Category Archives: Family

Family life, both personal and in general

A Book Cover for “Sistering”

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The cover for my upcoming novel, "Sistering," Aug 2015 from Linda Leith Publishing

The cover for my upcoming novel, “Sistering,” Aug 2015 from Linda Leith Publishing

I’m not usually fussy about design. There is photographic proof of it. When my in-laws-to-be generously organized decorations for my wedding reception while I was consumed with final exams at a university hundreds of kilometers away, they went for the crepe paper aesthetic—streamers and accordion bells. My in-laws are lovely but the crepe paper could only be horrible. I managed not ruin the day or our relationship over it (don’t worry, the person who did the shopping is dead and won’t be reading this). On my wedding day, I stood in crepe paper carnage, held onto the beautiful husband these nice people had made for me, and smiled for the pictures.

Those easygoing design sensibilities of mine become brittle when it comes to my own book covers. Stakes are high with book covers—not as high as at a wedding ceremony but definitely higher than at the crepe-paper reception afterwards. Book covers can tip the scales for readers choosing from a market full of good books. Covers usually convey something about plot—especially in genre fiction—but more importantly, they communicate tone and theme. They hint at the state of mind and heart readers can expect to inhabit. They make vague but real promises. They’re meant to elicit emotional connections. We’re supposed to have feelings about book covers—especially when we’ve authored the stories between them. For a second outing in an author’s career, getting a new cover is a little like getting a new face. And I loved my old face.

Like my first novel, the tone of the second novel is (wait for it) unusual. The structure and storyline are quite different from my first book but I hope my signature oddness (whatever it is, I’m too close to sense much of it) has endured. However, strangeness makes the book hard to characterize with a single illustration. My new book is grave but funny enough that a spooky cover wouldn’t be appropriate. The main characters are women but it’s got nothing like a chick-lit vibe so a cover full of flowers or lipsticks or purses doesn’t make any sense. It’s got elements of a warm, family story but images of sunlit kitchen windowsills would be bad fits too.

I set up my first ever Pinterest board and asked my sisters (blood sister and sisters-in-law, after twenty years with my in-laws, unless I’m looking for a kidney donor, it’s all the same) for cover suggestions and for their opinions on my ideas. But I asked them to do it blindfolded, knowing little more about the book than its title. I’m unreasonable that way.

A few days before the latest Linda Leith Publishing catalogue was finalized, Linda was kind enough to send me two designs being considered for my book cover. Nothing in our official agreement obligates my publisher to ask me anything about design. As is typical in the industry, the publisher buys the rights to produce the book however they see fit. This cover preview was a courtesy and one not every publisher extends. I am grateful for it. And that gratitude made me feel like a terrible person when I admitted I didn’t feel right about either of the designs. The kinds of images we were using—stairways—were the right kind. The concept was good and it was one I hadn’t been able to come up with myself. But I was being fussy about colour schemes and other fiddly details.

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Quit trying to cute it up, Cat

With the deadline for the catalogue looming, we all kept working. In desperation, I even recruited my sister Sara, a photographer, to take photos of the stairwell in her house in case we couldn’t find anything that worked. Her kitten didn’t make it easy, frolicking into the shot over and over again. “Hey, it’s not that kind of book,” I kept telling it. On my way home, I stopped at my sister Amy’s house to take photos of her stairs, as a backup plan for the backup plan.

In further desperation, I reached further into my wealth of sisters. While Sara and I were trying to light her stairwell, my sister-in-law, Stephanie, was picking through the Internet for me. Steph is a writer too—urban fantasy and romance with commercial appeal. She does most of her publishing independently and her best book covers are the ones she designs herself. She has a few favourite resources and on one of those, she unearthed the image of stairs our designer transformed into the book cover.

I love it. The blue-green tones are moody and a bit haunted without being gloomy or melodramatic. The architecture is pretty and visually interesting but not too fanciful or domestic. The title’s font—one of the LLP standbys that give the company’s books their unified look—blends well with the image. And best of all for my poor sophomore nerves, this cover has a comforting sisterly resemblance to my first novel’s cover—the novel that was well-received and not just a fluke, right?

When I posted the finished cover on social media, someone cool and smart said, “I’m picturing the Brady Bunch sisters lined up on those stairs. Except they’re all goth.” I didn’t know until I read it that this was exactly what I wanted to hear.

Laugh Track at the Beauty School

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This is not a picture of my four sisters and me; neither is my next novel.

I am one of five sisters. I was born first and in exchange for having the best memories of our parents when they were young and cool, I missed out on adventures my sisters had together after I swore off women for a life with my husband and sons. Different combinations of my sisters have traveled to Disneyland, New York City, Winnipeg, Amsterdam, the Northwest Territories, and the old gravel pit in Prince George all without me.

This year, for the first time, I made it to one of their “girls’ trips.” I met the three of my sisters who aren’t currently breastfeeding (see, someone’s always left out – it’s not personal) in Calgary to spend a weekend together.

I am terrible at ordering and it was over a bowl of thick green sauce at dinner that I taught the girls a new word: sistering. It’s like mothering only just between us. And then I warned them about my second novel. It’s about a group of five sisters.

No, it’s not about us.

If it’s not a tribute to our family why stretch the cast over five main characters? Well, because it’s not a stretch. There were five Spice Girls, five Go-Gos, five Miss Bennetts in Pride and Prejudice, and, of course, five Dionne quintuplets. My mind isn’t the only place where a group of five girls is the only size that makes sense.

It was impossible to write the book-sisters without invoking bits of my real sisters. I used some of our quirks and experiences as inspiration, like any writer would have done. To add to the tangle, our family is large. On my side alone there are seven siblings, seven spouses, one ex-spouse, and twenty-two nieces and nephews. It’s hard to create characters and situations that don’t overlap in some way with people I know very well simply because I know so many people so very well. When we’re primed to look, even general coincidences can seem like deliberate rip-offs. For instance, one of the sisters is the book is a nurse, just like Amy. One is divorced, like Sara. One is married to a man who’s adopted, like Mary’s husband. These elements aren’t uncommon inside or outside literature. Moreover, my book’s story wouldn’t work without them. And the story definitely wouldn’t work without the intimate understanding of sisterhood we sisters have given each other.

None of this is the same thing as writing a story about my sisters.

Still, I submitted to the girls teasing me about the book for the rest of the weekend. They let me have it, with that sharp sweetness of theirs and lots of laughter.

The next day Amy had planned girlie activities for us. We spent the morning shopping. That was easy. The afternoon was more difficult. The other girls wanted to go to a spa together. The only place that could book all four of us at the same time was not exactly a spa but a beauty school. I don’t want to use its real name so let’s just call it – oh, I don’t know – Carvel Mollege.

I’d had a facial only once before. It seemed like witchcraft – a superstitious ritual in smearing stuff on my face and wiping it off, a cycle of application and removal. The key to a successful facial is to end it immediately after finishing a thorough removal.

I was about to learn this.

If I’d been a more experienced exploiter of the pink ghetto that is esthetics, I would have realized how strangely my facial was unfolding and made some kind of protest. As it was I laid under a towel that smelled like someone else while a college girl let facial goops drip into my hairline, while she failed to rinse the cocktail of creams and toners and tonics off my skin.

At some arbitrarily determined point she said we were done. My skin felt tight and tacky as I stood up and looked for a mirror. There was only one in the room, mounted too high for me to see much of my face in it. All I could see was a dark, oily perimeter where my hair had soaked up the skin treatments.

Not a good sign.

The supervising instructor was waved out of a classroom to inspect my student’s work. “How do you feel?” she asked me.

“Pretty sticky.”

“From the moisturizer,” she finished for me.

I went downstairs, fingering the gummy surface of my face. In the lobby, my three little sisters were sitting in a love seat meant for two. They looked great. But when they saw me, they looked concerned – and amused. That’s when I knew for sure something wasn’t right. While the receptionist ran my card through the machine, I flexed my sticky face until it cracked. I stood in the lobby and peeled a sheet of – something – off my face.

Across the room, my sisters were cackling. “Why’d it have to be Jenny?”

Between my fingers I held a transparent mask of most of my face. It reminded me of a bored habit I had in grade four, pouring white glue into my hand and letting it dry before trying to peel it off in one piece. This glue mask was a good one. Every hair of my left eyebrow was perfectly visible.

I rolled the film into a ball between my fingers. “I’m not paying for this.”

My sisters kept laughing.

“I understand they’re just students,” I told the receptionist. “But look at my sisters: they’re not down here peeling their faces off.”

No one argued about refunding my money. Maybe they should have. My sisters and I had spun the barrel in a game of college student esthetician roulette and on our fourth shot, my shot, the game fired its inevitable concluding round.

We got in my minivan and drove away, off to a dinner where I would order another plate of food I wouldn’t like. Mary told me how radiant I looked. Amy lent me some makeup. And we never stopped laughing. That’s my sisters: the laugh track of my life, calming me down, cheering me up, convincing me this drama is much more fun than any amount of reason says it should be.

When my new book appears next year (please read it) don’t skip the dedication page. But just in case, let me reveal now how it will read:

For Amy, Sara, Mary, and Emily

All of whom inspired, none of whom is depicted in this book

How to Read Minds in the Check-out Line: Hints for Parents of Toddlers

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My uber-toddler. It was the best of times, it was the worst of time.

My uber-toddler. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Those social media posts and blog entries written by moms of young children, complaining about the way strangers interact with them in public spaces — I could have written those. In fact, I once wrote and voiced a five minute piece for CBC Radio about a low point in my public mothering of little kids.

My youngest child is the ripe old age of six and doesn’t attract much attention in grocery stores or restaurants anymore. However, in order to arrive at this time of life, I first had to run the gauntlet of five toddlers.

All five of my kids had monster moments but two of my toddlers – the first and the fourth – consistently and horrendously stood out when we were in public. They were what kind people called “handfuls” or “going concerns” and what not-so-kind people might’ve considered proof that there’s no hope for the future of humanity. Thanks to bad mate-selection on their father’s part, these two also out-class me in every measure of relative size and strength and I often looked more like their underqualified, overwhelmed, soon-to-be-fired nanny than their biological mother.

What I mean to say is I fought in the trenches of toddler-motherhood for as long and as hard as just about any other women ever to complain about it. I hear you, sisters. I remember. Three short years ago, I was you.

I want to show support for mothers of younger children – treat toddler-moms and their kids the way I wish people had treated us. I want to give the assurances I wish someone had given me – even if it’s going to be a few years before toddler-moms will be able to believe me.

Of course, what I have to say might not be true for everyone witnessing the struggle. I know that. I went on the radio and testified about it to the whole country. Yes, there are plenty of grownup weirdos who have no idea how to behave in public and feel they can scold other adults for things that do not concern them. I don’t know what they’re thinking.

But I can speak for myself. And between me and more than a few other parents with older kids, it’s safe to assume there are allies among the onlookers. It’s safe to assume:

No one cares about the noise and mess kids make as much as their parents do. Everyone in line at the Wal-Mart has ninety-nine problems and someone else’s little kid isn’t one. To strangers, little kids are pretty much white noise – alright, maybe beige noise but definitely not the red noise they sound like to their own parents. What might be interpreted as hostile glaring from strangers is likely just bored staring, idle bemusement, a lack of anything else to look at. We won’t remember or resent a noisy little kid. But thanks for the floor-show while we wait in line.

Wanna know what we’re thinking of that noisy little kids’ parents? I’ll tell ya. Nothing. We’re usually not thinking about them at all. Like most people, we have no trouble staying busy thinking all about ourselves. Most experienced parents are only too happy to let newer parents enjoy absolute rule in their own jurisdictions. There’s nothing we want more for toddler-wranglers than the free exercise their own good judgment. Maybe we’re jerks but compassion isn’t the only thing on our minds when faced with someone else’s struggle. Sometimes, it’s more like, “Better them than me.”

Our smiles for goofy little kids aren’t supposed to encourage them to keep acting up. We usually give frazzled moms space, willfully trying not to notice them. But kids don’t understand space the same way we do and can wind up too close to ignore. At times like these, our smiles and friendliness are meant to show goofy kid’s mom that he’s not bothering us nearly as much as she might worry he is. It’s a simple sign of good will. His mom is having a hard time and a common, deeply ingrained social reaction to seeing one of our kind in distress is to offer non-verbal reassurance and comfort with a smile. We don’t expect those moms to smile back at us – heck knows we never did – but if they did, it’d probably relieve some tension. It’d feel better than scowling and making a retort about how it’s not okay. The truth is, if no one’s being hurt, it probably is okay.

Sometimes someone is being hurt and it’s hard for moms of older kids to ignore years of well-learned reflexes and let it go. Raising toddlers leaves us with something like a post-traumatic stress disorder, hurling us into flashbacks of our very worst days – the ones when we went to the emergency room hoping the medical staff wouldn’t call the police about our kids’ bizarre but completely accidental injuries. When a fellow mom is distracted and her little kids look like they’re in danger, we might break down and squawk out a warning.

This was me, a few weeks ago. I was waiting in a slow, painful line while a mom with two young kids was paying for her purchases. She was focused on the cashier, trying to move along as quickly as possible, and her older daughter was pushing the baby back and forth in a shopping cart. It was a harmless, boring game. It was so boring the little girl added a new element. She pushed the cart as hard as she could and let go of the handle. The baby was launched toward a metal shelf. His mom was still busy with the cashier and hadn’t seen any of it. So this horrible voice called out “Excuse me, your daughter…” It was my voice. The mother whirled around, lunged for the handle of the cart, and turned back to the cashier without looking at me. She wasn’t grateful. She was ticked off. I get it. It’s embarrassing to feel like we’ve been called out in public for making a mistake. It’s embarrassing to be the one doing the calling. But accidents happen to everyone, even good parents. People jump in to help not because they don’t care about adults but because they do care about kids. That sounds sappy but it’s true.

We’re not trying to sabotage other parents. Everyone in the mall is muddling through, trying to figure out his or her own humanity. For me, being a good human means if I see a toddler standing alone screaming in a big space full of strange adults I will always rush up to him and say, “Hey, honey, are you okay? Are you by yourself?” Among a thousand reasons, I will do this in case someone who may not be such a softie steps in to take advantage of the situation. There is no way for me to know the kid’s mom is standing behind a nearby planter trying to teach him a lesson about the perils of being a doofus who won’t stop running away. I raised a kid exactly like that. I know how frustrated and desperate he can make his poor mother. But I also know how relieved and grateful I was every time my son truly was lost and someone reached out and rescued both of us. Personally, I’m happier living in a world where the “natural and logical consequences” of my kids’ bad behaviour is encountering compassion from someone with no specific duty to love and care for them who’s willing to love and care for them anyway.

Toddler-mothering sisters, we’re in this together, though maybe not at the same time. We’ve obsessed over the same little failures, exulted in the same small successes. Maybe no one has more confidence in young mothers’ abilities to overcome than mothers just a few years ahead of their schedule. We’ve lived through toddlers and emerged largely undamaged. More importantly, so have our freshly civilized older kids.

Final Post Before Moving House: On Depression and Sadness

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My house from the creek-bed below it.

My house from the creek-bed below it.

With less than a week before my family moves house — leaving the town we’ve lived in for eight years, longer than I’ve lived anywhere, ever in my entire life – I’m feeling kind of depressed. I love this place.  I love my friends here. I love my kids’ friends. I love the atom football team. I love the trees we raised from saplings. It makes sense to be sad about a departure from a happy hometown. As one of the characters in my novel says, “I’d be more worried about my state of mind if something like this failed to upset me.”

So this is not a confession of an artist speaking frankly about her troubled mental health. That artist is real but I am not her. While I’m definitely feeling depressed today, it’s not the same thing as having the disease of depression.

When it comes to mental health, I’ve got nothing to complain about. It’s not because I’m smarter or better than people who do have valid complaints. I think it might be little more than an endowment from my mother –an ability to shout or cry away bad feelings before they settle in for torturous long-term engagements.

Even so, I do get sad. Over my lifespan, I’ve probably lost months-worth of sleep to grief and worry. My personal best record for uninterrupted crying exceeds three hours. One summer, my daily routine included standing alone in my garage painting boards for the epic fence we were building, quietly weeping over them.

None of this was depression. It wasn’t an illness. It was a reaction to well-defined, acute stress and tragedy. It’s like the difference between bruising for a few days after bashing a knee on something and bruising maybe until death because there’s something fundamental missing from the blood that keeps it from clotting.

With the recent death of a famous entertainer, a lot has been said about depression as a dangerous disease. All of that needs to be said. Depression is still far too stigmatizing. I have a close friend who suffered depression after each of her kids was born. She still worries someone will find the medical records of her diagnosis and medication and use the information as prejudice. “All your history of depression really shows,” another friend explained to her, “is that you were smart enough to go get treated for it.” She’s got nothing to be ashamed of and much to be commended for.

While not everyone suffers from depression as a chronic debilitating illness, everyone (except maybe, I don’t know, people with anti-social personality disorders) feels sad sometimes. Sadness is part of the human condition. It’s inevitable and normal. There is nothing strange or sickly about the sadness most of us encounter.

Here, in the middle of my move, I was talking with another friend who suffers from depression. She saw my mood was low and jumped to recommend treatments she uses when she feels herself falling – when her disease flares up. But I don’t have her disease. I don’t need to fight sadness as quickly or as fiercely as she does. I thanked her anyway. And above my pangs of healthy-person-guilt I was surprised to hear myself telling her I don’t mind letting myself experience a bit of my own sadness. It hurts but it doesn’t damage me. There’s value in it. I can trust I’ll survive it. My preferred treatments are patience and time, love and companionship, faith, music, food someone else has cooked, fresh air, and new things I discover every time circumstances demand my character adapt and change.

For people with severe depression, sadness can be, very literally, the end of the world. They need to fight it with heavy medical and social artillery and no one should fault them for it.

For the rest of us, sadness, deep at its core, is a horrible, putrid, unwanted gift. It’s okay to unwrap it and handle it. And no one should fault us for that – trying to convince us we’re deluded or unhealthy or callous when we take our sadness into our own hands to see what we can learn from it.

Sadness is part of our life stories. Its gift to us is our stories.

Because Camping is Actually Writing

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Me, arriving at camp with a bit of baggage

Me, arriving at camp with a bit of baggage

Two decades without camping didn’t seem like too many to me. I love being outdoors but I crave a proper roof overhead when it’s time to call it a night.

Then, this winter, I was asked to take over as leader of a youth group for 30 girls ages 12 to 17. It’s a great gig. It tempers the Smurfette vibe I’ve cultivated living alone in a pack of men for the last nineteen years. I’m honoured and happy to be there.

Still, I spent the spring dreading our youth group’s traditional annual camping trip. Fortunately, some of my fellow leaders are skilled, enthusiastic campers. They took over. My camp role was to sign off on expense claims, make a few rousing presentations, offer hugs to the homesick, and not sabotage the whole thing with my incompetence.

It was a simple role but I fretted anyway. What might have been more daunting than whatever challenges awaited at camp were the challenges I’d leave behind at home. Not getting things done can be just as hard as getting things done. My family is in the middle of moving house. It’s not a great time for me to flee into the wilderness. In order to take the girls camping, I left my house unpacked and unsold, left my kids, left a chance to see my commuter husband who was traveling home to stay with them. And, I left my second novel in the process of an intense unfinished edit.

For me – and probably for other writers who finish manuscripts – there’s no such thing as taking time off simply because life is busy. Activity inspires creativity and the paradoxical truth is I sometimes work best when it should be logistically impossible for me to get anything done. This summer, while single-parenting my five sons and trying to sell our house, I’ve written more, and more consistently than I have all year.

The prospect of my second novel is a bit terrifying. My first book has been well-received and part of its legacy is fear of a “sophomore slump.” I wrote the first version of my second novel before I’d found a publisher for my first book – before I knew who I was as a novelist. It was an experiment. The first version of it was plotty and funny and fairly glib. There were hardly any “that’s my soul up there” moments in it. It ate away at me a little – the secret that I didn’t love my second novel the way I love my first one. I liked it. But…

With this second book I have access to something I didn’t have when I wrote my first one. I have someone in the industry willing to read it and skilled enough to tell me what’s wrong with it. I knew the book was lacking but I couldn’t tell how or what to do about it. With good editorial feedback fueling my revision process, I hope I’m starting to understand.

The radical edits demanded I change something fundamental to the book – the title itself. Every time I opened the document I changed the title and every time I changed it, I hated it more and more.

campgroup

Me, when my hair was still clean, welcoming the campers

So I went to camp with my novel gutted, untitled. I went trusting my familiar paradoxes, sure a four day pajama party in the woods would improve everything unsettled in my life right now – maybe even my second novel.

Camp was fantastic. We should have called it “Camp Slacker.” There wasn’t much of a schedule, I kept driving the girls to the beach in the back of my pick-up truck, we stayed up all night every night, we never really stopped eating.

On the final morning of camp, I woke up underneath a brand new spider web, listening to music – not in my ears but in my mind. It was a song I hadn’t heard in a long time – one I first learned when I was a 16-year-old girl. It was Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne.”

Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river…
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror…

It’s unlikely LC was thinking of youth camp leaders working to convince young girls of their worth and power and potential – to “show them where to look among the garbage and the flowers” – when he wrote these lyrics. But art is sublime and it doesn’t matter what he was thinking. For a moment, the song was about me and my “children in the morning” – the ones born to other mothers but sent into the woods with me for a few days in hopes we’d all come to understand ourselves a little better.

Suzanne loads you in her pick-up truck, and she leads you to the river

Suzanne loads you in her pick-up truck, and she leads you to the river…

My second novel – the awkward one with no name – it’s always been about sisterhood. And in the early morning sisterhood of my first camping trip in over twenty years, the paradox worked its perfection and I think I learned what I will call the book.

Photos by Naomi Stanford

Our Fairy Godmother is the Queen of England

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The Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award

The Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award

It wouldn’t be true to say I chose an arty career just to impress my kids. But I was definitely gratified this week when, right before my kids’ eyes, the unglamorous sitting and typing I usually do was fairy-godmothered into a morning of sandstone balustrades, live harp music, and canapés garnished with purple pansies.

Me at Government House , Edmonton, Alberta

Me squinting in the daylight at Government House , Edmonton, Alberta

The fairy godmother who conjured this fantastic morning for my kids and me was actually the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta. I’m one of the recipients of the 2014 Lieutenant Governor of Alberta’s Emerging Artist Award. It’s a fabulous, generous programme and I’m thrilled and honoured to be included in it. Canada is a constitutional monarchy and some of our traditional royalist sensibilities, like art patronage, provide vital support and recognition for artists – a term it’s probably high time I stopped apologizing for applying to myself.

The award was presented to me and seven other recipients – accomplished singers, filmmakers, poets, visual artists – in a private ceremony. I was able to invite five guests so I brought my parents, my husband, and my 17-year-old and 15-year-old sons – the kids of mine least likely to turn the whole thing into a brawl.

I arrived at the Government House mansion before my family and waited in the green room until we were ushered upstairs where our guests were already seated. We all rose when the “viceregal salute” was played on the harp and Queen Elizabeth II’s local representative, the Honourable Donald Ethell (who is more like an impressive great-uncle than like the queen of anything), entered to officiate from a throne made of dark wood and green velvet.

How cool is that?

Each of the eight of us was formally presented to the gathering as our bios were read. It was the first time I’d heard the adjudicators’ remarks about my work. They said, “Her writing is extraordinarily strong, powerfully handled, and evidence of a rarely encountered original voice.”

Thanks!

We then came forward to greet His Honour and receive a medal – and a discrete folder containing our prize money. (Apparently, Government House lacks a giant novelty-sized cheque printer.)

Me and the Honourable Donald Ethell, Lieutenant Governor of Alberta

Me and the Honourable Donald Ethell, Lieutenant Governor of Alberta

Just like the day years before when I was in this same room watching my extraordinary husband receive an award from the Department of Justice for his service as a prosecutor, the line from the bio that drew an audible murmur from the crowd was the one reporting our roster of sons. Lawyers, artists, everyone has something to say about a large young family.

Even His Honour mentioned it as he slipped my medal over my head. “With all the writing you do how did you find time to have so many children?”

“They were thrust upon me,” I said.

My mum loved that.

He recognized the pair of my boys sitting the audience. “Where are the other ones? In school?”

I shrugged. “I sure hope so.”

At the luncheon afterward, my boys didn’t fail to appreciate the never-ending platters of dainty sandwiches and sweets. No matter how nice they are, I have a hard time stomaching refreshments at events and it was good to see someone from the family eating my portion.

My sons met His Honour, Her Honour (his wife), their red-uniformed aide-de-camp, the Minister of Culture, the Mayor of the city of Red Deer, and a real live professor from the University of Alberta — the school my oldest boy will be attending in the Fall. The professor, Douglas Barbour, was there as a guest of one of the other artists but he also happened to be the instructor of the only senior-level English course I ever took.

My Family and the Lieutenant Governor

A Bit of My Family Meets the Lieutenant Governor

Several times during the boys’ fancy morning out, I overheard strangers asking them if they were proud of their mom. It can be an eye-roller question — even for me, someone who prefers the term “pleased” to “proud” since it travels without the negative baggage and misunderstandings that can come with “pride.”

People in their late teens aren’t renowned for being gracious. They don’t efface themselves like I do but they scoff and sigh and shrug. And the truth is, my accomplishments have meant the boys’ childhoods have been lean on motherly touches like homemade baking and chauffeur service to school.

I kept smiling but I braced myself as I listened to my boys make their answers at the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Awards luncheon. In replying to kind strangers who wished us nothing but the best, the boys set aside any cynicism, bitterness, or semantic fussiness to answer with pleasant enthusiasm – enthusiasm for me and the tumultuous, demanding arts career that may have affected their lives as much as mine.

Heart and Lip: Intellectual Prowess and the Obnoxious Dork

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“Which one is yours?” the nice lady sitting beside me in the spectator seats at the junior high school asked.

“The obnoxious one,” I answered.

She nodded and laughed a little, knowing exactly which kid I meant.

Reach for the Top in the 1980s

We were at the provincial “Reach for the Top” tournament.  As a kid, I’d seen competitions like this one on TV during long, cold, boring afternoons in the days when we only had three channels to watch. It’s a trivia contest for school kids – kind of like Jeopardy only the contestants give their answers in the form of an answer.  Like lots of the stuff on Canadian TV in those days, it seemed to me like another weird Ontario-thing.

Reach for the Top doesn’t exist as a television show anymore but thanks to the dedication of teachers in our area, there’s an untelevised league of it operating in my kids’ schools.  We’ve been involved with it for four years, ever since one of my sons took the local programme by storm.

I admire my son’s smarts but I don’t think he’s always the most knowledgeable kid on his team.  He is, however, the only one who nearly got fouled out for heckling the quiz mistress.  He is also the one who answers more questions than anyone else.  He likes to be right but being wrong isn’t a disaster for him.  The reward of winning makes the occasional “that is incorrect” worth the risk.  In other words, he dominates Reach for the Top out of sheer nerve.

It’s well-known that the sports trivia sections of Reach for the Top matches are usually wash-outs – those and the classic rock sections.  (“Trooper!” I once heard a parent rave.  “Come on. I can’t believe they couldn’t get Trooper.”)  When the topic is sports, the quiz master usually just reads through the questions while the kids wait for the time to run out.

But since points aren’t deducted for giving wrong answers, my kid buzzes in and tries to guess the sports questions anyway, again, out of sheer nerve.  It paid off most spectacularly the time the question asked for the number on Frank Mahovlich’s hockey sweater.

Like a random number generator in a hoodie, my kid picked a value between one and ninety-eight.

“27.”

“That is correct.”

“What?!”

It was unholy.

That match – the one with the hockey sweater divination – was the only time our team beat the team captained by our arch Nemesis, an über-dork named Angus.  In terms of high school competitions, it was an epic moment.  If the Reach for the Top team was the football team there would have been yelling and hugging, water bottles emptied over people’s heads, my kid getting cheered and mauled by dozens of people.  As it was, there was some excited whispering.  I admit I applauded — high and fast, fingers splayed like Snow White — in spite of all the stink-eye.

If my boy was a football quarterback instead of a trivia jock, maybe he would have spent his high school career being celebrated for playing his chosen game with such courage and self-confidence – so much of what is referred to in sports as “heart.”  It’s the willingness to take risks and use raw energy and enthusiasm to out-perform what ought to be expected of our natural talents.

But “heart” is for physical contests.  In the sit-down, four-eyed, noisy-spectators-will-be-ejected world of trivia contests, my kid’s “heart” is called “lip.”  Even I do it when I tell the other parents my kid is the obnoxious one instead of describing him as the gutsy one — the heroic one.  Sure, he doesn’t deserve to win any sportsmanship awards.  But maybe someone could give him a break and acknowledge that his headlong approach to his game is not a character flaw he needs to apologize for but a gift.  And the person who needs to do that first is probably me.

Go Rams!

Love and the Library

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My husband got me chocolates just like I ordered for Valentines Day today. And, by playing muse to my novel’s “Brigs,” he also indirectly got me this: a recommendation from the Edmonton Public Library’s “Great Stuff” curator, Diego Ibarra. See?

Really needed that today.  Thanks, fellas.

Here Baby, There Mama: Don’t Politic My Hair

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Let me tell you about the angriest I’ve ever been with my husband. Our not-quite-two-year-old son needed his long, wispy, angel hair cut. He hated haircuts and would carry on like a calf getting branded. It was always awful. My husband told me he’d take care of one particular haircut by himself. He took the baby into the bathroom and buzzed his head with electric clippers.

I was furious.

Yes, the baby’s hair grew back. And no one – not my oh-so-scolded husband, not anyone – has ever buzzed it again. The baby is fifteen years old now. His hair is still light blond but it’s also thick, silky, and he wears it long. I love it. Everyone loves it.

That’s the angriest I’ve ever been at my husband. I’m very lucky. I have an excellent husband. I also have an excellent mother. Guess what makes me angriest about the way she raised me. Once again, it’s haircuts. I’m not one to try to blame my mother for everything. She was and is wonderful to me and my six siblings. But she is a demon in a hair salon.jennyshort

Her first six children were born within seven and a half years. No, she’s not crazy. She’s just talented at pregnancy and babies. My mum is never happier than when she’s raising a baby. I don’t understand it — the same way I don’t understand people who are happiest when they’re cooking or playing soccer or doing math.

With a family like that, I guess Mum needed some short-cuts – literally. Five of us are girls — though it was hard to tell from looking at us when we were kids and our mother was choosing our haircuts. Mum had this idea that short hair on girls was “stylish” and modern – that and it didn’t need any time consuming combing or binding with elastics.

amyshort

Some people look fine in short hair. These people are not in my immediate gene pool. We all looked horrible. We knew it even though our mother raved about how pert and bold we were and how boring and backward our girl-friends were with their gorgeously normal shoulder-length bobs. But we were respectful, filial girls and I didn’t rise up and put an end to my mother’s terrible haircuts until I was in the tenth grade. That was when I grew my hair long – crazy long – and never went back. My sisters have thrown off their chains and grown out their hair too.

We all have the hair we want now. We’re educated, independent women exercising control over our own bodies and using a whole lot of high-end conditioner every morning. That’s the happily ever after, right?

Unfortunately, personal preference isn’t the only thing being read into hair length lately. Some click-baiting doofus wrotesarashort an article in response to the recent Hollywood revival of the pixie cut that made my childhood so awkward. He trolls on about how women cut their hair short to perturb and alienate men. The article has been answered by far more thoughtful pieces claiming long hair can be a patriarchal weapon meant to signal reproductive receptivity and with it, submission to oppressive forms of traditional gender roles.

Actually, for most people from my ethnic group anyways, long hair is just the natural state of all hair, for men and women. It’s now been unnaturally politicized by both sides of the gender divide. One of my brothers-in-law snapped and told my sister she had to cut her hair because she looked like the wife of a fundamentalist cult leader. I guess that wasn’t the impression he wanted his colleagues to have of their successful family business. My sister keeps her hair long anyway and sometimes twists it into a tight, top ‘o the head, power-bun that is authoritarian and formidable and totally awesome.

maryshortI admit I’m still insecure enough to worry whether anyone mistakes my long hair as a sign there’s something oppressive in my relationships or worldview – something amiss with my feminism. There isn’t. I’ve written more in defense of feminism than many people will ever read in their lifetimes.  I have nothing to be insecure about.  Part of enjoying my personal autonomy is invoking my right not to cut my hair if that’s what makes me happiest.

All that anger from the beginning of this story – with my husband and my mum – it’s petty. I’ve let it go and moved on. Even in the teeth of the crises, I never had much to complain about.  Unless it’s a token of religious observance, everything that’s said about another person’s hair length seems just as petty to me. And in realms of pettiness, what’s important aren’t the choices we make but the fact that we are free to make those choices.emshort

Sometimes, as Freud is rumored to have said, a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes, a haircut is just a haircut – no social agenda, no revolution, no patriarchal violence – just pretty protein sprouting out of a scalp. When it comes to the way I wear my hair, all I’m trying to say is that I love it long – on my sons, on me, on my sisters, even on my mother herself.

Me, My Mum, and My Sisters Today

Family Christmas Newsletters: Confessions and Unsolicited Tips

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My cousin, Rachel, composed and photographed her perfectly lovely husband and cat to make this and win at Christmas cards.

My cousin, Rachel, composed and photographed this to win at Christmas cards.

The year I moved house, finished construction on our basement, gestated and started raising my fifth son, I didn’t get much writing done.  The only thing I published that year was a Christmas newsletter all about my immediate family.

Some people hate reading letters like these.  I know that.  I don’t send them to everyone – like the person who once soundly told me off for “always bragging.”  He gets an empty card with a hand-scrawled inscription and just as much love as everyone else.  The letters aren’t meant to please me but the people on my mailing list — good will toward men, and all that.  I hope anyone who isn’t made merry by my letter throws it in a snowbank on the way home from the mailbox.

For letter-writers, there are lots of ways to approach the family Christmas newsletter.  An artsy friend of mine wrote hers as an acrostic poem.  My Manga-loving sister-in-law once included an original, hand-drawn cartoon in hers.  I have a family of cousins who usually aim for the absurd – cats and paganism and stuff.  And I have a friend from a town called Spring Coulee who doesn’t use any gimmicks but always manages to dash off a letter that’s hilarious and real and totally charming.

Don’t misunderstand.  I like conventional Christmas letters too — the blessing-counting, the press releases, the shine-a-grams.  If I stopped getting them, I’d be very sad.  I love them.  But I love the wacky letters.

To write, mail, or post either kind of letter is to run the hazard of spreading Christmas cringing along with Christmas cheer.  It takes guts to attempt a holiday year-in-review letter.  Sometimes, we all get it wrong.  With my husband’s job, I find it hard to write a letter without the words “rape” or “murder” and there might be people on my list who dread reading about it.

Still, here’s a list from imperfect, sometimes-offensive me sharing my personal preferences for Christmas newsletters — some tips on how to keep me smiling all the way to the “Happy New Year” at the end.

1)      Good News, Bad News – We’ve all got good news and bad news.  A letter that’s nothing but good news is not going to be seen as dishonest or deceptive.  We should all know enough about the human condition to be able to assume that the year had some crud in it that didn’t make it into the letter.  Bad news shouldn’t come from an ink-jet.  It’s for the hand-written note on the inside of the card for people we only communicate with through Christmas cards – and there aren’t many people like that anymore.

Often, bad news is embarrassing for the people involved.  That makes it embarrassing for readers too — like witnessing a public shaming.  It’s one thing to say the cat ran away or someone broke her arm in a heroic feat of sports.  It’s another thing to report that someone’s weight is out of control or that he has a court-date.  If telling bad news isn’t necessary, leave it out.  If letter-writers can spin bad news with the right kind of humor or hope or, if it’s already well-known, nod to it gently and obliquely, they might get away with sharing it.  Get an editor to confirm if this has been done successfully.  And when in doubt, leave it out.  For the love of all that is holidays, leave it out.

2)      Keep it short.  Christmas letters are an exercise in pith.  Don’t waste space waxing lyrical about snowflakes or telling readers how every bit of news should make us feel.  We can assume someone was happy about finishing the marathon without being told.  If we’re the kind of people who sat down to read the letter in the first place, we’re probably the kind of people who can empathize between the lines.

3)      Avoid the hallmarks of bragging.  Apparently, I haven’t been very good at this.  But may I suggest avoiding the braggiest of all brag words: proud.  For some people – and we can never be sure for whom – the word proud can’t be separated from implications of feeling superior.  Even if we are feeling this way, we shouldn’t admit it in the Christmas letter.  As we write about the best parts of our lives, we’ll probably find that the word “pleased” serves just as well as “proud” anyway.  It expresses all the happiness we’ve felt without running the risk of offending readers prone to feeling oppressed by other people’s good fortune.

4)      Make sure the news we share is rightfully ours.  This is about more than respecting privacy.  Even within families, there’s a hierarchy of ownership over news.  If my sister finds out the sex of her unborn baby, it certainly affects me as the baby’s aunt but I can’t mention it in my newsletter until my sister has had a chance to tell everyone first.  She’s closer to the news so her claim on it supersedes mine and I defer to her on how it’s spread.  The newsletter should be about our own small world where we are the experts and owners of everything.

5)      Avoid predictions.  It might be hard for readers to remember what’s actually come to pass and what we only hoped would happen.  It’s going to be awkward next year when we have to answer to past unfulfilled predictions and “un-tell” the good news we thought we’d be sharing.

6)      Illustrate.  Don’t use lists of vague adjectives to express something that can be told with an example or quick anecdote.  All journalism — including amateur holiday journalism — is essentially storytelling.  Good reporting makes the letter memorable and gives the people in it the character they deserve.  Concrete experiences and direct quotes make for a good newspaper and a good family Christmas newsletter.

I could add something like “be yourself” but, really, that can’t be helped.  Maybe a better parting idea would be that we might enjoy our letters more if they read like something we would like to receive ourselves.  If it’s wacky, so be it.  If it’s stodgy, that’s fine too.  People on our mailing lists already love us.  They’ll forgive us a few cringes.  And we’ll forgive them too.