What was once the pristine lawn that welcomed us to our new home in July is now quite a big mess. We wondered why bits of our lawn were all of a sudden being upturned, and a neighbour explained that the raccoons come out at night and pull up the top layer of the grass to get to their treats — grubs! Yuck!
We’ve never had grubs before. If I pretend I never saw them, will they freeze off and die over the winter and we can start fresh in spring? Or is this something that we need to take care of right away? Advice people!
He was practically sputtering, he was so frustrated. I looked at his tear-filled eyes with confusion. With stupid, naive confusion. He wasn’t talking to me, and I didn’t know him. We were a group of strangers exiting the warm, transcending world of the theatre before departing on our own separate ways.
But I heard him. And I thought he was wrong. That he was transposing his own experience as a young gay man in the 1980s to that of today’s teenagers. That today’s youth have it so much better. That the world is so much more aware, more accepting, and less closeted.
After all, when I grew up in the 1980s, you’d be forgiven for thinking that there was not a single gay person in the entire high school. (Which, of course there were. These young people were not just in the closet, they were forced there and kept behind doors with lock and key.) Whereas when my younger siblings were in high school a decade later, there were openly gay students and an LGBT group that regularly met at school.
And the theatre piece we’d just seen, the Tony-award winning play The Normal Heart, was about a time even before mine. It told of a tight-knit group of friends working to refuse to let doctors, politicians and the press bury the truth of the then unspoken AIDS epidemic, more than a quarter of a century ago.
This man was speaking to his friend, an older woman, and he was seething. He said, “Things haven’t changed. After all this, after everything we’ve been through, things still haven’t changed.”
I hadn’t really thought about this man since I saw that performance, many months ago. But today, I have. And I’ve been thinking that he’s right.
How else can we explain the death of Jamie Hubley, a 15-year-old Canadian boy who lived in my city, and who committed suicide after public taunting at school for being gay and unsuccessful treatment for depression? It seems that “difference” is still not considered “normal.”
Of course, even in my school days, difference was taunted. Whether it was the colour of your skin, the way you talked, the freckles on your face, or the clothes you wore, if you were different, you could get eaten alive at school. Conformity was everywhere. It protected you, kept you under the radar. I blended in. I got along okay. But I remember the others who didn’t. It wasn’t pretty. Like Rick Mercer says in this video, school was a prison for these kids.
But why are children in groups so vicious? And what makes us this way? It seems that bullying has existed in school since the beginning of time. Literature from all time periods notes this kind of behaviour among children.
How can we consider ourselves evolved as a species when our young people are tearing each other apart like animals? Think I’m exaggerating? Jamie Hubley had batteries stuffed down his throat by a gang of fellow students who didn’t like his choice to figure skate rather than play hockey. How does this make any sense? What does it matter to them what type of skating he wants to do.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I’m raising more questions than answers. When am I going to wrap this up with a nice closing and some calls for action that will make a difference?
But I can’t. I’m now that man outside the theatre, seething with frustration, with tears in my eyes. How can we make sure that there are no more families like the Hubleys, left only with questions rather than their much-loved child.
There’s no such things as normal hearts. Just hearts. And they all hurt just the same when they’re clawed at.
The “Month of Me” project that I first told you about here is coming together mighty nicely! On October 5th, I will be toasting a happy birthday to my mother in New York City … here’s a little more on the that …
On this day 40 years ago, a young woman was seven days overdue to give birth to her first child. Due on September 15th, there was no doubt in her mind that this baby was conceived during her husband’s short break during army boot camp training. They had only been wed for just over a year, but they’d been high school sweethearts and were ready to start a family. If only this baby would make its entrance ….
I often wish I’d known this petite, feisty young woman. For she is certainly not the same woman that I know now as my mother. There is no way that this young woman, raised in a small town in Ontario, could now be the same person after having travelled the world; tucked undergraduate, master and doctoral degrees under her belt; and learned how to navigate not only a hospital but a boardroom. But I’d venture that giving birth had been the most transformative of her life experiences. This young woman couldn’t have known forty years ago that she would go on to birth four more children after her first, and that she would know not only the joyful relief of a baby being put into her arms but also the excruciating pain of grief.
The woman my mother is now, in many ways, is still as much of a mystery as the woman she was back then, with me comfortably curled in her womb. And she might say the same for me. We’ve never been similar, we’ve always had our own ways of doing things … ways that likely make no sense to each other.
And yet, as time goes on, our physical appearances become more and more similar. I look in the mirror, and I see her. It is a strange sensation. As I age, the woman in the reflection sometimes feels like a stranger to me; she bears so little resemblance to the young woman who used to look back at me. But the eyes – they are my mother’s eyes, and they comfort me. They tell me that it will all be okay; that aging, while it may have stripped me of former physical joys, will bring its own rewards.
I love and admire that young woman who birthed me, just as much as the one who now acts as my counsel and friend.
And I am growing to love this newly emerging woman in my mirror. The one with wrinkles and sunspots. With hair that’s gone thin, and a face that is starting to fall. Forty years is a long time to know someone, but life is long and I plan for this face to keep looking back at me for many years to come.
If I’m lucky, I’ll still be looking at this face when my own daughter turns 40. And Stella, who is now aged nine, will ping me off a note asking me to come with her to New York City to celebrate my birthday. That, I think, will be a very sweet moment.
And that is precisely the kind of sweet moment I hope my mother felt when I did the same to her. That’s right, my mother is going to fly into New York (which is might cool of her, don’t you think?) to join me on her birthday, which is so close to mine. Because a “Month of Me” just wouldn’t be the same without her.
Back-to-school is here! As usual, summer has whizzed right by and we’re back into the busy fall season (both at work and at home). This summer was a milestone for us — we moved houses for the first time in 14 years and we enjoyed a special visit from overseas relatives. But we’re ready for routines again, I think. That’s one bonus of school-aged children; it helps the whole family get into consistent routines.
Not to be outdone by Valentine’s Day or other commercially created and flogged-to-death occasions to spend money, the back-to-school ads have been incessant. Not only do you *need* a new wardrobe, but also brand-new stationery, and the latest and greatest technology gadgets.
Now, don’t get me wrong …. when I was a kid, I loved — loved! — back to school. I loved the fall weather, the classroom, reconnecting with friends and the back-to-shopping trip my mother would always treat me too. Looking back, I have no idea how my parents managed to afford it with four children, but somehow I was always kitted out with new clothes and goodies for the pencil case.
But for us, the back-to-school shopping event is turning out to be more of a non-event. Stella has no interest in fashion and hey, who says you actually need a brand-new outfit for the first day of school? The advertisements do, that’s who. So, we are taking Stella’s lead and adopting a far more simpler and less stress-inducing approach.
Here is the outfit she would like to wear for tomorrow’s first day:
I’m not sure if it will be shorts weather or jeans weather, so both are out and ready. The shorts and jeans are regular features in her closet — both from The Children’s Place, which has a line of jeans that is perfect for Stella’s slim body type, as well as shorts that I consider “nice” and not “short-shorts.” We have the shorts in pretty much every colour and about five pairs of the jeans since Stella, like her father, prefers jeans over any other kind of pant. The shoes are a New Balance pair that we picked up late last school season when she outgrew her other pair of “indoor” shoes. I’m a big believer that the indoor shoes the school requests should be shoes designed for exercise with good cushioning and support, since the kids wear these shoes for gym class. Out of all the clothing elements a child has, I think shoes are the best investment for a growing body. These ones still fit perfectly and are in good condition, so it would be wasteful to toss them simply because they’re not pure white any more.
So, did you add all that up? Yep, a total of $0.00.
But wait, there is one brand new item. A never-worn-before item kept aside specifically for the new school season. And it’s this t-shirt:
Ontario Parks has created a number of nice lines of clothing for toddlers, kids, and adults. This one is from the Species at Risk line, and features the Eastern Wolf. We picked it up on our recent camping trip to Achray, but you can also buy them online (cost is $16.95).
In addition to this Eastern Wolf shirt, we picked up one with a butterfly on it. And during the summer, Stella and I happened upon some great Chinese dragon (a fave creature) shirts that were on sale for $3 each somewhere. So, in total, there are about 4 new shirts for the season.
All up, then, the back-to-school wardrobe this season totalled less than $40.00.
How did you make it through the season? Is your bank account still suffering? What were your top picks or most favourite finds?
A while back, I decided that I’d really like to attend Blissdom Canada, which is a blogging conference taking place in Toronto next month. I thought, hey, I love blogging and it’s my 40th birthday in October, so why not? All the tickets were sold out ages ago, but I was able to buy a ticket from someone who wasn’t going to be able to go. (Although I am still hoping to win a ticket so that I can recoup my cash. Keep your fingers crossed for me!)
Then a friend told me she was moving to New York City for the whole month of October. It was going to be a cool experience – to live as a bonafide New Yorker. I offered to grace her with my company for few days. Why not, eh, it’s my birthday month after all?
And from there, I’m afraid I have let it turn into all kinds of crazy. I decided that this October, the month of my 40th birthday, will be the “Month of Me.” I had a glass of red and then told my Twitter friends about it too. They happily spurred me on, as Twitter friends are apt to do. And a hashtag was created: #monthofme
Now that a hashtag has been created, it’s official. Right? Right.
So, my friends, you’ve been warned! I am going to beg, borrow and steal (okay, well not really any of those, but you get my drift) to make the month of October a mighty grand experience. While some might simply refer to themselves as 39 forever, I am going to CELEBRATE my 40th! I am really looking forward to my 40s; I have a feeling it’s going to be a fantastic decade.
First on the list? I am going to spend at least part of my Month of Me driving around in this beauty, courtesy of Ford of Canada:
It’s a luxury family car called the Ford Lincoln MKS. It looks might pur-dee to me!
Some of the cool features I’m looking forward to trying out are: the rear-view camera at the dash, that works with a reverse sensing system as well as a technology that scans blind spots for you when you’re changing lanes.
The interior also looks mighty fine. You know how nice seat warmers are in the winter? Well, this car comes with standard seat warmers in the front and the back. I really like that because the back-seat passenger often gets overlooked in a car’s design, so I thought that was smart.
Anyhow, part of the deal with driving this car will be to review it on the Coffee with Julie blog. I have been asked to review it for both what I liked AND what I didn’t like.
A sweet ride, some Broadway shows, and hanging with bloggy buddies … the Month of Me is really starting to take shape!
Edited to add: I didn’t win the Go Girlfriend’s Follow Your Bliss contest for a ticket to the Blissdom Canada conference, but happily, I received an invite to be a Tribe Leader for the topic of Travel. You can see some of the fun pics from Blissdom here. Also, through no fault of Ford, the car-testing thing got logistically too challenging for this month. However, I’m looking forward to test-driving one of their new Hybrid cars in the new year.
Here’s where I chat about whatever is percolating in my brain on a given day … silly family anecdotes, travel tips, a new movie or book, or just life in general.
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