Shrinking

"Your playing small doesn't serve the world.  There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.  We are all meant to shine, as children do." - Marianne Williamson

I had my annual check-up this week, an event which ends with being weighed and measured.  I've put a few pounds on since Jacob moved out of the house.  That came as no surprise and sooner or later, I will pull myself together and get my eating habits back under control.  Normally, getting weighed is the  most traumatic part of the weighing and measuring process, but not this year.  The worst part was being measured.  I've never been a particularly tall person but I did reach 5 feet, 2 and 3/4 inches.  With the four inch heels I wore in younger days, most people didn't realize that I am short.  Chemo was hard on my bones and I lost 3/4 of an inch in the months of my treatment.  At least I still had the 5'2" part, but not anymore.  This past year has deducted another 1/2 inch so I'm coming in now at just 5 feet, 1 and 1/2 inches.  That would explain why my pants are too long even though I buy them in the petite department and I can't reach anything in the kitchen cupboards.

My shoes are all flat these days.  My view is an ant's eye view and it is evident to everyone that I'm short - very short.  I don't so much care anymore what others see but I don't like shrinking.  It feels like a metaphor for my life.  I'm aging out of work, aging out of mothering, aging out of new adventures.  My body is shrinking and my world is shrinking. The adventures I yearned to have in my younger days, interest me no more.  I longed for exotic travel.  Now, I don't long to even leave Canadian airspace.  I used to love walking around downtown, absorbing the energy of the city.  Now I only go downtown if I have to.  I can barely stand the chaos and the noise.  It is unlikely I will ever again go para-sailing or zip-lining.  There won't be any more 60k walks or rain forest hikes or ocean kayaking, no dancing the night away.

There is not an inch of me that doesn't hurt these days and when I told my doctor that, he smiled and said, "Aging really sucks".  I keep reminding myself that it is better than the alternative.

Favors

"We secure our friends not by accepting favors but by doing them." -  Thucydides

I am almost always happy to do a favor for a friend.  I cannot remember the last time, if ever, that someone has asked me for my help and I've said "no".   But I've been inundated with some pretty onerous requests lately and I suspect I'm getting close to that first "I'm afraid not" response.  In the past few days, I've been asked to coach a friend's child's boyfriend in his job search, to recommend a P.R. firm to advocate for a group of insurance lawyers, to advise a friend's grown daughter on educational opportunities, to testify at a hearing about a legal fee matter that I have no involvement in and to speak to another pacemaker wearer about my personal experience as a pacemaker wearer.  Mostly that's all okay.  But there are some limits.  The thirty minutes I agreed to give the boyfriend to help him figure out his search, became three hours.  I had already written his resume, coached him through a crisis at his previous employer and written him a guide for his job search.  Apparently, that wasn't quite enough.  He hadn't followed any of the advice I had already given him and hadn't even contacted the companies I advised him to check out.  Instead, he railed at the injustice of not being offered the one entry level position to which he had applied.  I am more than happy to speak to my friend's daughter about school but she is young and can do the research on programs much more easily than I can.  She wants to understand what programs in her field of study are available as distance education.  I presume that she can put that question into Google search as easily as I can.    

I spent Saturday at my first ever sale of my jewellery and painted creations which was being very graciously hosted by my friend Cathy at her home two hours north of Toronto.  I've been busy getting ready for the sale for weeks.  I decided to give myself all of Sunday to recuperate.  But on my way north on Saturday morning I had a note from a rather panicked former client asking that I give him feedback on a new employment offer.  I really couldn't do it Saturday and he was working against the clock so I agreed to a Sunday afternoon meeting.  That meeting turned into a series of emails, the last of which I sent at one o'clock this morning.  Then came a text from a friend telling me he had been in a car accident and asking me for advice on the legal action he should be taking. I didn't think, "How in the Hell should I know" was a great response in the circumstances but it was what I wanted to say.  And it was the same thing I wanted to say about the P.R. firm recommendation.  I suppose it is a step up from the request I got from another young friend to touch up her resume for her, preferably by the end of the day.  That one came on Good Friday when I was single-handedly preparing dinner for ten.  I didn't hear my cell phone ring and didn't pick up the message until nearly eleven that night.  She had somehow managed to figure it out in the meantime which tells me she could have figured it out in the first place.

This morning I attended the funeral of a friend's mother-in-law.  I turned off my phone as I entered the church and turned it on a few minutes after I left.  Within a minute I had a message from a friend requesting that I call him urgently.  He needed a favor.  I'm afraid I almost ripped his head off which was an unfair response to his question.  I will apologize.  I'm a bit spent these days and realizing as I've been told many times from a friend that while it is great to nourish everyone, it is impossible to pour from an empty teapot.  This teapot is running dry.  I still have a number of commitments this week - a meeting with a friend's sister to help her navigate her journey through breast cancer and another fundraising sale at my mom's nursing home among the items on my agenda.  I think though I'm just going to schedule a day the following week when I'm going to turn off my phone and my computer. I don't plan to advise anyone, to cook for anyone or to meet with anyone.  I'll just take out my paints or my beads and play, all day.  Maybe I will declare it Favor Free Friday.  Time to refill the teapot.

Home for Dinner

"Family is not an important thing.  It is everything." - Michael J. Fox

Jacob went back to his own place about an hour ago, carrying all the leftovers from tonight's dinner.  It is bitterly cold today so his dad picked him up to come home for Sunday dinner.  He brought the groceries I have been gathering for Jacob all week as well as the lion's share of the big pot of chili I  made this morning.  At least I know he will eat well all week.

Tonight's visit home was just his second since he moved a month ago.  I had one brief dinner with him mid-week a couple of weeks ago.  My laptop died and try as he might when he came home for his first dinner visit, Jacob could not revive it.  So he took out the hard drive, backed it up in two places and took everything downtown with him so that he could upload all my data to my new computer.  The next day, I dropped my new laptop off to him and picked it up five days later.

He has been poor at communicating with me in between those events.  When I drove him to the subway after our first visit, I told him how hard I was finding it to have so little communication with him.  He promised to do better, he just didn't do it.  So after another long stretch of silence, I decided to try again, this time with a little humor.  I sent him a text that said "86,400".  He soon responded with a question of what that number represented.  I told him it was a puzzle that he would have to figure out for himself.  It didn't take long for him to come up with the answer.  There are 86,400 seconds in every day.  My next text was "20".  That was a little harder for him and I finally had to give him the answer.  It takes 20 seconds to text "hello" to your mother.  We've talked a bit more often since then.

Redefining the daily working of our relationship is a work in progress.  We managed to do it when he went away to school.  We'll figure it out again.

A Son is a Son

"A son is a son 'til he takes him a wife, but a daughter's a daughter for all of her life." - Anon

When I was little, my mom would repeat that old rhyme to me over and over.  I think it was her way of finding perfection in the fact that she produced three daughters and no sons.  As the mother of only one child, a son, I've always wanted to believe that the rhyme was silly.  I wouldn't lose Jacob when he married.  He wouldn't ignore me or see his wife as a replacement for me.  We have been joined at the heart for twenty-five years.  Nothing could change that.

Jacob hasn't married yet.  There is no new woman who has stolen him from me but I'm starting to wonder if there is some merit to the old rhyme.  Maybe it's not that a son is a son 'til he takes him a wife, but a son is a son 'til he takes him a condo.  He moved a week and a half ago and he has yet to initiate contact.  No text messages, no calls, no coming home for dinner on the Family Day weekend.  I am hurt and I am sad but I don't know what to do about that.  It's my pain but it's not my play.

Empty Nest

“Give the ones you love wings to fly, roots to come back and reasons to stay.” -The Dalai Lama

If I told you that my back is sore or that my shoulder is aching, would you tell me to just stop feeling the pain?  Of course you wouldn't, so I keep wondering why so many people have been telling me these last couple of weeks to stop feeling what I'm feeling about Jacob moving out.  I'm fairly bright.  I know it was my job to get him to the point where he would fly.  Yes, I gave him roots and yes, I gave him wings.  Yes, I'm happy for him.  Yes, I know it is good for him to be out on his own.  Yes, it is healthy.  And yes, I am SAD.  Telling me to stop being sad does not make me any less sad, it just adds to my burden.  I guess I'm not feeling the correct emotions.  If it makes you feel better, I'll add it to the list of the many things I've failed at but please, if you are one of those people, stop telling me about it.

Yesterday was moving day.  For a month I've been buying everything I think he will need to be comfortable in his new condo.  He got the keys on Tuesday night and reported that though a cleaning crew was supposed to have gone through it, it looked pretty dirty to him.  So on Thursday morning, armed with a couple of hundred dollars worth of cleaning supplies, his Aunt Cath and I headed downtown to rectify the situation.  I really expected that the two of us could clean an empty unit in a couple of hours.  It is so tiny that he is going to need to step outside to change his mind.  But I under-estimated the level of filth.  So after five hours of cleaning, we headed home with a plan to resume Friday morning.  After another full day of cleaning on Friday, we were finally comfortable that even if it wasn't quite where we wanted it to be, it was at least clean enough that he could move in.  While the guys moved his things in yesterday, I cleaned some more.  Tomorrow I will head off to Canadian Tire to buy some replacement pieces for the stove and kitchen fan.  I'm calling uncle on ever being able to get those pieces clean.  And because they are not as clean as they should be, the condo still smells of curry and grease and that just won't do.

Apart from picking up those things and the things he will need to replace what didn't come back from his university life, like knives and cutlery, there is little for me to do now.  My mothering work is done.  Jacob is a grown man.  I will leave it to him now to figure out how our relationship will unfold.  I hope I will still see him often.  I hope he will come home for dinner or call me to meet him for coffee or just text me to say goodnight like he did in his university days.  I'm stepping back and putting the ball in his court. But for now, I'm feeling my feelings, without apology. 

Marching

"They tried to bury us.  They didn't know we were seeds." - Mexican proverb

A CBC reporter asked me on Friday night why at 61, I would be joining the Women's March on Washington: Toronto the next day.   It's a good question.  It was my very first protest march. Why did I finally become mobilized now?  I tried to explain to him that it is probably because I'm 61 that I couldn't sit this one out. 

I've been thinking a lot about history.  I've been thinking about what the world was like in the days that Hitler came to power.  There were many people in Germany and in the world that knew that the hateful rhetoric he spewed was evil and dangerous.  But they stayed silent.  I've heard it said that nice people made the best Nazis.  They didn't make waves.  They didn't stand up for their neighbours.  As long as it wasn't them and their families, it was easier to stay quiet, go along and pretend they didn't know.  We all know how well that worked out.

I've also been thinking about the world I grew up in, about the struggles I faced as a smart young woman trying to make my way in business.  I've been thinking about how the Help Wanted ads in the newspaper were categorized as Help Wanted - Men and Help Wanted - Women.  I've been thinking about the hospital where I worked in my 20s.  The jobs as cleaners were divided on gender lines with published pay scales for male cleaners being significantly higher than the pay scale for maids.  I've been thinking about the myriad of times I was asked in job interviews about the number of children I have, even long after it was illegal to ask that question, about my intentions to have more, about my arrangements for Jacob's care.  And I've been thinking about the times I was asked in job interviews, where I was born and what my ethnicity was and whether I was Christian or Muslim.  It was impossible to win by refusing to answer the questions or to point out that they were inappropriate or illegal.  So I just decided that I may as well go in with full disclosure on all points.  If any of who I am was going to be a problem, it was probably better for me to know at the outset or to not end up in a place where those things would rear their ugly heads later.  And I've been thinking about the days of fending off unwanted sexual advances that were far more than passes though in those days we told ourselves they were just that.  Being grabbed and groped, pinned and once even slapped by my boss.

On Friday, Donald Trump became President of the United States in spite of or maybe because for more than a year he has been spewing racist, sexist rhetoric.  He is a self-confessed sex offender, fraud, con-man. anti-Muslim, anti-women, anti-Mexican, anti-immigrant, anti-black, anti-other.  He chose an anti-women, anti-LGBTQ Vice President.  Since his candidacy, we have seen a terrifying rise in hate crimes not just in the U.S. but here in Canada too. 

I don't worry about those things anymore in relation to myself.  I am not afraid.  But this isn't about me.  It's about my cousin Stephanie in Michigan who is the mother to five year old Bella.  I marched for Bella and Stephanie.  I marched for the young women who have become my kids.  I marched for Sara, Katie, Christy, Courtney, Lindsay, Emily, Jenna and Lia.  I marched for the young woman who will someday be my daughter-in-law.  I marched for my grandchildren. 

To stay silent in these times is to be complicit in the same way so many Germans and others were complicit in Hitler's attrocities.  So on Friday night, I prepared my sign and put cushioned insoles in my boots and Saturday morning, along with my sisters Cathy and Marg, one of my kids, Katie and my dear friends Nancy and Aivars and 60,000 other women, men and children in Toronto, I hit the pavement.  At 1 o'clock, the march paused to honour a moment of silence.  Then it was done.  I will never be silent again.

Dear Santa

“A good many things go around in the dark besides Santa Claus.” -  Herbert Hoover

Dear Santa,

I realize I've left it a little late to send in my Christmas list.  The truth is, I've been struggling with getting into the spirit this year.  It took me ages to even come up with a theme for our family Christmas.  In a time when the world seems very dark, I decided our theme this year would be light.  Our Christmas Eve table will be laid out accordingly.

Usually the things I ask for at Christmastime are gifts for someone else.  It actually feels a bit selfish to ask for something for myself this year but I'm going to do it anyway.  Santa, could you please give me my confidence back?

I lost a piece of it when my heart stopped working and I had to have surgery in March.  I lost a bigger piece of it when I realized I had misjudged a client whose bills have gone unpaid for nearly a year.  I lost the rest on November 8 watching the U.S. election results.

I'm trying hard to believe things will work out well but I just can't get there.  I'm concerned about every twitch in my chest, wary about every business encounter, heartsick about the fallout from the election not just in the U.S. but here in Canada too.  Though this is normally my favorite week, I'm struggling to find the joy this year.  Shining my light seems to be doing little to illuminate the darkness.

Santa, I realize I'm asking for a lot and maybe you can't deliver a request like mine.  But if there is anything you can do to help, I'd be really grateful.  I'll keep trying too.  Safe travels on Christmas Eve and Merry, Merry Christmas.

Love

Jackie