Wearing several hats at once.

One of my favourite amazing bloggers is bon over at Crib Chronicles. She has lately written a post about buying recreational land and the impulse to live a life of self-sufficiency. I started to write a comment about this post but, when I had reached about the one hundredth word mark, realized that what I should be writing was a post of my own. So, please go and read her post about almost buying a cottage. You'll love the writing and be fascinated by her topic. And I will add my bit to the discussion.

When you buy a hundred acre piece of vacant land, it can take over your life. It took over ours.

Our early years as a married couple were a mad scramble as we variously coped with doctoral dissertation, two babies in fifteen months, frequent moves and not enough money. Once JG finished his post doc, however, and settled into a permanent job, once the kids both started school, things, especially our finances, became smoother. And we decided that while a suburb was a fine place to raise and school young children, it was also noisy, crowded and nerve racking. We decided to buy recreational land.

Our first few investigations told us that a cottage on water in our price range came with even more noise, crowding and nervous tension. We started to look for a peaceful place, hopefully with access to water, where we could spend weekends. What we found was a hundred acre plot that had been settled and farmed in the nineteenth century but that latterly had returned to scrub bush. At the end of a rutted track on a dead end road, it was a perfect hideout.

My father, an avid consumer of survival fiction, worried from time to time about how his precious grandchildren would survive come Armageddon. He helped us buy this piece of land, and encouraged me to teach the girls subsistence farming, archery, self defence, all the skills he thought necessary for living through cataclysmic times. My husband was far more concerned with building an insulated cabin for all year weekending, taming the overgrown field and bush, killing marauding porcupines and exploring every nook and cranny of our new-found possession.

We did get books about surviving in the bush, we made (awful) soap and tried boiling down maple sap à la our pioneer ancestors. I tried gardening, but the competition with deer, coons, rodents and birds, on a two-day-a-week basis, was just too aggravating and I continued to keep my kitchen garden in the back yard of our city house. An electric fence, large dogs and a good aim with a twenty-two are the kind of help back woods gardeners need. Living off the land? While cat tail roots may be nourishing, they taste terrible. I was never inspired to see if porcupines were any tastier.

What did happen is that our daughters became very proficient at finding their way through the rocks, hills and swamps, learned to snowshoe and cross-country ski, charmed chickadees to their hands with sunflower seeds and, by helping with JG's various building projects, became competent carpenters. This was some comfort to my father. Later, my land happy husband acquired two hundred more acres of scrub bush, we became maple syrup makers and when he, a research scientist, got an early buyout from his federal government employer, we moved to this land permanently and built a home here. My grown daughters love it here for recreation and peace. I feed the deer and do not compete with them and live in gardenless tranquillity.

It was sometimes difficult, living five days in the city with part time job, two kids, dog and husband (um, not in that order), two days on the land, fitting all the city work into the four evenings, keeping two kitchens stocked, two houses clean and repaired, working with the woodsman husband long hours in the bush, cutting and stacking cabin stove and sugar camp evaporator wood, getting ready for the sugaring season, enduring the long hours of boiling, bottling, checking the lines in the bush for leaks plodding along through deep, soggy snow on snowshoes, lugging the equipment. Twice a week packing, travel out and back, arrange the children/teenagers' lessons and social life around two day absence from their milieux, keeping track of it all, could be frustrating, onerous.

We have friends who made the break complete, moved entirely into rural mode, grew food, raised their children there. Gradually they have adopted some amenities, buy more of what they need, made things easier. We have friends who have always lived here who seize on any and every labour saving device to make farm living smoother (theirs is the garden with the electric fence and all that, a garden where I weed in exchange for produce.) We have retired to 'the bush', and that is somewhat different. I shop in the nearest town for most of our food needs, and while JG happily lives a forest manager's life, I spend my time doing what my interests and age suggest to me, volunteering, reading and writing and photography, the minimum of housework. I no longer help in the bush - my joints and back are too vulnerable and, in truth, I'm not that fond of hoiking pieces of tree around.

As a young wife and mother I did what I had to do. I put myself at the end of every list for twenty years of child raising and for several more of housebuilding so that we could live comfortably here. I am now nurturing, slowly and carefully, my sense of self and my autonomy.

In the end, you see, the land and the dream have taken over only as much of our lives as we allow.

Would you like to live in a world where you turned over every penny you made to a husband who had been chosen for you, where your main duty was to 'live in harmony' with him and with your sister wives, where you had no access to birth control, you were forbidden television and newspapers and your children could be beaten? That is the life that women live in a sect called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS). This sect is a 'radical offshoot' of the Mormon Church; you may have seen pictures of the women of the sect in, I think, 2008 when a compound belonging to the sect was raided after a complaint of sexual abuse was made by one of the young girls there. The women all wore their hair in a complicated braided style, wore long sleeved and skirted dresses, and were accompanied by lots and lots of small children.

I have just finished a book written by Carolyn Jessop, a woman who managed to leave the strict control of her husband and community. The book is called "Escape" and describes how she grew up in the FLDS, how she became gradually disillusioned with it and how she managed to get out, taking her children with her, and build a new life. The book is riveting, sometimes horrible, sometimes amazing. One of the most saddening parts is the description of her eldest daughter, a young teen when the family left, who went back as soon as she was eighteen and has now become a spokesperson for the sect and is, I gather, quite critical of her mother's decision and book. The book is not objective, how could it be, but I think there is enough in it to make it very believable.

I don't have any problem with plural marriage in the abstract if it were to be as advertised; sister wives helping one another and supported by a man who was even-handed and just to the whole family. In fact, when my children were babies and I had to work at least part time to put food on the table, I often wished there were two of me, or even three. One to satisfy the husband, one to care for the babies, and one to work and look after herself. The situation Carolyn Jessup describes was not like that at all. The family was at war with itself, the husband did things that were lazy and uncaring and the family and community were toxic with fear.

I do have trouble with religions that rely on a 'prophet' (or bishop or imam) to direct the whole community. I have trouble with religions that restrict what their adherents can read or listen to or learn, and that limit their children's schooling. The argument that the children must be kept 'pure' is, for me, a specious one. Children are not 'pure'. They are innately curious; they need to have their world explained to them, using language and examples appropriate to their age level of course, but never talked down to or ignored. And they should never, never be beaten into silence and 'good behaviour'. They should never be persuaded to be afraid.

Carolyn's description of her childhood is full of examples of how the whole community was taught to believe that the rest of the world was malevolent and threatening to them. The children were routinely slapped and spanked to improve their behaviour. Nonconforming wives could also be beaten. Even worse, for me, was the doctrine that to be admitted into Heaven, the children had to please the adults and the women their husbands, to conform to a very stultifying norm, to be unquestioningly obedient. It's a long way from the doctrine of free will.

When I went to my confirmation, as a child of twelve, I was convinced that the Holy Ghost would descend to me and that I would become a good person, inspired by the love of Christ. It did not happen that way and I was horribly disappointed. I remained within my church for many years thereafter but gradually drifted away from all organized religion, finding it patriarchal and top heavy and increasingly irrelevant to the life I wanted to live, a life in which service to my family and community was balanced by self growth. It did not help that as we moved from place to place each new church I joined asked me for money pretty well as the first thing they did to welcome me.

Over the course of many years I have come to understand that no one can be the keeper of my conscience for me. Rules that make little or no sense, tenets of belief that are not clear or helpful, dictates from on high, are all distasteful to me. And it seems to me that a lot of organized religion, of whatever form, thrives on these things. The FLDS is an extreme example; while I read her book my heart ached for Carolyn Jessop and her long journey into a life she could shape for herself.

Back from the Wedding

I guess we had summer last week; to-day I am wearing a sweater and a fuzzy and am contemplating putting the winter duvet back on the bed. Do you think if I do that the weather gods will send us a heat wave? I am half afraid they will. It does not do to annoy the weather gods.

However, it is so cold the bugs have pretty well vanished and I was therefore able to paint the garage door without slapping myself with the paintbrush. After almost three years of bare untreated woodiness, the door is now a fine shade of dark green, to match the trim. Also we have a new roof on the house, also a fine shade of dark, dark green. The roofers arrived at 7:45 last Friday and seven of them climbed up onto the roof and started scraping and shovelling. And banging. And running back and forth. JG could not stand the noise and spent most of the morning wandering around outside watching them work. By noon they had the field half of the new roof done and about a third of the front. At this point the sky darkened and the rain came down by the bucketful, causing seven men to scramble off the roof, pick up their tools and depart. They left us in good shape, with a small strip of plastic protecting the seam between the old shingles and the new ones. Not a drop leaked anywhere. They returned on Monday and finished the job.

We were not here on Monday enjoying the fairy footfalls on the roof, as we had travelled to a wedding in Toronto on Saturday and then gone on to Fort Erie to visit with my mother-in-law. It was some wedding! JG's great niece, whose father is part of a big Canadian/Italian family married a young man from an even bigger Canadian/Greek connection. There were about three hundred guests. There were five bridesmaids. The groomsman danced around the reception with a loaf of bread on his head and the rest of the guests (mostly from the groom's side) prancing after him. The bridesmaids had not practised this traditional dance; the results were rather chaotic. The bride's family had arranged for a six course dinner, this after a serving of antipasto which would have made a fine meal all on its own. And when we left, the groom's family were laying out a dessert table that it broke my heart to miss. It was an amazing event, all in all. Both the bride and the groom's families pitched in to put it on; I have a sneaking suspicion that there might have been a bit of Italian/Greek competition somewhere in the mix.

The whole question of what kind of wedding to have is, in my view, a fraught one. Big versus small. White versus colour. Time of day. What to eat and when. Photo ops. Dresses and what are the men going to wear. It amuses me to check in our local weekly paper for the 25th and 50th (and other marker years) anniversary announcements. It is easy to spot which anniversary it is by looking at what the bride and groom are wearing in the (obligatory) wedding photo. Glasses with pointy frames? Fiftieth. Long hair and a pale coloured coat on the groom? twenty-fifth. Strapless dress? First through tenth. Some of the announcements put in a 'before and now' pair of photos and it is huge fun to look at how the married pair have changed over the time span.

The great niece went the whole nine yards with her dress. (Literally!) She had a tulle veil that trailed behind her and on which the junior bridesmaid stepped as the happy couple was leaving the church, bringing the triumphal walk down the aisle to a fast stop. She had a bolero jacket with train over a strapless dress, the latter fitted with tiny buttons in back and, let me tell you, fitted pretty dern tight, also with train. Under all of this I am sure she was wearing one tough set of underpinnings. She looked spectacular. So did the bridesmaids who were in a uniform colour but each with her own choice of design for the dress. A smart move, in my opinion. My best friend once put me into a floor length turquoise tube, with overskirt, and I still shudder when I think about it. In August. In an un-air-conditioned church and hall. There is something to be said for strapless after all.

Wedding traditions. Ah, sigh. The same best friend also had a trousseau tea at which, as the matron of honour, I had to 'pour'. Even in 1966 this particular torture was going out of style. A lot later, my now ex son-in-law was determined that all of the Scottish traditions to which he was accustomed would be carried out in the ex colony where he was being married. He wanted a Real Fruit Cake for the wedding cake; none of this Canadian angel food stuff. He wanted a glorious outdoor background for the wedding photos. (This was Ottawa in early April. He got the inside wall of the church.) And I got to run the whole thing. It turned out fine, but I sure sweated the preparations, especially when my father got involved in what we should eat at the reception. Smoked salmon, he wanted. For one hundred people. He paid.

I hope that Saturday's bride will have wonderful memories of her great day, just as I have of mine. She is now, I believe, sorting through several thousand photographs of the event. Two photographers caught every glorious moment. And, poor thing, writing hundreds of 'Thank-you's'. Fifty years from now, I hope the wedding picture looks timeless.

Sauce for the Gander

Afghan Shi'ite Muslim demonstrate Wednesday in favor of a new law that would require Shi'ite women to get their husband's permission before leaving the house and would legitimize marital rape. A smaller group of Afghan women staged a rival demonstration opposing the law.

Omar Sobhani/Reuters

(Copied this from the Christian Science Monitor)

When I started this blog, I promised myself that I would not write about sex. Lots of people doing that, I reasoned. No need for a wrinkly to get into it.

I have just changed my mind, after reading about women in Afghanistan protesting the proposed law that would, among other things, require Shiite women to agree to sex with their husbands every fourth day.

Every fourth day? Could it be that this requirement is set up for a man with four wives, as I believe is allowed under Shiite law?

Pierre Trudeau famously said that the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation. That covers it for me as far as adopting Sharia law as the law of the land; obey the tenets of your religion by all means, but do not enshrine these tenets in the secular laws designed to make the state a place of law and order for all. Frankly, I feel the same about any law enacted to enforce the tenets of any religion, the 'Close on Sundays' laws that until a few years ago forbade shopkeepers of any faith to open on Christian Sunday being a case in point.

When I was married, I took vows that I feel honour bound to keep. These promises I understand to include the right of each partner to have sex with the other one. Implicit, but there. With no three days off, either. And I recall, vaguely, reading that in Orthodox Jewish law a man is required to have sex with his wife once a week. Not sure of the detail, but the way I remember it would see that requirement as being for the wife's benefit.

And as I was doing housework this morning and thinking about it, I started speculating what would happen if the proposed Afghanistan legislation was an enjoinder on both sexes, a requirement for both a man and a woman to agree to sex once every fourth day. If a man had four wives, that would work out to sex every day for the man. Do you think that the men in the legislature in Afghanistan would rise to the occasion and pass such a law?

Because I don't.

Roads go ever on and on...

When I was growing up, I had two role models.

One was my very high achieving and equally uptight mother, a woman who had decided at the outbreak of WW II to abandon her career and marry a sailor. (You got married in 1940, you quit your job, at least at the firm where my mother worked.) My mother applied the same drive and rigour that took her through a Master's degree during the Depression to being a housewife, looking after her war damaged husband and raising me. And as I grew old enough to understand, she complained about all of these tasks, averring that the height of woman's emancipation had been reached in the 1920's and that she was caught in a backlash. To an extent, she was right. The late 1940's and the 1950's were the heyday of the white picket fence mythology.

My other role model was my mother's younger sister, my aunt Marion. Unmarried, amazingly talented in art, a gifted musician, she was an elementary school teacher who had her own apartment, drove a Carmengia, took fascinating vacations with compatible friends and generally seemed to dance through her life. Again, as I grew old enough to understand, I realized that this was not entirely so. Marion had a winsome, heart shaped face, a figure that Marilyn Monroe might envy and a horror of commitment. She did experiment with sex, she told me, but found the act of intercourse so funny that she could never really get into it. And although she had a network of family, friends and colleagues when she needed them, she was subject to fits of deep depression in which she felt entirely alone.

When I was a university undergraduate I got proposals. I even got a diamond engagement ring once. I gave it back, for various complicated reasons. But when I met the man who is now my husband and knew I had a real choice to make, I thought of the lives of my mother and my aunt and I chose my mother's path. Deliberately, knowing how much the yoke sometimes galled her, I made a commitment for life to be like her. I look back now at that cocksure girl and wonder if I ever could have been that person.

By the time I was in my forties I had two teenagers, a full time job, a dog, and a husband whose idea of fun was to spend every weekend at a waterless, non electrified cabin in the woods, chopping and stacking wood, building things and, each spring, making maple syrup. For all these activities my participation was, he believed, essential. And it was. He lived for the weekends, he needed to do these strenuous things and he needed me to help him make it work. Some of it I did, in fact, enjoy a lot. But there wasn't a lot of time left over for me to be my own person. And there were times when the yoke, indeed, chafed.
I dreamed, in odd moments, of a home that was just mine, of a life that I could order, of solitude to read, to create, to be subject to no one. I dreamed of being able to indulge my own taste, to do things without hurry, to roar off in my little sports car to fascinating spots, to have my own money and spend or save it as I saw fit. I saw myself with a career for which I was fitted and well paid and appreciated. I look back now on that rebellious and sullen woman and wonder if I ever could have been that person.

I have a daughter who lives that life, minus the Disney touches. She has a friend who has a husband, three kids, a dog and a career such as the aforesaid collection and her health permit her. They have, I am told, conversations in which each wants what the other one is fed up with having. Her friend says "We get together and yearn for the other's life. We always come down to the understanding that you can't have it all and life is about sacrifice and difficult choices, particularly if you are a woman. I see all she has accomplished and experienced and feel like I'm missing out in a huge way, here in suburbia, and she looks at my kids and feels the same thing."

Difficult choices.

I did not realize, in my twenties, that choices made can take you to unforeseen places. I did not realize in my forties that all choices lead to a place where the road not taken looks better, less stony, less steep. I learned that in fact all roads have stones and mud and hard uphill climbs.
Now, in my sixties, I am learning that all roads eventually connect. In Lord of the Rings, Frodo quotes Bilbo - "He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary." There is great scenery along the road. You meet friends there and journey with them a while. You learn things. Even when the feet are sore and the legs weary, the road dismal and steep and boring, it takes you forward. There is no map; I find I no longer want one. It is my road and I will follow wherever it goes.

But I can't help wondering if, should I be around twenty years from now, I will find myself wondering how I could ever have been the person who wrote this.

Resolution in 2009

The failure of our civilization to deal with the well being of a good part of our citizens is not political. It’s something which can, in fact needs to be, talked about by every citizen in an apolitical manner because it concerns every single one of us.
-John Ralston Saul

A lot of what I have been doing this fall when I have not been blogging is work for the non profit organization of which I am chair of the Board. This board, recruited from a cross section of the population of our county, runs a Community Health Centre and three satellite CHC's in a neighbouring county, a Mental Health Support Group, a collection of programs for families with children (aged prenatal to six) at risk, and another collection called Lanark Community Programs that provides services for children with physical and mental challenges, as well as directing provincial government support to their families below the poverty line. This fall we held a workshop on poverty as it affects our community. The quote above is one of a series we used in the workshop; I have committed to make the series into posters to boost awareness of poverty in our staff and clients.

One of the things we do is promote good health. This means working on the things that help people get and stay healthy, rather than relying on treating the sick. The 'determinants' of good health include food security, a healthy environment, a stable community and much more. Our community here includes many, many working poor and the levels of unemployment and poverty are, given the present economic climate, growing rapidly as local industries shut down. The call on our local food bank is increasing at a terrifying rate; the price of heating oil is high and that causes terrible hardship in our climate where you cannot be without heat in winter. The lack of proper clothing for the cold or appropriate clothes for school is a huge difficulty for children. Something as simple as not using sunscreen because it is too expensive can lead to damage that will last a lifetime. Just as pernicious is a lack of hope.

My resolution for 2009 is to be aware, to look for, problems in my community and try to help. I ask all of you who read this to join in. I ask you to look for evidence of suffering and hardship and to do what you reasonably can to amend the problems you see. Something as simple as donating your children's outgrown clothing and toys to an organization that deals with families at risk could make a real difference in a child's life. Look close to home; is the woman ahead of you in the grocery line putting things back because she hasn't enough money? Look farther afield; is your province or state cutting back on funding for something like teachers' aides or seniors' support? Often a letter writing campaign can rearrange priorities at the funding source.

I'm lucky to have the time and the financial security to do a fair amount of work pro bono in my community. I couldn't have done so when my children were small and we needed my income. But awareness and mindfulness can be done in small increments of time and support does not need to be monetary. I know I am preaching to a lot of the already converted here. So many of you are already aware and working in many areas. But I hope you will, with me, continue to be mindful. I think we have tough times ahead and the tough will need to get going.

Best wishes to you all for 2009.

Monday Mission - Grocery Store Medley

There goes Shopping Mom, there goes Shopping Mom,
Down the grocery store aisle,
She's got a list two pages long
The cart's piled up a mile!
Cans are rattlin', people scatterin'
The lady's on the run.
Get out of her way, there's hell to pay
'Cause the shopping's not yet done!
~
Baby cries, she can't feed him,
Children whine, though she's bribed 'em.
The omens are clear that the time has drawn near
To screw the list and get the monsters home...
Um,
To check out now and take the poor things home.
~
Now the kids are fast asleep,
She's on her second rye,
But Shopping Mom still has a list
Of things she has to buy.
So she writes to Santa Claus
Tells him of her plight
Could he finish off her list
And bring it round that night.
~
'I'll believe in you', she wrote,
'If you believe in me.'
'Santa, Sweetie,
Just drop it down my chimney tonight.'
~
There's a blip on the radar at NORAD
And it's not even Christmas Eve,
The guys on the radar at NORAD
Are seeing what they don't believe.

There's a sleigh and eight reindeer at Best Buy
And some elves with a grocery list.
They're packing up sacks of food and stuff
It's a sight not to be missed.

Down the road to Mom's they go
And unload all the food.
Mom's hung over but happy now
And she's really in the Christmas mood.

With no apologies at all to the demented and evil creators of 'Here Comes Santa Claus', 'Winter Wonderland', 'Jolly Old St Nicholas', 'Santa Baby', and 'Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer'. (I figure you might need the references.)

You have got to go and look at Ewe Are Here's take on the MM.
She's done much the same kind of Christmas muzac I did and it is totally hilarious.

A few bricks short of a load.

Two blog posts came up on my 'following' list this afternoon that at first reading seemed very different. One is a heartfelt but semi tongue-in-cheek complaint by a mother about whining kids. The other is a sad and serious report by a daughter of her mother's misery and helplessness following a severe stroke. I thought about them most of the afternoon as I slogged along making a brick border around a flower bed. And the two voices met in my mind and became one voice, the voice of a woman trying her best for dependants under her care. I heard in that voice that the task of making those dependants happy is thankless, unending, almost impossible. Yet most of us, at some time in our lives, identify it as something that has to be done and that we have to do.

I've been there. Whining kids? For sure. As much as we try to laugh it off, that whine is something we have to deal with. I think that the whine is innate in small mammals; puppies for example, as well as human children. It's a sound that does not carry well, making it safer to use when there are predators around. It gets attention, that's for sure. Because it is innate, training the offspring out of it takes a lot of time and effort And telling the child to defer or change tone does not work because her woes are immediate and serious, trivial as they seem to adults. A small child lives in the moment and one Brussels sprout on the plate is an overwhelming tragedy.

Adults who have suffered damage to the brain, whether it comes through a stroke or dementia or trauma, returns to that same state where small things become mountains of misery and everything, once again, is immediate and tragic. Like the children, they have no sense of proportion. Like the children, they turn to what they see as a source of relief. But there is no relief and so the misery they feel gets directed onto the caregiver. I've also been such a caregiver, putting every skill and every effort into trying to alleviate that pain.

That pain is the pain of the caregiver as well as that of those in her care. When the child is tired and stressed by a big family party, removing the offending vegetable will not solve the problem. Something else will soon become a tragedy. All the patience and vigilance in the world will not prevent the next whine. Nor, when your loved one has suffered an irrevocable decline in health, can you restore the health and the adult competence that would allow the sufferer, and you, some peace of mind.

We all feel guilt over this. If I were only a better, more patient, mother/daughter/sister/wife, we say to ourselves. If I had more strength, if I didn't let it bother me. It's exhausting, this task of mothering, caring, tending. None of us can step back, either, and let it go, because they need us. They need us.

I've been in both these wonderful bloggers' shoes. If my experience is worth anything at all, it taught me that I didn't have to be perfect. It turned out that it was okay to be a good enough mother, a daughter who did her share but left some things for others to do. If I kept my own sense of proportion I could, and can, live with that and be at peace with myself.

I haven't said this as well as I had hoped to, but I am going to post it in the hopes that it is good enough.

And tomorrow I will go out and redo the bricks around the flower bed in a more frugal pattern because I ran out of bricks before I finished.

Using my Digging Stick

Written for a blogging friend who has had a miscarriage and another who must have an hysterectomy.

We were going to be a four child family. It was in The Plan, along with establishing careers and setting up a lifestyle that included lots of outdoor activities. The first half had been accomplished -- two beautiful, healthy babies as close together as possible, one career on track and one avocation established, recreational land purchased and weekend home built. The first two kids were in school and old enough to do a lot of things for themselves.

The joker in the woodpile was a negative Rhesus factor. Mine. Antibodies built up and up and up, and for that and other unassailably good reasons (or so I thought at the time and still, in the main, support) I found myself, in my late thirties, in a doctor's office signing up for a tubal ligation. I hated the man at first sight and his questions and comments to me confirmed my instant reaction. 'Do you not want a son?' he asked. Later, while I was on the examination table with my feet in stirrups and his very cold fingers in most uncomfortable places he remarked, 'I will have to have your husband's permission, you know, for this procedure.' Fuming, I convinced him that he was not going to get my husband's permission and I stayed with him for the simple reason that at the time he was the only doctor in our city doing tubal ligation through the vaginal wall and it seemed like the best procedure. I didn't realize that what I hated was the decision, not the doctor.

And so I 'got my tubes tied'. And I thought it would be no big deal. No incision. No more danger of miscarriage. No more birth control. I was free. The day after my surgery I forged off into the scrum and did most of my Christmas shopping, then did all the Christmas stuff you do with two kids and an extended family, hosted the dinner, did the school holiday sports stuff. After the girls went back to school in January, there was time for what I had done to sink in and I collapsed into a puddle of misery.

The only grief I can compare it to was what I felt when I lost my adored mother. But this grief was keener, the knife edged with poison, because I had done it to myself. Hindsight tells me that part of the problem was the obvious; I was exhausted. But the babies who would never be were ghosts in the daylight and haunted my dreams at night. No chance now of the son who would have my father's eyes and gentle humour and whom we had planned to bear his name. No chance now of another little one, a unique combination of genes, whom we would meet with fascination and joy. No little round head in the crook of my arm, relaxing into satiated sleep. No next one.

In her post about her upcoming hysterectomy, Slouching Mom wrote this heart tearing paragraph:

Because someday you might be in my shoes, and you'll have so many regrets, regrets about the moments you didn't enjoy your babies, because you always believed that there'd be another chance to be a better, wiser, kinder, gentler mother, that no matter how many mistakes you made with your first and second children, there was always the promise of a third child, the one you'd more perfectly parent. That's why (isn't it?) after a particularly trying battle with a child who hadn't yet attained the age of reason, you so often found yourself muttering, "I have to remember not to do this the same way with the next one."

I don't know how it feels to have fertility slowly slip away in the menopause years. I read the things that women write as it happens and I read what is written about this slow, irrevocable loss, and I can't relate. But oh, I can relate to you whose miscarriage was your last try and I can relate to you whose body has to go under the knife to save your health. There is no pain like it.

It passes, that pain. The ghost babies fade away and other joys make themselves known. When your children are grown, all children become, in some sense, yours and there is a solid comfort in working for the community and making a difference in the lives of the little ones. And of their mothers, who are the same age as the children you did not have.

If you are lucky, someday your children will put their babies into your lap and the last little ghosts will be gone. I regarded my mother's devoted slavery to her grandchildren with a somewhat jaundiced eye, as it was my job to coax the little monsters back into some kind of civilized behaviour after she had looked after them. I see that same resigned look on my daughter's face when Little Stuff is reunited with her after a stay with Grama and Grampa. Grandparenting is sheer, indulgent fun. But the best thing is that I have found that grandparenting is a generic activity that I can do in all sorts of ways.

In Woman, an Intimate Biography, Natalie Angier devotes a chapter to the utility of the menopause in creating grandmothers way back in prehistory, infertile women whose contributions of food and child care increased the survival rate of their near kin and thus perpetuated the anomaly. Off these women went with their digging sticks and the food they brought back (plus child care, I am sure) made a huge difference. These women enabled our distant ancestors to thrive and spread out across the world. Angier calls it the 'grandmother hypothesis'. It's a fascinating take on the thesis of menopause as a survival characteristic. Working in and for the community (digging stick optional) is something I love. It's a role that fits me and that I fit. Hard work, sometimes, but satisfying and fun. It doesn't require you to deal with tantrums and vomit at 2:00 am either. Priceless!

Cripes, Here Comes Santa Claus

My link function seems to be down. Sorry!

The Elder Daughter called last night to tell me that Little Stuff's Christmas Concert is this afternoon. Little Stuff's class will be singing Chansons de Noel, she is requested to inform me, and teacher's instructions are that the children are to dress like princes and princesses. And would Grama and Grandpa like to come? Well, of course. But Grandpa left an hour ago for a meeting that will take all day. It is now 8:00 am, and as I look out the window, freezing rain is settling on everything like a silver scarf. However, if it stops I will attempt to make the hour drive, as the sight of Little Stuff in her Christmas red velvet dress with lace stockings, glittery shoes and a red velvet headband is one that I would be sad to miss. Even if she is overcome with stage fright, as well may happen.

For a wonderful description of a joyous Christmas concert child, take a look at Andrea's post about Frances' debut at A Garden of Nna Mmoy.

I have been reading a most riveting book, The Price of Motherhood. Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued. By Ann Crittenden. Crittenden is a journalist, former reporter for the New York Times, and, judging by this book, a most formidable researcher and analyst. The book was published in 2001 but I do believe most of the issues and data are very current for 2008. And the book has really shaken me, partly because I did not know how much worse off American women are than Canadian.

I know, because I deal with the effects, how debilitating low income motherhood is for both the mothers and the children. I wrote a bit about the effects in a November post titled 'Charity Begins at Home'. And I have long thought that working like mad to support food banks and remedial programs, to provide simple things like picture books and Christmas stockings and snowsuits as 'charity' is the least productive way to deal with this huge problem. Crittenden has a chapter of ideas on the subject, which I intend to get into later. I don't have the time to do it now because I have a house full of tasks to accomplish before Christmas, and I am almost time critical.

What? A woman with all her children grown and retired from her work years is time critical? Yes, indeed. I am cooking Christmas dinner for the whole crew, for one thing. This will give the ED one day off her incredible schedule of full time work combined with homemaking for her four year old and stepsons. Helpful as her partner is, her life is a series of compromises. The (single and childless) YD contemplated putting on Christmas dinner this year, but her travel schedule is extremely heavy and boiled down to a choice of either hosting or visiting her 91 year old grandmother for a pre Christmas visit. I also have some Board tasks over the next two days, the house to decorate, a Barbie doll dress to make (this deserves a post of its own!) other home made Christmas presents to finish (I procrastinate) and a pile of other self imposed but traditional Christmas stuff to do. Countdown, six days. One of which is today, and the rain seems to have stopped, so I am off to a concert, camera in hand.

Little Stuff told her mother that it was okay if I didn't come as long as her mother took lots of pictures. She is used to being put second, poor little mutt. The least I can do is get there myself.
Ho, ho, ho.

The Hand that Hits the Keyboard

Her Bad Mother asked all of us involved in BlogRhet to answer the following: How does (or DOES) blogging empower women? (Possible variations - has it, or how has it, empowered you? Is blogging a radical act?) Doesn't have to be specific to mom-bloggers, but should be specific to *women.* The MommyBlogs Toronto site is holding a contest regarding these questions -- winner to receive a package to Blogher. I'm not going, alas.

Writing something down is empowering. All through history, from the time that writing was regarded as the mysterious power of magical seers, the act of setting down an action or a thought has given the written word great power. The writing of chronicles, in specific, has been used by scrupulous men to record the deeds of states and heroes. By unscrupulous men, such chronicles have revised history, advanced the world view, ethics and religion of the writer and formed the opinions of the 'unlettered'. The 'Articles' that founded the protestant religion were posted on a church door. Spoken words of power, such as those in Shakespeare's plays, have entered and enriched the language in which they were written, but only when written do they endure.

I postulate that the antecedent of the blog is not really the diary, but rather a chronicle, the earliest form of which, kept by monks, has enormously influenced later events. The chronicles that survive their authors are referred to over and over again, analyzed and used both critically and uncritically to teach young people. When the printing press brought preserved text within the reach of many people, newsletters circulated in coffee shops in England and Europe gave middle class men access to the governments of their world. And with that access came the rise of democratic change. These observations are oversimplified, but I think they are sound.

When you look at the enduring early novels, you see the author using a form of chronicle, the direct address to the reader, to engage interest. "Reader, I married him," says Jane Eyre. The novel purports to be written in the words of the heroine, recollected after the fact. A great many chronicles/diaries that have survived from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries also show evidence of being written with an audience in mind. Some of them have been published as books, in fact, of advice of a father to his son, of the change of a government and religious outlook, or simply of a life vivaciously lived. Whom was Samuel Pepys writing for, if not for posterity. And how posterity values him, warts and all.

A blog seems to me to be a blend of a newsletter, a chronicle and a self conscious diary. I often find myself thinking of Lucy Maud Montgomery's diaries, a work over which she took obsessive care and frequently edited. How she would have valued a delete button -- so much easier to hide emendation that way than by taking a razor blade to remove pages. I think of LMM as the first woman blogger, because of the self consciousness and because of the subject matter. She wrote about her children, her work, her home and herself, just as we do. Her popularity was always in her mind, I believe, as she wrote because she knew that her fame would preserve the diaries and many women would read them. And mostly, I think, she was candid. Edited, but the voice and the emotions are real.

This aspect, the reality of the subject matter, the singular voice of the woman writer recording and observing and editing the events of her life, is what gives the blog its power. I want to read about you and I want you to read about me. The act of exchanging thoughts and comments on events and feelings and beliefs is the generating element that links all of us who write and illustrate our chronicles. And in the linkage lies power. The format of the blog, allowing graphics and photographs and providing a place for immediate response is a very powerful tool, and the reciprocal nature of the genre makes building a community at once simple and complex.

When I was a young mother I had a small version of this community -- my husband was a PhD student at a large university, one among several dozen in the Engineering school. Many of his fellow students were the same age and at the same stage of life and among the wives there were a double handful of us who were SAHMs from very similar backgrounds. We phoned each other daily, met as often as possible and made ourselves into a mutual aid society. It was good and supportive, but it was not immediate and not as link friendly. (What we needed was telephone conferencing.) I think that of all of us from that group I was the only one who wrote to my family (my mother and my aunt) in detail and regularly. It was a chronicle of my life, and the children's growth, that they needed and responded to. So it was somewhat blog like, but the response time was much longer.

Immediacy is one of the keys to the power of the blogger's world. That and linkage are the two aspects of blogs that are new and now. The reasons that the blogs are written are many but I have been collecting the BlogRhet meme responses and I am starting to work out some categories. There are women who primarily began to write to provide a chronicle of their lives for far-flung relatives and friends. Many cite reasons to do with mental health ranging from an outlet and refreshment from stress, through depression, post partum and otherwise to simple loneliness. Other women were motivated by a desire to write, either for themselves or to provide a record for future generations. Some are not clear themselves -- the water looked inviting to them, they jumped in and found themselves swimming. All the respondents, however, talk about how the immediacy and the sense of community have encouraged them to continue.

And a lot of us are continuing. Our voices are becoming legion. The variations in what we do with our blogs are less important than the simple fact that the numbers are increasing. I am sure there is disenchantment and women who just can't find the time to write and read enough to stay connected. But the majority are finding the time -- less than they want but it is important enough to keep on with, even at the end of a frantically busy and stressful day. And I can only surmise that what keeps us coming back is the sense of community, of empowerment, of being part of a many voiced, many eyed collective where we all can know something of one another and rely on one another. Not in a small and ephemeral group but as parts of a continuing whole.

I am saying that the whole has power. Like the chronicling monks, keeping their solitary candles of scholarship alive in the dark of the chaotic centuries, this multi voiced record we are keeping may take a long time to be useful. Or not. I am not an historian -- but there are some of us who are. I am not a psychologist or statistician or sociologist. But there are some of us who are. I am posting these observations in the knowledge that, unlike the monk chroniclers, other minds than mine, with different and probably better skills, will have immediate access to what I am writing and can use it, correct it and comment on it so that the discussion becomes more refined. I think it is too soon to wonder what will we do with this power we are generating. But it is not too soon to look at what kind of community we are building. And never to soon to foster it.

I think that we are joining voices - and writing history as it's never really been written before.

June 11 Edit. TBM added this comment, but it is a much better conclusion than mine so I have incorporated it.

Sounding off. Again.

I've been thinking about volunteers all day to-day, mainly because the organization I work with gives out an award each spring to people who help to make the community a better place to live. I had a list in front of me of people who have all dedicated many hours and impressive skills to a variety of organizations and programs. It was an amazing record. Women who run food programs in the local schools, a visiting service at a local nursing home, the local Community Justice Program, a transition program for low achieving teens entering the work force, a youth support program -- and on and on.

But as we worked on the list and rated these marvelous people, I was looking at the committee members and it struck me that they are equally amazing. They are all working mothers with children ranging from pre-school to university. They hold down demanding jobs -- one is a minister, one runs a doctor's office, one has two half time positions and contributes enough that she seems to be full time in each of them. The office manager has a teenaged Down's Syndrome son. The minister has three children, two at school and one preschooler and is going back to school herself in the fall. The double job holder works a farm with her husband, has two teenagers and manages to leave the smallest footprint on the planet of anyone I know, a time consuming endeavour that takes a lot of research and extra work.

What is so striking and so heart warming about this is the cheerful enthusiasm with which they settle down to yet one more demanding task. When you've got ten good candidates and two awards to give, sorting the better from the good and the best from the better is a stinker of a job. And this group does it with grace and laughter and the decisions they make are fair and reasoned. It's time consuming to do it well. One woman has to get back to her office by noon. Another has an afternoon meeting coming up. The third is always running under time constraints. But they give the process all the time needed to do the thing properly, without hassle or glances at watches or fuss.

I love working with women like this. In my many, many years of experience with committees and boards, I have never found a group of men with equal qualifications and demands on their time who can do this. Who can just get on with things without fuss or posturing and have fun while doing it. Men seem to have to display their credentials, argue about method and ways and means, stake out their territory like robins having spring singing contests, puff up, flare their tails and gobble like turkey cocks. Is it testosterone poisoning?

I think of Question Period in our Parliament and I just want to cringe. A lot of the women in the House seem to have adopted the male stridency and factionalism. Sheila Copps, for instance, was embarrassing in her hounding of the Opposition benches. I like a good debate but when courtesy and common sense are absent, it isn't a debate at all. It's chaos. Men's rules and men rule. I really think that the reason there aren't more women in provincial and federal politics is that they can't abide the nonsense. So they get on with the job in their own way, which is making sure all the notionally small things get done, and our world keeps turning.
I sometimes imagine that I can see the turkey hens look at one another when the male starts to strut, role their eyes and get on with looking for tasty bugs. And I don't blame them at all.