We Are De Same

Growing up Armenian meant people fell into two categories: "Dey are not like us," or "We are de same."

Canadians, for example, fell into the "Dey are not like us" category. Their kids could stay out way past when the street lights came on. The parents were never home. They could wear makeup and have parties. They let their kids out with spaghetti sauce on their faces (I don't know why, but my mom was a stickler on that one). Their house rules were way too relaxed for the Armenian parent.

Anyone who kinda, sorta looked like us fell immediately fell into the "We are de same" category. Greeks and Italians first and foremost. They also ate a lot of garlic, liked sticking to their own kind and keeping their girls locked up until marriage.

Then the Arab countries, with Lebanon getting the highest ranking. Iranians, Egyptians and such were acceptable too, but if they were Christian, well then we were practically related.

Then eventually any immigrant culture, but European cultures like Romanians were considered more like us than say, South Americans. Except Argentinians -- lots of Armenians there, so Armos view it as Armenia -- the Latin version.

Jews were viewed with a mix of disdain (they did one-up us on that whole genocide thing after all. Nevermind their stronghold in the dental profession! How's an Armenian dentist supposed to catch a break?) and respect (they managed to accumulate wealth quickly in Canada. Armos love hard-working rich people). Besides, Armos are basically like Jews for Jesus -- we love discounts and guilt trips -- because "We are de same."

All kidding aside, I think any persecuted nation survives by getting along with others and making allies. And the way Armenians do this is by trying to make you feel like you're practically one of us.

For example, the average Armenian can say at least one word in 10 languages. This is mostly to try and get special service at restaurants -- by showing you that we're down with your culture. You can never take my mother to a Greek restaurant without her saying "Tikanis" in a flirty way before she asks for her "pirzolas." Plus we love telling people that Armenian food is like Greek food, but way better. "My mother's dolma is way better than this dolmades!"

See us on a resort? We'll ask for "Dos cervezas por favor." We'll chat up the locals about family and the state of the world today, because "We are de same."

Talking about Italian stuff? "I'm practically Italian," I will often tell my Italian colleagues. Armenians are chameleons; growing up WITH another culture meant we knew enough about them to hold our own in a conversation. I know what "finocchio" is slang for and the difference between a Calabrese and an Abruzzese. Of course I'll take another piece of lasagna, because "We are de same!"

South Asian? "Are you celebrating Eid or Diwali? Yeah, I know Siddhartha puts sweetener in the butter chicken to get us white people in there man, that's why I eat here! Give me another chili pepper -- I can handle it. I grew up eating hot peppers! Because we are de same."

"We are de same" became symbolic of a nation built of immigrants, trying to raise families in a new land while keeping a foot in the old country. "We are de same" meant the same strictness at home, the same family values, the same deep love of food, the same longing for a place that was no longer home.

Fist bumps to the other children of immigrants out there. Your food, language and family story might be different, but WE ARE DE SAME!

It's not that I don't have much to say

... it's that I have too much to say and not enough time. But there's more coming. Slowly. It's steeping like a good pot of tea right now.

In the meantime, if you're so inclined to see what my family has been up to, I posted a lovely article on SweetMama about our visit last weekend to the Apple Pie Trail (which I didn't know existed until two weeks ago). You can take a peek at how much my favourite little people have grown.

Hope you're all well. N

Continuity

My dad. His "work friend." A cottage.

It was all so... Canadian. Such a TV, Brady Bunch version of what life should look like. Which is all a 13-year-old girl wants. To have some semblance of life as it looks like on a sitcom. An 80s sitcom.

(And ideally your parents are a lawyer and a doctor, and you live in a great brownstone with your kooky brother and sisters. And on fun nights you all do a choreographed lip-sync to Ray Charles. For the record... I was always Denise in my Huxtable fantasy...)

My mom had just had some sort of surgery when all this was taking place. My sister and I had gone to stay at my godparents for a few days while she recovered. My cousin T taught us to wear mascara really thick, then took us to see Who's That Girl at Pickering Town Centre. I'm pretty sure I was wearing a sweatshirt embossed with a duck dressed in Madonna's Like a Virgin outfit. (Hey, it was the 80s. Don't judge.)

I recall that we lied to my parents about it, because they'd already taken us to see that movie at that exact theatre a week earlier. I don't know why we thought we'd get in trouble for that, but my sister and I agreed that it was best to say otherwise if asked. (What can I say? We LOVED Madonna!) I think we sensed that little things we did might upset the apple cart.

When we got home, my dad suggested this little trip to his friend's cottage to give my mom a break. Except I remember that he insisted she make a lasagna for us to take along. That lasagna would become a symbol for everything that went wrong. (Which is too bad, because lasagna is one of the things my mom makes well.)

It normally took a lot of nagging to get my dad to take vacation days. But we didn't dare question this amazing opportunity -- a first (and only) father-daughter trip. We drove happily to Fenelon Falls, the sun streaming in the windows, listening to top 40, my dad going on and on about his love for Atlantic Starr's "Always," which was on the radio approximately every 22nd song in those days. He was positively giddy and we absorbed every second of it.

We pulled up to the cottage and I remember thinking that it wasn't as remote as I'd imagined cottages to be. The cottages were very close together on the canal and whoa, wait a second. Who was that portly blonde woman waving at my dad from the door?

Her name was Doris. She was my dad's "work friend." My confused brain was soon redirected as we met Doris's four children, two of whom were teenagers and therefore immediately cool in our books. After lasagna and pleasantries, the teens took my sister and I out on their boat.

That afternoon, A and I were in heaven. Sticking our hands in plastic tubs of wet earth to get worms, then squeamishly enjoying the sensation of hooking them perfectly. We caught sunfish and tossed them back after blinding them. And while I felt that to be cruel, there was a part of me that relished in the brutality of it.

The older brother rowed us out to a wide expanse of the Trent-Severn where the water was almost black. "It's so deep here," he said as though telling a ghost tale, "If you fell in they'd never find you." I was suddenly terrified -- of the water, of the strange company, of being out of my element.

We got back to the cottage and my dad came out of the house to say it was time to go. I now know what went on while we were on that lake, but I didn't then. I was still innocent to the awful games that adults play. I had a 'tween girl's Knot's Landing education on adult romance and the messes they make.

As we drove home, all three of us were grinning. It had been thrilling to try something so new, so different from our Armenian-Canadian existence of house parties with too much food and polite conversation. We'd done something so inherently Canadian! Without my mother there to put The Fear in us, we'd each felt the pure joy that comes with freedom. Of course my father's risk-taking behaviour was not quite on par with my first time fishing.

I stuck my hand out the window and laughed at my dad singing Atlantic Starr's "Always." The final days of my innocence were about to be forced out like the last bit of conditioner in the bottle.

My Homework (Part 1)

So I'm under strict orders to digest the past and then shit it out and be done with it. Flush away the resentment and the hurt, tuck my reading material under my arm and get on with it. Move forward. Yes, that's right, it's time for your weekly dose of me working through my therapy online.

The summer I turned 13 began with me being blissfully unaware. I was a TEENAGER! Finally! I had already learned the awful lesson that having your period wasn't something to get excited about, share at a sleepover, or wax poetic about in a Judy Blume novel.

I'd also figured out that dandruff, bad hair, acne and braces were not a winning combo for securing dates. But hey, I could still fantasize about River Phoenix. I was THIRTEEN!

I rode my bike through laneways and around cul-de-sacs, spending my allowance on Big Macs and a Tuesday showing of A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon or Who's That Girl? at a TTC-accessible mall-theatre of choice.

I was also in summer school. Not for dummies, but for enrichment and free babysitting. It was the first summer in my entire life where my mom had a job outside of the home.

The classes weren't at our local school, so my dad would drive me and my sister there and back. I took Computers (which meant waiting for my turn to play Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?) and Drama (which was just the beginning of my future drama nerdness).

My dad had been acting stranger than usual as of late. He'd insisted my mom go back to work. He was working two jobs himself and he was tired and cranky much of the time. My parents seemed distant. When we asked my mom about him, she would tell us he was still heartbroken over his father's death, or he was very tired. I think she knew -- she must have known -- but the truth was too scary, too horrible to face.

He was driving us to summer school one morning, exhaustion dripping from his face. I was oblivious, flipping between Top 40 stations trying to find Jody Watley. He hit the brakes -- HARD -- and the car jerked to a stop at a crosswalk in front of St. Aidan's, a startled school girl looking right at us.

"Oh my God. I almost hit her," he said. I remember nothing else. Not whether he was shaking, not whether he swore; all I remember is that I didn't think it was as big a deal as he was making it. He'd stopped in time after all. We drove the rest of the way in silence.

The phone rang at 1 am that night. It woke us in our teeny house. The details are fuzzy, but I must have asked my mom if everything was alright. "Your dad says he's too shaken up over almost hitting that girl today. He's going to his friend's cottage."

He worked nights, leaving just after dinner and coming home while we were sleeping. But it was the first time in my life where I was conscious of his absence.

We'd been hearing about this "friend from work" in recent months, but frankly, I was excited that my dad finally seemed to have a friend. He was a loner mostly, preferring books to people, and though I craved some positive attention from him, some validation, I'd come to accept that in some broken way.

The idea of my dad having a fishing buddy, like the dads on TV, brought joy to my naive heart. Sure, I wished it was me he was taking fishing. Heck, I would even gladly share that outing with my sister, but if nothing else having a friend showed that he had a heart and some promise as a "normal" human being.

Then came the day he announced we'd be going to his friend's cottage...

To be continued...

The Chinks in My Armor

If you came here for laughs or random hand job talk, click away, because I'm dishing out more introspection. It's not for everyone, but it's important to me to document my new outlook and how I'm getting there. If you want to be happier in life, stick around, you might find a nugget that applies to you.

So I've been seeing a Life Coach. Particularly Carly Cooper, who writes for me on SweetMama. I wonder if this is a weird conflict of interest, but I needed help and Carly was approachable, a woman and a mom so I thought it would be worth the risk. It absolutely has been. I have learned more about myself in the past month or so, than I have in 5 years of blogging my deepest thoughts. And now I even know why!

Tonight I did an exercise that required going through a list of fears, identifying which ones apply to me and then writing down when that fear started, what negative/self-sabotaging behaviour does it cause, and what would be the worst thing that could happen should that fear come true.

I got through a quarter of the list.

A huge part of this involves examining the past to find the reasons I do things the way I do. By far the biggest revelation has been the perfectionist/procrastinator/self-sabotager one. If I can't do it perfect, why bother? Are you like that too?

The other one is the Fear of Humiliation. When I first read that I thought, nah, not me. Why I humiliate myself for laughs regularly on the interweb! But then as I thought about it, I realized that I humiliate myself to beat others to the punch. Get them laughing with me instead of at me.

My best friend has the same fear, but the opposite tactic. She wants no one to notice her. In her house, getting noticed meant getting the beats from her dad. In my house, getting someone to laugh might have saved you a beating.

Instead of noticing I'm being noticed by surprise, I want to control that element. By saying, "Look at me! I'm a goof!" I feel like I'm somewhat in charge of the outcome. Holy motherfucking cuppa crazy!

Actually, my mom's right. I should stop referring to myself as crazy. I'm not crazy. I'm human. I am a puzzle put together by events in my life, events I'm trying to understand now so that they no longer make up who I am. There's more to me than abuse, bullying, separation and eating disorders.

Going through this process has made me more confident as a mom. Oh, I am going to fuck those little shits up regardless -- and they will have phases where they will hate me regardless -- but at least I feel like I'm fucking them up slightly less. It's not a competition or anything, but if you were beaten as a child and you DON'T beat your own kids, I feel that's a heck of an improvement.

Just a note here that it is not my intention to malign my parents in any way, though it may seem like that. I know they'd both get defensive if they read this. I know they did the best they knew how and I've forgiven them for a lot of their mis-steps. I love them dearly and am grateful for their help in raising my kids. They've also grown a lot as people over the past 35 years.

I am no longer expecting them to accept responsibility for their wrong-doings. I'm not waiting for some crazy confession of guilt. I'm over it. But I want to process the past so I can live in the present. I need to be done with it all, but first I must learn to undo what's ingrained in my brain that's holding me back.

Here's to that.

Oh for those who were still hoping for a giggle, we went camping last weekend. Funny photolog to come....

I Am Not Me

I've been chanting a line I heard Eckhart Tolle say to Strombo on The Hour:

"You are not the sad story in your head."

It's likely paraphrased, adapted after watching the clip into a language that would work for me. But it's working. I am not my mind. Therefore I don't have to let my mind be an excuse anymore.

I'm far from being healed, or enlightened on a Buddha level, but I feel like I've had a breakthrough.

*********************
I've had a weird week. I've gone from thinking that there is no way my marriage will survive, to finding a way back to love again and celebrating our 9th wedding anniversary with a renewed commitment to making it work.

A week or so ago we were bickering in front of Nate and his cousin. Nate turned to his cousin and said, "My parents are always fighting and I don't know why." This was a pretty big wake up call for me. I thought all our petty snipping would show him that we're not perfect, that people can disagree and still love each other. But I realized it made him feel unsafe, because we've been venturing into some scary territory.

Plus my sage four-year-old is right. What the heck ARE we fighting about? Then BOOM! I got news of several women I know having their marriages break up. All of them with two kids or more. No one wants to say it, and no one knows what the outcome would have been without them, but it's hard not to look at the having children part of all this and wonder how much it has to do with the downfall of a marriage.

As one woman put it roughly in an email, "...it is inevitable I think, it's not their fault, but it does place so much stress." It's completely true of course, but the thought of my dear sweet children, who were both created out of great love, being the cause of that love's demise breaks my heart too much. I can't give up yet.

There's another phrase that's been going around in my head. Something along the lines of "Every horse thinks his load the heaviest." I would say that thoughts like that account for a lot of the discord in co-parenting right there.

Of course that's not all that I have to say on this subject. I'm working through a lot right now and (not to get all Oprah on you but) I've had a few "a-ha" moments. I've had to lay low, be quiet around here until I understood what was going on. Normally I would just spew, but I have to take into account the potential feelings of the three other (human) members of my family.

(Not Scout. Scout could handle it. She'd just look over at me and continue licking her puckered asshole. But I can't suddenly turn this into a cat blog.)

*********************

I've just spent two amazing days with my beautiful kids, revelling in their blueberry muffin batter scent, big brown eyes that engulf my heart, giant mouthed smiles and bedtime giggles. They are so sweet with each other these days.

I lived through my parents' mis-steps. It is the sad story I've played in my head forever, wearing it like a security blanket, thinking I had to carry it to identify myself. I would say it made me who I am today, but that would be wrong. It made me who I thought I was for a long time; the person I'm working very hard to shed now, to separate myself from.

The idea of separating from myself might sound like weird hocus pocus, but it's the key to keeping me from separating from my husband. I know for many couples there are few choices and this is not a comment on anyone else. I can only speak to my own experiences.

No one ever wants to break their children's hearts, or to let their children watch as their mother's (or father's) heart gets broken. I'm sure my mother had no such intention, but couldn't stop herself from falling apart in front of us. (My father on the other hand was too sick with midlife crisis in the brain to notice the consequences of his actions.)

When Sly Stone sings, "It's a family affair..." it's always held a different meaning for me. Every choice we make as adults impacts the lives of our children to some degree. Maybe because I watched my mother fight for, and then forgive my father, I am hard-wired to keep going. Maybe because I didn't like seeing them act like children, I am forced to finally grow up for my own small family. These are stories for a book, or another day.

Regardless, I'm not carrying those old wounds with me anymore. I don't need them. But I need to fix this, fix me, for the sake of my kids. That's the only truth I've got right now.

Happy Birthday Miss Lucy!

Mystery girl, you confound. You delight. You inspire belly laughs and midnight giggles at the remembrance of the clever thing you did earlier that day.

You lay in the sand like it's gold. Eating it. Inhaling it. There is no body of water (you currently call it wala) that you cross that doesn't beckon your feet for a dip. I can see the joy rise up from your toes through your spine and shoot out your finger tips as you hurtle yourself forward, fearless, exuberant, knowing the thrill awaits.

It frightens me, but I celebrate it too. You are bold, strong and as a good friend made me realize tonight, I admire these traits in you. Wish I was like you a bit more.

"Peels of laughter" was a term invented for you. You are loud, like your mom, especially when happy or when no one is paying attention to you. You command it, refuse to yield to my protests of "after the dishes" or "just one minute," taking my hand forcefully and dragging me to your destination of choice. "LOOK Mam!" "WATCH Mam!" "MAM!"

Your spurts of frenetic energy are tempered with quiet moments of pure concentration. "Halp!" you cry when you get stuck, but I can tell the need to ask for my assistance wears on your pride. You must see everything, do everything, know everything -- yet you keep your own secrets guarded.

You love, immensely, but on your own terms. Like a cat, you dole out affection when YOU feel like it. Your brother will be sullied for life, drawn to women who tease him mercilessly and push him away when he seeks an innocent hug or kiss. He wants to protect you in his feeble, giant-brained way, but you will have none of it. If he's lucky, you might be the one defending him one day.

Some days I think that you are smarter than all of us. That you have this love thing figured out. Like it can never hurt you, because you don't always need it. Yet another trait of yours I wish I had.


You're insistent, willful, demanding. But I dare anyone who loves you to be able to turn you down. You just won't have it.

You defy me, knowingly. You look into my hopeful eyes with the devil's grin and I know in an instant that you will break my heart.

The world is your oyster and by God you will develop the perfect shucker by the time you're old enough to slurp the salty sea flesh of life, tossing the shells behind you. Giving a coy smile when the person behind you steps on your leftovers. They can never stay mad at you for long girl.


Of course I knew that when I made you. Knew it the second you were born. You would challenge me. Test me. Make me wonder why I chose this path. Make me wonder who I will be after parenting you and will there ever be an end?

I pray to a god I know longer know how to refer to that there won't be.

PS: I am reading your birth story and crying, remembering all of it. If you google your way to this in the future, you may think it's gross, but I could read it a thousand times over. You are my gift, my treasure. I love you Lucy and everything you've brought me in these past two years. The good and the bad and all that's to come. Happy Birthday.