Love Actually

One of my favourite movies of all time is Love Actually.  I love Christmas.  I love cozying up to a feel good movie at this time of year.  I love Hugh Grant and most of all I love the message that is delivered in the very opening scene.   This year, though I haven’t actually had the time to watch the movie,  I feel I have been offered perhaps an even more special showing of its opening precept.

“love…actually…exists….everywhere…”

Hospice is busy right now.  Every day I trudge into Campbell House in my snowy wintery boots and am filled with awe at its warmth.   As  I watch families sit vigil, with Christmas music and softly falling snow in the background, I am amazed at the overwhelming feeling that permeates : peace.  In years past the trend has been for people to “hang on” and make it to the big day.  The rush of deaths often happens the week AFTER Christmas.  This year has been an anomaly; these past few weeks have been filled with poignancy and sadness as we have watched many people die before their goal dates.  We have hugged and supported these families whose future Christmases will forever be tainted by the sadness of their loss.

The love at hospice is so obvious.  I am privileged to bear witness to it year round, but especially so at Christmas.

The special glimpses of love that I have seen outside of hospice are much more subtle: innocent love at the extremes of age.  So simple, in fact, that I almost missed them.

The other day, Jack Jack, (Mia’s best friend and true love who lives only a few doors down) came to the door all dressed in his snowsuit (which is a BIG undertaking for a 6 year old).  He desperately wanted Mia to come outside and play with him.  As she RACED to open the front door I noted the excited bounce in her feet.  Is there any better feeling in the world than someone you love coming to call on you?

But, alas, it was COLD outside and SNOWING and Mia had a friend over and they were playing HOUSE.  That’s three BIG STRIKES against going outside.  

I watched as Jack Jack GRINNED at her as Mia opened the door.  I stood by as Mia jumped up and down repeatedly as she explained to him that she didn’t WANT to play outside but did he want to come inside?  Jack’s grin didn’t waver as he answered that there was no way in hell he was taking off his snow suit and coming inside to play house with a bunch of girls when there was freshly fallen snow on the hill outside and his GT snow racer in his hand.  Was she SURE she didn’t want to come outside?  Mia kept grinning and bouncing as she informed Jack that she was WARM and had ALREADY had a hot chocolate after she got off the bus and she had NO DESIRE to get her snow pants on and besides, he never shared his GT snowracer with her ANYWAYS.

They were at an impasse.

And yet there they stood, grinning, bouncing and laughing together as they negotiated their differences.

Finally I had to tell Mia that I was getting cold standing there with the door open.  Was she SURE she didn’t want to go outside?  Was Jack SURE he didn’t want to come in?

There is a reason they are soul mates : they share a very strong tendency towards stubbornness.

I can’t remember the last time I was SO EXCITED to see someone that I literally bounced up and down.  ESEPCIALLY someone who lives a few doors down that I see several times a day.  I also can’t remember the last time I approached an unsolvable deadlock with a friend with quite so much love and enthusiasm.

Though neither of them budged on the issue and a compromise was never reached, they cheerfully agreed to go their separate ways, Jack to his GT snow racer and Mia back upstairs to her friend, while JOY and LOVE radiated from their still smiling faces.   

Mia and Jack : At a time when Mia won and they stayed indoors

Mia and Jack : At a time when Jack won and they played outdoors

At the other end of the spectrum, on the other side of the 401, another showing of love has slowly been growing.  Perhaps with less bouncing but no less poignancy,

my dad, at the age of 91, on a locked ward of a retirement home, occasionally takes a break from calling out for his beloved wife, Lynda, to enjoy the peace and comfort of his new companion, Pat.  We speak of this blossoming friendship with wonder and humour. 

“It appears there’s some cohabitation happening at the Teddington!” Mom will text me, “I found two of Pat’s blazer’s hanging in dad’s closet again”.   More recently Pat has taken to removing her location bracelet and putting it on Dad’s wrist, causing both agitation on the part of my father “WHY AM I WEARING TWO WATCHES” and from the nurses “Where did Pat go!  Has she escaped again!?!!”

I watched the two of them together the other day when I was visiting.    As she came around the corner, my dad’s eyes rose to look at her and suddenly a quizzical and hesitant look of recognition came over him.  As she approached, hands outstretched he gently reached out and took her hand in his, ‘Oh…hello, Love” he said gently.  She smiled back at him and patted his hand on hers.  It was gentle and kind.  These three simple primitive gestures – smiling, recognizing and the offering of a hand – quell their mutual anxiety of living alone in a new place.  It offers them comfort to know the other is there.  It offers us all solace to know dad has found companionship.

I marvel at the fact that, even in the final years of life, when much of who he was is gone, the comfort of love and the bonding of souls is still there; an integral and essential part of living.

But perhaps the greatest showing of love came at the Teddington Christmas luncheon.  My mom, sent me a picture of the two of them; Dad and Pat all dressed up, sitting side by side at the table.  “Pat wanted to sit beside her husband, “ she texted, “So I’m sitting  by myself, opposite them, for lunch.”

There is no jealousy on the part of my mother.  She happily obliged Pat with her request and took it as a fine opportunity to get a great photo of the two of them.  They sat there, the three of them, enjoying soggy sandwiches and lukewarm soup, comforted by one another’s presence. 

At the end of the meal, Pat leaned over to my mom and said, “He IS my husband, isn’t he?”

“Well, Pat…technically he’s my husband too…you just never know with men!”

They shared a good laugh together with my dad chuckling away too, looking on at both of them  with bewildered adoration.

They say that patients with dementia don’t need to know facts or be corrected on what is or is not happening at any given moment. They experience and remember only how things make them feel.  This Christmas brunch, thanks to the loving generosity of my mom, allowed them all to feel the warmth of love that surrounded them at their table.

Love.  Actually.  Exists. Everywhere.

Merry Christmas, Everyone.  May you find love, in all its many forms…everywhere.

Crucial Mommy-Mia Conversations

As it is with every family, we have our share of family stories.  They aren’t hundreds of years old or filled with prophetic wisdom, but still we have our anecdotes that Grandma Lynda or Aunt Adie remind us of every time certain topics emerge.

One story that I have heard several times is that of my early career choices.  Allegedly, mother asked the bossy, self confident 3 year old version of myself what I wanted to be when I grew up and I boisterously announced that I was going to be “ a doctor, a teacher and a mommy.”  This story has been recounted at my high school graduation, at my med-school graduation, and probably a few times during each of my pregnancies.  I applaud the younger version of myself for having the wherewithal to say something so prophetic that it somehow happened to come true.  High points on the credibility monitor even though the only person around to corroborate the truth has a vested interest in this story since she has told it SO. MANY. TIMES.

Tonight, completely out of the blue and by utter happenstance, I had a few moments with Mia on her own.  I had made a lovely roast beef dinner for the family and Rob and Toby had vacated shortly thereafter to go to – you guessed it – hockey practice. Mia may be good for morning smiles and cheerful companionship but she is completely USELESS when it comes to helping to clean up the dinner table.  After asking her SIX TIMES to go bring something from the table to the kitchen (the last time she had brought ONE SINGLE fork) I finally gave up and allowed her to just sit at the kitchen counter and colour while I cleaned up.  (Ya.  Cause THAT’s helpful.)

As she coloured, Mia chatted away to me.  Watching me laboriously scrub the roasted potatoe remnants off of the bottom of the roasting pan she asked me, “Is it HARD to be a Mommy?”

“NO!” I replied automatically “Why would you ask that?”

“Well…” she said as she shook her head and went back to her colouring, “It seems like an AWFUL lot of work.  Making dinner…cleaning up from dinner…putting us to bed…”

I applauded her keen empathy and observations skills and explained to her that, like any job, there are wonderful thing about it but there is also some exertion involved.  I took the opportunity to remind her that some of the most rewarding jobs in the world required some degree of hard work.

“OH…So being a Mommy is like being a doctor and like being a teacher?”

She asked earnestly.  I agreed as she continued, “Because you have a student right, now, don’t you Mommy?”  (She has heard me talk about my resident that is with me for 6 months this year, doing a 3^rd year of extra training in palliative care).  “Yes, I said, I am a teacher, too.”

“So you’re a Mommy, a Doctor AND a Teacher?”

It was almost as if I had been set up.  After YEARS of hearing the story I looked around for Grandma Lynda and was sad that she wasn’t here to bear witness to this ULTIMATE TRIUMPH.  Was I about to be struck down by lightening?? Had my absolute life goal just been REALIZED and announced out loud to the GODS?!??!

“Um….YA…. that’s right…”  I replied hesitantly.

“SO what’s your FAVOURITE job?” she asked me.

“What do YOU think” I answered.

At first she guessed Doctor.  Then she guessed teacher.  (In fairness to her, I WAS doing the dishes as we spoke…)  It was a rather tender moment we shared when I smiled at her and she realized that my favourite job was that of being her mother.   

What a perfect blog post this would have been if I could have ended it here -- with Mia and I skipping off to bedtime, arm in arm in the blissful mother-daughter realization that we made up one another’s most perfect existence…(while a sparkling clean kitchen and roasting pan sat drying in the sink….)

But as life has it…these poignant moments are fleeting, and, especially when it comes to Mia, often followed by a second line of questioning.

“Well if it’s SO GREAT being a Mommy, why doesn’t EVERYONE just do it?”

“Well….” I explained, still scrubbing away, “Not everyone WANTS to be a mommy. And not everyone’s bodies cooperate and can make a baby all that easily.”

Seemed innocuous to me – didn’t it?  Not to Mia.  That was a LOADED GUN.

WHAT did our bodies NEED to do to have a baby and HOW did it do that and WHY did a man have to help and HOW did that seed get in there and WHEN was HER body going to be ready for all of this and WHY was mine still DOING THAT?!?!?!?

I kid you not.  This MAY go down as one of our family “stories” for years to come.  I covered everything from sperm-egg infiltration to the female menstrual cycle all in the span of one very vigorous scrubbing of a roasting pan. 

Mia GLOSSED over the love-making part and focused instead on the whole menstrual bleeding part.  Did it hurt?  Did I have to go to the hospital when it happened?  Did it STILL HAPPEN to me at MY ripe old age?  And did Daddy drive the car everywhere while it was happening?  (Some of her questions made more sense than others…)

Finally, much to my delight, there was a pause in the rapid fire questioning and Mia settled back into her colouring. 

I relished the silence.

“Well, Mom…” she said with her head down, “That all seems like a LOT of work to me.  I think I’d just RATHER be a man.”

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And so there you have it.  Just as I was about to celebrate the completion of my own ultimate life’s purpose, the merriment was struck short by my daughter’s gender identity crisis.  I guess that’s just part of being a Mom…

Shit Kids Learn When Daddy Goes Away

I recognize that a large number of my blog posts start with a dramatic lamentation about the fact that I’ve just come off of a period of…wait for it…SOLO PARENTING.  It’s not like it happens OFTEN and you would THINK that, after 9 years of being a mother, this would be a skill I could develop.  But regardless, each time it happens to me my perceived abilities in this area are often JOLTED into a grim reality of my abysmal lack of patience and ability to go it alone for long periods of time.  (Read : anything longer than 8 hours…)

This weekend Rob went away to Buffalo for a football game with some of his guy friends.  He doesn’t do this often so it is well deserved and I try my hardest to make MY part look easy so he doesn’t feel badly.  NO, I’m not trying to paint myself as a saint – it is done with complete self-interest: so that I can continue to go on 4 times the number of weekends away and not suffer from mom-guilt.

What REALLY is so difficult about spending 48 hours in the company of my 2

lovely kids, enjoying a movie and pizza night, and having a quiet evening after they go to bed with the remote control all to myself?

Well….as it turns out…it’s the talking.   The INCESSANT talking.  And the taxi service to and from out of town hockey games and play dates and shopping excursions to get snow pants.  And the talking.  And the feeding and cleaning and feeding and cleaning.  And the riddles.  And the fighting.  And the whining.  And the talking.  Oh, have I mentioned the talking?

Mia falls asleep mid sentence and wakes up at precisely 7:01 ready to continue right where she left off.  She tells me about her sleep and the sleep quality of her 50 beanie boos with whom she shares her bed and then she launches into her breakfast plans, her play plans for the day and general observations about the world.  Like the fact that it’s still a bit dark outside.  And that the snow hadn’t melted yet.  And when WOULD it melt?  And on that note….was I going to put chocolate chips in her pancakes?

You would think that Toby’s arrival at breakfast would provide me with a reprieve from the chatter.  But Toby, like his dear old mom, is not a morning person.  His occasional grunts in response to her questions only serve to fan the flame.  As such, her questions are repeated in exponentially rising decibels until either Toby or I explode a response. 

All of this before my 1^st cup of coffee.

Tonight, with the end of all of this looming in sight, we ventured out to Creemore  for Toby’s hockey game.   The talking and questions and fighting and talking continued for most of the drive until I was saved by a particularly upbeat country song.  For 3 blissful minutes we cranked the volume and sang, just the 3 of us, at the top of our lungs.  DRIVING ON THE BACKROADS I’m GONNA TAKE IT SLOW JUST AS FAST AS I CAN.  Rob NEVER likes us to play the music that loud.  Things were turning around.

After the game our dear dear friends who clearly observed my parenting fatigue offered to come to dinner with us all afterwards.  They even pretended not to care that we were eating at 4:30.  They just went with it.  #truefriendship

We had a lovely buffet dinner at the Sovereign and then headed home in the dark with only ONE MORE HOUR to go before bedtime.

On the way home, just as Mia’s voice box was starting to fatigue, Toby got his chatter on.  He asked us some riddles. 

“I have a mouth but don’t speak.  I have a bank but no money.  What am I?”

Mia, with her usual display of equal parts confidence and blind enthusiasm, shouted out the answer first, “That’s EASY Toby.  It’s a GIRAFFE.”

????

(It was actually a river)

She then PROUDLY announced that she had finished the candy from dinner.  It tasted like black licorice and Toby and I had spit ours out in disgust about 2 seconds into it.  But Mia is not one to pass up on a candy. 

“Good perseverance, Mia” I said sarcastically.

Toby asked what perseverance was.  I gave a brief definition and Mia, not at all catching onto my sarcasm and not wanting to miss an opportunity to show off her aptitude at persevering, further clarified,

 “See, Toby? It’s like when you eat a candy and don’t like it but you just KEEP AT IT and FINISH the candy anyways.  THAT’s Perseverance.”

I don’t think she got the fact that, for the second time in 5 minutes we were laughing AT her.

Toby moved his line of questioning to general LIFE questions, as he sometimes does when he is enjoying having all of us together.  He asked us where we would each like to live if we didn’t live in Canada.  I told him I’d like to live in France. 

Mia’s response?’

“France.  Because I just want to live wherever Mom is.”

After a long weekend I felt my heart swell with love…

Just before we pulled into the driveway our country song came back on and we finished our drive, and the long weekend of togetherness, with one last loud sing song.

Don’t worry.  This isn’t a braggy blog post.  I didn’t ACTUALLY kill it as a mom.

As we sat there in the driveway singing our hearts out to the last verse, I suddenly, for the first time, stopped an listened to the words… 

I will conclude with the lyrics to the song that I so energetically instilled on my children this weekend…and will leave you with the image of Rob returning home tomorrow to the sweet sounds of their chatter…and SINGING OF THIS SONG….

Got a girl from the Southside
Got braids in her hair
First time I seen her walk by
Man I 'Bout fell up out my chair

Had to get her number
Took me like 6 weeks
Now me and her go way back
Like Cadillac seats

Body like a back road
Could drive it with my eyes closed
I know every curve like the back of my hand
Doin' fifteen in a thirty
I ain't in no hurry
I'm a take it slow just as fast as I can

The way she fit in them blue jeans
She don't need no belt
But I can turn 'em inside out
I don't need no help

Got hips like honey
So thick and so sweet
Ain't no curves like hers
On them downtown streets

Body like a back road
Could drive it with my eyes closed
I know every curve like the back of my hand
Doin' fifteen in a thirty
I ain't in no hurry
I'm a take it slow just as fast as I can

We're out here in the boondocks
With the breeze and the birds
Tangled up in the tall grass
With my lips on herss

On a highway to Heaven
Headed south of her smile
Get there when we get there
Every inch is a mile

Body like a back road
Could drive it with my eyes closed
I know every curve like the back of my hand
Doin' fifteen in a thirty
I ain't in no hurry
I'm a take it slow just as fast as I can

I'm take it slow just as fast I can

(Body like a back road
Could drive it with my eyes closed
I know every curve like the back of my hand)

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Two lessons in bad timing...

I am not a fan of transitions.

I shouldn’t complain about my 2 weeks vacation but the planning, the paperwork on both ends and the onslaught of “goodbyes” take a toll on me emotionally.  Yesterday I wrapped up everything at my family practice.  Today, I had the hard job of saying goodbye to my 4 patients at hospice.   When you leave your palliative end of life patients for 2 weeks the goodbye has a special poignancy to it.  I managed the first 3 tears free but broke down with the last one.  I wished, in that moment with them, that I wasn’t leaving for 2 weeks.  The brother graciously offered up the fact that “You wouldn’t be able to do what you do if you didn’t take a break now and then”.  I nodded in agreement, but the unspoken hung heavily in the air.  For this man, and this family, my vacation came at the wrong time.  After months of developing a deeply meaningful and trusting relationship, I was leaving at a crucial time.  As I’ve explained to my quizzical husband on many occasions, “It’s like teaching grade 8 all year but not showing up for Grade 8 Graduation.”

And so I left hospice today with a heavy heart and did what always makes me feel better - - I went to find my family.

I had heard the plan at breakfast that morning – they were off to the lake to paint the tree house that they were building together this summer.  What better way to kick of a 2-week vacation than a good bike ride out to the lake to surprise them? 

Keen as they had been this morning it was evident that the day was not going as planned.  The tree house was full of half painted fence rails with open paint tins and brushes scattered across the floor.   Rob was down by the water working on a zipline and the kids were up at the house alone.   Apparently none of them were ACTUALLY all that keen on painting after all. Without officially announcing my arrival, I peeled off my sweaty bike gear and set to work.   Painting the rungs of the tree house, up in a tree and all by myself was meditative and quiet and just what I needed.  Off in the distance I could hear the familiar tussles of sibling disagreements with the occasional harsh word and yell from Toby from up at the house, but I kept painting, knowing that soon enough I would be a welcomed part of whatever disagreement they were having.

After a brief time the shouts and noises grew closer and soon my hideaway was discovered,

“Hi, Mom” they said, excited to see me, “Whatcha doing…??”

I handed them each a paintbrush and told them to join me.  We could paint together.

It was a combination of a Tom Sawyer and a Von Trapp moment.  Neither of them dared refuse as they were relishing the opportunity to hang out with me but I don’t think either of them REALLY wanted to be painting.  So I tried to engage them in conversation.

“So…. what were you guys doing up at the house?” I asked innocently, pretending I hadn’t heard the screaming and yelling

“Oh,” said Toby earnestly, “We were busy building a FORT together!”

“Ah…” I said, “I see.”

 “Why?” he asked, “What did you THINK we were doing?”

“Oh, nothing” I said, painting away, “I just thought I heard some fighting that’s all”

“Oh…right…” Toby said.  “Well….there WAS this ONE moment…when we were building the fort and I couldn’t get one of the pillows to stand up straight and I kept trying and trying and it kept falling over and I was VERY FRUSTRATED and Mia just BURST OUT LAUGHING at me and that made me REALLY ANGRY”

I was about to sympathize with him when a paint covered Mia piped up from the other side of the tree house,

“Oh, Toby…” she said, “I wasn’t LAUGHING at you I was just LAUGHING at something FUNNY that came into my head a that moment.”

RIIIIIIIIIIGHT.

I didn't buy it for a second.  But our Toby is equal parts trusting and naïve,

“Really?” he asked Mia with complete honesty, “What was is that was so funny?’

BUSTED.

Mia didn’t skip a beat.  She dipped her paint brush in and turned her back to us to paint a rung of the railing and launched into a slow but confident tale,

“Well….you see….FIRST I was thinking about going down a WATERSLIDE….” She hesitated for a bit as she painted, “And THEN I got to thinking that maybe at the END of the water slide I would do a fancy DIVE off of it….but I didn’t.  Instead I imagined that I had done a GIANT BELLY FLOP.  And that made m LAUGH out LOUD.”

“Oh,” Said Toby a bit surprised, “Yes that DOES sound funny.”

“Yes,” Mia replied smugly, “You see Toby it was just REALLY bad timing."

Ahhh…the dichotomous bookends of my life…If today had been a Sesame Street Episode it would have been brought to you by the phrase “BAD TIMING”.

And just like that….I was on summer vacation.

The Unpainted treehouse

Always worth the uphill bike...

                                               And finally...a video of Rob's finished Zipline!!!