social justice – Grateful Grumbles

July 13, 2019July 16, 2019

Our Blatant Invisible Luxuries

They’ve done it. The third time is the charm. Twice my desperate pleas of, “I’m sleeping. Shut my door,” worked. “Pleeeeeease!” I add and pull the duvet up higher. It feels early, but it’s not — not in this house anyway.

I roll off the bed and take the almost giggling baby with me. She loves mornings, she loves the super high-pitched squealing declarations of love from her sisters too. Goodness, that’s high-pitched. I need coffee.

I power up the espresso maker. It stubbornly beeps at me, a reminder that I forgot to empty the grounds, yesterday. It needs water too. A petulant thing — I’d complain, but then again I’d give her anything and she knows it. Satisfied, she pours a double espresso, extra long, just right.

I release the dogs from their kennels downstairs and prepare their medicines. That’s right, they’re both taking medicine now, for the rest of their lives. We probably should have better timed getting dogs, so they weren’t both seniors at the same time.

I prepare breakfast for us all. We all want different things. Not a problem, the espresso has kicked in.

And then the poo. She warned me, by pushing and grunting. I bring her to the change table, and lie her down. I remove her diaper and carefully peel off her jammies. There’s poo in her armpit, well that won’t do. I run a bath.

Her sisters crowd around as I lather her up. She laughs and kicks her legs under the heavy wash cloth. Sufficiently clean, I lift her from the tub. She looks unimpressed to be leaving the warmth of the water. The towel I had neatly laid out on my bed is now balled up on the floor. “Thanks,” I mumble to nobody.

I rinse off her poo-logged jammy in our oversized sink, I spray on too much stain remover and place them into the washing machine. Before I press start, I gather the remaining laundry from the various places it has been strewn about the house, tucked into the couch and hidden under beds. I’ll repeat the same circuit later, scouring for dirty dishes and random toys.

The weather looks iffy and I can’t stand the thought of being indoors all day. It’s time to get to the park. They need a snack. Crackers and cheese strings will have to cut it.

The baby falls asleep on the six minute car ride there. I buckle up the baby carrier while making small talk with a couple in the parking lot. They lower a ramp out of their car for their Rottweiler, who very happily makes her way out of the vehicle. My kids are equally as happy as they make their way out of mine. The baby stays asleep, snuggled against my chest as her sisters chase down bunnies wildly waving their carrots in the air. “Go slooooowly!” I whisper.

We walk through the park, greeting everyone with a genuinely hearty, “good morning!” (I may have had a second espresso). They echo our sentiments, everyone is happy to be out here.

We stop a few times to throw rocks in a pond, attempt to climb a very large rock and to watch ants scurrying around.

While my kids play at the sandbox amongst the once loved, now abandoned, toys I contemplate this short morning, a typical one, mundane even (in the most beautiful way), I’m lucky.

I can’t help but think that of course they’re coming. Of course people want their children to experience even the smallest luxuries we all take completely for granted. Safety at the most basic level, enough food and shelter. Even my inconveniences are convenient — blatant invisible luxuries.

I did nothing to deserve this. Nothing. And yet here I am, completely complacent.

I’ll likely never have to risk dehydration and starvation crossing deserts. I’ll likely never need to brave the ocean waters with a child on my back. I’ll likely never need to cross borders to keep my family safe.

But I would. If it meant that my children for just one morning could run freely through fields, throwing rocks into ponds, attempting to climb impossible rocks or watching ants scurrying on the ground, not a care in the world, I would do it. I would.

September 20, 2018April 24, 2019

Fortunate Circumstance

As I lie in the dark, listening to the rain pouring down outside, I sink further into the warmth of my bed, pull the covers up, shut my eyes and reflect on my day. I had taken my two daughters on a walk through the park. I watched as they excitedly chased birds in an open field, in the distance children pulled at a branch of an apple tree, they cheered as an abundance of fruit rolled down the hill. People walked their dogs along pristine paths, lined with beautiful gardens, and a helicopter flew overhead.

Never once was I concerned for our safety, never once did anyone look at me as though I didn’t belong there. My children wore clothing adequate for the cool temperature and light rain, they snacked on oversized buns, too big to even finish in one attempt. As I soak up their smiles with my memory, I know that we are lucky. For all of the things that I take for granted, I am lucky.

Out of all the countries in this world, out of all the families in this world, out of all the times the world has seen, out of all of the bodies in this world, I am so lucky to have been born here and now. I recognize that life could have, just as easily, been very different and for that, I have to acknowledge that I am lucky.

I have a family who loves and supports me. My parents provided me with a safe and nurturing home. They encouraged me to take chances and were there for me whenever I needed it. They continue to be a valuable part of my life. My husband and I are now able to provide our children with the same beginnings. I am lucky.

I am physically and mentally able to work. I work hard, but that is because I am able to. While I do endure some physical limitation in the form of rheumatoid arthritis, free access to good medicine has helped me to live my life with very little restriction. At this time my children are also in good health. I am lucky.

I drink, cook with, and bathe in clean water. So many countries across the world, and even some communities within our own country do not have this access, spending valuable time and energy sourcing out something so basic as safe water. I am lucky.

I eat nutritious food, and have a pantry full of it. As a child we didn’t have much money for extras, but I never feared hunger. My children have never wondered where their next meal was coming from. I am lucky.

I am able to access free medical care, in my own community, whenever I need it for myself and my children. Never have I had to weigh the balance of my bank account against the concerns of my health. Never have I had to hike for miles only to find out the help I was seeking was unavailable. I am lucky.

I attended public school and later government subsidized university. I had teachers passionate about the subjects they taught and I felt safe while attending. I was able to live at home while attending high school and university. I drove an old but mostly reliable car and when I couldn’t afford to fix it, my parents helped. I am lucky.

I have never been on the receiving end of racist jokes, comments or actions. I have never been told I am worthless. I have never been made to feel unwanted. I have never feared for my safety when dealing with the police. My profile has always worked in my favour. I am lucky.

Everything I am stems from circumstances completely outside of my control.

Sometimes, when considering the circumstances of others we forget just how much of our own circumstances depend on luck. We have worked hard, but the opportunity to do so depends so much on the things we have had no control over.

So when our country offers refuge to people in need of safety, I am happy, because they might get to experience the safety I so often take for granted now. The very real possibility of their limbs being severed from their bodies, their children raped and burned alive in their homes fade into only nightmares as they become a part of a country that cares for physical health and safety.

When our country deems it necessary to send a sizeable donation to countries in need of relief, I am happy, because for just a second they get to breathe a sigh of relief, knowing their children can sleep for one night with a full belly.

When our country offers welfare to individuals and families in need within our own country, I am happy because their basic needs have been met. When our country makes promises to care for our most vulnerable populations I am hopeful, that they may one day take for granted some of the things I have taken for granted my whole life.

So often compassion arbitrarily stops at a border, as if a person’s worth, health and safety ought to be determined by their place of birth, the colour of their skin, their income level or their physical or mental wellness. People fear advances for others as if their small step forward is an infringement on the luxuries we did nothing to deserve and feel so entitled to, but why?

Canada has taken care of me for thirty-four years, only five of those, have I contributed any significant amount towards taxes. I enjoyed medical luxuries beginning with my own cesarean birth, very expensive medications, I attended public school and worked part time while I attended subsidized university, I have had three c-sections, taken two maternity leaves and plan to take another. Never have I been deemed unworthy, and why?

So as I listen to the rain drumming down on the roof, surrounded by so many luxuries, carelessly strewn about, it is overwhelming acknowledging just how much I have especially when faced with the sharp contrast of the lives of others. I am grateful, but I know that I am lucky. In so many ways, I am lucky.

October 10, 2017July 1, 2021

A Walk Through A Residential School

This past week I walked the grounds of a residential school, the footings remain but the buildings have been reclaimed by grass and beautiful gardens, it has been renamed a heritage site. And as we descended down the steps into what happened to be the basement of one of the dormitories, our children began to laugh and play. We watched as they chased a squirrel and we laughed as he mocked them from the safety of a branch out of their reach. They gathered pinecones, scaled boulders, waved sticks and admired insects. I soaked it in, their innocence, their adventurousness, their independence but at the same time, their need for their parents and their ability to act completely unhindered, young and free. It wasn’t lost on me that not that many years ago, the children who lied there, in that dormitory, lost all of those things.

It has been a week since “orange shirt day,” a day proclaiming that “all children matter” a day that recognizes the atrocities our Indigenous community members faced. A six-year old girl, Phyllis Webstad, was sent to a residential school, proudly donning the new orange tee shirt her grandmother had purchased for her, only to have it removed and taken from her on day one. As someone who has taught kindergarten for several years, I can see her, eyes wide, nervous but excited, in need of someone to care for her in the absence of her parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, and I want to welcome her, to tell her it will be ok, that she will be well cared for and her days filled with fun, but I can’t. There’s such an enormous responsibility teaching a students’ first year setting up class rules and expectations without dampening the bright light of curiosity, young playfulness and general enthusiasm for life while sneaking in a few lessons on literacy and numeracy. It kills me that these students weren’t seen as human beings, as children, as little lights, each one a valuable personality, unique unto themselves.

For 90 seconds at a time I can feel it. The pure panic that sets in as your child disappears from your sight at a busy park and your brain races, presenting countless scenarios of your child being preyed upon by disgusting and perverted people and you are completely powerless to prevent any of it because they simply aren’t with you. And after 90 seconds I’m exhausted and emotionally overwhelmed and then I see her, I grasp my little trouble-maker, hold her tight against my body and whisper into her hair, “I love you.” And again it’s not lost on me that 90 seconds is not a long time, and I multiply it out in my mind to an unfathomable 300 days, year after year after year, and I fall apart. How did you make it through, sweet mommas?

It’s not lost on me that had my daughters momentary disappearance been something more than just that, that the RCMP would have been on my side, but they were the ones enforcing the legal seizure of your precious children. The agency that is supposed to provide protection to members of our society at their most vulnerable moments, pried very vulnerable children from the loving arms of their families and placed them in the arms of abusers.

Sweet mommas, I’ve been in a home too empty, void of all the beautiful chaos that is children, and my heart ached. My body and my soul, heavy from the emptiness and the helplessness and my heart breaks for you. My loss was one time, but you, year after year, you suffered, your home emptied, year after year, your arms emptied, year after year, your heart was carried away crying in the arms of someone else.

My daughter cries out in the night, a cry into the blackness and I go to her, and I realize how lucky we both are for this simple gesture. The children who slept here in this dormitory were not so lucky, they feared the dark because very real monsters lurked there, sexually preying on their innocence as they quietly cried themselves to sleep, praying the monsters didn’t choose them that night. Their young cries lost in the dark night, no one to comfort them for 300 sleeps at a time.

I watch my daughters’ eyes sparkle, alive and bright, their beautiful cheeks, their dimpled goofy little smiles. I love their peculiarities, their tenacity and the freedoms they choose to exercise, their ability to be themselves. I can’t imagine anyone deeming them worthless, ignoring their unique natural beauty, and extinguishing the light that shines so brightly in children so young. I just can’t.

I used to attend a church that each week preached the single message of “love,” and I shudder to think of the atrocities allowed under the guise of religion. Young children malnourished, beaten when caught communicating in their mother tongue, stripped of their belongings and their culture at the hands of the church. Pedophiles allowed free access to children, when their perversions were brought to light they were moved from city to city, but still allowed a position of power over the powerless, continuously sheltered by the church. Countless abused, disconnected, hungry and sexually confused children lay devastated in their wake.

There was no war to right these wrongs, there was no world-wide upset about the injustices, the last Canadian residential school wasn’t closed until 1996, there was no formal apology, from the government, until 2008, The Catholic Church STILL has not apologized. So absolutely, compensate the survivors of the sixties scoop. That’s right, NINETEEN sixties, when the government took children from their homes, without parental consent and adopted them out to non-Indigenous families around the world. We should have known better. Nothing can make reparations for the familial brokenness, the cultural destruction, the psychological devastation our Indigenous community members suffered but we can try. Teach about it in school. Speak of it. Acknowledge it. THIS is OUR Canada. These are OUR people. THIS is OUR history.

June 12, 2017August 13, 2017

No More Mother’s Day in School

I realize Mother’s Day has come and gone, but with Father’s Day right around the corner, maybe it is still applicable, and this has been on both my mind and heart for awhile.

Recently grade 1 and 2 teachers, in just one school, in just one city, announced they would not be creating Mother’s Day crafts this year. There was immediate backlash and outrage from not only the parents of those children, but the entire community and province. So like anything that fuels my teacher fire, I took to the comments section of Facebook. I was asked several times, “Why the hate for Mother’s Day”? So here it goes (for the record, I don’t hate completely hate it, and I still do Mother’s Day crafts with my students).

I am deeply bothered when teachers are not given the benefit of a doubt. Let’s pretend for 30 seconds that teachers, who have spent 5+ years of school learning to be a teacher, have years of experience, take professional development to continue to learn how to effectively reach children, who spend evenings reading books and blogs to become better teachers, who spend 6 hours a day with a particular group of children might just understand some of their emotional needs. In this particular circumstance one of the students very recently, and very tragically lost their mother. Did they write this in the note home? No. Should they need to? NO! Parents and the public should understand that the vast majority of teachers are looking out for their students best interests.

BUT… BUT… BUT…

Why don’t teachers just get them to make a craft for someone else? If you think that teachers everywhere have not been doing this since the beginning of Mother’s Day, you are wrong. If you think creating a craft for an aunt, grandmother or foster parent on Mother’s Day makes those students who have lost theirs, or who have mothers who are not yet well enough equipped to be a mother, feel less left out, you are wrong again. Every year I have at least 2 students who come from complicated family situations.

Mother’s Day crafts have been made at school for 100 years! There were a lot of things happening 100 years ago in education that are highly inappropriate for today. Students were given the strap as a form of discipline, teachers smoked and drank in the staff room, special needs students were not included in a regular school, black children did not attend the same school as white children and First Nations children were taken from their families, stripped of their culture, forced to attend English speaking schools and often abused. As society evolves so do our thoughts, attitudes and actions. “It’s always been that way” is clearly not a reason for continuing hurtful practices.

I’m sick of everything having to be so PC. I’m not entirely sure why this was used as an argument in support of Mother’s Day cards, though it was. I know the teachers used the word “inclusive” on their note, and I know that word scares some people, heaven forbid we be more inclusive when considering 6 and 7 year olds. I have taught children with same sex parents and I can assure you that those parents have been more than happy receiving two projects on Mother’s Day. I have also taught students from a variety of different cultures, they too appreciate a love-filled, paint-splattered, heart-shaped handprint card.

This is not preparing them for the real world. First of all, they are 6 and 7 years old! If ever there was a time to shelter someone from the “real world” it is when they are 6 and 7 years old. Secondly, some of my student’s stories would break your heart if you heard them, others would make your skin crawl. Believe me, they know more about the “real world” than they anyone ever should. The MOST important thing in my class is to keep my students safe. I wish it was learning, I do. It is my job to keep my classroom a safe space, because unfortunately for some students my classroom is the only safe space, the only escape from the “real world”, they have.

My child is very upset they cannot create a craft for me. First of all most 6 and 7 year olds I know, don’t know what day of the week it is, let alone year. But let’s pretend they do. If they are upset, wonderful! That means they have a wonderful loving mother that they want to create a craft for! Give them a hug, they will get over it. It is the ones who have lost their mothers or the ones who have a mother unable to be a mother, that are the concern here.

Arts and crafts are part of the curriculum. Yes, they are. At 6 and 7 years old they are usually making 1 project per week. I’m sure you are inundated with beautiful projects that your child excitedly hands you each week. Feel free to claim any one of these as your special created “just for you” project, because they are, kids cannot wait to bring these weekly little gems home and gift them to you.

Finally to put this into another, far more personal, perspective, Mother’s Day 2012 I was pregnant with my first. People wished me “Happy Mother’s Day,” saying I was a mother, maybe I was, I was getting up frequently at night, which is basically the definition of being a parent. I lost my baby shortly after he was born, fell pregnant quickly again only to miscarry that little guy. So Mother’s Day 2013 was a very painful day for me, but I’m an adult and am capable of dealing with large emotions, so I completely avoided the world and anyone who wasn’t also grieving. 5 years and 2 beautiful daughters later, I still don’t step foot into church or a restaurant to avoid that stupid obligatory flower that reminds me of my heavy heart.

Now imagine for a second that there was a day called Kid’s Day, where everyone around the world recognized their little trouble makers, and on this day at my place of work every staff member was forced to create a special little project for their little ones. It is mandatory, I cannot escape it. But they assure both me and the other lady, who has tried for 7 years to become pregnant, that “It is ok, just create one for a different baby.” Seems like a special kind of torture, am I right? School is mandatory. It is for children. Some children are very hurting.

Mother’s Day is clearly a family event; does it need to be a part of school?