2013 in review

This is the year that I have had to accept that I am officially middle aged. I turned forty and the last of my grandparents died.

For some people, the death of a grandparent signals little about their own mortality but the longevity and persistence of my elders and their familiar place in my life, makes their passing a significant remark on the finite nature of my internal clock.

I have had the pleasure of knowing most of my great-grandparents, and all of my grandparents; to have known them all well and had them see me in the fullness of my own adulthood. As the last of the grandparents left earth this year I could see that for everyone, even for those as rebellious as Beverly Haley, there is an end. And in her end I see my own future.

As for turning 40—it meant little. I kept feeling like I should feel some big weight or release. A new decade. But the dread/relief never arrived; a new day dawned and I changed one number on official documents.

This is also the year that I realized one of my life long ambitions; I learned to run. I have always wanted to run and finally found the key to success this year. I ran my first race, a 5 km in support of a Boston Bombing victim at the old Fort Devens army base just North of Boston in July. I ran that race with some of my cousins and it was one of the proudest moments of my year to cross the finish line under a burning sun.

Later in the summer I completed the 5 mile road race in my home town, a race my father had run regularly in his younger years. He, along with my kids, were at the finish line to watch me complete my first 5 mile race in just over 50 minutes. It was a major achievement.

But that was not enough road work...I ran the annual 5 mile road race during the Canso Regatta; the next town down the shore from mine, too.

I have medals from the 5 mile races and my race numbers. Those races were the highlights of my year. None of it was easy.

What may seem like an odd thing to mention, but in truth was also a major triumph, was the installation of a heat pump in my house. This year for the first time since I moved home I am not worrying about how I will heat the house and keep food in it at the same time this winter. That peace of mind, as well as comfortable temperature in the house, is a major event in the history of this year.

This year had its trials—My father was sick with something of unknown origin for months. He has never fully recovered but he's home after several months in the hospital and keeps on keeping on, doing all his usual activities.

As far as I can remember I was only in the ER twice this year-- admitted once for a night. That is a pretty good year for me. And I was not sick over Christmas which had been a common occurrence in my mid to late 20s.

We have had difficulties with the girls dad; he dropped all communication after his visit in July and that has been a constant source of stress for me and the kids. Hard to see them hurt and angry and be helpless to do anything about it.

My aunt died and my grandmother died on the same day and I was torn between heading to the States for my family there or staying here for my dad. I went to the States as I thought that it always seems after the funeral, after all the visitors have left, is the hardest time, and I knew I would be here for my dad at that time.

Those are the main turning points in my year. Overall I felt there was more good than bad and you have to be content with any year that chalks up well on the pro side of the chart.

Missing piece of the anti-bullying puzzle

The news this week out of Sydney, NS is evidence that the anti-bullying strategies so far implemented by the province have failed. Not only did one girl bully another, a second person stood by and made a recording of the bullying.

The incident as reported in The Cape Breton Post on October 16, 2013.

“The teen...was charged with assault after an incident at a local school in which she sucker punched another female student and then kicked the victim several times while she lay on the floor.

Drake said an added element to the assault was the fact the accused asked a friend to video tape the scene which was then posted to Facebook and other social media sites.

Defence lawyer Cheryl Morrison said her client denied asking a friend to video the assault. Drake said the friend admitted to being asked by the accused to film the attack.

The video was played Wednesday in court and shows the accused standing in the hallway and then running towards another female student and punching her in the head. The punch knocked the girl to the floor and the accused then proceeded to kick the girl in the head, arms, legs and chest.”

What is missing from this article is the question: how could this happen in a school hallway with no one stepping in to stop the attack? The answer is the oft cited bystander affect-- people witness a crime but are unable or unwilling to help the victim. The bystander effect plays a large roll in the continued presence of bullying in our schools and our society. When good people do nothing, evil wins.

Of course one of the most commonly cited reasons for people not acting in defence of others is that they were afraid for their own safety or were so stunned by what they were witnessing that they were unable to act.

The approaches to reduce bullying in the province, that I have seen to date, have failed to address this key piece in the anti-bullying puzzle.

Bullying is a cultural emergency. Why is it not dealt with in the same manner as we deal with other emergencies? Where are the anti-bullying drills, the anti-bullying protection classes and the mock bullying roll plays that have proved so useful in saving society from fire, medical emergencies and criminal elements that use physical violence against us?

Learning by doing, not just reading or watching films, helps people react in a real crisis situation. When a person is faced with a dangerous or fearful situation they must fall back on pre-learned behaviour, like a muscle memory, so they can operate. Unprepared, the automatic response to danger is to freeze or run away. If we want children and adults to stand up to bullies we need to do more than read books about how to do the right thing; we need to offer hands on practice.

Asking a bystander to stand up to a bully in action is like asking a man on the street to disarm a bomb. Without the confidence of training, the bystander is not able to take on the job even when they know action is required. Teaching through roll play, how to take control of a situation and how to feel confident enough to do so, will help decrease the bystander effect.

In the 1960s the Freedom Riders took on racism in the southern United States. They did not walk into a mob unprepared, but they did not bring weapons either. They practiced nonviolent responses to an overtly violent situation; they didn't just read books or watch films about Rosa Parks. They had to learn physically the lessons they already knew in their minds; racism was wrong and these were the actions that would help them defeat that evil.

Below are notes from a nonviolent training session held in 1963 for Freedom Riders heading south (http://www.crmvet.org/info/nv1.htm).

3. Purpose of nonviolence training: This session to simulate common situations and practice techniques & tactics for dealing with them. Familiarization. Remove fear of unknown & not knowing what to do. Increase understanding of dynamics of violence through direct experience. Develop generalized response patterns/habits. Instinctive reactions.

4. Format of: Direct action: Plan, —>Act, —>Critique. This training session similar pattern: Discussion, —>Role Play, —>Critique.

These notes are useful today in the struggle to stop bullying by reducing the bystander effect. I propose anti-bullying role play experiences be adopted into the curriculum. Only through hands on experience will our children have the tools to stand up to bullies.

Love is the best art of all --response

I watched the above Moth project story the other day about a mother who was obsessed about giving her children a very happy childhood. This became her obsession as a solution to her own off-kilter upbringing where her parents were so concerned over her, and her siblings, safety that they lost sight of the art of living.

Today as I thought more about this story, this woman's madness began to feel familiar. In her I could see pieces of my own mother who fought so hard not to give my sister and I the childhood that she had endured.

My mother was raised in a big family and most of the fun times were only fun in retrospect. Both her parents were abusive but the driving force behind it all was her mother.

Throughout my childhood I heard story after story of the abuse my mother or her siblings had survived at the hands of their parents. Whenever my mother and her siblings would get together they would relive and retell these stories like so war weary veterans.

I heard some of these stories so often that I almost thought they were my own.

In light of the physical abuse my mother had suffered, she was determined never to raise a hand to her own children, never to be her mother. That was her greatest fear.

So she took what she thought was the opposite approach to parenting. She was against corporal punishment of any kind. As long as she did not cross the line of physicality she thought she was safe. What my mother never seemed to realize is that one did not have to raise a hand to hurt a child.

My childhood seemed focused in the corner; hours standing there as punishment. Hours sitting at the table over cold meals which would be reheated until it was finally bedtime. Hours of my mother's faced pinched in anger and hatred all directed at me.

When I was twelve she finally broke through the barrier and hit me. She only did it once. I am sure she spent a lot of time thinking about that moment afterwards; and not about how I felt, but about how she felt to have crossed that line. It made her angrier at me. I had pushed her across that unforgivable line that made her no better, in her own eyes, than her mother.

Things had never been good but from that point on they got worse. She forced me to go to a therapist and when the therapist told her that he did not think there was anything wrong with me and that perhaps I should go to group therapy with people who had problems with their parents she called him a quack.

She was determined to have me declared mentally ill so that the onus was not on her; so our relationship could be my fault not hers. When that did not happen she left. But not before she told me she was leaving because she could not stand to live with me. I was 14 years old.

With my mother living away and only visiting a week here and there every five or six months, my teenage years got better. I loved my school, I had good friends, I was mostly enjoying life.

Then when I was seventeen my mother decided to come out of her self-imposed Northern exile and return to the city. She and my then nineteen year old sister took off like a tornado; clubbing almost every night, double dating and bringing strange men home. I went on being the only sane person in the house.

It didn't last.

In February of my Grade 12 year, my mother told me I had two weeks to find a job and move out. I can't say I looked for work. I was traumatized. I went to social services, went to my friends and my mother stood in my way. She refused to let social services get involved in my case; she said I had a parent and she would make the decisions and told my friends parents, who were willing to take me in until school finished, the same thing-- but not as politely.

She called my school and started making trouble for me, telling my teachers and the school guidance counsellor that she thought I was suicidal. Homicidal was more likely. And on and on it went.

In the first week of March I came home from a school cross-country ski trip to find my mother and sister waiting for me. They were taking me to the airport that evening and sending back to my father in Nova Scotia. I didn't want to go but I had no choice—my mother had cleared out my bank account to buy the ticket and hidden all my shoes so I would not run away in the still winter-ish Edmonton night.

My mother was desperate not to be the crazy that her mother had been. But she was a different crazy which was just as bad for me. Getting away from my mother was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life.

This year I attended my grandmother—my mother's mother—funeral.

My grandmother was not an easy woman. But I always maintained a relationship with her over the years because all the bad was laced with some good –even great—times. I have fantastic memories of my grandmother. Unfortunately I can not say the same for my own mother. If I think really hard I can't come up with one good memory. I am sure there must have been some good times but they are heavily outweighed by the bad.

These days my mother sends me occasional cards and sometimes calls to talk on Skype. She sees her grandkids electronically and has even met them in person a few times. This is the kind of contact I can survive—impersonal, distant, indifferent.

I won't tell my kids bad things about my mother, I won't forbid them to talk to her, I won't keep telling them how I am trying not to be my mother. Because I am not.

Sometimes in this mothering journey I get a little guilty about not being the mom who gets down on the floor to play. I can't help it—I am just not into Barbies anymore. I may feel a little guilty about working and shutting the kids out of my office—but you have to work to keep the fridge full and the heat on and the kids know that.

I have never tried to not be my mother. I was never like her and that was always part of the problem between us.

When I watched this story about the mother obsessively trying to make her kids every moment fun, the antithesis of her own childhood, I felt pretty good because I know I have done that without even trying--the antithesis part of the equation at least.

What I get up to when the kiddies go to school--Paddle

This morning's paddle from Cooks Cove to Dorts Cove.

No more kid free vacations

Cousin time

A mother should always vacation with her children. And this is not for the reasons you may be thinking—creating memories, educational experiences, bonding, etc.

No, it is because if you have time off from the mommy job it is really hard to readjust to being the one thing those little people can't live without.

Almost two years ago I went on vacation without my kids. Actually it wasn't really a vacation, although it often felt like one; I was flying solo –literally-- to Massachusetts for my grandfather's funeral. For reasons beyond my control, I could not take my children, who were 3 and 5 years old, at the time. So for five days I was kid-free. For the first time in years I was living free and easy; no crying, no fighting, no meals to get on the table at scheduled times.

The first night I arrived ended up being the first party night I had had in more than 5 years. My cousins and I, many of whom I had not seen in years, went out on the town. We went to a loud, raunchy bar, and then out for late night nachos. It was awesome. I didn't have to worry about getting home for a sitter or worry about dealing with little children while suffering from a pounding hangover the next day.

The rest of the week was a little less carefree. I attended a day's worth of wake for my grandfather, and his funeral the next. Despite that, it still felt like a vacation.

As I sat on the plane returning to Nova Scotia-- my mind was turning over the duality of life. I was looking forward to seeing my children but I did not have the same enthusiasm for returning to the mommy job.

It was a few days after I got back before I felt like I was back in mommy mode but I did learn a valuable lesson; those breaks that I often longed for from my kids were not worth the mental toll it took on me when I had to come back to my mommy world.

This summer I have had lots of vacation time; lots of time exploring new places and things with my kids. While sometimes I might have liked to be alone; it's been good to share these adventures. Right now it is time to make lunch as we spend our last weekend of the summer farm-sitting for some friends. Cows, chickens, a dog and a big barn--the kids are loving it and I am writing. What could be a more perfect vacation.

Run for my life

I run because I can't stop. Because if I stop I'll never start again.

I know in the past I have banned the word 'tired' from my vocabulary but that has not made the problem disappear.

I am so tired; so tired that I feel I am missing out on the best parts of life.

So I started running-- I run so that some part of my life feels like it is keeping up, like some part seems energetic. How could a person who can run 5 miles possibly be suffering from severe fatigue?

I run so I have a reason to be tired. Instead of just being tired for no known reason.

About three years ago I was so tired I couldn't move. I went to bed at 6 pm and if either of my two children who were 2 and 5 years old at the time needed anything; they had to fend for themselves.

When I got in bed, moving a leg from under the covers was physically impossible.

My doctor diagnosed me with hypo-thyroidism and I have been on synthetic thyroid hormone ever since and will be indefinitely. But I have not reclaimed the old me.

I was always defined as a hyper person-- one who needed to be weighed down with ballast to stay in one spot. Not any more.

I try not to think too much about being tired but sometimes I wonder how it is that I am going to live the rest of my life in this tired state.

Today I read an article in The New Yorker about a woman in a similar predicament—she became an extraordinary slave to her thyroid diagnoses and spent most of her time trying to find a cure for her disease. In the end she realized that she just had to accept that she would always be 80 percent well and live with it –instead of live by it.

I am used to living with chronic health problems – I have lived with one my entire life and I have taken it in my stride and I will live with this too. But some days it gets me down. Sometimes I just want to tell people that I just can't do one---more--- thing---today. In fact, I often do tell my kids; they are pretty used to putting their mother to bed.

So I run to fight back this disease/condition/this whatever-it-is that is slowing me down. I run and when I run I think about how I'll be tired for a reason that night.

Da

The kids were at Day Camp and I had a free afternoon ahead of me with no pressing work or house related jobs crowding my head space. I started down the familiar road to Dorts Cove anticipating a visit at my father's house or the beach; perhaps both.

I pulled into the driveway at my father's house and drove up behind the hill where the vehicles often hide when rain has not saturated the grass. No car, no truck, no people in sight.

I turned the car around on the hill and set off for the beach, just several 100 meters away.

As I drove in the beach road a familiar truck was perched on the edge of the bank looking out to sea, seaming to pull at an invisible leash that kept it tied to the shore. The truck was similar to almost every other truck in the community but the opened tailgate revealed a pair of rank black sneakers that I knew my father wore around the yard.

I parked the car and headed out across the rocks towards the mouth of the Salmon River where I could just vaguely spot a human figure.

The wind on the beach was brisk disguising the power of the sun as it poured buckets of radiation on me. The tide was high and what little sand peeked out between the rocks sparkled.

I walked up to the lone fisherman on the point who was standing in hip-waders in the river two or three feet deep. At first I wasn't sure if it was him; something didn't seem exactly right and I wasn't positive about the truck although I was pretty sure about the sneakers.

Normally I would have no doubt that it would be my father on the beach; the beach where he grew up, where his father and grandfather had grown up, where I had grown up and where now, my children were growing up. This beach is part of the family DNA. But my father's trips out to the beach were less frequent these days; his knees gave him a lot of trouble and the long walk over rough terrain was difficult if not sometimes impossible for him.

The fisherman looked up and sure enough it was my Da but with so much sunblock on his face that I barely recognized him under the white-wash. I didn't want to disturb my father, I guessed he had gone out to the beach, despite the trouble it may cause him, to be alone. I guessed that the beach acted as a sort of church for him as it did for me-- to either contemplate or forget the worries of the day.

I had come to see him on this day in the hopes of talking to him about his sister who had recently died. I had been away, attending to my grandmother's death and funeral in Massachusetts, when my aunt had died. I had returned on the day after my aunts' funeral.

Since I had been home my dad made some mention about the funeral but not much—I wondered if there was anything more he wanted to say. So here I was waiting to hear whatever might need to be said.

The death of my aunt surely struck my father hard. They were, as the saying goes, Irish twins, less than 12 months apart in age. She had been his playmate for his entire life. When I thought about her death I kept returning to a photograph I had once seen of them playing hide and seek around an apple tree when they were toddlers.

My aunt had been sick with cancer for several years but the end came quickly and unexpectedly. It was just four years ago that my grandmother died. None of us, at that time, would have believed it if we had been told that my aunt would die four years and one month later.

Now there is just my father and his youngest brother. Luckily they are friends, comrades, fishermen-in-arms. You can often find them casting out their lines at the Salmon River bridge located on the road between their two houses which are less than a mile apart.

So I waited for the conversation to start. But it didn't; at least not that one.

Da was fly fishing; hoping for a big trout. There was one already on the beach when I got there—past the point of playing the line, gills no longer trying to breathe in the unfamiliar atmosphere.

After a while a new fly needed to be tied and Da waded ashore. We talked about flys; none of them looked like anything we had ever seen in nature yet the fish went for them greedily. We sat, he tied the fly and the fish started to jump in the river diverting his attention from his knots. The more the fish jumped the harder it was to tie the fly. Finally he got back into the water and we kept an eye out for the fish who now seemed to jumping on the other side of the river.

The closest we got to talking about my aunt was when my father got up from the shoreline in an uncertain fashion—a little wonky in his waders. He said that was how it went when you were getting old then corrected himself and said, “when you are old.” He went on to tell me that his grandson Sam had recently told my father that he, Sam, could never think of Da as old. He was never an old man to Sam and that is a sentiment with which, most people that know my father, would agree.

My father has always been a woodsman, a fisherman, a man who always could and would do hard work. It's been very odd to think of him not being able to do things—for him and for me. The idea that my father is getting old is one I really can not square in my mind with the person that I know him to be and I think he has the same problem. Who is he if he is old? The death of his sister brought this question into sharper relief. A day on the river quietly thinking or not thinking about it; that's how we work these things out.

I stayed on the beach watching fish, birds and my father for several hours. The one thing in life I always want more of is time with my Da.

I started for home with a fish and fresh memories; a perfect afternoon.