Dear Ms. James, Mother of Mommy Porn

Dear Ms. James, Mother of Mommy Porn,

Like the Twilight books that were your genesis, I spurned your books as your fame rose.  I was certain that they were not for me, and though curious about what could drive your sales to such stratospheric heights, I said, “So many books, so little time!” and I kept chipping away at the mountain of other books by my bedside.  Books with Weight and Literary Merit.

Then there was a hint that you might be a pick for our book club, and then, not one, but two mothers enthused that you were so, so bad but sooooo good, and then, it was official and you were this month’s pick.  I bowed to the weight of consensus and bought all three of your naughty little tomes.  (If these were going to read like Twilight, I did not want to have to wait for the next installment.)

Well Ms. James, thank you for a very entertaining Mother’s Day.  Your pronounced lack of Weight and Literary Merit kept me awake until the small hours all weekend.

Marcelle recently quipped that the most outrageous fantasy in your erotic romances was that a recent graduate of university would land, not one, but two interviews at a publishing house right after graduating.  To this I would add another thing that sorely tried my suspension of disbelief.  Your heroine does not eat when she is heartbroken.  She loses weight because she forgets to eat.  Please.  In addition to being a virgin, has she also never heard that the pint size of Hagen Daas was made for just such occasions?  Her boyfriend eats the ice cream off of her in a reunion scene.  Bullshit.  The ice cream in her freezer would have been history 30 seconds after heartbreak.

But you really do get the mommy porn right with the domestic staff.  I know I’m not quite getting into the spirit of things here, but when the narrator takes us into the Red Room of Pain, all I can think is, “Who cleans in here?”

The marvel of your book is that you provide an answer for that.  The ever competent, and largely invisible, Mrs. Jones.  She cooks, she cleans, she launders, she anticipates everyone’s domestic needs, she meets them, and she disappears.

Ms. James, your Christian Grey was delightful to meet, but in real life, I’d take your Mrs. Jones any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Thanks again for a great escape.

Fond regards,

Nathalie Foy

 

 

No Mother’s Day?

Christy Turlington Burns, most of us know, is a model.  But she’s also a maternal health advocate who began a campaign called Every Mother Counts, an organization devoted to reducing maternal mortality.  The World Health Organization estimates that 360,000 girls and women die each year from complications related to children, most of which are preventable through basic, proven health care services.

To raise awareness about this issue, Turlington Burns proposes that in lieu of Mother’s Day, mothers band together for “No Mother’s Day”, encouraging mothers to “disappear” for the day,  “out of solidarity with those who needlessly die in pregnancy and childbirth.  We believe that in acting together, we can show just how much a mother is missed when she is gonefor the day in solidarity with those who needlessly die in pregnancy and childbirth.  We believe that in acting together, we can show just how much a mother is missed when she is gone.”

Without further ado, here is a two minute video clip, directed by her husband, shouting out about No Mother’s Day.

So we throw our weight behind this pressing, heart-breaking issue.

And then, from 4Mothers to you, we can’t help but wish you a very lovely Mother’s Day, for all you do, each and every day.

Get Outside!

Great Britain’s National Trust has come up with a list of 50 things to do before you are 11 3/4.  They include skipping stones, climbing trees, observing rock pools, calling owls, and sliding in the mud.

The list makes a great activity to print up, read together and check off.  Then, when you have the list of things still to complete, head outdoors and have some old school fun.

Here is the complete list.

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1. Climb a tree

2. Roll down a really big hill

3. Camp out in the wild

4. Build a den

5. Skim a stone

6. Run around in the rain

7. Fly a kite

8. Catch a fish with a net

9. Eat an apple straight from a tree

10. Play conkers

11. Throw some snow

12. Hunt for treasure on the beach

13. Make a mud pie

14. Dam a stream

15. Go sledging

16. Bury someone in the sand

17. Set up a snail race

18. Balance on a fallen tree

19. Swing on a rope swing

20. Make a mud slide

21. Eat blackberries growing in the wild

22. Take a look inside a tree

23. Visit an island

24. Feel like you’re flying in the wind

25. Make a grass trumpet

26. Hunt for fossils and bones

27. Watch the sun wake up

28. Climb a huge hill

29. Get behind a waterfall

30. Feed a bird from your hand

31. Hunt for bugs

32. Find some frogspawn

33. Catch a butterfly in a net

34. Track wild animals

35. Discover what’s in a pond

36. Call an owl

37. Check out the crazy creatures in a rock pool

38. Bring up a butterfly

39. Catch a crab

40. Go on a nature walk at night

41. Plant it, grow it, eat it

42. Go wild swimming

43. Go rafting

44. Light a fire without matches

45. Find your way with a map and compass

46. Try bouldering

47. Cook on a campfire

48. Try abseiling

49. Find a geocache

50. Canoe down a river

Threshold Moments

We got the little ones into bed on the night before Easter, and my eldest was still dressed and reading when his brothers had been dispatched to dreamland.  He has known for several years now that Mum and Dad are the Easter Bunny, so I went into his room and offered him a choice: he could help me stuff and hide the Easter eggs (and get first dibs on the little Lego sets and action figures) or he could take part in the hunt in the morning with his brothers and wake up to all the surprises.  Without skipping a beat, he said he wanted to help me.  His first instinct was definitely to be in on the secret and part of the grown-up, behind-the-scenes action.

“Are you sure?”  I asked.  (I was, of course, asking, “Are you sure you want firmly to cross this threshold out of innocence and into adulthood, surrendering the joys of the surprise in exchange for the pride and privileges of age?  Are you sure you don’t want to be my baby anymore?!”  No pressure.)

“Yes.”

“O.K.   Go brush your teeth and then come upstairs and you can help me.”

When he came upstairs, before he came into my room and saw the Easter loot, I asked again, “Are you sure?”

And this time, he hesitated.  A lot.  He was really conflicted.

“I don’t know what to do.  I want both.”

And there it was: his own confrontation with the downside to crossing over into adult privilege.  He wanted the fun of hiding eggs for his brothers to find, but he also wanted the fun of the hunt on Easter morning.  We compromised on his hiding just a few, and his Dad would hide the rest, some in places only he’d be able to reach.

And so he crossed a threshold of sorts, in a way that was most comfortable for him.  If only all transitions to adulthood could be made with forethought, choice and the chance to inch into a new self.

Bluebells

On a little patch of the University of Toronto campus, a sea of bluebells appears each spring.  It never fails to amaze me how, almost overnight, the landscape goes from dull brown to green to suddenly bright blue.  I used to walk or take the bus past it each day when my eldest was a baby, and one day I plunked him down on a tree stump in the middle of the blue carpet of flowers, snapped a roll of film, and a tradition was born.

Now, we go back every year to get (digital) pictures of the kids in among all those flowers, which are technically blue scilla.  It’s a bit tricky, making sure that the kids don’t step on the flowers, and I will readily admit that some years, the photographers’ nerves are frayed by the end of the exercise, but the pictures are worth it.

It’s one of my favourite rites of spring.

2004

2008

2009

2004

Spring Rituals

I did not grow up in a house with spring cleaning.  My mother was a very meticulous person, and every week was spring cleaning.  Dust was never given a chance to settle, literally or figuratively.  We moved so often that the kinds of dust bunnies that grow to monstrous proportions in quiet corners just never got a chance to grow.

Does spring cleaning feature on your calendar?

This week, 4 mothers are writing about our spring traditions.  What are yours?

Children on Planes

March break sees a decent exodus of Canadians flocking to warmer climes (although this year we might all have just saved our money at stayed put, no?).  For the first time, my family joined this wave and went down to Florida to join my in-laws at a rental home.

The trials of air travel with young children are evident to everyone – the children, the parents, the previous selves of parents, the fellow passengers.  A (childless) friend of mine, who happens to be an anaesthesiologist, told me that she once wanted to offer to sedate a screaming child on her plane.  “It wouldn’t hurt her,” she pleaded/reasoned, even in retrospect.

However, I have unabashedly brought my babes on lots of planes, all over the world.  They’re good little travellers; they don’t cry much and when they do, they are easily settled.  I’m much more accustomed to doting than disdain on a plane.

Which is why it surprised me somewhat on our late flight back from Florida to receive a complaint from the woman sitting in front of my 3 year old’s seat.  I couldn’t quite see her through the seats, and when the top part of her face and her silvery crown appeared over the head cushion, it took a moment before I realized she was trying to get my attention.  I pulled my earphones out so she could say,  “Your son is kicking my seat.”  There was a turned head and some movement from her seatmate; apparently her seat too was being kicked by my 5 year old.

I wouldn’t let my kids do something like that had I seen it, but I hadn’t noticed anything.  As far as I could see my boys were sitting mesmerized by the miniature TVs  in front of them as they don’t often get to watch.  But I leaned over to both of them and told them they were disturbing the women in front of them and to please stop.  They were sort of sleepily surprised – by then it was about midnight – but they listened and said they wouldn’t do it anymore.  And they didn’t.

But at some point, both of them needed the washroom, and this required some jostling due to the economy class seats and the baby on my lap in the aisle seat.  On his return, I saw my 5 year old give accidentally bump the seat in front of him as he tried to climb back into his own seat.  Before I could say anything, a knobby, wrinkled finger jab through the space between the seats in front of my boys and, wagging up and down, it snapped  “Little boy!  Stop kicking the seat!”  My son pressed himself as far back on his seat as he could.

Now, I have a good dose of mama bear in me (I once ran, yelling, after a car that had just rear-ended my family on the Don Valley Parkway and pounded on the driver’s window because I thought he was fleeing the scene – he (claimed he) was moving his car to the shoulder).  I am open to other people guiding my kids if they are using gentle discipline, but I find this can be a big if, and I perceive a certain roughness to be far  more common in dealing with boys than girls.

So I was surprised that my reaction to this stranger yelling at my boy was, simply, mild.  I really did see her point of view.  Firstly, of course it’s annoying to have one’s seat bumped from behind on a plane.  Secondly, this woman was kind of surrounded by children, and there was a toddler on the other side of the aisle who did cry for most of the trip, poor thing.  Thirdly, it was late, and the woman was probably leaving her vacation, which can be a downer for anybody.

Did I think she was being kind of mean to my son who was basically being reprimanded pretty much for being young?  Yes, I did.  Did I lean over to let him know he hadn’t done anything wrong and make sure that he wasn’t very upset by her?  Yes, I did, and no, he wasn’t, which I’m sure in turn allowed for the mildness of the reaction.

And so I let it go.  Once I made sure my son was okay, I was mostly left thinking about this woman and the girl she had once been.  About how many bony old fingers had been wagged in her face (and worse) when she was small.  What she had been told about what she could and couldn’t do,  whether she was good or bad, what responsibilities she may have been given before it was time, how she might have been treated when who she was didn’t suit the adults around her.

And I wondered what she looked like.  When the plane touched ground, I made a point of trying to catch a glimpse of her (and wondered if I would get a glare).  She was seated for a long time.  But somehow, after doing whatever it was I needed to do, and even though I wasn’t slow, I looked back up again in surprise to find the seats before us empty.

She was gone.  I was left with just the wagging finger through the blue airplane seats, and my sad and sorry feelings for it.

Peeves with Family Day

I have two peeves with Family Day.  Firstly, the concept.  I feel like things like family are so fundamental that they ought not to need a commemorative day, because that suggests that these basics are in need of protection, which in turn means they are under assault, which therefore means that we are undermining the very things that make our lives possible and worthwhile.  I mean, do we have a day to celebrate the air that we breathe?  The earth that we all rely on?

Oh yeah, we do.  Nice.

The second (more immediate, more tangible, much bigger) problem that I have with Family Day is that I don’t get it.  Argh!  I work for the federal government and Family Day is a provincial holiday.  So every third Monday of February, I board an empty streetcar and wind through empty city streets to the downtown core.  I enter one of its usually bustling high towers, except that day it is just a grim building with dimmed lights, and elevators on access card operation only, and the odd tumbleweed.   In addition to the offices, all the shops and restaurants in the surrounding area are closed, so heaven help you if you’ve forgotten your lunch.  My family-less co-workers and I soundlessly float through the halls and haunt our own offices until we drift back to the empty city once more.

Like I need another reason to go crazy.

Tales of a Reluctant Hockey Mom

“Hockey mom.”  There are two words I never thought I’d use to describe myself.  I’m not at all a fan of the professional sport, though I do get very caught up in my kids’ games when I’m there to watch.  Truth be told, I don’t feel fully entitled to the moniker, since I am the parental unit who is usually on the home front while my husband is at the rink.  Dragging a three-year-old boy along to hockey games is no one’s idea of fun, and I’m not so keen that I want to arrange babysitting to allow my two hockey players to have both parents rinkside.  So I’m a proud mother of two hockey players who is very often in the background. 

Our house was minus two for the February Family Day long weekend: G and Ted were in Montreal for G’s hockey tournament.  There are so many things I once would have resented about the time that hockey takes out of our schedules, the dent it makes in our time as a family of five all in one place at one time. 

But, while our little family of five was not together all weekend, G had as spectators for one game his grandfather, who drove five hours to see him, his great aunt, two of my cousins and their families.  My father is one of twelve children.  We have a sprawling family, and that was four separate branches of the family tree out to watch one kid play hockey and gather for a meal and a chin-wag.  I was profoundly humbled that they took time out of their weekends to gather at the rink.  Call it “Aren’t We Blessed to Have Such a Wonderful Extended Family?” Day.  That G’s team won gold was also news to warm his distant mother’s heart.

As it happened, we five were together for Family Day Monday, but it was a very quiet sort of a day.  I wanted textbook Quality Family Time, but I was too tired for orchestrating a perfect memory, and so we drifted into our day, hanging out in pajamas all morning, reading, playing tag at the park, making bread, cooking wholesome soup and unwholesome nachos, playing Lego, and catching up somewhat reluctantly on homework.  G worked out how long it would take him to get all of his homework done and then wilted.  The crash after the high of a fun-filled weekend.  But then he found the solution to a difficult math problem in a fraction of the time he thought it would take and rejoiced, saying, “That felt as good as winning gold!”

And that’s where all of these pieces fall into place for me.  G has had to work really, really hard on this select team.  Goals, which come fast and furious for him on his school and house league teams, elude him in this group of stronger players.  A few days ago, G said to his dad, “I love being on the Select team. Winning is so much more fun when it’s hard.”  He is not the star of the team, but he is a fully committed member who works his heart out.

The rewards of being a somewhat reluctant hockey mom are plentiful: seeing him recognize the value of hard-won victory, seeing that spring in his step as he drags his hockey bag along to the next game, seeing him feel part of something bigger than himself.  That, surely, is something to celebrate on Family Day.

Disney Daze

We’ve just come back from several enjoyable and unforgettable days in Florida. Each time I travel with my family, I learn something new about them. Traveling, even somewhere as relatively mundane as Florida, pushes out the walls of your comfort zone — and as Oprah-ish as that might sound, I think it’s a good thing for all of us to have our boundaries pushed at a little. My own boys seem each to be a year older and six inches taller today, and I swear that’s a by-product of being somewhere other than home for eight days.

Travel also reminds you of things you already knew, but probably have forgotten. To wit:

1. No matter how obedient your children might be, there will be moments when corrective action need be taken to keep their behaviour in check:

2. Not only are my boys friends, they are also best friends. Sometimes, they even act as if they are:

3. Theme parks are loud, crowded, and boisterous. They can be incredibly fun places if one is in the right frame of mind to be jostled, well prepared for the crowds, armed with a touring plan (we really liked this website, for that) and armed with a sense of humour and a large packet of patience.

Wine helps, too. Especially when you can sip that glass of wine anywhere in the park:

4.  I’m convinced that there exists over Disney’s Magic Kingdom theme park an invisible bubble, which keeps in all the fairy dust, happy, scented air and whatever else it is they spread around there that makes it virtually impossible to be angry or grumpy at anyone for the entire duration of your stay. About ten minutes after you leave, you will find yourself doubly confused, both by the sudden return of your cynicism about all things Disney, as well as by the gaping hole in your wallet where your money once was.

5.    Every now and again, it’s okay to get a little Goofy:

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• Disney World in 2012 (thedisneymoms.com)