Moving Day

Today is the day before Canada Day and it is for our home a time of transition not just for we grown ups but also for our children Trity, who is 3, Vovey, who is 5 and Kitsy, who is 9.

You see, our children will move away on Wednesday.  This means that they have two more sleeps here in their little beds.  Then, on Wednesday morning we will get up as usual, have a coffee as I prepare breakfast and the boys will play with toys on the floor of our family room.  I will wake up our daughter and then we shall gather together and have a bite to eat.

 After breakfast I will tidy up as the children go to their morning routine.  We are a big family so the children have learned to to go about some of the daily routine quite independently.  They brush their teeth, put on the clothes that I have laid out for them and also make their beds – I normally have to tidy a little afterward, but want them to learn to be self sufficient so this is the cross I bare.  

You may be wondering, if you don’t know me, why it is that my kids are moving out all together at the same time.  You may also think it is strange for me to let my kids move out at such a young age.  We though, have seen many of our children move away before they are through growing.  We love them and let them leave and then we keep on loving them some more.  Our children return, over and over again like little yo-yos- the same children, new children.  It matters not, to us, all the children who come to our home are ours, at least as far as we are concerned.  

This said, there is the matter of the other parents.  The real ones.  They can be difficult and they can be easy.  In this case I love mommy nearly as much as I love her children.  I consider her to be a part of my family and hope that we can keep this alive so that these three will have another place to call home – we will be honorary grandparents to them, instead of foster parents!  We can pick them up when we are needed – or rather when we need to spoil them.  A wonderful outcome to a year and a half long placement in our home. We simply provided a soft place to land, when we were needed and then we remain still soft in the heart for these people who are ours to love.  Ours to provide for and to nurture.  Our family.

So, back to Wednesday morning – after everyone is washed, fed, dressed and ready, the driver will come to pick up the boys and bring them to their daycare and I will bring Kitsy over to Mommy’s.  When I return home there will still be the matter of packing up and bringing over the several dozen boxes that I have not yet gathered up, but otherwise, we will be small child free for the first time in a long time.  Our big home will be emptied and empty.  No messes, no noise, no stomping feet, no slamming doors, no giggles, tickle sessions, tears, little voices and mystery missing cookies.  No children.  So final.

Since we started to foster, we have had 11 kids and people ask us the same questions over and over.  The most reoccurring of these is “how can you have them and then let them go?” and a quick post quantifier “I could not do that!”  My answer is this: you don’t foster for yourself, you foster for the children who need to have a stable home while their own home life is disrupted or often times dissolved. We offer the children three R’s, rules, routine, rites of passage.  These concepts can be totally alien to the kids when they come.  Food in the house, a toothbrush that is expected to be used twice a day for two minutes, beds with pillows in cases and new clothing in a non-violent home can be and have been a huge learning curve for some foster kids.  It is difficult to be a foster kid!  Imagine that you are dragged from your home, all the people who you know, all the things that you have and all the things that you know for sure and to be dropped into a strangers home who does things very different than everything you do and everything that you thought you knew for sure.  To say that these little human beings experience culture shock is a HUGE understatement!  Even if things were not as bad at home as the Child Protective Agency first imagines, they also have post-traumatic stress disorder when they arrive and they are scared as hell.  Every child looks exactly the same when they arrive – like an animal in the headlights.  Poor little things!  Terrified!

Fostering is not easy for people who have hearts that feel, and being a foster kid has so many disadvantages that people who don’t see it, cannot possibly get the magnificence of what this system does to human beings.

This story, I know, goes backward, from end to beginning – but I hope that this is not the end – and only the middle.  Be well my little children!  Stay safe, eat well, grow strong, be who you wish to become and remember always how lovable you are.  I have been enchanted by you and our soon to be quiet home will remember you and long for the days of your visits, and wish for the touch of your sticky little fingers.  

On my little loves to your life as it should be with your mommy who loves you!

From your mama who loves you too!

Perfect Overbalanced Mouthfeel

Today, while shopping at our local Asian Grocery store we found something that we had never seen before.  It is called “Perfect Overbalanced Mouthfeel”.  Since we are regular shoppers of the unusual, it is not out of the ordinary for us to see packaging with poorly done translations, but this caught my attention.  I picked it up as I asked my poor long suffering husband what the heck is this stuff as I investigated the package.  There is a photo on the front of the package that appears to be some sort of noodle – but it looks more Italian in origin than Asian; however, thankfully there was more English writing on the front, so I read this out loud to my husband.  It reads, and I have copied it verbatim: “Choose the wheat carefully, refined and succeed, include the abundant mineral substance trace element richly.  Can make you is it happen flourishing.  Mouth breath after eating add vigor like season tree being long time”.  My husband and I looked at one another and sort of giggled.  Hmmm????  

Needless to say, this little blurb was not really very helpful, so I still was not sure what I had in my hands.  Nonetheless, Perfect Overbalanced Mouthfeel comes in two different packages at our local store; one is green and the other is pink.  The green package has a photo that is very apparently a bunch of green onions on the front; while the pink package appears to have a box of kitty litter on it.  I am sure it was not kitty litter of course, but I really have no idea what it could be and since, clearly, we felt that the onions would be the tastier of the two flavours we bought the green package. 

So, here I am at my computer, package in hand and now, I will try it. On opening it, the dogs like the smell of them.  But dogs, they like a lot of smells that I am not really impressed about!  They roll in dead stuff if given the chance, so dogs being a fan, in and of itself, does not make me feel any better about the product.  

Each is wrapped individually and now that I see them they look sort of like chips stuffed with some brownish stuff; but still, they seem, dubious at best.  I am happy that I did not buy kitty litter flavour or I would chicken out right now.  These though, onion, I am committed to try them.

I really don’t like the way they smell!  They remind me of the stuff that my dad would mix with milk to give to calves whose cow mom’s wouldn’t feed them, only the smell is more sugary. The texture of them does not feel bad, sort of crispy and flaky.  So I take the bite.

Ok… Here it is!  It turns out that Perfect Overbalanced Mouthfeel is a sort of sweetened onion flavoured cookie-chip on the outside and a sticky crispy mineralish, sweeted onion and raisin flavoured middle.  Not your average snack.  

I took a little bit and gave mine to one of the dog herd.  Minnie liked it.  I still taste it in my mouth as I write.  Both my husband and I still make faces and smack our mouths in distaste.  My conclusion, they were not lying as far as overbalanced mouthfeels go – this was perfectly overbalanced, but would I eat them again?  No way!  

I have a whole pack left, they are individually wrapped so should stay fresh for a while.  Anyone out there hankering for a truly overbalanced mouthfeel you can have some with a coffee when you come by here.  They are not as bad as the yummy, yummy Chinese candy that my friend Lili brought back to me from China.  Yummy, yummy Chinese candy is my least favorite food.  This is the candy which is ginger and seaweed coated in salt.  If you know it, you will know what I mean, it is even nastier than fermented tofu in hot peppers.   

So, you can see, I am interested in trying new things, but what I want to know, is would you have gone ahead and tried them if you were me?

An Early visit

No, it is not a typo!  I really did have an Early visit.  Early is a clown and he lives next door.  He is not just a regular joker that a person might refer to as a clown but an honest to goodness, big shoe, bright colour, makeup wearing, big-red-nose clown.  

Clowns make interesting neighbours, at least in this case!  He keeps the exterior of his home neat and tidy – though the trim is painted fire engine shiny red and he does put gold fluffy tinsel on his railings year around and as well his porch is covered with red tube lighting.  As well, there is the matter of the polka-dot car.  This said, he also has an exceptionally clean home, though admittedly his sofa is multi-colored neon in a pink living-room and his back garden is bright yellow and pink from ground to six feet up the walls.  

He also, and not surprisingly, has vibrant art work, though these are nearly all clown pictures.  In short it is almost as though the home is a giant three story cartoon!  Honestly, visiting Early is sort of like visiting Switzerland!  Not that the Swiss have anything to do with clowns really, it is just that when you visit Switzerland you expect it to look like a post card image that you have on your mind and visiting Early’s home is just like this.  It is, if you can imagine, what a clown’s home ought to look like!

The front hall chair wears clown feet.  There is a retired early period McDonalds booth in his kitchen – which has been, no doubt donated by Early’s next of kin Ronald of the red hair.  The colors are bright and whimsical.  It is a home that you must always feel bright and happy when visiting.  It is a warm and welcoming home despite the bright colours and most would feel very comfortable there.

Truthfully, it might not be the same for you folks that are weirdly afraid of clowns – For you I am sure it is the home that nightmares are made of!  Happy clowns faces peering out at you from every direction attempting to make you smile.  Little statues, photos, parties with loads of clowns, big red smiling lips and honker noses!  Imagine that!?  I know, I know!  Now you need therapy – like you did not already in the first place!

Not me, I do not fear clowns!  I like clowns and I like Early.  He is comical, truthful, cheery and a helpful, a great neighbour.  I think we all should have a clown next door!  They certainly are much nicer than the village idiot types that somehow we call clowns but are really not similar in type at all!

Do you have any interesting neighbours in your area?

Father’s Day

So, here is another Father’s Day.  A day to call up old dad and say, hey, I am thinking about you!  I remember when I was a little one and you and I did that stuff together!  Thanks Dad!  You rock!

The problem is that my dad is dead.  Also, he did not believe in an after life, wasn’t much of a visiter in life anyway, and so there has been no sign of him since he passed through.  The consequence is that these last few Father’s Days have been a little bit more empty than they are for some, I am sure.  

I wasn’t close to my dad, but still, he was my dad.  To his credit, he did keep the home fires burning.  He did make sure that earned enough that we had enough to be well fed, dressed and so on.  I always had a bike, a treat now and again at the store and I even have happy memories, so all in all, he did good for a young father.  

My dad, Richard Moreland, was a dairy farmer and a true stoic.  He rarely used more words than were absolutely necessary.  But I have a nice story to share about my dad.  It is the thing that I look back on with astonishment every time that I think about him.  He wanted to come along to an awards ceremony that was being held at Queen’s University, where I had attended school.  I was being given an award, called the Barbara Paul Prize which I was totally honored and thrilled about, and had asked Daddy if he wanted to come.  Strangely, he said he would be there.  When he arrived to get me he was really dressed nice and looked about as handsome as I had ever seen him look. So I got the award and after the ceremony we went to a wine and cheese at the Ban Righ Centre, on what is now Alfred Bader Lane.  We walked in a little late because Daddy and I had been chatting with lovely Ms. Donna and her family, and when we went into the room, my dad took a look around the room scanning very carefully and then VERY loudly he said “you eat up that cheese and support your local dairy farmers”!  

Honestly, this was so out of character.  First to be loud, second to say something public in front of all those people and third to be so political.  I have thought about this a lot.  I know I have already said that it was astonishing for me, but the thing that I have not said, is that on that day, I realized that Daddy was proud of me.  That my success gave him a voice in a life where his voice had primarily been never heard both literally and figuratively.  So, while the Barbara Paul Prize was a wonderful gift to me, the memory that springs out of that day is what truly stays on my mind.  So on this Father’s day I recognize that while daddy was not nearly so well known as many people are, I am glad that he had his chance while alive to say something important.  But, honestly, it was the things that were not said, that were most meaningful about that day.  It was the day that my father will be remembered for most by me, because it was the day where he delivered his first and his last lecture.  

It was the day that I gave my father a voice and it spoke as clearly to me as any voice ever had or has since.  It was the voice of a man who loved his children and who was proud of them.  I love you for that Daddy.  Happy Father’s Day.

When the flowers die

My mother was a master gardener.  She never went to school and trained to get this status rather it came to her naturally.  Her garden was an oasis of color ready for passersby to have wedding photos taken.  A natural rock which sprouted out in her yard in the Portsmouth Village; a place where long ago the keepers of convicts had aspirations of building the whole of Kingston on their backs.  A vein of rock ending square in her cellar made the house damp and cottage like all year around.  The house, two blocks up from the quarry edge where it was a century ago filled with the convict whose lover sat in the house a few down and pined for him, and served his needs.

When mother died a few weeks ago she asked us to keep her flowers alive.  Move them to our places, dissect them for her friends taking parts of her long toil and spreading it – the best of her – the living part, to sections in the gardens across Eastern Ontario.  As for me, I inherited her seeds and plants and nothing more.  I have no knowledge from her about the garden and therefore dug up in vain what I now know are lupins and hosta, periwinkles and silver mound.  Thousands of seeds with names like “kiss me over the neighbors gate Kate” and Goblin.  Three year pink sweet pea and invasive but I love this flower scribbled in moms funny hand with no other notes about height and what these things mean.  An in vain attempt to keep a bit of the best of her for myself – I have made a ten foot long garden in her honor next to the grave of my baby Lily who was taken too early to be swaddled and buried properly.

At the bed side we watched as mother struggled to die.  She had been ready for it for years now.  The pain of living too much for her and when we did not understand she tried to suicide, pulling desperately at the tubes and machines until they finally tied her up – she tried to speak to make us understand… but there were no words only the desperate attempts.

What do you want mother?  

We said.  

Do you want someone?  Something?  

We guessed.

Do you want us to take your garden?  Yes!

Do you want to see Bob?  Yes!

Funny face I love you!  

If I say all those mean things – I want to die

you know are not true – I have a living will

Funny face I love you.

What will we do if the flowers die and there is nothing left at all?

What’s Write?

I realized about 35 years ago, that I was a writer.  I was sort of a weird child and I found myself writing quite frequently. There was poetry under the trees at our family farm, short stories in the hay mow and the long stories stayed in my mind, where I edited and reedited them into adulthood.  Life has a way of getting away on you though and it becomes more and more difficult to follow the heart, go forward, do what you want.  Grown ups are, as was the case with me, propelled by our own reality. Our life’s work, school, children and responsibility take us into places that we never imagined at eight, would be our lives.  Surviving in this world takes more than any young person can really understand.

It may sound funny but I  made my living as a writer for a long time – but is was not what I wanted.  The dry writing of educational advancement was not exactly the stuff of my dreams.  As a little girl I was lost in the stories of girls that could be me.  I loved Judy Blume but devoured all the books in my school library.  I ran away with Virginia Woolf later on.  Dreamed with Douglas Coupland.  Time travelled with Ken Follett and I even plotted with Dan Brown recently, but never took the time to scribble a book of my own in a room of my own.  It is nuts, really, because I carry so much stuff in my head that if I could get rid of some of it I would have space for growth and more creative development.  So even as I speak (er… write) I think about the books that must come out of my head and be committed to paper.  There are 7 of them – each is outlined – characterized and on paper ready to go.  One has the first two chapters already in order and on paper.

I hope that I can write as well as I can put off the writing!    Now at 42, I have for the first time in my life the opportunity to write.  I have a room, a computer and a husband who supports me for one year while I write.  No job, no kids (in two weeks) and time to bring it to fruition.  

Hopefully I can handle the isolation. Hopefully I can write!