It’s true! A tuna has taken up residence under my front steps. What’s worse, there may be more than one!
Okay, by now you’re probably asking yourself what the hell I’m talking about. Let me tell you a story.
One fine evening when my eldest son was about a year old, my ex and I decided to go for a walk around the block, baby in carriage. It was spring, just like it is now, and the lilacs were blooming their fragrant heads off. The bumble bees were in heaven, and there were plenty of them. Their low pitched drones could be heard as they busily buzzed from blossom to blossom.
In the thick of it all, my ex decided that it might be the best idea for me to push the carriage. When I inquired why, he explained.
Now there are two things you need to know about my ex at this point. One, is that he is French. Quebecois. And two, that he is deathly afraid of bees.
His explanation for not wanting to push the carriage containing our child was as follows:
Because if I see a taon, I’m going to run.
Taon is the French word for horsefly, deer fly… but he meant bumble bee.
What I heard was thon, which is French for tuna.
Many minutes passed before I was able to get up off the ground from laughing so hard. When I could finally speak, with tears running down my face, I told him he could push the carriage because it didn’t matter – if I saw a tuna, I was going to run as well.
So there you have it. I have a tuna living under my steps. I won’t be telling my ex though – I won’t see him again until winter if I do.
As a child I was led to believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. I don’t remember when I discovered the truth about the latter two, but I do recall feeling betrayed by my parents when I reached into my stocking one Christmas morning and pulled out a gift with a price tag on it. At first I refused to believe it – they couldn’t possibly tell me such a blatant lie, these two adults who were constantly stressing to me the importance of telling the truth. But alas, we all know how it turned out. I’ve been wary of humans ever since.
Even worse than this, in my opinion, is telling kids that they can grow up to be whatever they want to be. I’m sorry, but if you stop growing when you hit four feet, you will not be a Harlem Globetrotter, nor will you be a famous opera diva if you can’t carry a note in a bucket. You will never be President of the United States if you were born in another country, no matter how much you want it.
I don’t care who you are – everyone has limitations. As adults, we learn what these are, and yet I still hear adults lying to generation after generation, promising children who can’t possibly know any better that they can do ANYTHING and be ANYTHING they want to be when they grow up. It’s total, utter bullshit.
In my own case, this on top of being told that everyone is good at something, left me feeling woefully inadequate. I wasn’t about to believe people who would tell me that I was a brilliant singer – these were the same people who told me there was such a thing as Santa. Hindsight shows me that in most cases, it’s just as well. Just look how many end up on TV talent shows only to be laughed at? So if I couldn’t be good at doing something I loved, what could it be? I tried guitar, figure skating, horseback riding … and ended up a bookkeeper. I couldn’t even type that fast. It’s only in the last fifteen years that I’ve discovered my passion for writing.
But I digress. The incident that brought this whole topic up was a conversation I had with Chris, my Autistic eighteen year old, in the car on Sunday. He told me he wants to be a radio announcer. I know for a fact that he’s been told he can do anything he wants. Radio announcer isn’t one of them, nor will it ever be. He can barely get more than two coherent sentences out of his mouth on the best of days. So I get to be the bad guy. I have to tell him he can’t do it. I tried to explain to him that he needs to get hired in order to talk on the radio, but he can’t understand why anyone won’t just hire him.
I can say with all honesty that I was reluctant to let my kids to believe in Santa. It came down to the question of whether or not to allow them that wonder I remember feeling when I did believe. But I can also say I never really tried to convince them he existed.
I’ve always maintained a realistic outlook for their lives. I’ve been truthful in telling my eldest that he can do almost anything. There are many things Chris will never do and I’ve always tried to steer him towards what is feasible. Alex as well. He will certainly never sing opera – and none of them will ever be President.
I’m sure there are people out there who have become exactly what they wanted to be – we all knew someone who was incredibly gifted and knew what they were cut out for at an early age – but few of them actually turned out to be the superhero they always dreamed they’d be (yes, that was one of my dreams too).
If you were like me and Chris, and your aspirations were outside the realm of what is achievable, then perhaps you’ll agree with me. Or maybe you were more down-to-earth in your expectations. In either case, telling a child they can do or be absolutely anything is something I’ll never do and something I wish others would put a little more thought into. You never know whose dreams you’ll eventually be dashing.
At the ripe old age of 50, I’m seriously considering starting a career. At the moment I have no income whatsoever, apart from the $15 I bring in every week (I know, put your jaw back in place) from my paper route. The government supports my kids because of their disabilities and we all live off that. If I’m ever unable to physically care for them anymore, or if they by some miracle are able to look after themselves, I’ll have nothing. Even now, I’m living beyond my means.
So I’ve been looking into University level courses to get an Editing Certificate. I’ve enjoyed the proofreading/beta reading I’ve done so far, and it’s something I could do from home, on a freelance basis. There are no Universities in the area that offer the course, however, so I’d have to do it online. Even if there was a course available close by, I’d have a hard time getting there with the limited time I have free due to looking after the kids. Add to that the fact that I can’t always be reliable given a certain day and time, and the concept of going to University is pretty much a flushable one.
Originally I was looking into the idea of taking a copy editing course, or even some more creative writing courses. I recognize though that it’s not recommended that one does one’s own final edit. And so no matter how good I am at writing, or how much I think my writing is perfect, I know it won’t be. If, on the other hand, I learn to edit other people’s work and get some money coming in from that, I’ll be able to afford to pay an editor to edit mine. It’s kind of like the old adage, “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for one night, but teach a man to fish and he’ll eat his entire life” … except this fisherwoman will still be asking other people to fish for her. And THEN, maybe I’ll be able to do something about the little red line that goes under “fisherwoman” but not “fisherman.” First the Certificate, next, the world! Or at least the world of spell check.
Anyway, that’s what’s been going through my little brain of late. I’ve always wanted to go to University. About time I did, if I’m going to. Never too late to start, right? I don’t want to be sitting around in two years thinking to myself, “If only I’d started two years ago, I’d be finished now,” after all.
Is there anything you’ve wanted to start and thought it was too late? Has this made you want to get off your butt and do it?
It doesn’t take me long to run out of resources. Energy, both physical and emotional – hell, even spiritual – seem to dry up when I get to a certain level of stress wherein I’m running around like a daddy longlegs with half of its legs pulled off by a willful child.
When I reach that limit I go blank. Nothing works. I must stop moving, I must force myself to try to stop thinking of everything at once. I have, at these times, so many thoughts in my head that I feel as though I will explode. And then I am without.
Without anything to draw from. My brain fires on the remnants of the sparks of what energy is beginning to build up again but I have no control over which way they shoot. Sometimes it’s anger, seeping from my pores like lava, and sometimes there are tears that threaten never to cease. Rarely, it’s laughter. When it is, I know I’ll be okay again soon.
Without resources I feel useless. I exist on a plane apart from the rest of society. I float (yes, I am even without gravity) an inch above the ground, always in danger of taking off. Not up, but away. If I do, I’m afraid nothing will stop me until I’m lost.
Eventually I can once again focus. But only by focusing on myself, and not all of the people who demand my attention all of the time, can I come back to me. To regain my energy, my emotions, and the spirituality that centers me and keeps me in the moment.
Here in Canada, we celebrate the birthday of Queen Victoria (May 24th) on the Monday before it. Today would be that day this year.
When I was growing up I knew the holiday as firecracker day. My parents and their best friends would buy fireworks and set them off in the back yard, always ending with the burning school house. Secretly, this was my favourite.
Ours was the size of the first one they lit.
As I moved into adulthood, however, the holiday became better known as the May 2-4 weekend. This meant the first long weekend of camping, cases of 24 beers, and if we were smart, a few packages of hot dogs came on the trip along with a few bottles of Jack Daniels.
My first experience of the kind would have been about 1988. We piled into half a dozen cars and headed to Sauble Beach, to a campground run by bikers. There were guard geese there – my first encounter with those particularly vicious animals was luckily not a close one.
Much booze and a few cold weiners (it was too rainy to light a fire) into the weekend… let’s just say I was longing for the burning schoolhouse – or burning anything by the time Monday morning rolled around.
But such is the experience of life. Ah, youth. Now I’m just trying to get through a day off school for the kids.
Are you a Canadian with a great remembrance of Victoria Day? A favourite camping trip, perhaps?
01:00 – The thirteen year old comes to my room to say he needs to be covered up again. I get up because he won’t leave me alone until I do, and the more he fusses, the more he wakes up.
02:01 – Cell phone rings. Squint at the number. Don’t recognize it. Decline call.
02:02 – Roll over to go back to sleep. Get cramp in left foot. Writhe until cramp goes away.
02:03 – Get comfortable again. Notice light in my eyes. Open them to be blinded by rays of moonlight like laser beams coming through window. Roll over.
02:04 – Am awake, wondering if the phone call was from eldest son, lost, alone on the side of the highway, with a phone he plucked from the cold dead body of the guy he’d just seen run over. (Okay, the body wouldn’t be cold yet, but you get the picture.)
02:25 – Thinks about getting up to write this post.
02:30-02:54 – Drifts back off to sleep.
02:55 – Cell phone rings. Answers it. Loud talking in the background and then a voice says, “Wrong number,” and hangs up.
02:56 – Cell phone rings again. Answers it. Person hangs up.
02:57 – Cell phone rings … again. Answers it. Lots of noise: voice says, “Still wrong number.” Well DUH!! Am clearly dealing with a rocket scientist.
02:57 – Cell phone rings. Picks up and listens. Voice says, “I think the number’s 0215…” Resists temptation to say, “YES! Try that!” They hang up.
03:00 – (While failing to get back to sleep.) Imagines how it might be possible to replicate fax machine noise for next phone call.
03:27 – Considers getting up to write post which will include phone number of non-rocket scientist so that people all over the world can phone said doo-doo at 2 and 3 every morning for the next week.
03:41 – Tries to figure out how to say 999,999 in Japanese.
03:50 (or so) – Drifts off to sleep.
06:25 – Thirteen year old wakes me up to let me know he’s going downstairs and that he’s going to let me sleep for another half an hour. Goes downstairs and proceeds to scream at TV for half an hour.
06:55 – Phone rings … cousin in England has forgotten yet again how many hours difference there are…
It’s going to be a long two weeks until I’m able to sleep again.
My best friend John was talking to me today about a man he works with named Mike. Last night Mike didn’t show up for work; apparently he just found out he has cancer.
Mike is 32 years old, just got married, his wife just had a baby and they just bought a house. The cancer spread from his testicles and is now in his stomach. Nine weeks of chemo await him.
Yesterday, I took a picture of a tree.
I feel lucky to have what I believe is a bunch of open-minded people following my blog. So I ask you, please try to see the connection.
In life, there is so much beauty. While I’m sure Mike is worried as hell for himself and his new family, and it might be impossible at the moment for him to see what he has gained in light of what he has potentially lost, this is what I would advise him, if I knew him: focus on the beauty in every single day.
It’s so much easier for we who are not suffering to see the positive in things. The very last thing I mean to do is be glib. But each and every one of us is dying. Every thing that lives, will die. This is what connects us.
Please, send some positive thoughts out for Mike, and for all who suffer. And don’t forget to look for beauty, everywhere you go.
My mother, talking to me on her cellphone: I’ll make sure I keep my phone with me tomorrow, in case you call – I just have to find where I put the bloody thing now.
You never know when you’re going to meet someone who will change your life forever. Be it by accident or by design, there are those whose actions will alter the course of our lives, or do it simply by existing.
For myself, I think the people who have changed my life the most drastically are my kids. I could have had no idea how much until I actually gave birth to them.
There are people who have passed through my life who have caused me to trust less, and those who have cemented my faith in humanity. I suppose one sort balances the other sort out.
My ex, with whom I had my children…
We met when we worked together many years before we actually began having a romantic relationship. We lost track of each other for six years – it didn’t really matter. We were barely friends at the start. Then one day I pulled into a gas station just to buy gas and there he was again, in a city hundreds of miles from where we first met. Some might say it was meant to be. I’m sure my kids would.
I never even liked children before I had my own. Yet now I would die for one, even if it was not mine. That’s what being a mother is about, I guess.
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