I have suspended the branch over our dining table from a shelf on the wall using  some twill tape. Onto the branch I’ve draped several random loops of yarn to create a sort of web hanging over the table. Before dinner tomorrow I’ll clip 29 very small clothespins or paper clips onto the yarn. I’ll also have 29 squares of coloured paper, as well as a few slips of plain white paper, sitting on the shelf above the table. On the table we’ll have a candle.

So that’s the display we’ll have set up for the season. Every evening we’ll light the candle and we’ll read a short passage, talk about what it means, what part of the story it represents, and about the waiting within that passage. Then we’ll take a square of paper, decide as a family what shape might represent that passage (or just what we feel like seeing that day) and we’ll cut it out. Stars, hearts, people, doves, snowflakes…We’ll cut out the shape and then clip it to the yarn. Every day more and more of the clothespins will be filled up. Some days we’ll add some written words as well. By the end we should have a colourful, joyful little array above our table.

I’ll be posting the reading for that evening here every day, so feel free to follow along with your family.  And I’d love to hear how you are marking this season of anticipation.

Friday Follow

I was planning to do a different theme this time around, but I’ll save it. This week we’re looking at some of my favourite feminist blogs.
In days gone by, I followed blogs like Feministing religiously. But then I married and had children and, frankly, my tastes changed. Feminist mothers who blog aren’t few and far between (there are LOTS of us, in point of fact) but finding them can be somewhat challenging. So here are some that I follow:

1. Bluemilk – I love this woman. I mean, I absolutely adore every post she writes. She is made of awesome. Her post, Don’t Get Raped is the sort of anger-driven brilliance to which I aspire. Check out her extensive list of feminist blogs in the right sidebar if you are looking for even more to read.

2. The Mamafesto – Another golden one. Her series This Is What a Feminist Looks Like is a study in the breadth of identity and definition of feminism. Check out her post But What About the Rest of Us? to see a short round-up of some notable feminist parenting blogs, as well as the comments.

3. PhD in Parenting – Annie Urban is local and prolific. Her blog is primarily focussed on parenting, but within a feminist frame. So much to read here: go check it out.

4. Raising My Boychick – Gender norms, parenting, feminism…it’s all in here and it’s brilliant. Check out this post on facilitating the co-existence of work and parenting, particularly in light of my post from yesterday.

5. The Unnecesarean – The intersection of informed consent, with regard to pregnancy and birth, and feminism is about a mile wide. Jill Arnold does a fan-freaking-tastic job of illuminating both, all while maintaining her sense of humour.

6. Hugo Shwyzer – He’s a guy. He’s a dad. He’s a professor. He’s an author. He’s a youth minister. He’s a feminist. Who’s a big fan? This woman!

So there you have it: six feminist blogs that are full of awesome, heavy on the meditation, free of man-hating, and food for much thought. Did I miss anyone? Did I miss you?? Leave a comment if you have a blog – or know of a blog – I should be reading.


Happy Friday, lovelies!

early years at home with mommy

Canadian news media have been picking up on a recently published paper which, ostensibly, addresses changing and ever-pressing childcare needs. The Early Years Study 3 of 2011 promises to address “the social, economic and scientific rationale for increased investments in early childhood education.” 

But make no mistake: this paper is not entirely focussed on early childhood development. This paper has an agenda, one cleverly couched in language of parental and feminist guilt.

The gist of the proposal found here is this: formalized education can and should start as early as age two. Toddlers should be in a classroom setting. One of the co-authors of the paper, Dr. Fraser Mustard told the Toronto Star, ““I would come down to three-year-olds, then two-year-olds and one-year-olds.”

Yes. 12 month old babies in a classroom.

Studies of this sort make my brain hurt. They make my very heart and soul hurt. Because while some have responded to this, saying, “Good: something for those of us unfortunate enough not to be able to stay home with our kids,” that is not what this paper is about. To those who say, “This will support a woman’s choice to return to the workforce after maternity leave!” I say, “Bullshit.” This paper is not about supporting choice: this paper is about making choices for parents. This paper doesn’t have a feminist objective: this paper is the very antithesis of feminism.

This paper is anti-family.

The authors go so far as to say that families with only one working parent are bad for the economy. This is hard enough to hear at the best of times but in the midst of a global recession it is positively dripping with guilt. The authors even condescend, stating, “Most women want to work.” They repeatedly talk about growing children to be “contributing members of society” while positing that opposite the elderly (who are a terrible financial drain, they note) and at-home parents, particularly mothers, who do not earn, therefore do not work, therefore do not contribute.

The authors of this paper note the prevalence of maternal depression but then argue that a key to reducing the rate of maternal depression is social time with others and a comfy chair. Seriously. So thank you, dear researchers, thank you. The cure to my PPD is not vitamins and minerals or prescription medication: the cure is a comfy chair a good chat with some ‘gals’ at my local school. And I should get right on that since, as they make a point of noting several times, stress “drips down” onto my children, and a stressed or depressed mother isn’t good for her children. If my PPD hadn’t already made me worry about the quality of my parenting this paper certainly cleared things up for me: now I feel like a downright failure.

But what about the children, you ask? Yes: what about the children. The authors use anecdotes to describe two year old children who haven’t yet learned to regulate their emotional responses to stimuli as an example of…well,they never come right and state the purpose of that particular little story, exactly, but when viewed within the context of the paper as a whole the implication is clear: our children might just grow up ‘wrong’ if a trained professional isn’t there to manage their development.

The phrase “levelling the playing field” has been tossed about in describing the objective of this paper, but such a claim holds no water. The authors make it very clear in the first chapter of the paper that the children about whom they are most concerned are not the very poor or otherwise typically disadvantaged: the children families they are primarily targeting are middle and upper-class households. 

So what is the purpose, then, if it isn’t to assist already-struggling families? It’s to get parents – fathers, but if we face facts, mostly mothers – like myself out of the home and into the workforce. The only reason I’m home with them is because I don’t have access to a viable and reliable option for childcare, yes? The only reason I’m not contributing is because I’m stuck at home with the kids.

No.

My children are home with me because they belong here. I am home with them because I choose to be, because my partner and I know that it is the right choice for our family. It may not be the right choice for every family, but it is for ours. I do not begrudge the women who dedicate years of their life and enormous effort to achieving the career for which they feel destined who then feel compelled to return to work after a few months or at the end of their year of paid maternity leave (as we have federally legislated in Canada). Not at all. Had I had a career to which I was dedicated, to which I felt drawn, which was vocational, my choice may have been an entirely different one. 

This is what so thoroughly enrages me about this paper. Though they couch it in feminist language (“if [women] did not work, the economy wouldn’t function’), the assertions are most definitely anti-feminist. My feminist foresisters worked long and hard to have the value of women recognized. Before women were routinely employed outside the home, that was the goal: for women to be valued as contributing members of society, not because they generated income but because we are people and people are always valuable.

While it may seem commendable that the authors of this study show such concern about the development and care of the children in this nation, they do so at the expense of mothers, of women, and indeed of the children themselves. In discouraging at-home full-time parenting they are demonstrating the lack of value they place on such a role. And who typically fills that role? Women. There are lots of stay-at-home-dads out there (I know a few myself) and I applaud them uproariously for turning those hetero-normative gender roles on their ear and caring for their children. But the fact is that there are more SAHMoms than SAHDads. As far as we have come in attempting to equalize the genders, the fact is that biology has a leg up in this situation. I lactate: my husband does not. While that doesn’t entirely preclude him from being the full-time parent, it certainly simplifies the question for our family. In their dismissal of the importance and value of at-home parenting, in their argument children as young as two years old should be in school lest they be “disadvantaged” for life, in their implication that children who are at home with a parent before attending kindergarten are less likely to graduate high school, they are demonstrating the sheer lack of regard they have for a role typically filled by women.

How dare they? How dare they shame women and families? How dare they fear-monger, all while backhandedly saying that at-home parents “perform quiet acts of heroism, day in and day out”?

A woman’s place is wherever she damn-well feels like being, including in the home caring for her children if that’s her choice.

And it sure as hell is mine.

“The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only – and that is to support the ultimate career. ” 

― C.S. Lewis

plans

It’s a bright and cold Tuesday. Let’s take another look at that list, shall we?


1. Plan a daily advent activity for our family. Something nifty but reflective to help us focus on the season.
I’ve got ideas percolating. My wonderful and dear friend Katie Munnik shared with me her plan for her family’s advent activity (which involves craft foam and fishing line! How awesome is that!!) and I’ve been thinking about what we’ll be doing. We’re going to focus on expectancy, the wait. Once it’s all figured out I’ll be sure to share.2. Get out of the apartment. We’ve been cooped up in here for days and, to be quite honest, Peanut is starting to get a little wrangy (this is a word I use. I think it’s a real word. Just go with me on this one) as a result. Kid needs some air!
We picked up Jon at work last night. We have a scheduled errand this afternoon so we might head to the park then, too.3. Build a fort. We’ve never built a fort in the living room and I think this might be the week for it.
We’re expecting snow tomorrow. I think that fort building is on tap for the snowy day.4. Decorate. Ooh, baby, I love Christmas festoonation (again with the non-real words. Consider it a theme).
Ibid.
5. Dig out the sewing room. Remember how it looked back at Easter? Well, I bought some shelves, put all sorts of stuff on them…and the room still looks no better. Where does all the stuff come from?! Maybe I should also…
Oh who knows. 🙂 Maybe tonight?
6. Get rid of some stuff. Or not. Whatever.
Ibid.
7. Christmas sewing! I’m very excited about this. I have fabric for a new dress for Peanut and fabric for a Christmas stocking for Bubby.
If this happens this week I’ll be extremely surprised.
8. Find the final piece to my new toy (I’m saving this for a whole separate post: it’s also very exciting). Then commence playing with new toy (you’ll actually benefit from this one: just wait for it).
This! This I’ve halfway done. This afternoon’s errand will finish this. And then I’ll share an elated post about my new toy. 

So, what are you up to today?