De-Visiting The Past

One of the nightmares I most dread -- after a second term for Rob Ford and my father's hitherto recessive baldness gene  -- is the prospect of moving back to the town of my childhood.

Now, it's not so much that said town is a yawning pit of mediocrity whose main distinction is the staggering volume of drive-through anythings. Or that the ancient downtown mall, partially housed in one of the town's few remaining heritage buildings, is now home to dollar stores, a yarn shop, and perhaps the worst Greek restaurant to ever serve tinned black olives. It's not even the fact that most downtown restaurants close by 8pm on weeknights, or that VHS rentals are still widely advertised.

Okay, yes, it's actually all of those things.

But it's also the memories associated with the town that act like emotional kryptonite on my psyche. I'm actually quite lucky that we lived in the country, in a small development nestled by a large, placid lake. The city was twenty minutes away by car, a rare treat for the occasional shopping trip or jaunt to the movies.

A good thing too, as stories of my less-fortunate LGBT townie kin are rife with tales of verbal abuse, stalking and drive-by eggings. I was relatively safe in the countryside, accepted (if occasionally grudgingly) by neighbours, and surrounded by lots of woods to escape to when things got tough at home. 

Home life was, well, not good. My folks wasted no opportunity to disparage gay people (men in particular), so the effeminacy that plagued my every move and syllable from toddlerhood onward did nothing to curry favour in their eyes. Add to that a sister who was a genius at both academics and managing our capricious parents, and you have one oddball of a gay kid left pretty much to his own devices.

Not actually me. This kid has way more style.

Now, as an adult, I still have trouble feeling affection or affinity for that struggling gay boy. I find it hard to like him, to like myself as a child and teenager. I suppose it's my fear of sliding back into that life, and that persona, that makes the idea of returning 'home' anathema to me. I didn't like who I was then, or my role as the weak and fearful misfit within my own life. But return I did, last week, with my 3-year-old son. 

It was an interesting experience, seeing the town through the eyes of a financially secure, relatively confident adult. Driving down the main street felt much the same as it did when I was 11 years old, suffocating quietly in the back of our family car as my parents puffed cigarette after cigarette. Back then, any request to open the window was viewed as criticism of their smoking habit, so I admit reveling in all four windows being down as Pre-Schooler N and I tooled around town singing at the top of our lungs. 

Lucky kids. We had to breathe through our shirts or suffer.

We visited a childhood friend, now raising her own family in a subdivision just outside of town. Her life seems idyllic enough: carefully potted plants, loving children, handsome husband and well-appointed home. She was always the star of our childhood, with cute boyfriends and model good-looks that still make her seem ten years younger than her drivers license claims. I lived vicariously through her triumphant high school life, never feeling her equal but grateful for her friendship at the time. 

That's changed, of course. Chatting with her for a few hours, I realized that I no longer felt the need to impress or flatter her. We spoke as equals, and I left feeling as though I had lain to rest the insecure child who had always viewed her with such awe and envy. I no longer want her life. I much prefer my own.

That evening, Pre-Schooler N and I had dinner with a woman who had stood in as a defacto mother for me after separating from my own family. She's nearly 80 now, but seeing her joyfully discover my son's sweetness and sense of fun was magical for me. It was as though my son was meeting one of the truest members of my family, someone who was excited to meet him and celebrated his presence. Again, I felt the needy, grasping teenager that she first reached out to recede a little more into my past.

Our final stop was my childhood home, now up for sale. This was the biggie, as part of me yearned to make an appointment to tour the place under the guise of a perspective buyer. What would it be like to tread the stairs, open my bedroom door, and remember the scared, unhappy boy who once live there?

The temptation was so strong. I could have done it. I could have re-visited who I had been and where I had begun to become who I am today. But I didn't. I drove past, I pointed it out to my sleepy son, smiled as he yawned, and left it behind as we drove home.

And for the first time, I felt real affection for the boy who survived his family and his environment. So now those pieces of him that I still carry in my body and in my mind sit perhaps a little more comfortably. Maybe I don't need to say goodbye to him, so much as blow a kiss and show him how grand it all turned out.

Adopting a Stoic Attitude

Anyone who knows me will happily vouch for my life-long struggle with Full Disclosure Syndrome. FDS is a (completely made-up) disease that has robbed me of the ability to hide, subvert or otherwise fake an emotional response to anything from childhood trauma to which riding lawnmower clashes least with my hair. But if parenthood is teaching me anything, it's that sometimes I need to just shut up.

My biggest recurring peeve is unfairness. Yes, yes, I realize that the world did not come with an instruction manual, batteries, or any sort of assurance that things would be equal and balanced for all. But when a person or persons behaves differently (and generally pejoratively) towards myself, my family or my ilk, I tend to get pretty damn pissy. As a gay adoptive parent, this has become even more of an issue.

I recently interviewed actor/writer Johnny O'Callaghan for a preview piece on his one-man-show Who's Your Daddy, a true story account of his journey adopting an AIDS orphan from Uganda. When Johnny describes his friends and family's reaction to his decision, he pretty much nails it on the head: Reactions of dismissal, disbelief, half-hearted indulgence and bemused congratulations abounded when he began his Herculean array of obstacles to overcome -- all of which he did on his own, with little outside help.

It felt very familiar. When the decision was made to pursue adoption, I experienced the same sort of reactions. I think maybe most people didn't take it seriously, or figured it was just some lark that would peter out once things got difficult. Certainly the largess of the work undertaken in fostering and adopting Pre-Schooler N was taken on very much in isolation, with little in the way of help offered or proactive engagement. To this day, we are a very self-sufficient family unit, with relatively sparse involvement in our friends and families' lives. 

I contrast this with the rapturous furor that greets an impending birth. A palpable excitement begins, with countless hours of shared planning, joyous anticipation and oodles of gifts, odds and sods meant to ease the arrival of a new life. Nine months of support and involvement climax in an orgy of congratulations and doting, as the newly-enlarged family gratefully accepts what is surely their due.

Eat that cupcake Liz!

Despite my diagnosis of the hitherto-stated FDS (or FUDS, as I like to call it) I'm actually a fairly private person. Asking for help is anathema to me, so unless it's offered I generally find my own way in things. In some ways this is a blessing. I haven't had to deal with interference from well-meaning know-it-alls, or expend energy in being tactful when it comes to some hideous hand-knitted atrocity that some well-meaning sartorial neanderthal has decided would look just darling on my unsuspecting son. 

It's also meant that I've kept a strong degree of self-sufficiency -- an important holdover from the days when I lived on dry pasta and cheddar cheese powder. And I love that my son feels that we're a close family, and that we take care of each other.  Our little indomitable group of plucky adventurers.

But it's a shame so many of our friends and family don't really know him. We're lucky that First Cousins A and H attend the same daycare, and Sister-In-Law #2 welcomes play-dates, so it's not like he has zero extra-familial contact. Professor D's parents seem to like him, and see him every month or two.

I've been estranged from most of my own family since I leapt out of the closet so many years ago, but Sister T and her daughter are affectionate when we meet once or twice a year. Aside from these and a couple of stalwart friends, there's definitely a sense of island-hood.

Perhaps our rocky start as foster parents (perennial exhaustion and uncertainty that we were doing the right thing) set the tone for the lack of involvement. We had to hit the ground running with a 13 month old baby, and zero help or supplies. It was overwhelming, and we almost called it quits during the first week.

Or maybe we're annoying parents, keeping our kid from misbehaving even if it means those around us having to listen to too many Please Put That Down's or You Need To Do Better Listening's. But then again, if I let my energetic toddler roar around with abandon, I'm quite sure outside reaction would be anything but contented. My own loathing of parents who allow their children to mouth off, break shit and basically act like savages is certainly warrant against letting things slide with Pre-Schooler N. Surely they'd rather vigilance than tantrums, right?

Or maybe it's that we're such a different iteration of family. Gay parents, First-Nation kid, etc. Maybe we just don't seem 'real,' somehow. I honestly have no idea... maybe it's all of the above, with a few extra reasons tossed in that I'm not even aware of.

To be honest, I don't think it's worth trying to find out.

I mean, sure, I want my son to grow up surrounded by people who love and support him - and even a tiny amount of free babysitting would have been a freakin' godsend - but I can't coerce anyone to want to be part of his life, or our lives. Almost certainly, it's not a conversation in which anyone wants to take part. Which brings us back to the shutting up part.

But I'm just not good at shutting up. I stink at avoiding conversations that point out the disparity between the treatment of us as a gay adoptive family and the natural fecundity of hetero breeding. I may not list all the ways we could have desperately used any sort of help or involvement, or demand payback for my own previous efforts and aid, but it has forever impacted the way I feel about some of the people in my life.

So yeah, I'm a little bitter. But I'm also pretty fatalistic about this stuff. If they don't feel it, then nothing can be done. I can muster understanding, and focus on the miraculous turn of events that brought this priceless treasure of a child into my life

But I sure as hell know that the next time someone tells me where they're registered for baby-shower gifts, I'm going to cheerfully promise that I'll be giving them the exact same thing they so helpfully sent along during that exhausting, stress-filled period when my son arrived:

Polite congratulations and a big ol' box of nuthin'  :)

Lettuce Prey... Or, What Danger Lurks Beyond Yon Frigidaire.

Last Wednesday started much like any other day: me still comatose in bed at 7am, with my son propped up against me watching Netflix kiddie shows on the iPad. It is often thus, given that Pre-Schooler N wakes promptly at 6:30 each morn, full of vim and vigour at the glorious day about to unfold.

It's a little different for me. In my ideal world, 6:30 is a time that should only occur once a day, preferably whilst sipping lemonade and munching toasted almonds during the pre-dinner hour. The fact that another 6:30 occurs in the godforsaken early hours, every twenty-four of them (talk about overkill) is of no concern to me. I was happily ignorant of this sinister doppelganger until the wee one came into our previously sleep-sated lives. But I gamely try to make do, offering a bleary salutation and kiss before slipping into blessed half-consciousness for the half hour preceding my child's breakfast.

So it's quite believable that I may misunderstand or misconstrue things overheard during this period of light dozing. Last Wednesday, for instance, when the cheery, singing vegetables on Pre-Schooler N's favourite new show suddenly seemed to slip into sermon.

"God is bigger than the boogie man."  What the honest-to-god fuck??? Seriously? I must be hallucinating I thought, disbelief rousing me to full wakefulness. But no, there on the iPad screen, was a perfectly adorable spear of asparagus singing praises to the Big Potato in the sky.

Good christ.

You know, the irony here is that I carefully monitor each and every video or program exposed to my child. I check out sites to ensure that there's no frightening or age-inappropriate material, and I do my homework when it comes to any and all media he is exposed to. But somehow, being on the lookout for proselytizing legumes never once entered my sphere of awareness.

It's not that I begrudge Christians their entertainment. If they want to spiritually wank off to whatever low-budget Jesus flick that Kirk Cameron has attached his all-but-decimated career to, then that's their affair. But shouldn't this vegetable-fronted Bible fest come with some kind of warning? I mean... call me crazy... but there IS a special interest sort of section on Netflix, where you can view all sorts of stuff paying homage to whatever deity floats one's boat. Shouldn't this brainwashing toon be located there?

It's not that I don't realize my son will be exposed to all sorts of belief systems, philosophies and cultures throughout his life. Hell, I embrace it. But I can't help but feel the kind folks at Netflix have pulled a bit of a fast one, sneaking one sort of fantasy into another without identifying it as such.

Granted, any harm is extremely limited. I have to give myself a reality check here, remembering that I gleefully indoctrinate my son with belief in Santa, the Easter Bunny and Wonder Woman (not necessarily in that order; Wonder Woman comes first, naturally). We're not dragging him to church every Sunday, or encouraging a system of religious control and oppression into his fast-developing mind. No, this is just another fictional character on a show where tomatoes and cucumbers drive cars and happen to pray to some faceless benefactor in the sky.

It does make me think, though. A lot of these bible thumpers take serious umbrage with fantasies like Harry Potter or Narnia, as they promote unnatural 'magic' that is anathema to any god-fearing individual who has had their imagination surgically stunted. No, they must only be exposed to that which their lord has created... that which is wholesome and natural and easily understandable.

Yes, that's Hugh Laurie of 'House' fame. I'm fairly sure that's a wig. Fairly.

Or maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe there's nothing magical about a carrot experiencing an identity crisis, or a Frankenstein monster made out of celery (I shit you not). But since most evangelicals seem to believe that animals and other non-humans don't possess souls, does that mean these poor little veggies are praying in vain to an indifferent god? Are they doomed - consumption and spoilage aside -despite their obvious faith that there is an afterlife beyond the crisper? And where do animals fit into all this? Are Bessy and Mrs. Cluck aware of the divine plan regarding their impending doom?

I can't actually pretend to care. But this episode does serve to illustrate that there are hidden -- and not-so-hidden -- messages everywhere my child ventures forth. There are religious nuts (and, apparently, rutabagas) waiting to prey on his innocence and trust, on the openness of his unblemished psyche. There be dragons. Except not dragons, because that would be, you know, witchcraft.

But somehow I'd rather him believe that his lunchtime apple will suddenly start spouting Shakespeare than a bunch of sycophantic foodstuffs offering loving submission to a god whose plan for them basically boils down to a delicate cream sauce and an impudent but tantalizing bottle of claret.

"STOP YELLING!!!" Or, Another Fine Moment of Parental Restraint and Dignity.

I'm generally not much of a yeller. Sure I raise my voice from time to time when frustrated (or reading transcripts from Toronto City Hall), but I was raised by a shouter, and I don't like the way it makes me feel to be on either end of the expostulating.

Then I became a parent. And suddenly, years of gazing with detached disapproval at shrieking mothers and fathers rightfully slammed me full in the face. with a ferocity akin to Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's political belly-flop courtesy of the crack we call cocaine.

To give myself a little credit, yelling is still a rarity in our home -- at least from the parental side of the fence. I can generally make my point known with a quick correction or time-out -- saving the nuclear option of Thomas the Tank Engine withdrawal for the really big no-nos. But sometimes... ugh... sometimes it just all comes vomiting out, as though my mother herself has been hiding in my lungs for the past three decades, waiting to bring her throaty brand of screeching retribution down upon a whole new generation of innocents.

Not my actual Mother. She had curlier hair.

I have two big triggers when it comes to being pissed off. Okay, three if you count crack-smoking misogynist neo-cons whose hatred of left-leaning homosexuals is only surpassed by their love of KFC. But when it comes to my kid, I'm really challenged by aggression and unkindness.

What, aggression and unkindness? In a three-year-old??? How can that even be possible, you exclaim!

Well, my friends, it's more than possible. You see, as the toddler brain develops, it starts to move past the two-year-old tantrums that are generally sparked by immediate frustration, denial and general crankyness.  However, when the little darlings hit three, different parts of their wee brains suddenly start communicating with each other for the first time. And as the hippocampus and the amygdala start comparing notes, they begin to realize how well and truly fucked they are in the general scheme of things.

Finally the child understands that, not only do the parents control every facet of their burgeoning, curiousity-driven lives, but that they themselves could, in theory, actually refuse to easily accommodate said control. The knowledge that this rebellion would (one hopes) lead to correction and behavioral consequences can then blossom into that most vivid and animated flowers of childhood reaction: the Temper Tantrum.

Pre-Schooler N is actually fairly mild on the tantrum scale. There have been no meltdowns on the grocery store floor, embarrassing screaming jags at the doctor's office or hysterical hissy fits that magically seem to fill an entire afternoon. No, his outbursts are generally brief and fairly easy to handle. But sometimes it just all gets a bit much.

My own growing frustration with the Thoroughly Thwarted Threes came to a head a few weeks ago, after being shouted at by my darling child for nearly half-an-hour. In all fairness to his chagrin, I had just turned off the Scooby-Doo chase scene music we had both been so enjoying during bath time, but it was time to get ready for bed and I had given ample warning with due diligence.

Hell, I could've penciled it in three weeks ago and he still would have completely lost his shit.

So I toweled him off, applied lotion, helped him into his jammies and began choosing a bedtime story, while he kept up an admirable wail of astonishing laryngeal tenacity. Finally, inevitably, my last gay nerve snapped with a resounding "Oh No You Di'int!"

"STOP YELLING!!!"  I bellowed.

Not actually me. I have curlier hair too.

The irony of this ludicrous response was so palpable I could have used it as a cheap and environmentally-responsible alternative to hair gel. I was yelling at my child for yelling. Good god.

Unfortunately, it worked. Completely. He was silent... either from shock or a sense of complete and utter contempt for my age-adjacent behaviour. Then, worst still, he went to sleep. Quietly. Without whining or complaint.

I apologized to him the next morning, explaining that I had been feeling frustrated and sad that he was yelling at me, and promising that I would be very careful in the future to try not to yell at him again. He was quite cheerful about the whole episode, giving me a quick-if-somewhat-befuddled "Okay!" before returning to his ongoing masquerade as the monster that lives in the laundry basket.  But I was actually quite shaken.

The awful truth is that yelling often gets us what we want. If we yell loud enough, and long enough, the hapless recipient(s) of our angst will frequently capitulate to our demands just to shut us up. And that is a lesson I cannot afford to teach my son. Because one day he will yell louder than me, or yell at the wrong person, or yell himself out of school, out of a job, out of a relationship. All because I indulged in an outmoded form of communication that was a big part of my own wreckage of a childhood.

So a new way must be found. For one thing, I've stopped arguing with him. I state when something is going to happen, and that's it. If he needs to protest, talk about it, complain about it, that's fine. He's using words and I'm okay with that. But my word stands. I may be a relatively benevolent dictator, but Stalin ain't got nothin' on me when it comes to bedtime. So far, this seems to be yielding a largely positive response, albeit with some backsliding.

This morning, he did something he hasn't done for quite some time, in response to Professor D's firm reminder that the departure time for daycare was nigh. He raised his hand, as though to hit. He didn't actually do it, but I wouldn't have put it past him if things had escalated.

At least my response was in measured tones. "Go to your room," I said calmly, as he bawled out his frustration. "Come out when you're ready to be calm and apologize." It took him about 30 seconds to return, sweetly apologetic and ready for a make-up cuddle. And I felt good that I hadn't allowed my inner mother to claw her way out of my gullet in her well-remembered wave of sound and fury. I do know she's still there, waiting for her chance, though. And I know that she will need the occasional release from the fetters of responsible human behaviour.

Which largely explains why I have begun to look forward to the afternoon deluge of telemarketing calls, with something akin to ravenous hunger and gleeful anticipation.

Coz in the world of Super Steam Duct-Cleaning and This Week's Unbeatable Offer, all bets are off baby.