Just what I have been waiting for: The big C

Today I went to the doctor. I had a few things on my list one of which was something strange on my back. Not a mole, not psoriasis (which I have had since I was 7) but something different and more worrisome.

I am a fair skinned person who burns easily and have had my fair share of painful exposures to the sun. In adulthood, I have avoided the suns rays as much as possible. Once while on vacation in Thailand a friend took a picture of me on the beach except you couldn't see me- I was sitting in a bunch of bushes fully covered by sarongs and a hat. You can almost make out flecks of colour through my leafy camouflage.

Those first few words were written a few days ago. I had to let things percolate. I was waiting for my follow up appointment but due to weather it has been postponed until Monday. So here it is: Cancer.

If you have to have Cancer this is the best one to get. Basel cell skin cancer has a 99% cure rate. On average 30 % of white people get this type of skin cancer. I am whiter than white so I am not surprised by this development.

The thing that has been bothering me is that C-word. What other less-likeable forms of that multifarious disease may be lurking in me.

Every day I touch that bump on my back and feel like my body has betrayed me. I have had enough health problems. For some reason I thought I had paid my cosmic debts and would be spared further affliction.

I feel bad, and then I feel bad about feeling bad. Plenty of people get this disease- you have it removed and carry on. It's doesn't entail torturous cycles of chemo or radiation. It's very simple. It's the psychological impact that has been hard. I'll get it taken care of next week but that word will will stay in my brain for a lot longer.

Mean Girls: confession of a bully

Little girls and their little games occupy a lot of my time. I watch my daughters interact with each other and hear school yard tales from my 5-year-old. In this, the earliest years of her social education, I can see the lots being drawn and the devious tactics of female aggression starting to take shape.

I am worried about this. My oldest daughter has the type of personality that could be crushed by such childish shenanigans as the withholding of friendship. Fortunately, since the days when I was playing both sides of this game, there has been more examination of the field.

I have been faithfully listening, for the second time, to the CBC radio show IDEAS and its broadcast of the documentary It's a Girls World. It explores the emotional manipulation and malevolence that many girls use to express aggression. While some girls opt for the male-like path of fist and feet, most girls preserve their outer physical decorum while verbally annihilating their targets or just as frequently freezing them out.

These are things I know a lot about. When I was in elementary school I was a tough kid; a bully. The person who was often the target of my wrath was my best friend. I had a little gang and we frequently froze my best friend out. I remember many times leaving her standing alone in the playground while the gang and I took off. And the emotional abuse was only one chapter in my playbook; I also was big on physical displays like a silver backed gorilla I would yell and charge at my best friend hitting her, twisting her arm, hurting her any way that I could.

Only once was I called out on my behavior, which often happened at school during recess and lunch. My best friend finally got up the nerve to tell our third grade teacher that I was hurting her. He called me to his desk and told me to apologize. I told him I wasn't sorry so I wouldn't apologize. His next action may stun you. He sent me to my seat and told my best friend to fight her own battles. That's how I remember it. I may be wrong. I am sure my best friend will tell me if I am wrong in my recounting of history because surprisingly she is still my friend.

A major life-shift turned me from my bullying ways; my parents got divorced, I moved to a new school and was the one in the oft targeted role of 'new kid'. For a few years I behaved and in my new school I picked out the potential bullies easily; as I could recognize myself in them. I stayed out of their social circles and had no problems.

In my third school, the bully problem reared it's ugly head again. I was the new kid again but I found a target and lead the rest of my classmates straight for another girls jugular. The girl, Ellie, had been in the school since primary and she got along well with all the others but then, fatally, her biology kicked in before her parents had sense enough to buy her deodorant. The poor girl smelled. In school yard bullying anything out of the ordinary is an opening and I saw mine. I was the leader again.

A group of my classmates and I cornered her at lunchtime outside the library and called her 'smelly Ellie' until she was crying on the ground with her face to the cold brick wall. When I walked away, with the other kids following, cheering and hooting in victory I turned and saw Ellie and felt a rock where my heart should have been.

In the following weeks I relinquished my role as leader and did not take part in the 'smelly Ellie' taunts that my classmates threw around the playground. I don't know what happened to Ellie in the end; I moved.

In my teens I thought I had left that mean girl far behind in both time and space. I was living in Edmonton, attending a school of the performing arts and had a group of friends who didn't appear to have a malicious bone in their over conditioned ballet bodies. In our second year of High School a new student arrived at school and joined the ballet.

Her name was Maria, she was a Phillipena. She had beautiful long black hair, almond shaped eyes and razor sharp cheek bones. I offered to share my locker with her so she could be in the ballet crowd instead of lost over in the Vietnamese or Skater sections of the school. At first everything went great. We went for coffee, rode the bus together, and hung out at lunch. Then she met my friend Kevin.

Kevin had been out of school since the end of Grade 10. None of us knew where he was or why he had gone. We had been chummy at school but none of us knew him well enough to have his phone number. Several months into Grade 11, not long after Maria arrived, Kevin returned to school and explained that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and had been in the Psych ward at the hospital across the street from our school for most of the past 6 months.

Maria was immediately drawn to him. At first she asked to hang out with Kevin and I when we went for coffee and then she started to ask me questions about who he was seeing, who he was interested in. I told her that I didn't think that Kevin should be dating anyone, that the turbulence of the dating scene would be too much for him right now. I thought she was a little out there herself for even thinking of dating someone recently released from the Psych ward. I thought my comments would disuade her from any action in that area.

Several weeks later I found out from Kevin that he was dating Maria. I was extremely upset and completely furious with Maria. I kicked her out of my locker and immediately turned all the other bunheads (the common nickname for ballerinas) against her. I explained to them how hurtful this could be to Kevin and how her dating him would likely end him back up in the Psych ward. I won them over easily and they shunned her. She was frozen out during school and after school at ballet. Her social life, aside from whatever relationship she had with Kevin, was over. In less than a month she transferred schools and we never talked about her again.

After she left I recognized the monster which I thought I had tamed. It had been roaming the halls at my high school and had claimed another victim. I was ashamed but I could not talk about it with my friends. I was like the devil; I had led them into temptation and they surely would not like to admit the evilness of their actions. All I could do was censure myself and be more vigilant in guarding my darker side.

One day in my final year of high school I got on a city bus headed to the mall and there at the back sat Maria. I had not seen her since she left my school-about a year had past. I walked to the back of the bus and sat in the seat in front of her. She didn't speak to me but a faint smile played across her lips similar to the ones chimpanzees are known display as an expression of fear.

I turned to face her and ...I apologized. Soon we were both crying and holding each other. We rode the bus to the mall and back round again while I made amends and she graciously forgave me. I don't know why she did it, forgave me that is, just like I don't know why I treated her so badly. But I did know I was wrong. I did make amends. I was fortunate to have the chance. I have not lost control of my mean girl since then but I know she lurks somewhere within.

It is this knowledge that makes me worry about my own girls. How will they deal with people like me? Will they even tell me if they are being threatened in this way? Many girls don't. In the documentary It's a Girls World, there are several bullying stories that end in death. How can we protect against it? Most likely the best defense is an offense; learn about, talk about it, and practice plays before game day.

Girls social aggression is a type of game- most girls know the unwritten rules and play by them. The attack and counterattack seem to be written into the female DNA. I am hopeful there is something else written there too.

Butt Out

First, a confession; I have never smoked. I don't think I have ever held a cigarette to my lips. But I have a few things to say about quitting. The first being that the self-congratulatory campaign by Health Canada which is captained by the increase in size of the gruesome pictures of smoking's health effects is converting nobody. I know smokers; have lived with them, dated them , friended them on Facebook. Sick lungs covering 70 percent rather than 50 percent of the package is not going to change their addiction to nicotine.

Currently, my office is the site of one person's battle against the weed. I was proofing a press release on the new cigarette packaging and had to ask her what she made of the government's new anti-smoking measure.

"It's shocking the first time you see it and then you don't look. You don't even notice it's there, " she said of the lurid photos.

"So why are you quitting," I asked.

"Honestly, it's the cost. Then, it's the health thing," she replied.

Everybody knows that smoking is bad for you and will lead to many kinds of outrageously bad diseases. But there are a lot of things that people do which they know are bad for them. These mainly fall into the category of addictions. Smoking is an addiction and it will take more than a few disturbing pictures to cure the addict.

When my co-worker said that cost was her main motivation for quitting we devised a much more plausible anti-smoking campaign. On every package should be featured fabulous cars, houses and vacations with the tagline, "All this could be yours for the price of your pack-a-day habit." I really think we have something here. And if the price of health care savings was added...imagine the lives former smokers would lead.

Do any smokers out there think these new packaging strategies will reduce the number of smokers in Canada? Do you think money in the bank and a luxury cruise could sweeten the withdrawal symptoms?

Today I saw a teenager I know post a new Facebook profile picture of herself with an unlit cigarette in her mouth. I don't think this campaign is going to affect her choices. What would? A cool car or a college fund perhaps.

The one that got away

I once had a very good friend that I shared everything with. Unfortunately the friendship ended badly. I have wondered these past few years exactly why it ended as it did and I have one main theory but I am never sure if my theory stands up to scrutiny or if it is just a construct to relieve myself of the doubts caused by her explanation of the breakup.

Here we were two North American foreigners living in Bangkok, working in the same school and of a similar age. We understood each other, could see similar cultural patterns and felt like kindred spirits with our mutual love of red wine and cheese.

More than anything else though, we were brought together by our need for friendship. A close female friendship that I think we both had had in the past back home but had not found yet in Bangkok.

We both were in relationships; neither of them perfect. And we often consulted each other about our personal problems. We had another mutual female friend but she was never quiet sympathetic enough to our small personal dramas. I think she had been through too many major ones to let little things bother her much. So my friend and I spent a lot of time together. Coffee, lunch, and eventually labour.

And it was with the labour, I think, that things started to come apart. She wanted a child. Her new husband, who was turning 40, did not. She was conflicted by this. She loved him but to give up the chance at a family for another person was a constant source of internal turbulence. To say nothing of the fact that he had not been keeping up his end of the relationship in terms of working to support their life together and had become so addicted to fantasy football that the game itself told him, “If you have a girlfriend, stop playing now or you won't!”

I had my first child and my friends, both the low drama and high drama ladies were in attendance. When the big time labour hit, they were forced out so that it was just me and my partner battling through the long painful hours. My friend, sat outside the labour room doors listening to my screams. When my daughter was born my friend was one of the first people to meet her. I thought my friend would be witness to Hannah's childhood, not just her birth.

As time went on things got worse between my partner and I. I had need of a friend and my friend was always there for me. When my hair was cut too short and I balled while holding Hannah aged 3 weeks, she came right over. When I kicked my partner out of the house, once again, she was there for me. When I decided to leave Thailand, she drove me to the airport.

I had a lot of drama in my life, I'll be the first to admit it and it was surely due to the fact that I had someone to talk to about it that I made it through. But it was not a one way street.

It seemed however that as time went on my friend became resigned to the fact that her husband would never work again and that she would not get the baby she wanted. But when she looked at me, a part of her saw what she wanted and saw that she didn't need a perfect situation to get it. In fact there never is a perfect situation for having children. Some people just have a few more advantages than others but having children is always a drama.

Not long after I had left Thailand, I talked to my friend a few times on the phone. Then one day, I found out I was pregnant. I was in shock and feeling a little crazy. I had left everything behind and I did not even know my ex-partners phone number to call him to tell him that once again he would be a father. The one number that I did know by heart was my best friends'. I called her. She and her husband were friends with my ex and most likely knew his number.

I didn't think about the time when I called-it seemed like an emergency. I unfortunately called in the middle of the night when they were on a camping trip in Khoa Yai National Park but they did answer the phone. And no I didn't ask them anything about themselves- I was just desperate to find my ex and tell him about the new baby.

I can't remember much about that conversation but afterward there was another conversation where my friend told me she had had enough of my drama and that was that.

I have never fully accepted this as the complete reason why we went from being inseparable friends to being long distance enemies. I have always felt that she resented me, in my ever so imperfect situation, once again being blessed with another child.

I know that what she said was not a total falsehood. I am sure she was fed up with my drama. It was a high drama point in my life. Luckily things have evened out.

I miss having that close friendship but I doubt I will ever get that close to another woman again. So when I left Thailand I ended two significant relationships. I wish I still had a female confident but no one has taken her place. Occasionally I see her comments on Facebook when yet another of our mutual friends has a baby but it does not look as if things have changed for her. I think she could have had more.

Earth Angel

I don't believe in God but I do believe in angels; the earth bound variety.

Last year I was blessed with many angels. The first I'll mention was my neighbor who delivered a very merry Christmas to me and my girls; an act for which she wanted no publicity. She gave us toys and food which I appreciated but didn't really know how to accept gracefully.

Then I got a job, which I desperately needed, but that job meant finding childcare and the means to get Hannah to and from school (the early learning program she was in had no bus service). Many of the parents and caregivers of the children in Hannah's class helped me by driving her to school and to the babysitters' after school. If it was not for them Hannah could not have gone to school last year.

And then there was/is Dima. She is the babysitter for my girls when I am at work. She lives down the road and my girls love her. Without her in the community I would not be able to work.

In a pinch, when no babysitter or transport for Hannah was available- there was Violet, my stepmother, and my dad. They have helped me out of many tough spots and they are the reason I moved home; I knew I could count on them for help. As a single mother you will always need reliable extra hands on deck.

I am writing on this topic because one of my angels has found an angel herself this week. Linda, one of the people who often drove Hannah to the babysitters' last year had an unfortunate car accident on icy roads last week. Her van, which was lost in the accident, is the source of her livelihood. She is a childcare provider for three families in the area and needs her van to transport her charges. Luckily no one was injured in the accident but the loss of the van was a financial blow. Recently I read on Linda's Facebook update that she found an anonymous envelope in her mailbox with an unspecified amount of money in it. Her angel had arrived.

Such acts of kindness should not go unnoticed. We should all be talking about whatever good fortune befalls us. It is my hope that we will all be angels on earth.

911 Legacy

This weekend the death of a nine-year-old girl, Christina-Taylor Green , in the Arizona Safeway shooting has saddened us all. Her untimely death is a tragedy not just because of her age but because she was billed as the poster child of hope after the 911 massacre. Born on 9/11, 2001, this fresh-faced patriotic youngster was featured in a book, Faces of Hope, which featured photographs of children born on that fateful September day. It's horrible that one vision of hope to come out of 911 has been taken from the world but in another story to come out of this most recent tragedy, comes another.

On Saturday, an unnamed woman confronted the gunman and stopped him from loading another magazine of bullets into his gun. In facing-down the gunman, this woman surely saved lives while risking her own. It is reported that she was wounded and is in hospital.

Her act can be directly linked to the act of defiance in the face of terrorism that was demonstrated by the passengers on the United Airlines Flight 93, where passengers attacked hijackers and diverted the plane from it's intended target. Since 9/11, people have been more aware that only they are able to affect a positive outcome when facing such fanaticism.

It's not only in the faces of the children that entered the world on that terrifying day that we can find hope but in the acts of everyday heroism that have occurred since.

Dear Mrs Garang,

In July of 2005 the rebel leader John Garang was killed in an airplane crash on return from a secret rendezvous with the president of Uganda. Garang, the leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), had recently brokered peace with the Northern Sudanese government in Khartoum ending a civil war between North and South that had lasted over 10 years.

Upon hearing the news of this African leaders death I was compelled to write a poem for his recently bereaved wife. I am re-printing it here due to recent developments in Sudan; notably an upcoming election for Southern independence from Northern Khartoum. In the press coverage of this event, I have not heard John Garang's name mentioned; not even once. For Mrs. Garang, now a minister in the government of Southern Sudan, I have not forgotten John Garang or his role in moving your people out of subjugation and into self-rule.

Imagining Mrs. Garang

Another Saturday night,
she waits for him to come home.
After all the years of war and rebellion,
all the years when she doubted
that he
would walk through that door.

Tonight she waits secure in the knowledge of peace.
A peace he has long fought for,
a peace that she has helped him attain
through 21 years, six children and 1,000 nights of worry.


But tonight it is different.
No need to worry;
peace has come.

How cruel is life,
that death should come to him now.
How unexpected,
when peace is on the tongues of the Nation
friend and foe alike.

A late night call,
a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach,
a numbness overtakes her heart.
The helicopter crashed;
Sudan erupts.

Amidst her grief she addresses the Nation
calling for the peace that her husband
had worked so hard to acquire.
She refuses to see it slip from his grasp in death
when he had only just found it in life.

Some may consider her stone-hearted.
How is it possible that she has the fortitude
to stand in public, to survive, to be a force for good?
Why isn't she devastated, left speechless, a shell filling with grief?

Practice.

For decades she has been expecting not to expect him.
The only shock is that it should happen now.

"I am very proud of this man," she says pointing to his flag draped coffin.
And he should be proud of her, this Rebecca, this woman who seeks to keep the peace despite her losses.

written Aug. o8/2005


Many of us go through life not thinking about how we have come to be in the place we are. How the eddies and currents of history have brought us to this shore. It seems almost impossible to me that a few short years after his death John Garang does not even merit mention in his people's history as portrayed by the world press. Is it Africa and the way in which the rest of the world perceives it that such history is not worth reviewing? Or perhaps it is the fast-paced way in which we grab our information- just skimming the headlines, not interested in the back story.

When a new Nation is about to be born, you can be sure it has been delivered in the blood of many. A new country is something the world should take note of; analyzing it's conception, gestation and birth. I ask you to witness this miracle and occasionally pop in to check on the pulse of this newborn.

Peace Agreement and Funeral