Sure you could have written this...but you didn't

I'm totally jealous of Rebecca Eckler.

I think it's best to just put that right out there at the beginning, instead of pretending that I'm not jealous or that it's irrelevant to any kind of a review I write about her latest book Toddlers Gone Wild.

Because a lot of us are jealous of Rebecca Eckler, aren't we? Show me a parenting blogger who's looking for readers, who aspires to make a living from their writing - or better yet achieve fame and fortune from their writing - who claims not to be jealous of Rebecca Eckler and I'll show you a bald-faced liar.

Okay? Let's move along.

Will my jealousy get the better of me? Click over to my Shooting for Hip column at Better Than A Playdate to read the rest of my review and enter to win a copy of Toddlers Gone Wild...

Driving with the brakes on

I have always had a hard time letting people show me how to do things.

And as a result I end up doing things the hard way.

A few years ago I decided I wanted to grow tomatoes for the first time. I bought all the plants and the soil and the pots and eagerly set to work on our back porch, visions of jars and jars of homemade tomato sauce dancing in my head.

And Rob, a green thumb, from a long line of green thumbs, was thrilled to see me take an interest in one of his hobbies and was anxious to help.

Except I wouldn’t let him.

“You have to plant them really far-”

“Let me do it.”

“Ya, but if you don’t-”

“Let me do it!”

“But I’ve done it before and-”

“JUST LET ME DO IT OKAY?”

So I planted the plants too close together and most of them died. When I tried to stake up some of the survivors, Rob tried again.

“You just have to-”

“ROB, YOU ARE NOT RESPECTING THE WAY I LEARN!”

So Rob finally gave up and I tied the surviving plants way too tight when I staked them up. Every single plant died a gruesome death and we ate canned tomato sauce all winter.

I had no one to blame but myself and it was not an enjoyable learning experience.

I need to work on listening to people: I know that. Because even though stubbornness, stupid stubbornness, is part of who I am, it’s a part of me that has made my life more difficult than it needs to be.

And even worse than that, I am queasy sometimes to think that my son may be destined to go down the same hard roads I have always insisted upon treading.

Graham got a tricycle for Christmas and over the last few weeks I’ve been out with him several times, trying to help him learn to ride it.

Except he doesn’t want my help.

Time and time again he refuses to put his feet on the pedals and insists instead on pushing his feet along the ground to propel him and the tricycle forward. He frequently bumps his shins and gets his feet caught under the back wheels. As soon as he gets some momentum his feet drag on the ground, slow him down and threaten to upset him entirely.

It’s painful to watch.

“Graham sweetie, look, just put your feet on the pedals and-”

“Nope!”

“But if you use your feet to push the pedals like this you can-”

“NOPE!”

“Just let mama push you and then you put your feet up and-”

“NO MAMA! GO ‘WAY MAMA!”

Which I think is another way of saying “MOTHER YOU ARE NOT RESPECTING THE WAY I LEARN.”

And so I step back and let him do it himself. Because I must.

But damn it’s difficult to watch him tire himself out dragging that blasted tricycle around, getting up just a little bit of speed but then stumbling over his feet and tumbling in frustration just as the breeze starts to blow in his face.

Yup, that’s my boy.

Doing it his way, even if it is the hard way.

Just like his mama.

The dog who saved a family!

I got my father a dog for Christmas because I desperately needed help.

It was almost a decade ago. My parents and I were suffering terribly as a result of an estrangement from my only sibling and his family and I just couldn’t handle Christmas alone.

I had only been dating my Rob for a few months and he wasn’t yet a regular fixture at holidays. No matter how hard I tried, and believe me I tried, I wasn’t big enough or loud enough or entertaining enough to fill the hole they left. I just couldn’t take up enough space.

I needed a dog.

My parents, my dad especially, have always adored dogs. Two mutts had the run of the house throughout my childhood and the younger had finally died at 18 years of age the previous summer.

Mom felt sure Dad was ready for another and gave her blessing for me to pick one out at The Toronto Humane Society and surprise him with it at Christmas. Get a smaller dog, she advised. Something sweet and low-maintenance.

And that’s what I intended, I swear.

But we can’t help who or what we fall in love with.

A pit bull-German shepherd-doberman mix (we think), he had been living at the shelter for more than three months. There was a letter taped to his cage, written as if by him, begging someone to give him a chance. I gathered from the shelter staff that his days were numbered.

I had to have him.

I took him home to my little downtown house and while he wildly raced around and around I called my mom to advise her that I found a dog that was a little different from what we discussed, but nonetheless, perfect.

And he was perfect, in his way. From the moment a few days later when I dropped him onto my blindfolded Dad’s lap and shouted Merry Christmas!, he was a perfect diversion from the sadness that back then hung like a heavy cloud in my parent’s house.

Hercules became his name and he was incorrigible. He chewed everything he could find. He climbed the kitchen table and gobbled bread baskets and pounds of butter. He ate a whole raw chicken my mother was prepping and threw it up an hour later. He was so excitable that a playful tone of voice would send him bouncing on all four legs, three or feet into the air. He was so hyper that my father was often forced to wrestle him to the ground, hold him there and coo softly in his ear, imploring him to relax and calm down.

Hercules did calm down as time went on. He became intimately attached to my father. He insisted on sitting on his lap, burrowing into chest and tucking his head under his chin and to this day he wails and cries like a baby when left alone. Dad takes him everywhere; flying him into his fishing camp and letting him ride shotgun in his pick-up truck on morning coffee runs when he is treated to a donut hole daily.

Everywhere they go people stop them. “What kind of dog is that?” they say. “That’s the weirdest looking dog I’ve ever seen.”

And Dad puts his hands over Herc’s ears. “Don’t listen to them Hercie,” he says. “You’re a fine-looking dog.”

It seems silly to make some kind of dramatic proclamation or put a cheesy movie-of-the-week title to this story, a la The Dog Who Saved A Family!

But in a lot of ways I think he did.

Hercules made us laugh and gave us something to talk about that Christmas and we needed that. In the days that followed he made my parent’s house a noisy place to be, a busy place to be and they needed that even more.

He gave my parents something to focus on during a very dark period of their life. He was so grateful for their love, so overjoyed to be in their presence, so friendly and accepting of everything and everyone in their world that it was impossible not to be infected by his happiness.

And when the rift with my brother and his children began to mend Hercules and his boundless energy was there to break the ice and relieve the tension: no one could refuse him a smile, no one was unmoved by his enthusiasm.

Today my parent’s house, being on the lake, is a gathering place for my family and friends and my brother and his children and their friends. Summers especially are a whirlwind of flying and boating and barbecues and laughter and fun.

Hercules is there too of course. Old and grey and grizzled now, he’ll join in the fun if asked, but mainly sticks close to my father’s side. And in my typical, cheesy, movie-of-the-week way I'll always think of them both as the glue that continues to keep our home and our family together.

Happy Happy

Father and Son,

Ring in 41,

And another year,

As my moon and sun.

*Edited to add - it's Rob's birthday not mine!
It'll be years and years before I turn 41*

I'd rather keep flying

I thought it would feel different somehow. More dramatic.

I thought my first flight this year would be immediately preceded by nervousness or anxiety or sober reflection, because I have not flown since that day a few months ago when I learned that a fellow pilot and friend had lost his life to the sky.

Since that day I have done a lot of reflecting. I have thought often about the day last fall when I took flight with my precious boy. I have made a conscious effort to remember all my father taught me, to review safety procedures and to articulate why I fly and why I must fly again.

But none of this ran through my head when I actually stepped into the float plane last weekend; it was instead like slipping on an old shoe.

And yes, it was last weekend, a week ago Saturday that I made my first spring run. The fact that I am writing about it a week later speaks to how inauspicious an event it really was.

It was a windy day and I didn’t really expect I would fly at all. But as day turned into evening the wind died down and my eight-year-old niece showed up with a friend who had never flown before and had been promised a flight with Aunt Kelly.

“It’s a little windy and I haven’t flown since last fall,” I said. “Maybe I should do a run with you first Dad.”

Dad waved me off from his station at the grill. “The wind’s down. Go ahead.”

And I hesitated only a split second, not because I felt anxious, but because I felt that maybe I should feel anxious.

Then I shrugged. "Okay, I’ll take a quick run on my own before I take the girls.”

And Rob jumped up. “I’ll come with you.”

So away we went.


And it was gorgeous.

It was bumpy and lively and the sun was shining and the sky was blue and my heart swelled as the plane and I danced and she accepted my lead like we had been waltzing together forever.

I did a circuit, let Rob practice straight and level flight for a few minutes (did I mention he’s learning to fly as well?) and then brought it in for a smooth landing.

Then I taxied to shore, picked up my niece and her friend and took to the skies again.

And it was even more gorgeous, if that’s possible.

Several minutes later as I brought the plane in on short final for landing, I felt a little tug at my sleeve and turned briefly to see the beaming face of my niece’s friend.

“I’m just a little busy right now sweetie,” I said. “What’s up?”

“I was just wondering if we really have to land,” she said. “I’d rather keep flying.”

And I had to chuckle.

I’d rather keep flying too, I thought. I’d rather keep flying too.

No spanking allowed

I know, I know.

I’m a curmudgeon and not at all forward-thinking.

But when I ran across this story in this morning’s paper detailing a new strategy to punish speeders I was cringing for hours.

It’s about a program that allows speeding drivers to avoid fines and tickets by instead subjecting themselves to jeers and lectures from local teenagers studying law at the high school down the street.

There’s even a photo of a woman – probably a mom caught rushing around doing a million and one things on her family’s behalf – surrounded by several self-righteous teens mid-lecture.

Oh yeah, I’d say she looks sufficiently humiliated – much like the one in the story who was reduced to tears after being caught doing 63 kilometers (40 miles) per hour in a 50 km (31 mile) zone.

Only one driver opted for a ticket, but was apparently jeered anyway as the teens were given free rein to do so to all the offending drivers the police pulled over.

You might castigate me for saying this (and have at me, I welcome dissent) but here’s my take: I’ve seen a lot in my 38 years. I work hard. I struggle every day to keep up with a myriad of responsibilities in this fast-paced world. I’m a good person. I’m generally law-abiding. Sometimes I speed.

And if I’m caught speeding I’ll take responsibility for it.

But do not humiliate me. And spare me any sermons from 16-year-olds who have earned neither a driver’s license nor the right to lecture me about anything.

Bottom line: I’ll take a hefty fine over a hectoring teen any day.

How about you?

It doesn't make me a bad person

Just sitting down to write this piece requires a huge act of will on my part.

Huge.

In order to write this I have to tear myself away from a bounty of pure bliss, a cache of unadulterated comfort, delivered straight from my mother’s house to mine following my Mother’s Day visit last weekend.

I also have to admit to an addiction that has plagued me for almost three decades.

That’s right: my name is Kelly and I am a tabloid-a-holic.

I am not addicted to all tabloids mind you, just two of the decidedly old-school variety: Star magazine and The National Enquirer.

I mean, just because I’m an addict doesn’t mean I don’t have standards: I feel it’s important that the latest vainglorious celebrity gossip be interspersed with gruesome murder mystery cases involving average Joes, outraged (and righteous) condemnations of animal cruelty and uplifting accounts of everyday heroism and true grit.

Now, I don’t want you to think I actually buy these magazines. I would never do that. But my mother, enabler that she is, has for years carefully saved each and every issue and piled them neatly on my childhood bed. When I visit the first order of business is to put them in alternating, (Star, then Enquirer) chronological order and then work my way through them one by one.

Generally at least half a dozen unread papers travel home with me where I spend the first few days post visit reading them to the detriment of everything else in my life. Then I reorganize them and pass them on to my cleaning lady or one of my co-workers, so I can congratulate myself on being fully up to speed on pop culture and environmentally friendly.

I don’t know exactly why these rags hold me in their thrall. I have an honors degree in journalism. I publicly swore off celebrity Internet gossip last fall. I very rarely watch television or go to the movies. The last flick I saw in the theatre was Hairspray and I have never seen a single episode of Grey’s Anatomy or Lost or The Sopranos or House or Desperate Housewives or CSI or any one of the dozens of shows deemed as must-sees. Quite frankly I have never seen most of the actors I read about actually act.

But I don’t care.

It is inexplicably soothing to me, the consumption of these rags and their delicious morsels of desperation and morality and human frailty. No matter what drama is playing out in my own life, it always pales in comparison to the passion plays writ large across their pages: crime, depravity, self-loathing, drug abuse, adultery, financial and emotional bankruptcy.

One of my earliest childhood memories is visiting my late grandmother’s house and seeing a picture of Elvis Presley in his coffin on the cover of the National Enquirer. Back then my mother didn’t buy tabloids either: she would bring home stacks of them that my grandmother had saved for her when we visited. Later when Grandma moved in with us, she and my mother split the cost of the subscriptions. “I don’t care about them", my mom said. “It’s your Grandma who’s used to reading them.”

But my Grandma’s been dead for four years and each week, like clockwork, the National Enquirer and the Star arrive at my parent’s house, glossy and chock-full of possibility.

Sometimes I wonder if there will come a day when I don’t care to be courted by jesters anymore. Will I bother to actually buy the tabloids when my mom passes on or will my addiction resolve itself as I continue to age and, presumably, become further removed from the youth-oriented pop culture milieu? I do wonder.

But of course I’m not wondering about that right now because I just came back from my parent’s house on Sunday.

And I have some reading to catch up on.

Something of the marvelous

In all things of nature, there is something of the marvelous.

Piercing my illusions

I pierced my navel 13 years ago when I was 25 years old.

I had just been dumped by my long-time boyfriend. I had cried off a good ten pounds of excess weight, was working out like a mad woman and was in the best shape of my life.

It was a painful but exhilarating way of confirming my emancipation. “I am hot. I am fearless. I am embarking on the next chapter of my life.”

I removed my navel piercing almost three years ago when, almost six months into my pregnancy, I glanced down and realized that it had inexplicably migrated halfway around my back.

Apparently that was my body’s way of saying, “You are not hot. You are a mom. You are embarking on the next chapter of your life.”

Click here to read the rest of my latest Shooting For Hip column over at Better Than A Playdate. There is an actual un-retouched photo of my formerly pierced navel over there - honest to blog...

Her name is Beverly

*Below please find a newspaper editorial I published 15 years ago in honor of Mother’s Day. Back then I was fresh out of university, running a weekly newspaper in the Ottawa valley and only just starting to see my mother as something more than a conduit for my own needs and desires. Back then the realization that she was a person and a woman, in addition to a mother, was a revelation for me.*

There’s a story I remember hearing, about the generation gap, that has rung especially true during the last few years.

It’s about a young man who wonders how his parents got so darn smart, so fast. After all, he reasoned, during his teenage years they were hopelessly ignorant.

Today is Mother’s Day and I can’t help reflecting on how much my mother has changed in the last year I’ve been fending for myself in this world, working and building my own family.

I have come to see my mother as a woman, not just a mom. It’s only now that her experiences seem to me those of a person, doing her best for her family no matter what the circumstances.

Beverly is the name of the woman who brought me into the world. She was a school teacher from the age of 18 and a city slicker, born and bred, when she fell in love with a mechanic and moved to a tiny village carved out of the bush north of Lindsay, Ontario.

Beverly left her comfortable middle class existence for one where every dollar was a struggle. She worked full time, raised two children and helped my father build a successful excavating business from the ground up.

And I remember that most of the time, like most children, I considered her slightly less than a person. I remember times when she looked exhausted, when a thoughtless remark brought a glint of tears to her eyes.

But like a lot of mothers she never said much – she was too busy creating an environment my brother and I were too young and too ignorant to fully appreciate.

There were dance lessons, piano lessons, pottery classes, and ping-pong, swimming and archery lessons. There were gymnastics, Juniors Rangers and Brownies.

One year I started a family newspaper and Beverly produced a typewriter, mimeographed the pages, sent copies to all the relatives, donated recipes and entered (and won) the poetry contest every month.

She clipped articles about story contests and encouraged me to enter. When I was 12, at her urging, I sent a column to the local newspaper and got my first job.

And when I became the first in my family to earn a university degree last year she surprised me by having it framed and mounted.

Over the years I’ve come to see Beverly for what she is – a lovely, kind, intelligent woman whose modesty would never allow her to describe herself in those terms.

But thanks to her I’ve got the perspective that allows me to see those qualities in her and the confidence to publicly admit my debt to Beverly.

I love you mom.