Ooh we are... yes we are

You know when you first start dating someone? And you get all those wiggy waggies in your stomach every time you think about them? And then you stop hanging out with your friends for a while, because you're out having picnics and going skating and to the movies and making out all over town?

Well that's kind of why I haven't been blogging much. I'm in love.

I'm not really sure when it happened. Not so long ago I thought my family was done. I thought that divorce was inevitable and I started planning. "OK, Sunday-Wednesday, he'll have the kids. Then I'll get them Wednesday-Sunday..."

Then we had THE TALK. You know the one. You might have had it too, especially if you have kids. The one where everything seems hopeless, every argument is the same one you had the month before and you're just not getting anywhere. And somebody says the awful. "Well, I guess I'll just leave then."

Because you feel terrible. You are ruining everyone, you think. They'd be better off without me. I'm the fuck up. I'm the problem. Or you might think that your partner is the dick. That he or she isn't pulling their weight. You're feeling overwhelmed and you don't know how to ask for what you really need, so you're just a snippy bitch all the time.

And we got scared. Like really, really terrified. Because what the fuck were we saying? How could we go from thinking we had the world by the balls to hating each other every day? We swore we'd never do that. And now we were a daily cliche, wallowing in everything that we weren't to each other anymore, wondering what we ever had in common.

I could see our struggle like a graph (sort of, don't quote me or try to picture it yourselves, because I wasn't very good at graphs ever, so I can't explain the axis to you...). Our marital stocks had plummeted. You could look at it one of two ways: either Company Silverthorne was going to fold, or we were at the peak of awful and the only way to go was up.

Then the marriage genie granted us an extension, some sort of miracle that would get us to the next crossroads, the next judgment line.

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"Every horse thinks his load the heaviest." It appeared one day as one of those annoying Google ads that comes up at the top of Gmail. And I saw it. I mean how many ads go by that you don't even register? But this quote of the day caught my eye, and it made sense.

I decided to stop weighing and measuring everything. I decided that I needed to practice not being angry when I felt like I was doing more.

But before I go further, I should let you know that I did not come to this on my own.

As mentioned before, I've been working with a Life Coach named Carly Cooper. She's into Oprah, and The Secret, things I normally roll my eyes at like the coolio that I pretend to be. (OK, I'm hot and cold with Opes. I did love her for years, but Maya Rudolph's SNL impersonations might have ruined her for me forever.)

Sometimes on our weekly call I would ask her things like, "Why do I need to tear him a new one when he forgets a simple errand?" She would calmly reply that I would rather be right all the time than keep the peace in my house. But I'm a lifetime know-it-all, how the fuck was I going to stop doing that?

I can't even get into all the amazing things she's taught me about myself. For example, if you sometimes take your inner dialogue, play it back to yourself and then think about how you'd feel if your child talked to herself that way, well it shows you how you mentally abuse yourself. But that's a whole 'nother post and this one is lengthy already.

So not to simplify, but once you become aware of all the shit you do, you can train yourself to flip the switch in your brain to the right choice. For example, regardless of whether I'm stressed or not, I have the same workload at my job. I can get stressed about it, thinking it makes me look more important and busier than my colleagues, or I can shut the fuck up and just deal.

When my husband washes the dishes in cold water (and he does) I can make him feel like everything he does is wrong, or I can CHOOSE to gently ask if next time he would please wash the dishes in hot water because it means a lot to me. (Previously I would try this but it would go more like, "Who washes dishes in cold water? Don't you know that doesn't get the grease off?! Maybe WE should start using hot water to wash the dishes, because that's what the rest of the world does.")

We started talking again. Not just about how awesome the kids are, but how awesome we are as parents, as people. We started talking about our dreams again, and talking about them like there wasn't a mortgage and line of credit hanging over our heads. We started to put plans in place and set deadlines to help us write outlines for our artsy endeavours. WE! Together. Without fighting.

I'm not saying any of this was easy. It's taken months of almost daily/nightly introspection and discussion. Many fights ended in tears. But after getting to the tipping point, we realized that we didn't want every conversation to become a fight. I'm learning to not get my back up at every suggestion he makes. He's learning that what he views as constructive criticism comes off like he's the perfect human and I'm the asshole.

Did we start dating again? Nope. I love that idea, but the reality of making it work with two kids and weird-houred jobs is complicated. I did start turning off the BlackBerry and the laptop though. I started putting my head in his lap during Dexter. I started wanting what he wanted without being offended when I realized I was falling short on some things.

We're not 100% yet. If I knew anything about graphs I might say that this is because we're on the slope up, and that may be the toughest part. We could slip back down to the bottom if we go back to sleepwalking through this marriage. But trying to always have an awareness -- of the triggers, of my own thoughts, of how he might feel if I say X Y Z -- that is the key. It takes patience and practice and it's not going to work for every couple, but if you think about how much of your martial discord comes from measuring and weighing, this could work for you too. Email me if you want to chat in private. (nadineDOTsilverthorneATgmailDOTcom)

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So there you have it. I haven't been watching Gossip Girl or ANTM with you; I haven't met up with you for our weekly yoga class or fro-yo date; I haven't gone clubbing or to the movies or to your Facebook wall -- because right now I am IN LOVE with my family. All of them. Even the cat and I are into each other and snuggling again. I didn't see it coming. But it's here and I'm hanging on to what I've got. right. now.

Oh Joy

It's coming up fast; grabbing me by the throat so that I can't breathe when it enters my mind. If I struggle against it, I fail. Resistance is futile as they say, so I let the speed of its current carry me away and I find peace.

In six short weeks, I will have a five-year-old.

They tell you it will pass by so fast. They compare it to the speed of light and all you think of is Superman. Try as you might to be prepared, to take stock in the minutiae of fingernails the size of lentils, you can't. You can't ever be ready for it.

Some days I feel like Sandra Bullock in Speed. Like I just want to the bus to fucking stop already, but Life is Dennis Hopper on a cell phone, commanding me to go forward at an inconvenient pace.

The bomb has already imploded. I am the mother of a soon-to-be five-year-old and a two-year-old. My home is a melee of LEGO shrapnel, cat hair and discarded dolls. I bail on holiday housewarming parties so that I can go to bed at 9 o'clock, next to my almost five-year-old boy -- who mostly sleeps on his own (though begrudgingly so) and would prefer the open-mouthed gargle snore of his mother any evening.

While I have loved every day of being his mother, I have not accepted that I am now a mother every single day. It's been the hardest road: giving up the superficial "me" that I thought I was (the party girl, the hipster, the in-the-know girl-about-town) and discovering my true self. I'm not 100% there, but I see me.

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I am always surprised to read something that reminds me of my "birth day" 4.8 years ago. I was over at sweet | salty after a long absence and I came across this post. And somehow it unlocked the words and the what-should-I-writes. I'm still blogging once a week at my day job, which I still enjoy, but the tone of what I do there in general is quite different from the real me.

And while I don't want to wallow in darkness anymore, I am struggling to find the in between. The new me and the new voice that goes with it.

What struck me about Kate's post was that I'm still not over my NICU experience. I don't think any parent ever totally heals from that. I lie awake some nights, listening to Nate breathe and I feel The Stroke hovering over us, taunting, "I can come back you know?" I try to picture his brain growing in his head and I want there to be no scar tissue, but I am struggling to erase my mind's eye vision of them. I imagine them sitting there at the top of his head, under his lovely chocolate hair, playing cards, waiting for the day they can get up and stretch their legs.

I know this topic would upset my mom, who wants so badly to forget it ever happened -- The Stroke that is. But I realized when I read Kate's post that I too am angry about my birth experience and I need to work it out. (Because Lord knows I'm scaring the bejeezus out of the preggos at the office.)

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Tonight, as we were driving back from my mom's, all-girl synth pop from the stereo sending Lucy to sleep in the backseat, Nate sucking his thumb in silence, I was about to parallel park in front of our house when a small voice made me brake.

"Mom, can we stay here until this song is done?"

The muscles of my heart pushed up to form a smile on my face. My son, my soulmate. We're connected at the brain and the only way for me to heal his is to heal mine.

I'll share the song here with you via a YouTube link (something we didn't do 4.8 years ago). It's "Oh Joy" by Au Revoir Simone and I think it's going to be my new anthem.




For the record, the chorus is "Oh joy! I can see you. Oh joy! I can see you. It's all I want. It's all I want." It's off their latest album, Still Night, Still Light. The album is softer and quieter than their live performances, but equally lovely and haunting. Get it because you can listen to it with your children and feel the warm tinglies inside.

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....