Sunday Dinner

     Sunday dinner at our house begins long before we are all gathered around the scuffed old pine table. Sunday dinner begins with Sunday mornings. Just like Lionel says, ‘Easy like Sunday Morning” I love Sundays. For me, Sundays honour past memories, create the present and form future history.

   Sunday dinner feels like payback for all of life’s hard stuff. It’s when all of my young roosters come home…some with their special people, some on their own. It’s when all the tough stuff that’s happened over the years can be brought out and revisited with laughter, tenderness and even tension. It’s when a young voice (out of the mouths of babes) can pipe up with the questions…. “Did you get a job yet? When are you getting married? Wow, your hair is long/short/pink/ purple/messy/nice. Where’s your girlfriend? Did you hear the latest about Stephen Harper/Rob Ford/Whoever-is-in-the-news? Why are you sad today? Did you kiss yet? When did you get that big dent on your car?” …those questions and situations that everyone may have been avoiding, the questions that create a moment of discomfort, then erase the tension and allow us to heave a sigh of relief and move on to the business of sharing food. Sunday dinner allows for a decompression of the week’s stresses. The starving students get stuffed. The childhood stories get pulled out and new memories get made. Politics abound, kids get root beer and grown ups get wine. And there’s always, always a special dessert or two. All the years of cooking a roast beef when they were young and didn’t notice, have finally resulted in the goal being attained…the ultimate plan…cook a Sunday dinner and they will come. And come they do.

   Although my own mother died before I had children of my own, she is with me every Sunday. She’s with me as I peel the potatoes, as I guide the table setting and teach the fancy napkin folding. She’s with me as I sip wine and cook and as I remember her sipping her ever-present gin and tonic while cooking. She’s there as I listen to Sunday afternoon CBC while remembering her belting out the tunes alongside Frank Sinatra on the oldies station. How she loved Frank Sinatra. The memory of her scrunched up face as she hand whipped the eggs for the lemon meringue pie makes me laugh as I make my own lemon pie (with a mixer). I remember the time that a jokester brother (or maybe it was a friend—there were always extra faces around our Sunday dinner table) swapped the sugar with salt resulting in the worst lemon pie ever. Somehow she didn’t even get angry at the ruined dessert.

   Every Sunday, after the faded, mismatched coffee tables were rubbed with Pledge, fresh towels put out in the bathroom and carpets vacuumed, as the roast roasted, and after the pots and pots of potatoes were peeled, we sat and played gin rummy together. Sunday afternoons as we shuffled the cards were the backdrop for our mother daughter conversations. Under normal circumstances, these conversations would make my normally animated and easy going mother very uncomfortable. But with a drink in one hand, a pair of pairs in the other hand, she could talk. My mother had a way of talking to me and making points with the fewest of words and the subtlest planting of the smallest seed. For example, my mother, acknowledging my adolescence was marked by the simple phrase. “You will be starting your period soon. There are supplies in the back of my closet when you need them”. (Yes, feminine hygiene products were to be kept hidden and out of sight).There. We just successfully navigated the birds and the bees.  I have great admiration for how my mother handled my first serious boyfriend years later, who was clearly a bad boy (every girl needs to have had at least one bad boy in her life). She held her tongue but when the time was right, she got out her garden hoe to sow the seeds. “Do you ever go on dates? Like, to the movies?” We didn’t. “Did you do something nice for your birthday?” We didn’t. Did _______ like your new haircut? He didn’t notice. He didn’t last much longer after I started noticing that he never noticed anything. She said so much without ever saying a word. Admirable trait in a mother. A trait I try hard to emulate, but always forget and end up using too many words.

    Sunday dinners mean a lot to me, and I hope to my kids as well. Sunday dinners are filled with warm memories as I think about my own childhood Sunday dinners, as I watch my older children reminisce about their childhood antics while the younger ones listen with wide eyes and baited breath.  I am filled with pride as I look around the table at the amazing assortment of children and young adults who come together each week because they want to, not because they have to. They arrive and they bring the important people in their lives to join into our family, and slowly, my memories get tangled up alongside theirs.

    

Adoption Video Short

Here is a little video that I created for our far away family who haven't yet met our new additions.  Please excuse the amateur quality.

Playing with a Bully

Playing with a Bully Pillow time is a longed for period of time on any given day. However, there are two drawbacks to pillow time for me. The first is that I almost fear going to bed because I love it so much, but it inevitably means that I will have to get up in the morning. Don’t get me wrong, I love my life and my busy days….yet I am not and have never been a morning person. I am married to a leap-out-of-bed-no-snooze-button-required kind of guy. I set my alarm for 30 minutes earlier than necessary just so I can hit the snooze button several times. It is safe to say that I am not at my sunny best first thing in the morning. Before getting out of bed each morning I find my inner voice negotiating many things…such as, What is worse…getting the dogs outside now before they pee, or having the extra time in bed but having to clean up the pee. I will then feel badly all day (and give even more fuel to the bedtime bully who you will soon meet—read below) for denying the dog’s dignity for my own selfish reasons. Or, I know I swore I would wash my hair today, but hey, I have a hat that I could keep on all day. These are my silly, humorous, lazy- ass reasons for not liking bedtime. The second reason that I dread bedtime is somewhat darker. Bedtime has become the time of day for me when ‘Critical Mom’ has been rearing her ugly head. Critical Mom has darkness to her…a darkness that she brings to my heart while whispering ‘anxiety disorder’ in my ear. She erodes my confidence and self-worth. She is not always anxiety-provoking; the odd time she’ll boost me up, makes me feel like supermom and a role model to all. When that happens, bedtime is bliss, life is sweet and I feel in control of my life. Most times, Critical Mom is the mom in me who comes out and wants to play almost every night. She is not a nice friend. As I lay with my head on the pillow, her presence seeps out. She often tries to come out earlier; I can often feel her knocking at my mind’s door… when I am brushing my teeth, washing my face, putting the last load of laundry into the wash. I can often push her away if she arrives before bedtime. It is when I am in bed that I am trapped. Out she comes, knocking on all my doors and windows, begging us all to come out and play. “C’mon, Guilty Mom,” she calls, “You were active today. Let’s play! Oh, you know you want to join in, Tired Mom. Don’t even bother calling on Happy Mom, Doting Mom, Patient Mom, Awesome Mom or Crafty Mom today, they are no fun. They will put Anxious Mom right to sleep with their soothing, ego-building antics and we won’t see any of the fun moms for awhile! We want to play for a long time tonight, so let’s go get Short-Tempered Mom and Busy Mom to come out. I heard that Frozen-Pizza-for-Dinner Mom and Skip Bath Tonight Mom are up for some fun too. Did you meet Secret-Chocolate-Eating-Mom and Wine-on-a-Tuesday Mom? They are sure to induce guilt and feelings of self-loathing. That’ll keep her in the game, wide awake with heart palpitations into the wee hours!” I have a love/hate relationship with Critique Mom. I truly do. I hate her because she causes my heart to skip a beat, my blood pressure to rise and my much loved sleep to remain elusive. She causes me to examine all of my actions and reactions. She makes me go outside of myself and analyze one of my greatest sources of pride…my abilities as a mother. She brings me down and makes me angry at myself. Many of these ‘hate’ reasons are also my love reasons. Without Critique Mom, I wouldn’t strive to do better the next day. I wouldn’t walk a mile in my children’s shoes. I wouldn’t revisit my sometimes sharp tone through sensitive little ears. I wouldn’t proactively come up with strategies to make myself feel better, so I can be better. She is both the monkey on my back and the cheerleader in my court. Critique Mom often gets the best of me, despite my best intentions. She can be easily foiled and put away simply by my being a perfect, awesome, smiley and loving mother in every circumstance, at every moment. Of course, that is not realistic, or even human. I know this on a rational level. Heck, I even know that most of the time, I’m a damn good parent, despite my flaws. What I need to learn is a way to manipulate Critique Mom. I need to pull her out on my own terms to keep myself in line. I also need to dance with her when I deserve to be happy and positive, and tell her to *&$% off when I’ve had a bad day. It’s all about control....the control she has over me, and my control over her. She can be a bully, but as they say, keep your enemies close. For now, she continues to take up space in my mind rent-free. I am working hard on controlling her, but at this point, she seems to have the upper hand, both in my mind and on my pillow.

Our Kind of Crazy

Parenting…Second Time Around I live in a strange world. It is a world of dichotomies. My world involves Tosh.0 on one television set, while Phineas and Ferb are up to their crazy adventures on another. My home is a land of juice boxes on the front porch and red beer pong cups on the back porch. The flowerbeds host stained popsicle sticks alongside a soggy cigarette butt (that I know doesn’t belong to me, my husband or the mailman).My driveway lays waste to pink bicycles with training wheels lined up beside assorted cool cars and rusty trucks being worked on by young mechanics. We have teen foragers in the kitchen crunching cereal at 3 am, with cereal again at 7 am for the school aged bunch. Together with my husband Chris, we have embarked on what we like to call Parenting…Second Time Around. (Insert dark music here) Our children’s ages are as follows: 8, 9, 10, 12,18,19,19, 23, and 24. The twenty four year old does not live at home, so at the moment we only have eight children. (Only?) For a period of time there were only seven, but one boomeranged back home after a summer of adventures (we’d rather not talk about it). Five of our children are biological, and four of our children are adopted. I don’t think I mentioned that we are also foster parents, and we have recently begun fostering babies aged zero to two. I know what you are thinking…but, like our son’s summer of (mis) adventures, we are not going to go there either. Living this kind of crazy has its upsides. For instance, a discussion between us and he-who-shall-not-be-named over the use of a car (we said no), normally may have been filled with angry tones, a possible expletive concluded with a slammed door or a dramatic exit. Instead, the denied car-borrower walked into the next room, where a loving seven year old sister approached him, said hi and hugged him. The tension immediately disappeared, followed by a hug back and a sigh. Situation-diverted. Another upside? Where else would you find a nineteen year old sitting in the living room, somehow finding himself watching a Barbie movie, and yelling into the kitchen, “Should they be watching this? It seems inappropriate.” A future concerned dad is born. Parenting second time around must involve patience, energy and humour. In many ways it is easier…we are more experienced and laid back. We’ve navigated many a parent/teacher interview and know our way around every childhood illness possible. In other ways, it can be challenging…we have to work hard to avoid the ‘been there, done that’ mindset. Yes, we’ve already had the puppies, kittens, pet birds, hamsters, guinea pigs, turtles and lizards. But they haven’t. Yes, we’ve been to the ocean, amusement park and road trips across Canada. But they haven’t. We are discovering that doing the same activities through a different lens keeps us young, although we have definitely earned our pillows at the end of a day. Parenting second time around is not for the weak-of-heart, but I highly recommend it. I get to hang out with cool young parents. It gives me an excuse to keep coaching, help in classrooms and Brownie lead. It forces me to get out of the house when I normally might have stayed in to watch another rerun of Modern Family with glass of wine in hand. Parenting second time around ensures that I at least feel that I've earned that post homework/bath/story/bedtime glass of wine followed by my desperately needed pillow time.