Working Girl

I know that, according to the experts, the key to a successful blog is regular posting. But...life can get in the way.

Tonight I'm having a cocktail and toasting the end of teaching for 2012. I still have a stack of grading waiting for me, but classes are over! And I survived.

I didn't just survive my first term back in the classroom after maternity leave, I survived my first term back in the classroom after maternity leave while also dealing with the most severe flare up of my Crohn's disease since 2006. Yup--I deserve a drink.

I've been lucky enough to have been pretty healthy for the last 3 years. Healthy enough to go off the meds that could harm a fetus, spend 9 months trying to get pregnant, 9 months pregnant (well, 7 and a half months), and 15 months at home with my babe. Then I went back to work and it all went to shit--literally. It's hard not to look for a correlation there...

I quickly identified my priorities this Fall, and I was a little surprised at the extent to which work wasn't anywhere near the top of the list. I was actually looking forward to going back to work in September. I was ready to get back in the classroom, and was excited to start my first term as Chair of my department. By the end of August the signs were there that my health was going to be an issue, and by the end of September I was already treading water at work and in life, but--true to my M.O.--I was in full denial. By the end of October I was barely functioning and denial was no longer an option. Instead I got a little perspective.

So as I prepare to spend the next 2 weeks finally catching up on all the marking that's been pushed to the back burner, I'm not sorry that I spent what energy I had in the last 3 months on my family. I'm not sorry that I spent my weekends enjoying late breakfasts and getting nothing accomplished. I'm not sorry that I spent my healthy moments laughing with my husband and son rather than chained to my laptop and all the student papers I should have been grading.

The moral of my story? I may not be capable of balancing life and work, and I'm okay with that. I will work to support my life, but at the end of the day, life is where real happiness lies.

The Sweetest Thing

Tonight I watched the latest episode of Emily Owens, MD on Video on Demand, and one of the cases featured was about a baby who needed heart surgery in utero if he was going to have any chance at survival. I watched the mother cry and clutch her round belly, and it made me think about the relationship I had with Euan before he was born.

Back then he wasn't yet a he, and to Blaine and I he was Echo or Baby E (because though we didn't know what we were having, our top boy and girl names both started with "E"). Even after I started feeling movement, the baby in my belly remained an amazingly abstract concept for me. In fact, for several weeks after Euan was born, I still referred to Euan and "the baby" as if they were separate entities. I had trouble reconciling the fact that they were one and the same. Now, looking back, I can see that part of the emotional upheaval I experienced in the first few days after Euan's birth wasn't just the result of gushing hormones; I was mourning the end of my pregnancy. Even though I was celebrating the (earlier than planned) birth of my son, I longed for the intimacy of carrying him inside of me. In the immediate aftermath of his birth, I didn't feel the same connection.

I feel terrible admitting that here, and for weeks--if not months--after Euan was born, I thought I must be a horrible mother because of it. I think Euan was at least a month old before I said to him "I love you" out loud. I thought it every time I kissed him and laid him down to sleep, but for what felt like the longest time I couldn't bring myself to say it out loud, and I didn't know why. I've thought about it a lot in the months since, however, and I think I've figured it out. The thing was, Euan was a stranger. I recognized him from his pictures (I'd had many ultrasounds in the weeks before he arrived), but I didn't know him. We didn't know each other.

The reason I can admit all this here, though, is because things have changed. Euan still isn't "the baby," but now he's my baby, and there are no words to describe that love. Now I say, "I love you, baby" a hundred times a day, without thinking about it, simply because I can't not say it. Euan and I have known each other for nearly 18 months now, and we've "become accustomed to each other's faces," as the refrain goes. The relationship isn't always perfect--he gets frustrated, I get impatient--but there is absolutely nothing like it. When I was pregnant I may have carried his body inside mine, but now I know I carry his heart. Corny? Maybe. Amazing? Awesome? Unparalleled? Definitely. What can I say? He's my son.

Lest We Forget

Today is Remembrance Day, so of course my thoughts are with my grandfathers, who both fought in World War II, and who are both gone now. Each year in the week leading up to November 11th, as I watch the variety of TV specials dedicated to those who have fought and died in our many--too many--wars, I think about my grandfathers and all of the things I should have asked them. Should have, but never did.

It's an interesting thing, asking someone to talk about war. I think by the time I was old enough to understand what war meant, and that my grandfathers had both experienced it personally, I was also old enough to sense that many people don't want to talk about their war experiences. Even though my Grandpa Spidel made a career out of the military, and even though the walls of my grandparent's basement rec room were covered in the framed memorabilia of Grandpa's time in the Air Force, I can't remember him ever talking about the War. His time on the DEW Line during the Cold War, sure. Stories about meeting buddies in the Mess for coffee and camaraderie, okay. Exciting details about how, as a radar officer, he would track Santa's progress each Christmas Eve so all the kids on the base would know exactly when they had to be in bed and asleep, of course! But the War? Never. The closest he ever got--in front of me, anyway--was a reference once to a friend who had been a POW in a Japanese camp during the last months of the war. But I can't remember him ever speaking about his own war experiences. Not once.

Although I had a different relationship with my Grandpa Garrett, it was much the same. I knew he had been to the War, had served in the army and been on the European front. I even knew that he had come home with shrapnel embedded in his skull. (Years later we wondered if that had anything to do with the early onset of his Alzheimer's.) But Grandpa Garrett never spoke to me about his wartime experiences, and I never asked. And now, like Grandpa Spidel, he's gone, and so is my chance to find out what they went through.

War is still everywhere, but in Canada we are so very fortunate to not have it impact each and every one of us directly, and on a daily basis. The families of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan and around the world live every day with the consequences of war, but most of us can go for days at a time--if we keep the news off--and not have war touch us. War is not real for most of us. It's something we encounter on TV, and in movies and video games. It's not in our pantries or our closets, and it's not at our dining room tables or in our beds at night. And for that privilege I stop today to think about my grandfathers, and all the other grandfathers and fathers and uncles and brothers, mothers, sisters, aunts, and friends, who have made it possible for me to sometimes forget just how lucky I am to live in a place where I am free. Free to remember, free to forget, free to protest, free to speak and to write. Free.

A Blog of One's Own

Why blog? This is the question I've been asking myself for ages. What terrain could I possibly cover that hundreds—or thousands—of bloggers haven’t trodden before me? I still don’t have the answer to that question, but recently the voice in my head has started asking, Why not blog? It started as a whisper, persistent and pestering, and has turned into a constant nag at the edge of my consciousness. Get over yourself, the voice says, stop assuming that what you write has to actually be read by anyone to have meaning and value. Do you think Virginia Woolf wrote letters and journals assuming that they would have a public audience one day? Well, maybe, but look at how she ended up. Who needs that kind of pressure? So, save for the small cadre of dedicated readers who have pledged to believe in me no matter what, I have decided to write for myself.

But the question remains—Why blog? Why not just get a nice, leather-bound notebook, or one of paper hand-made by a local artisan, and keep a journal? The thing is, when I do something that is genuinely just for me, I don’t usually follow through. I have stacks of beautifully bound notebooks, partially filled, that have followed me from home to home and city to city over the years. I've tried, but I’m just not a diarist. So I need the illusion of an audience to keep me going. Does that make me some sort of closeted exhibitionist? That’s probably a topic for another entry. Although, it does seem almost anachronistic, doesn't it, in this age of reality TV and the celebrity overshare, to keep private thoughts private. But the thing is, what I want to write about aren't really private thoughts, per se. What this blog will really be is a kind of scrapbook. A digital memory-keeper.

You see—here comes the first real tidbit about who I am—I have a young son, and as I watch him grow way too quickly, I’m becoming increasingly preoccupied with my memories of him. I want to be sure I do remember—as much as possible. And it’s not just about milestones. Those are things I’m never likely to forget. I’m talking about those quiet times, the simple moments when I feel as though the sun is shining just for us, when I stop to take a breath and fully be with my baby. Because that is the gift that Euan has given me: he has helped me to pause and enjoy the sunshine and simple things. And that’s something I just can’t keep to myself.

Euan--and yes, the legs of the sleepers are way too long!

Along the way I'm sure readers will learn many more things about me and my family, things that aren't necessarily about Euan, but impact and are impacted by the raising of him--like my ongoing battle with Crohn's disease and depression. These are also things that have come to define at least a part of who I am--despite my best efforts to swaddle myself in a comforting sheath of denial. Like it or not, my struggles with my health and well-being are not separate from who I am as wife and mother, and in recent years I've tried to be more open about the challenges I face because the one thing I can say for sure is that there is no power in silence. But there is sunshine to be found in simple things, and I'm trying hard to keep out of the shadows and live in the light.