family

Regina Widowbago


Saturday we stopped in Regina, Saskatchewan to meet more of Rob’s family. His mother and sister both live there. It is his mom’s hometown actually. Regina is really quite pretty, especially the streets and park around the Parliament. The first thing I noticed as we traveled down Albert is that many of the streets are tree lined on both sides. I just love that natural canopy effect. On sunny days the light dances down from the leafy ceiling in a way that seems to sparkle.

We headed into the downtown which was much like any other. Shannon, Rob’s younger sister, works at the Ramada near the Civic Center, and she had booked us a hospitality room so we could swim and use the hot tub. Her manager greeted us when we arrived and told us that Shannon had popped home for a bit because we were running late, but she would get us the key to the room. Between the wedding that had invaded that day and the renovations it was an obstacle course to the suite, but we arrived and Shannon and her children, Robert and Randi, soon followed.

Shannon has eyes like Rob’s, and his eyes are very striking. She isalso very animated. Never stopped talking, which is a good thing because Rob and I listen more than we speak anyway. Shannon has a self-deprecating sense of humor, but I am beginning to think that might be a widow thing. I didn’t mention she was widowed, did I? Seven years and still grappling with that widow tendency to wonder where the map is. Still waiting for life to begin again. “Wait, I have to do that, right?” she asked though it wasn’t really a question. We all know the drill on that score, but the practice of it is tricky, elusive even. People seem to think that it is simple. That there are certain things, like re-coupling for example, that magically make all other aspects of life fall into place, but it is not simple as both Rob and I can attest. It is simply getting up every day and living it. One foot. Another foot. You can’t wait for life to come back and take your hand because, like time, it moves forward only, and if you don’t follow along you can easily be left back and forgotten.

It wasn’t until we were on our way to Rob’s mother’s home that it occurred to him that we had just been to a Widowbago. It certainly had all the elements. A gathering of widows (Rob, myself and Shannon) and our children for dinner and swimming and hot tubbing (which I know is not a verb). Interesting, eh?

Bad Scare


I found my daughter with a jump rope wrapped around her neck Saturday evening. Rob,  Jordan and I were enjoying a late supper in the dining room and Katy was supposedly watching television in the living room. I had heard her cough minutes before but dismissed it as she had been stuffy and still coughing a bit from a cold. It was the silence that followed in those minutes that jump-started the feeling that something was not right and sent me to check. I found her sitting on the couch in tears and terror. She had wrapped the rope around her neck several times and attempted to tie it, thank God she cannot tie her shoes yet, and was attempting to free herself but was only managing to pull the rope tighter. It is interesting how detached and task -oriented you become when faced with a crisis. I realized quickly I couldn’t untie the tangles and began to unloop instead. By the time Rob got to us I had her free but for the coils of rope that were caught in her curls. He quickly undid those and put the rope up on a shelf in the entryway to the house as I assessed her neck and soothed her.

She had frightened herself quite badly but at that moment I was still too concerned with checking for any burns or bruising and making certain that she was breathing properly which isn’t an easy thing to ascertain in a crying preschooler. It wasn’t until later when I had her in bed and asleep that the full impact of the event hit me, and I was more than glad to curl up on the same couch with Rob and receive my strokes and reassurance.

The nest morning she was fine and the fright over though hopefully the lesson learned is not forgotten. The fright is not so much gone for me. Since her father died, I have been…. well….over-protective…but understandably so, I think. I do need to learn to let her take those steps towards independence without always fearing the worst, and it is moments like Saturday evening which make that much harder. I can’t really protect her from anything. I know that. But hopefully I will be near enough to provide whatever rescue and snuggles that I can.

Victoria Day


HDR IR Victoria Day, Toronto

Image by Lone Primate via Flickr

Rob is here for the the week. He arrived Saturday afternoon, and my daughter and I picked him up at the airport. His flight was a bit delayed, so we walked around a little as we waited, a very little, as it is an extremely small airport made smaller by the fact that you are no longer allowed up in the main terminal. I think terrorism is currently a yellow color, and what passes for security was a tad more attentive though their vigilance seemed only to extend as far as luggage that sat still for longer than a minute. Dee too was especially interested in the suitcases as they wheeled by us.

 

“Black, black…..red….black,” she would say as she tallied them up.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

“I am looking for a green suitcase. Rob’s is green,” she explained to me in a tone reserved for the stupid.

 

I explained to her that Rob would be with his suitcase. It wouldn’t be arriving with someone else. Still, we had to go to the baggage claim and look there as well.

 

When he arrived, there were hugs and kisses, and I felt whole again. I hate the time we spend apart. Even though we both put much time and effort into staying as connected as possible, there quickly comes a time when phone calls, emails and IM cannot substitute for hugs and kisses and looking into his eyes during a conversation.

 

Being a family too is not a distance thing. It should come as no surprise that my daughter has taken to Rob like a duck to water. Last week one night as she artfully resisted bedtime, she tried to convince me that she needed to spend the night in my bed with me. Although I didn’t need to point out to her that she is a big girl who has her own bed in her own room, I did anyway. Repetition is the key to instruction. Cleverly, she agreed, but pointed out that since “our dad” was not here, it would be okay for her to bunk in.

 

We spent the weekend quite like a normal family. The babysitter came at seven on Saturday evening, so we could have dinner out with friends of mine who wanted to wish us well on the upcoming move and wedding. Sunday was Shrek the Third at the multiplex at the nearby mall and a walk around the fishpond outside before ice cream and home. Sunday was tidying up Will’s grave site and decorating it for Memorial Day as we will be in Edmonton for the holiday…….okay, maybe that’s not what a “normal” family does as on a Sunday afternoon many families are trading the kids back at the designated drop off according to the visitation schedule per the divorce decree…….and yes, that wasn’t nice. But, I wonder sometimes about “normal”. A year ago a normal Sunday was spent with me on the Internet and my daughter watching cartoons. The year before that our normal was going to the nursing home and her watching me spoon feed her father his lunch.

 

When did the standard for what constitutes a normal family become a mother, father and 2.3 children, and why does this standard persist when that clearly is not the norm anymore?

 

Peggy Drexler, a gender scholar who lives in New York, has a piece in the current Newsweek magazine discussing the idea of what makes a family appear normal. A product of a single parent upbringing, her father died when she was three and a half, she discusses the insecurities and inadequacies brought about by the overt and subtle messages that society sends to children and parents who are living outside the Christian Coalition’s definition of what makes up a proper family. She raises the point that growing up she felt that somehow they were a lesser family due to loss of her father, and although that is true, to my mind it is only true in the sense that she, her mother and her sisters missed out on the love that would have been theirs. They were a family regardless.

 

The article, No Such Thing as an ‘Average’ Family, discussed research Ms. Drexler conducted as a graduate student that concluded that family make-up is not a one size fits all and that “damaged” children are not necessarily the outcome of families that fall outside the traditional structure. As a public school teacher for twenty years now I would have to concur. What we would term “good children” comes primarily from “good parenting” and this can occur in any type of family.

 

Victoria Day or Fête de la Reine is a Canadian holiday celebrated on the last Monday before or on May 24th in honor of both Queen Victoria’s (1837-1901) birthday and the current reigning British Monarch. Although it is often thought of as a purely Canadian event, it is also celebrated in some parts of Scotland. I mention this only because next year we will be celebrating it as a family, or maybe not, Rob tells me that this Monday is usually the day spent traveling back from wherever you have been camping. We will be our version of a family. No better or worse than what we would have been had Will not died or if Rob and I had never found each other. Just a family, like so many others that live and love from day to week to years on end. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then so too is what makes a family.