Parenthood

The Art of Playing


Jordan was remarking about her own willingness and ability to play with Katy. A friend had been asking her what it was like to have such a young step-sister and if she found it difficult to play imaginary games with her. Jordan admitted that she did find it hard and wondered when we lose the ability to do that and why. I have to admit that I didn’t have much of an answer for her though I share the dilemma. Katy is always after me to play with her. The game of choice where I am concerned is house, a game I didn’t play much at all when I was a child of five and find in more dull now. Unlike my daughter, I had chores from a young age. Making my bed, picking up my room every night, helping with supper dishes which progressed quickly to the point where at 9 or so, my sister and I were left with the supper remains to clear and wash up. House was not a game. It was a series of lesson designed to prepare me for my life’s eventual part-time and then full-time work. Or at least that is how my parents saw it.

 

I however that the real reason I lost my ability to play is that in choosing to marry and become a mother, I surrendered my right to down time. I wasn’t able to retreat to my own space anymore because I was sharing it all the time. Before, when I tired of company, conversation, interacting on any level – I could go home. To my apartment or my house. A place that was just mine and where I could do or not, read and write, go for a run or to the mall without taking anyone else’s needs or wants into account. In regards to the children I knew back then, I was much like an aunt or a grandparent in that I could leave when it wasn’t fun for me anymore. You can’t do that when it is your own child.

 

In terms of imagination, I haven’t lost mine anymore, I think, than Jordan has misplaced hers, it is just a grown-up’s version of one. No matter what we say, we all grow up and become conscious of the world around us. Our needs and interests change to reflect who we are becoming and however similar my imaginings may be to the child I was, I have other ways of expressing and meeting those needs now.

 

I think too that the grown-up disinterest in play as a child knows it is nature’s way of letting children develop that part of themselves without adult input and interference. Imagine if grown-ups did enjoy the long bouts of play that children demand. Children are already programmed to allow too much to be done for them. Would they develop any true self-interests or ability to think for themselves if bossy parents were inclined to play with them? Maybe that sounds self-serving. Maybe it is self-serving. I don’t remember my parents really playing with me beyond my father teaching me to play ball or my mother reading to me when I was very small. I don’t know that I knew any adults who played with children. So why do I sometimes feel bad that I don’t always play when Katy asks and that I often don’t find what she wants to do interesting?

 

Last weekend, we built a fort, and I enjoyed doing that with her, but once the fort was built and she wanted to continue playing clubhouse – I wasn’t as interested. And it’s not that I don’t have an imagination or that I don’t engage that side of myself anymore. I can lose myself in a daydream as easily now as I could as a child. I can create stories even more easily than I could way back when. I’m just not interested in being childlike. Which is interesting because isn’t that touted as this great attribute for artists to have? I am not so sure.

 

Still, an interesting question and on-going conundrum.

Inner Cleansing


Katy’s catch-all for all upsets is a tummy ache. Her tummy hurts when she is frustrated, tired, bored, not interested in following directions and when she is stalling for time at bed (although sometimes she has growing pains to forestall her nightly tuck-in). An aching tummy can mean she is experiencing a grief wave or that she ate too many grapes. This has been such a standard of hers that I almost pay no attention anymore to the physical and skip immediately to Nancy Drew mode to ascertain the true problem. So, it should come as no surprise that occasionally, the kid really is sick. Like the time she complained of a tummy upset before bed and awoke us later at 3 or so in the morning announcing she had “pukey tummy”. She made it as far as the top of the landing outside our door before spewing on and off the rest of the two flights to the bathroom on the main floor (god, I miss my en suite). Last week, her aching tummy turned out to be a bladder infection which I would have missed entirely had she not inadvertently mentioned that it hurt to pee. You would think she’d have brought this up in addition to the tummy ache, but her gut overrides all things most of the time. 

Wednesday, she played the tummy card again when I picked her up at the child-minding after my workout. I had to carry her to the car after she did her dramatic belly clutch and walked bent over a few staggering steps as we headed down the hallway for the parking lot. And before you waste too much concern, she wasn’t that sick or in that much pain – she just didn’t want to walk. After I had her buckled into her booster, the interrogation began and by the time I was near the four way by the shopping centre, I had made up my mind to take her back to the walk-in clinic. Her tummy – interestingly – suddenly hurt a lot less.

We have been remarkably healthy since coming to Canada. Given that an average winter had me floored with sinus and bronchitis most of the last several years and that Katy was averaging one whooping cold and an ear infection as well, I would say we have stumbled upon some sort of health Shangri-La up here. This is a good thing because like just about everything else service wise up here, doctors are in short supply, and those who are practicing seem to be able to do so on a part-time basis. Rob’s doctor – who I am seeing now – is a kindly old Chinese man who probably should be retired and works a greatly diminished schedule in an office next to a pizza place in a strip mall (I kid you not when I say you find doctors and dentists in the oddest places up here). I would have taken Katy to see him but the wait can be hours and there are, curiously, no nurses working in his office – just receptionists. It’s a little weird. I took Katy back to the Walk-In Clinic which can be quick or long depending on the staffing, which varies without rhyme or reason, and the various viruses going around. Fortunately, our flu season seems to have abated up here, so we were able to get in quickly. 

Last week Katy saw one of the younger doctors. There are two, a man and a woman. My younger step-daughter Jordan looks older than both of them and Jordan could pass for a high schooler without much trouble. Wednesday though we saw the older gentleman who is easily older than Rob’s rather old Chinese doctor. He was fairly certain that Katy was suffering from constipation and wanted to do a quick rectal to confirm. And no, that didn’t happen. There is one thing I never need worry about and that is that my daughter will ever unwillingly have sex. That girl can clamp her two little legs together in a death-like vise. So, off we were sent to the local hospital across the way for a tummy x-ray.

Katy has had x-rays before. Last spring when Rob and I were in Arkansas, she was staying with my folks and caught Influenza-B from my nephew and it turned into pneumonia. That was a long 12-hr drive back I can tell you. Katy had not forgotten what an ordeal the x-rays were. She had been crying and of course for a chest x-ray you have to hold still and hold your breath. A crying four year old, sick and wanting her mommy, is not the best direction follower.  She started crying before we even had her up on the x-ray table and she cried all the way through (I am hopeful that the days of using her tummy as a catch-all are over with this experience). Needless to say, I peeked at the x-ray as we were leaving to go back to the clinic and I even could tell she was – as Rob said, chuckling when he heard the news – “full of shit”.

Ironically, Rob and I have been planning to do one of those “cleansing kits” and after the last two of days of fruits, smoothies (laced with prune juice) and pretty much nothing but veggies, I am wondering what might be left in us to “cleanse”.  Kate is not cleansing as easily. She balked at the Sennekot after day one to the point that she willing drank a half a glass of prune juice to avoid another dose, but her Valentine’s party at school was nothing but a sugar feast and it probably will come out a wash.

Just when you thought I couldn’t be more TMI. 

Shredding, Purging and Nits


Last night I started sorting the last of the boxes of papers and other crap that I stupidly lugged from Iowa to Canada. Rob says not to be hard on myself about it, but it’s hard not to when you spend an entire afternoon shredding receipts that predate your daughter’s birth and are sorting through old check duplicates from four years ago. This was all stuff I had more than enough time to handle even before Will died and I simply let it stack up. And why? Because I let my inertia take over and I listened to people when they told me that it was okay because of my circumstances. It wasn’t okay. It still isn’t. But, it’s done. I have sorted the wheat from the chaff and can now get on to the much less fun task of filing.

I am a horizontal filer by nature being a concrete random and all. Filing just doesn’t feel natural and sticking them away in drawers even less so. Worse is that I can’t find them at all once they are neatly put away. It’s as if file cabinets are kryptonite and once the papers are securely encased within them, I lose all sense of them. When they are scattered about or in plastic totes, I can hone in on nearly anything quite quickly. But filed papers disappear from my radar and I can be rifling through the exact folder I need and never find it at all.

Fortunately the ordeal was just depressing from a self-recriminating standpoint. Last night I found a lot of the paperwork from hospice, the funereal home and the autopsy that was performed on his brain and spinal cord by the university to which I donated his tissue so that researchers working on ALD can learn from him. I also found more of the cards that my MIL has sent sporadically since November of 2006, but I didn’t bother to read them again. Today’s fun was limited mainly to pictures, Katy’s school stuff, receipts and old billing statements. And of course my regrets that I wasn’t on top of the clutter the way I should have been. It seems to me sometimes that my now is forever running into or falling over piles of debris from my then. Perhaps life is this way anyway and it was just something I didn’t notice until now, but it is still cause for heavy sighs.

And finally, would a day around here be complete without nit-picking? I think not. We find the tiniest bug. Just one. It’s dead now. And two dozen nits – picked them suckers with a vengeance. Kate’s bedding is still being washed daily and all clothing worn by each of us is tossed in the wash basket regardless. Tuesday is the next shampoo treatment and then – knocking all wood within arm’s reach – perhaps we can get back to normal. Although I think our sofa will have to go since neither Rob nor I can bring ourselves to sit on it (his nephew was an inert mass there for his whole visit and interestingly Rob remembered that the boy confessed to a very recent short haircut after Rob wondered what had happened to the long hair that adorned his Facebook photos – my loathing for SIL continues).