Wrestling

I was listening to Bob and Doug Mackenzie's 12 Days of Christmas on the radio on Christmas Eve and one of them referred to today as Wrestling Day. It seems apt. I've been wrestling with feelings of apprehension, fatigue, desire, and doubt all day. I'm not sure why. Maybe because this time of year always makes me reflect back on the year that's past and try to plan a better year to come, as I never measure up to my own expectations.

This past year was eventful. I started teaching again after a 9-month hiatus last January. I was also quite anxiously awaiting the report that has since caused so much anguish and distracted myself by trying to buy houses. I did buy one eventually, but only after my first house didn't pass inspection. The second was this one and I remember that when I walked in my agent was waiting for me, sprawled on a lawn chair set up in the living room, and he said, "I think this it it."

I wasn't convinced at first, but the little house grew on me. Now I love it. I'm so glad to have it.

In February I was packing and planning my move, which happened mid-March. The report was ready the week I moved in, but it came out a week or so later and was devastating, as it recommended the half-time access I'd been fighting for three years. [Interestingly, here we are 9 months later and that still hasn't been implemented.]

I can't remember, April through June, except that the cruelest month seemed to extend through the whole period. In July, A began her integration program and I had no work. Summer passed by quickly, measured in cherry tomatoes ripening on sprawling vines along my driveway. We travelled north in August before she began school.

September through December of this year was the most challenging period of all, with A starting school, me teaching 3 new classes, and the case conference. Oh yes, and in there somewhere E and I were officially engaged. The year was the best and worst of times, but I'm thankful for the fleeting days of joy.

Today . . . was that. E and I sat for hours on his leather couch in front of the fire, reading and talking, with the low sun seeping through the back windows. It was soothingly silent for the first time in days. I could hear the hum of the gas and the tick of the clock, but nothing else.

I asked him at supper last night what his 5 predicitons for the year to come were. He said, "I have no idea." I'll try some here, some sure things, some not:

1. I'll meet E's ex-wife for the first time.
2. My ex and I will finally settle on a schedule for A.
3. Things will settle and clear.
4. I'll start something new.
5. We'll move forward, all of us.

Hmm. I hate putting anything down, thinking I'll jinx it, but I'll do it all the same and cross my fingers.

I've been reading Carol Shields today. I finished my latest Joanna Trollope novel on Christmas Day. Both authors make me more certain in my own uncertainty, if that makes any sense. I feel less lonely in it, anyway. They make me think that it is part of the female condition to feel at odds with our roles and obligations and to be struggling to feel authentic admist them.

Christmas Morning

It was 5:00 am Christmas morning
and all through the house
the children were sleeping in
pre-dawn hush.
I was awake
and ready to jog
but it was too dark to go out
so I sat down to blog.
After an eve stuffed with food
and a child ill with fever,
I needed to reflect in
a pre-Christmas breather.
The morning to come
was sure to be manic
as children ripped paper
in gift-driven panic.
But after the frenzy
the hype will die down
and our half-time kids
will be sent out of town,
my partner and I
will have a much needed rest
to be still together and
know we are blessed.

Beat

I thought maybe I could mark tonight, but it doesn't look promising.

A's been sick with a fever, roasting and snuffling through the nights, crying and clinging to me through the days. Her father refused to take her during my exam today . . . so she came with me and was taken off to Starbucks by my TA after gazing in awe at the 120 students in the room and saying, "What names are they?"

Now she's with her dad and I'm trying to figure out how best to use these 24 hours of freedom. I have so much work to do and so little energy for it. I'm also fighting A's cold, having been unavoidably sneezed on and touched with icky fingers.

I have tomorrow to work and maybe Thursday. Friday E and I will try to throw together a Christmas Eve Appetizer Extravaganza for us and the kids. I'm just happy we're together this year. I'm just hoping I can survive the days of marking that lie ahead.

It would all be easier, of course, if I didn't also have to worry about this hearing in the offing. The profile letter that the school put together for me, after all of their dire depictions of A, was not at all reflective of what they said. My lawyer found it weak. I now have to work on them to work on it, and that's the last thing I want to do over the holidays.

Clearing

I did shovel and it was okay, a workout, surely. After that, I left a half-hour before school started to drive A in. It usually takes about 10 minutes, but it doubled in the snow. The piles on the unplowed road were up above my bumper, and I felt myself skidding and sliding far more than my nerves could handle. After dropping A off, I ran off to the car, anxious to get home and pack for our trip to Montebello.

We just returned. It was heaven to be there, to be away, to be in love, to be lazy and indulgent. I read Vanity Fair and Quebec Elle and Vogue. I read about Sean Parker and Lindsay Lohan and their incredibly priviledged lives and how they "party." What does it mean to "party" anyway? I realize I'm no partier . . . neither is E, thankfully, although I do have the distinction of one particularly famous Canadian writer calling me a " bon vivant." Perhaps, I am that. Maybe that's the only thing that saves me from being completely felled by the particularly icy environment I'm currently attempting to navigate.

Snow plowing??

I've been waiting to decide whether it is worth spending $350 for snowplowing. Today will be a test. I have to drive A to school, so I'm going to have one more cup of coffee and then I will try to shovel my driveway . . .

Otherwise, I'll holed up at home marking. I made this week's exam a take-home, so I don't have to go in until Friday.

I watched the documentary Mine last night. It was quite powerful. A picked it up at the library and wanted to watch it. She did watch it with me, falling asleep a third of the way through, but waking a lot through the night . . . hopefully not as a result of the show, which showed the aftermath of Katrina and the abandoned animals who had to be left behind when their owners were rescued. It is always a good thing to check our own experiences against those of others . . . it makes us appreciate what we do have, even if it is a half-foot of snow.

Mid-weekend

I'm waiting for E and his kids to arrive. We're going out to a local restaurant, after a day of hangin' together at his place. The dank and dark of December are getting to me. That and everything else.

I worry about E's daughter. She's ten going on fourteen, and I think her complicated life is getting her down. She woke up crying because she couldn't sleep and was exhausted. Apparently she heard a noise in the night that kept her up and so she watched videos until the early morning. I was worried the noise came from us, but I'm not sure. E always assures me his kids sleep through anything, but obviously she didn't. Our weekends are these strange times of coming together in a fairly new family situation. It is fun most of the time, but tiring, too, as our kids go back and forth so much. How can divorced parents make their messed up lives easier for their kids?

I'm going to try, over the next few weeks, to stabilize A by reverting to her summer schedule. It is the only thing I can control for. From my internet reading on child development, it seems more than 3 days away from either parent can result in overwhelming stress for a child, so this will prevent that, at least. From there, I am hoping something else can be negotiated. When I asked my lawyer about this on Friday he said, "Not likely. He hates you." Which, of course, I didn't need to hear. I told him that and so he repeated it again, a couple of times, and reminded me that my ex spent the entire 2 hour wait for the Case Conference in a small room adjacent to the courtroom, implying that he couldn't bear the sight of me, I guess. Then he added, "I've seen it before. He really hates you."

In my own defence, I said, "Well, I don't know why. I didn't do anything to him."

Which is true. Nothing except stop loving him, if I ever did love him. Now it is hard to tell what went on there. It certainly wasn't what love feels like now. I had no idea what I was dealing with. I suppose I still don't, and that is why the cold feels so unbearable and unremitting.

Mittens

Yesterday was -16 with the windchill, so since I am finished teaching for the term and had marked my quota of essays for the day, I decided to drive to A's school to pick her up. I was particularly concerned about her getting cold . . .



Imagine me standing outside her school, unsure whether they'd even bring the kids out in the cold, stomping to keep my feet warm in my winter boots, and then when I saw the pre-schoolers tumble out the double doors, searching their little bundled bodies for A's face. I saw her friend, S, who ran to greet me at the gate, her small hands jabbing through the fence, asking what the pink, sparkly purse in my hand had in it. I showed S the little pet shop cat and tin of hand balm and noticed her own bare hands and tried to say, in my still-halting French, "Put your mittens on, your hands will get cold."



As I said this, I looked up to see A at the wall with another friend, bare-handed herself and clutching a spruce twig. I waved and she looked away. I shouted, "Put your mittens on . . . " before noticing she didn't even have mittens on . . . but a thin stretchy dollar store glove. That's when I broke school policy and walked around and into the schoolyard to help her get something warm on her hands. I was, I realize, quite upset by this point. She'd been out in the cold for several minutes and none of the teachers wandering around had noticed the children's bare hands or helped them get mittens on them. Meanwhile, the teachers were so bundled, it was likely they couldn't see past their hoods and scarves to the kids at all. I rushed to A, who started to cry, as she always seems to whenenver she sees me after seeing her dad. I put her spruce twig in her bag and searched for her mittens, which were in the pocket of her bag. She refused to wear them, at this point, as she was crying and somehow upset with me, probably for breaking the 4th wall convention of the school yard, whereby I'm supposed to remain outside the fence, observing until 3:25 pm.



As I explained the importance of mitts on hands, A pulled another silly, stretchy glove from her pocket and pulled it on. I calmed down slightly and looked around for the teacher, wondering how anyone with any sense would allow children out without mittens in those kinds of temperatures.



As I asked for Mme. T, I was directed inside, so went, and ran into A's friend's mom, whom I told about the debacle. Her comment was, "It was chaos in there today." Very reassuring.

I didn't find the teacher I was looking for, so trundled back outside until I did. In my crap French I explained that A had come out without mittens.



She replied, (in French) "She didn't have any mittens. I looked everywhere."



I then zipped opened A's bag and showed her the two sets of mittens in the pocket and said, "She had mittens in her bag."



Mme. T said, "Oh, we don't look in their bags."



"Incroyable!" I snorted.



Mme . T said, "She didn't come to school with mittens today and there was nothing in her cubby."



"Well, next time, can't you look in her bag?" I asked.



She seemed to hesitate. She obviously wasn't enjoying this conversation.



"She's only four years old," I said. "She spent last night at her father's. Can't you help her find her mittens?" My voice, I realize, was rising.



The conversation ended as she made some excuse to walk away. That wasn't the end of it, but that's all I'll say because I just lost the rest of this post to the ether . . .

The point is, how can this so-called student-centered school be so callous?

Blind

Perhaps I was going around in circles there because I wasn't understanding what was right before my eyes. I did feel it, but I had no confirmation for it. Now I do.

I met with A's teacher the week after the case conference and I was left speechless and agonized by what she said. My beautiful, intelligent daughter cannot function at school, cries constantly, isn't eating, slips off her chair and cannot rouse herself enough to get up, is confused and confounded by her schedule and is completely without happiness, joy, or innocence. She is "carrying the world on her shoulders," according to her teacher and is always sad. The teacher also said that my daughter always asks about me and says she misses me, but she does not say she misses her father.

Everytime the teacher opened her mouth, I reeled back as though struck. She nodded at me sagely. I was in shock for some time thereafter, then became angry. Even as I've been saying that my daughter has been under tremendous stress, even with the support of my doctor, my ex claimed I was making it up. His lawyer blamed me.

When I finally got to speak with my lawyer last week (he was apparently unavailable for 2 days of previous calls), he told me that my ex would likely take me to court on an emergency motion if I reverted to the court-ordered schedule. I have a hard time imagining how that could be justified. He didn't explain. He never does.

So, here I am again, taking initiative alone, trying to protect my daughter from harm, sick-at-heart to hear that she is suffering and frustrated beyond belief that I can't do more to help her and that her father refuses to.