Following my sun: the one where I say goodbye

I know my recent absence from this space has been abrupt in light of the considerable effort I have spent the last two years convincing readers to invest in my life.

I know that radio silence for a month is perhaps even disrespectful, given the fact that I have often drank deeply, nay greedily, from your virtually never-ending well of support and goodwill.

But I hope you will forgive me when I explain that since I have last written, everything I used to assume about the way my life would play out has changed.

At the beginning of the summer I applied for what I can only describe as my dream job: a job that would catapult me several steps up a career ladder on which I already occupied a comfortable middle position. It is a job that represents an enormous challenge, a job that would move me into the inner circles of the film and television industry and allow me to advocate for the people and places I hold dearest in my heart.

I am not normally a humble sort, but suffice to say I firmly believed that my application was a long shot

But I got the job.

I got the job and in just a few days I will fly to Los Angeles, California on a nine-day business trip during which I will find a place for my family to live.

In mid November I will leave Don Mills and Canada and my life here behind to chase my dreams and ambitions in a place where success in my chosen industry represents the very pinnacle of success.

I have been offered what I believe is the opportunity of a lifetime folks and I'm going for it.

It will not be easy. It has not been easy. In the month since I accepted the offer I have plummeted down the rabbit hole into a vortex of details and lawyers and contracts and home listings and visas and export papers and anxiety and studying and disbelief and sleepless nights and joy and uncertainty and heartfelt late night talks.

I will pull up stakes and move south towards the end of November. Rob and Graham will await my return about a month later and after Christmas together we will return to Los Angeles as a family to build our lives anew in a sunny place, far removed we hope from the uncertainty and darkness of the past year.

It was on last New Year's Eve that we learned that cancer cells had been found in Rob's mother's stomach lining. That very day she was released from the hospital to our home where at midnight we raised a hopeful, if tentative glass to the possibilities that 2009 would bring.

We did not know then that we would mourn her death just 11 weeks later: we have learned since that, more often than not, both life and happiness are hard fought.

And so we are fighting. And we are moving. And I am moving on from this space which I believe is incompatible with my new job, at least in its present incarnation.

In just a few weeks I will be taking Don Mills Diva private and providing a password for friends and family who may be interested in photos and basic updates on how we're doing.

If you'd like to keep in touch feel free to request the password via e-mail and if you live in the Los Angeles area especially please touch base.

I will miss Don Mills Diva and I will miss all of you. It is thanks in no small part to my readers, supporters and even dissenters, that I was successful in obtaining this job. Even more than the guerrilla social media and Internet marketing skills I learned from the blogosphere, I learned confidence in the expression of my ideas and confidence in the importance of what I could contribute.

If there is one regret that I have with regards to my withdrawal from the blogging community it is the vague sense that I took so much more from it than I was able to give. During some of the darkest days of my life you gave me a renewed conviction in my personal power and there is no way I will ever be able to repay that.

Thank you each and every one for lifting me up and helping me soar.

Good bye and God bless you.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

There are some life-changing events afoot here at Casa DMD: I hope to be able to tell you what's happening in the next few days.

Thanks for your patience.

Schooled

The call from Graham's school came on Monday, barely an hour after I had settled into a busy day at work.

"We have Graham here in the office," said the voice at the other end of the phone. "He's not feeling very well and I think you'll have to come and get him."

"What?! Is he okay?"

"I don't think it's serious," was the reply. "Here, I'll let you talk to him."

There was a shuffling noise and then, Graham's voice, so thin and tiny that I instantly felt my chest ache as my heart swelled and pushed against it.

"I throwed up in the trash can Mommy. Are you going to come and get me?"

I went and got him.

I took him home and tried to catch up on work e-mails while he lolled on the couch and watched cartoons. I fed him chicken noodle soup and buttered sourdough toast and anxiously inquired about his well-being.

He appeared to be perfectly fine.

He appeared better then fine, actually: he appeared buoyant and, in retrospect, perhaps just a little relieved. That evening I even took him to the park and let him run off an obvious surfeit of energy.

Yesterday morning I walked him into his classroom where we were greeted by his teacher.

"Graham seemed fine at home yesterday," I told her.

"Well I think it was probably just nerves, but he looks way better today than he has since he started," she said. "I mean, he's just seemed so anxious."

He has?

Oh.

I decided not to make a big deal of it: when I spoke to Graham after school yesterday he was happy as a clam and assured me he had a "great" day. I decided not to say anything about it at all.

And then this morning, as I buckled him into his car seat, a look of pure panic flashed across his dear, wee face.

"I'm gonna be sick Mommy, I'm gonna be sick," he wailed. "I need a sick bowl."

I handed him the car's waste paper basket and stood there for quite a while, rubbing his back and trying to reassure him.

"It's okay. It's normal. Everybody feels a little nervous sometimes. Even Mommy when she goes to work. All the other kids at school probably feel a little nervous too".

After a few minutes he seemed okay and off we went.

I walked him into his classroom again where the morning story was already in progress and apologized for our lateness.

"Graham had a little attack of nerves," I whispered to the teacher, as discreetly as possible.

She smiled kindly.

"Yes, that happened yesterday as well."

It did?

Oh.

And so it seems that perhaps my darling boy is not quite as confident as he seems or as I so proudly asserted he was following his first day of school last week.

And so it seems that I must come to grips with the painful realization that the child I thought I knew better than my own heart has anxieties and fears that, for whatever reason, he feels he must keep hidden from me.

The heart, it breaks.

Forty

By all accounts today is significant, but it is especially so for me.

Today is my 40th birthday.

I celebrated with my family already last weekend and I enjoyed tons of well wishes and cake at work today, but despite all the exhortations from female friends who've already hit this milestone, I don't feel liberated. I have instead been unable to shake the melancholy that has plagued me since waking: it is nearly bedtime and I still feel unsettled.

I am happy enough, but not knowing if my family is complete leaves me unable to exhale and ill-equipped to make grand declarations about what the next year or the next decade will bring.

I cannot help remembering that last year I was so rushed on my birthday that I completely forget it until my sweet mother-in-law forced me to slow down for a birthday kiss: little did I know it would be the last one I would ever receive from her.

So what if I never expected my life would look like this at 40 - that's hardly surprising is it?

Just last weekend, between bites of an early birthday cake, my father quoted me an old saying that has rung in my ears all day today: "The secret to being happy in life is not getting what you want, but being happy with what you get."

And in the absence of grand declarations, that, I think, will be my mantra for the coming year and hopefully for all those that follow it.

Brave new world

As much as I deep down might entertain the notion that I am somehow different and perhaps even a little special, I was today humbled to learn that I am but a walking cliche.

That is to say, oh yeah, I cried.

Graham didn't, but I did.

He was a little nervous, but not overly so. He needed only some gentle reassurance and a great big hug before confidently taking his teacher's hand and allowing himself to be lead right out of his babyhood without so much as a backwards glance.

And I lingered, at the classroom door's edge, uncertain and teary, straining to keep him in my line of sight as he settled into a circle of his peers at the front of the room. The teacher nodded, a kindly cue for me to take my leave and even as I cursed myself for being that mom, the tears started to spill.

There's a reason why cliches become cliches and it was more emotional than I ever imagined it would be to know, at that moment, that the person I would die to protect was beginning his journey into a world where the sum total of the affections of a hundred friendly faces he encounters won't equal a millionth of the passion his mother has for his well-being.

So I cried, just a little, and I wished with all my heart that his Oma could have seen him today, so handsome, so grown up and so confident.

So yeah, I am a walking cliche and I cried, because even though Graham returned home today, looking exactly the same as he did this morning, I already miss the boy he was when he left.

How can you tell if your kid's a spoiled brat?

There are two ways of looking at the photos below: a selection of shots I took yesterday at the closing day of the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) in downtown Toronto.

If you just glance at the photos you will likely take in a scene that looks very similar to scenes I often present here, in pictures and in words: scenes of a carefree and charmed childhood enjoyed by a boy with two parents who, whatever their struggles, endeavor to create happy memories that will one day act as a bulwark against the complications and difficulties that adulthood inevitably brings.

Looks like a great day, right?


Wrong.

Yesterday was a terrible day.

Yesterday was a terrible day not because the CNE was hot and crowded and ludicrously expensive, though it was all of those things, but because it caused both Rob and I (though really mostly me) to question whether all the effort we put into creating memories with Graham is actually having the desired effect.

Let me be blunt: Graham wasn't just poorly behaved yesterday, he was insolent and just plain bratty.

Look a little closer at the photos.


Can you see the frustration and the exhaustion on our faces now?

We were exhausted - by almost constant, enduring temper tantrums that erupted over the most insignificant things the instant Graham's gratification was denied or delayed. We all know that keeping a three-and-a-half-year-old in line anywhere there are crowds and candy and rides and noise is bound to involve some major headaches, but normally the fleeting moments of joy and fun make it all worthwhile in the end.

Not yesterday.

I have never spent so much time correcting behaviour: talking, discussing, sternly warning and yes, yelling. I have never felt tears of frustration sting my eyes so many times in such a short time frame. The pain involved in yesterday's outing so far outweighed the pleasure that even a full 24 hours later, I still wish I had not bothered to go at all.

I still feel unsettled.

Graham's Labour Day weekend was a whirlwind. He celebrated his uncle's birthday with a big family dinner that went late on Thursday. On Friday we headed for the lake and spent Saturday and Sunday at Grandpa and Grandma's where Graham collected clams and played in the water with his cousins. He had a campfire and a sing-a-long and boat rides and barbecues. We came back to the city Sunday night for the express purpose of taking him to the CNE on Monday, our seventh wedding anniversary.

Was Graham overstimulated?

Maybe. Rob thinks so. He also thinks he was way overtired (true) and nervous about his first day of school on Thursday (possibly). He doesn't really think that Graham's behaviour, however awful, is completely out of the norm or that it indicates a problem with discipline or entitlement. He thinks I was right to be so hard on him, but that I should stop being so hard on myself.

But I'm not so sure.

Because I can't shake this nagging fear that my well-meaning attempts to make my son's childhood special have unwittingly contributed to the creation of a spoiled, entitled little monster.

First love

Many, many moons ago, before Graham developed his fixation on a certain comely neighborhood girl, he had another obsession.

And this obsession. I think, may well outlast his affection for any girl he has met or has yet to meet. This obsession, after all, has persevered since the very beginning of his short life; from the very first time he started to become capable of making his wants and desires known.

Graham is a balloon-a-holic.

He has been since birth and still is, as evidenced by the picture below taken at the birthday party for the daughter of a dear bloggy friend last weekend.

Yes, during a birthday party featuring wonderful food, tons of kids and a magic show with doves, a rabbit and an iguana, my boy spent most the time fixated on his first, true love.



Sigh.

Oh well, odds are balloons will never throw him over for the captain of the football team, right?

Damn: the potty training edition

DAMN!

It's days like today that I dearly wish I had not committed myself to refraining from the use of stronger profanity on this site (and in real life, though in real life I almost never quite manage to refrain from it).

But anyway...DAMN!

Just damn.

I've been trying to potty train Graham for almost a full year now. I beat myself up over my failure to do so way last January. Then I decided to just let it happen on its own. Then I tried to put my foot down again in May. That was a disaster that upset me more than I thought it possible to be upset over something like potty training. Then I resolved to just let it happen in its own time. And now?

We're back at square one.

Well, not square one. Let's just say square one as far as number two is concerned: as in, he won't, absolutely won't, poop in the potty.

It's been three days since he's gone at all. I know this can't go on. I know he WILL go eventually. But here's what you don't know...

The last time we got to this stage, he did go eventually. In his sleep. In his bed. And guess what? The humiliation, the discomfort, the sheer GROSSNESS of that experience was NOT enough to convince him that perhaps the potty was a better alternative.

Nope.

What happened was he seemed quite comfortable to get settled into a routine of just holding it all day, soiling his bed in the night and going happily about his normal routine in the morning.

So now he's not gone for three days and he's refusing to go on the potty. I know eventually he will go. And if I continue to refuse a pull up, I suspect he will go in his bedsheets tonight just like last time.

In fact, I suspect he will continue to soil his bed on a nightly basis as long as I refuse him a pull-up.

Graham has told me outright, over and over, that he will NOT poop on the potty.

Graham will be FOUR in November.

Graham is not frightened of the potty and no longer has any hang-ups about the potty: he is stubborn, plain and simple.

I have pleaded. I have cajoled. I have firmly instructed. I have shouted. I have talked softly. I have sobbed. I have tried rewards. I have tried letting him take the lead. I have tried making him stay bare. I have tried withholding privileges. I have tried EVERY single piece of advice I have been given.

I feel like a complete and abject failure

I never, ever thought that I would find myself in a power struggled of such epic proportion but now that I have, I feel that it's a power struggle from which I must, as the PARENT, emerge victorious. After all, what kind of message does it send to him if I don't follow through? If I repeatedly threaten consequences - no tv, no school, no birthday party tomorrow that's he' s been looking forward to all week - only to turn around and give in?

And yet, deep down, I don't believe, even for a second, that my following through on these consequences - and a million more I tearfully threw at him in the throes of frustration last night, consequences that will make us ALL miserable - will change his mind.

DAMN.

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I almost forgot to say thanks for all the tips on locating the Curious George Balloon - thanks to Cheryl and Wendy I believe one was found in the shop at Sick Kids Hospital. Also, many thanks for suggesting we visit our old house to look for our missing kitty. We did just that AND put our former neighbors on lookout duty: I'll let you know if our dear Eddie turns up.

The showman

Honestly!

Are there no lengths to which...

...a guy won't go...

...to impress a girl?

Just out of the frame of these pictures was the object of Graham's latest obsession. Earlier this evening he climbed to the top of this play structure and jumped off about...umm...76 times in a desperate bid to get her to pay attention to him.

Unfortunately for him, it didn't appear to work: she apparently doesn't notice or appreciate great bravery and superhuman athletic prowess in men.

Clearly, it's her loss.

On preferring sticks and stones

Three weeks later, her words are still with me, roiling through my gut like pesky, intestinal gnats; not exactly painful but just galling and irritating enough to still sting in the quiet moments when I stop and take their measure: yes...they are still there.

Yes, they still hurt.

The words were part - just a very small part actually - of a conversation I had with an acquaintance, a dear friend of a very dear friend, I had met briefly a few times before. She is tall, blonde and pretty and works in independent film. She's thoughtful, interesting...cool.

We ran into each other at a girls gathering and were chatting about her upcoming wedding (to a member of Canadian music royalty no less) and comparing notes on parenting. She has a one-year-old and is stepmother to a 10-year-old and a 20-year-old.

She admitted with a grin that she was already thinking about a second child with her soon-to-be husband and I remarked that at least she had a few built-in babysitters. I didn't mention that I had been thinking about a second child for almost three years now, but I noticed and envied the ease and assurance with which she discussed her plans to add to her family.

I always notice that in other women: I always envy that.

And the conversation turned, as it so often does these days, to plastics and phthalates and chemicals and all this crap that has apparently crept into our children's food and toys and how it might be affecting them, particularly their future fertility.

Another woman remarked on a documentary she had seen about the decline of fertility, particularly male fertility, and how the phenomenon was something we had all seen around us. I talked about a book I was reading that deals with this very thing.

"Well, maybe it's not such a bad thing really," said the first woman, she of the one-year-old and the two step-children and the blithe plans for more. "I mean, the earth can only handle so many children, it's probably just the earth's way of self-correcting and saying 'no more'."

I didn't say anything: I didn't think I could say anything without bursting into tears, so I didn't say anything.

"I mean, at some point, something has to force people to really stop and look at why this is happening, about whether it's because we're overpopulating the earth, right?"

Right.

I think I may have just mumbled something or changed the subject, or at least someone did, and the conversation went on. I spent the rest of the evening not thinking about what she said while continuing to chat with her and thoroughly enjoying our conversation. The night ended when I sincerely wished her good weather for the upcoming wedding and headed for my car.

It wasn't until the way home that I let myself replay the conversation; until I let the hurt and the indignation wash over me.

I cried much of the way home actually, but more out of plain old frustration than any real anger, because I know her words were not meant to be hurtful. I'm quite certain, in fact, that she would have been mortified had I taken her aside and told her how I was feeling.

She probably would have been mortified if I sought to confirm that any plans she had to stop and really look at the issue of overpopulation were meant to be executed after her partner had fathered his fourth child.

She probably would have felt badly if I had gently pointed out that positively glowing with happiness and good fortune whilst that speculating that someone else's ailment might be the result of a necessary and perhaps even deserved Darwinian correction is, at the very least, staggeringly insensitive.

I probably should have told her how I felt, but I didn't.

Perhaps I would have if I had known that more than three weeks later her words would still be there, roiling around my gut, gnawing at me and making my eyes sting with tears when I watch my only child try and make a playmate out of our 12-year-old cat.

******************************************************

Do you live in the Toronto area? Do you know where one can purchase a Curious George balloon? If so please, please spill your secrets in the comment box - I have a dear friend who may have to renege on a serious promise to a toddler who's about to turn three. We can't have that, can we? Help!

We Miss Eddie

So...umm...yeah...this sucks.

"We Miss Eddie. Eddie (Edgar) is our small, tabby (black and grey with
white tummy) cat who went missing when we moved into (our new address)
last week. If you have seen her, please call us!"

The poster's been up for more than three weeks now: no one's called us.

I think it's pretty safe to say that Eddie isn't coming home.

Despite the fact that these posters are up all over our new neighborhood. Despite the fact that Rob and I have spoken to countless new neighbors and ventured out separately many a night calling for her at the top of our lungs (and annoying said new neighbors).

Despite all these things, I think it's pretty safe to say Eddie isn't coming home: it's been exactly a month since she slipped out the back door three days after we moved in.

She (yes she's a girl) is a scrappy cat and a mouser, so she might well be managing just fine. But what keeps me awake nights is the knowledge that she won't be fine at all once the cold weather hits. And despite the fact that I've babied her for the past nine years much the same way I've babied her feline brother, she's always been skittish and fearful of people: I'm almost certain she would never let any well-meaning cat lover take her in, no matter how much she needed it.

I feel awful and Rob feels awful. Graham did feel awful but cheered up considerably after I marshaled my considerable acting ability to convince him that Eddie had just gone to live with another, perfectly wonderful family. (Does that count as a lie? Probably. Do I care? Nope - he just lost his Oma for chrissakes).

Sigh.

In other, more cheerful cat news, it's been almost exactly a year since so many of you weighed in on the tough choice I made with regards to our other feline friend. I'm happy to report that Horace is still living healthily with his facial lesion: he ain't as pretty as he used to be but at least he's present and accounted for.

Sweet Carolina

Graham is in love.

Graham is in love with a much older "woman" who every evening rules the playground just steps from our new front door. Her name is Carolina and I'd guess she's about 13 years old.

Carolina is tall and beautiful with long, dark hair. She travels with a fawning entourage of younger girls who are noticeably less confident than she and quick to conform when she rolls her lovely eyes and tells them they're being "so immature!"

Graham noticed Carolina the very first time we visited the playground and he's remained in her thrall ever since.

"There she is Mommy! There's the girl! I'm gonna go play with her!" he shouts gleefully. Ever the picture of blissful optimism, he generally runs headlong in her direction only to be summarily dismissed.

"I think she's a little old for you to play with Graham," I cautioned him a few nights ago, after she once again rebuffed his enthusiastic invitation to join him on the slide with a giggle and a bemused pat on the head.

"But she has pretty long hair, Mommy," Graham countered. "I have to play with her. I JUST have to."

And so he tried - all night that night and all night again tonight when, upon arrival at the playground Graham pushed his way into her gaggle of pre-teen admirers and announced, "Hi there! You might remember me from last week at the playground."

I don't believe Carolina did.

No, she just smiled weakly and turned back to the task at hand: impressing her friends with her brand new cell phone.

Graham was undeterred and determinedly stepped into the circle again.

"Well, gee, that phone sure looks like it's got everything except the kitchen sink!"

Yes, he actually said that.

And this time he actually got some genuine laughs and oohs and ahhs from the girls before they moved on.

I can hardly bear to watch the way Graham puts himself out there these days, the way he cheerfully wears his tender heart on chubby sleeve.

I just watch with a strange mixture of apprehension and admiration, scarcely believing this is the same boy who only a year ago inspired me to worrying about his extreme shyness.

And it's funny; while I am thrilled that Graham seems to have well and truly outgrown his shyness, I never imagined that his new-found fearlessness would somehow terrify me in a way that his introversion never did.