Re-visiting the past

My daughter has been asking me questions about her childhood. She wants to know how I remember her. She wants more information about the day-cares she was in.

Talking to her, and those memories, have evoked many feelings in me. Feelings of shame, anger, anxiety, and worry.

I still remember the first day I left her with a care-giver. She was crying, and reaching out for me as I had to walk away. It was heart-wrenching. She was four.

As I had to walk away. And in that statement I look back and wonder - did I have to?

I did, at the time, I was struggling with depression, and I was not happy. Not happy as a stay home mom once the children were in school.

And working did help me. It did help me fight the depression.

At least for a while.

And I thought, at the time, that was better for my children. Better for them to have a mom with better mental health. To have a mom that wasn't always going to bed with a migraine, or crying, or hiding in the basement. That is what I thought. It was better for them.

But in that day-care situation, which was a mom at home with her own children and a couple of others like my daughter, there was a boy that bullied my daughter.

And in the pre-school, at the same time, she was being bullied by a few children.

Twenty years ago I thought that this was how it was. This is what children have to negotiate.

I did put my foot down with the school when they wanted to place her in Kindergarten with those same children. I insisted she be in another kindergarten or I would pull her from the school. I did win that battle.

It was little consolation.

That summer my day-care giver had to suddenly leave for six weeks because of a family emergency. She suggested another mother at our school. I took both my children there.

It was a night-mare.

She had two very aggressive dogs, which she kept crated when the kids were there. Towards the end of our time with her, one of the dogs bite off her finger. When I dropped the kids off one morning she answered with her hand bandaged and obviously on heavy pain medication.

I left my children there.

I. Left. My. Children. There.

I didn't feel I had a choice. I was a computer programmer on a deadline.

What was I thinking?

Clearly, I wasn't.

This same house had a swimming pool. My son told me one day that when he and his sister were in the pool the care-giver went into the house and left them unguarded in the pool Another girl, who bullied my daughter, pushed my daughter under the water and held her there.

When I heard this I called the care-giver and insisted that the children NEVER be in the pool without her being there. Still, I continued to take them there.

I didn't feel I had a choice.

Finally the time came to an end, and they returned to the previous situation. However, later that year I was again left without care for my children.

A previous teacher at the school was able to take them.

Her son bullied my daughter, one day holding her hand in a pot of hot soup.

Her husband had a bad temper.

And then my daughter also talked about a friend down the street where she would often go and play. This friend had two older brothers that used to 'tease' and 'bully' the girls.

And then school began, and my daughter was in a class with a myriad of bullies. We struggled, we met with parents, we met with the teacher.

Finally, finally after grade six, we left. We left because my daughter insisted that she wasn't going back.

She was smarter than I was. By tons.

At home? At home I fed them well, loved them, kept them safe from too much television, kept them away from the malls during the Christmas hype.

But still, shit happened. It happened under the watch of others. It happened and I didn't know, or if I did know, I tried to work with it, to change it.

I feel so responsible and ashamed.

My husband reminded me that under my mother's watch, a stay-at-home mom, there was bullying between my siblings.

It doesn't make me feel better.

To my thirty-seven year old self I want to say I understand and I know you did the best you could at the time. I also want to say "What were you thinking?"

To my twenty-five year old daughter I want to say how sorry I am for all of it. For all of the times I should have acted sooner and didn't.

To my twenty-nine year old son I want to say that I should have spent more time with you, drawing at the kitchen table, or talking to you, instead of hiding in the basement when I first got home from work. You were only two, and I should have been there.

I should have been there. I should have been more vigilant.

But I wasn't.

And I have to live with that.

Yes, it is important for me to re-visit the past.

But, I don't have to live there.

Not anymore.

I should have made that call

It has been a year since Lorraine died. She was a woman I worked with in the early 80s at Metro Transit. We both worked in the operations office. I had left teaching (I was too young, the public school system too inflexible), and clerical work was something I was good at, and I had tenure at BC Hydro from all the summer and winter jobs I had to put myself through university. But, this story isn't about me, it is about Lorraine. Or, maybe it is about how sometimes we let our own insecurities get in the way of true and abiding love.

Lorraine had the greatest laugh. She was probably, hands down, the kindest person I will ever have met in this life. She had married Nelson, a man 20+ years her senior and they loved to travel in their little camperized van. Nelson had lost both his arms in an electrical accident before Lorraine met him. She met him at GF Strong where he was recovering from his accident. Lorraine was there visiting a friend recovering from another accident. Accidents brought them together. They formed a friendship, and finally Lorraine proposed to him. He didn't have the nerve to propose to her. He thought she couldn't possibly love an old man who didn't have any arms. He was wrong. Lorraine could love.

They never had children, but they always had a dog. Lorraine would walk that dog for two hours every day. One hour in the morning, one hour at night. During their camping adventures they fell in love with Rock Creek. They started to buy land there and when Nelson retired, Lorraine retired too, and they went to Rock Creek, built their dream home, and settled into that little community. She skied, walked her dog, and worked for the local newspaper as a journalist.

Even after I stopped working at Transit she and I would keep touch by having dinner every month or so. On one of those dinners she shared that she was going for a biopsy. Breast Cancer. She had a mastectomy, chemo, recovered and continued with her life. We continued our dinners, sometimes with our husbands, usually just the two of us. Writing this I just remember her huge smile. She was always smiling.

We wrote letters, exchanged Christmas cards, kept in touch as best you can when you live far away.

And then it was August of 2007. My husband and I had bought a truck and camper and had spent the summer in the interior of BC. One afternoon we stumbled upon Rock Creek. We were having lunch and he suggested we should call Lorraine and Nelson.
I didn't want to. Why? Because I weigh more than I did in the early 80s. Because I was 25 years olders than I was in the 80s. Because I was worried about what she would think about me. What was I thinking? I know Lorraine would have hugged me, and greeted me, and made me tea. But, I didn't make the call.

That Christmas I received a letter that her cancer had returned, that she was finishing chemo and, although tired, heading to New York Times Square with her niece to see the Ball drop at New Year's. I called her,but only got her answering machine. She called back and I wasn't home. She said she found it hard to talk on the phone, she would get too emotional. We exchanged a few long emails. Catching up. She always wanted to know how my kids were doing.

Then last fall I started to get emails from her friends. Lorraine was dying from her third fight with breast cancer. This time she would not win. The emails came daily and I sent some emails that her friends could read to her.

She died on December 1 last year. So I have been thinking about her alot the past few days. I wish I had made that call. I wish I had hugged her one more time. I wish I hadn't been so vain and stupid. I wish I could hear her laugh and see her smile one more time.

God willing, I won't make that mistake again.

not really about baseball at all

In good resolve I send the light.
A pitch ill-timed,
hitting the dirt,
too close to the batter
Dust covered intentions.

Accusations,
misunderstandings,
a poorly timed swing.

Where is the re-play,
the slo-mo,
the play-by-play
so I can see where it all went
so terribly wrong.

In good resolve I send the light
not wavering on my ability
to play the game
but wondering
how long the
season will last.