The Pear Tree

Archive for the ‘The Mother Load’ Category

I had an epiphany today and it was all thanks to Cyndi Lauper. I was in the grocery store, pushing my kids, Miss Two and Mr. Four, in a buggy, and suddenly the song ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ came on, very faintly.

“It’s ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,’” I enthused.

Blank stares.

Something surged in me. Another side of me. One that I haven’t been in touch with for several years now. The me that used to dress up and dance as Cyndi Lauper for lip-synch competitions at my neighbourhood roller rink back in the early 1980s. The me that actually shaved my hair on one side and wore neon pink nail polish. The me that would bounce and flail my arms and make goofy faces to the music.

Suddenly, and joltingly, a flood of memories tsunamied over me of a very different person than the comparatively dour one pushing a shopping cart through the grocery store.

“I was fun, once,” I wanted to explain.

But they wouldn’t have understood. Not yet. Not at the ages of two and four.

To them, I am a life force. A protector. A motivator. A spiritual guide and a provider of food and bed, clean clothes, hugs and safety. I am The Mom. I’m supposed to (and do) frown when they do something naughty. I smile benevolently when they say something cute. I fret when they’ve been quiet for too long or don’t eat enough or act inappropriately in public, and have started to sport the lines on my forehead that prove it.

And suddenly I wanted to cry because the me I am now seems so old and fettered in comparison to the me that was and how did that come to be?

I remember learning, at the age of 12 or 13, that my mum was once a big fan of The Beatles and Elvis and The Dave Clark Five and being incredulous because this was My Mum, and how did she know about these things? I couldn’t believe that she had once worn miniskirts or crushed on boys or (on the rare occasion) skipped school. But every now and then, that Old Her would show itself.

That’s when she’d do a few doughnuts in the school parking lot, turning the heads of the other, more conservative parents – and us kids.

“That was really cool, mum,” we’d exclaim. “Where did that come from?” Not realizing, not even fathoming, that mums can be cool – or at least that they used to be, before they had us.

Don’t get me wrong: I do not want to shave my head again. I would never wear That Much make-up at one time again or dance like I was having a seizure (well, okay, maybe that last one, but only on special occasions). I wouldn’t even do it all again if I never had kids.

I guess the thing I took from that little trip down memory lane in Aisle 3 is this: That below all the layers of responsibility and seriousness and nurturing and motherliness there still remains a 12-year-old girl who just wants to have fun.

And I can’t wait for my kids to get to know her better.

- Words by Lori-Anne Poirier

- Photos from the arvhives

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The Mother Load is a syndicated column about writer Lori-Anne Poirier’s adventures in motherhood and runs weekly in thePenticton Herald and  www.beaconnews.ca.

For the last two weeks, since the beginning of December, we have begun our mornings by opening the little doors of our Advent calendars. Yes, calendars, plural. We have one with chocolates, one with pictures behind windows, one with daily activities to do together as a family, and a Playmobil forest scene.

All have been useful tools to help build and extend the excitement of the season, but the Playmobil one actually surprised me with the unexpected life lesson that came with it (and at no extra charge!).

Every day between December 1 and December 24, my two kids get to open another box. Each box contains a Playmobil toy. There are trees, plants, all manner of forest creatures, and sustenance for them such as berries, carrots, hay, and itty-bitty beets and turnips.

The first box they opened contained a green, piece-together tree, a plastic tuft of grass and two tiny birds. We let them play for a bit before encouraging them to find a home for them on the paper backdrop that comes with the set, boasting a picture of a snow-covered forest.

After the initial excitement wore off, my four-year-old son quickly grew disenchanted. He had seen the picture on the box and knew there was more.

“I want the reindeer now,” he demanded.

“I’m sorry,” I had to explain. “The reindeer are in another box.”

“Which box? I want to open that box now,” was his retort.

I explained again that he only gets one box a day. And then we moved on.

The next day, all he got was a lousy tree branch, bare of leaves, to set beside the lush, green one he’d gotten the day before.

“I want a different one,” he pleaded. “I want some animals. Take this one back and let me open a different number.”

It was then that the lesson showed itself, to him as well as to me.

You see, I told him, it’s kind of like life. You get one box a day. You don’t get to choose what’s in it, and you don’t get to trade up for something else. It might seem insignificant and boring, like a gnarly old tree with no leaves on it, but the trick is to bide your time, keep adding each piece as it comes, and in the end you should have something quite wonderful.

And sure enough. Already our little forest is filling up with badgers and racoons, mice, boar, reindeer and birds, as well as an abundance of food and foliage. By the time we get to December 24 there will hardly be enough room for all of them, although I’m sure no one will mind the crowded conditions – least of all my son.

He’s finally stopped complaining about his daily find. While I’d like to think it’s because he understood my explanation, it probably has more to do with the fact that the ensuing boxes have had more exciting treasures hidden in them.

I think it also has something to do with how full his little diorama is becoming. It’s hard when you’re just starting out and don’t have many pieces to work with. We want more, and we want it all, now. It’s so easy to get impatient and forget to enjoy the little bit we do have. But the more it grows, the more there is to rearrange and play with and (hopefully) we can begin to enjoy the process.

I must remember this when I pack away the Playmobil until next year and continue to build my own, life-sized scene.

-Words and photo by Lori-Anne Poirier

The Mother Load is a syndicated column about writer Lori-Anne Poirier’s adventures in motherhood and runs weekly in thePenticton Herald and  www.beaconnews.ca.

I have ceased to exist. At least virtually speaking.

Last week I disabled my Facebook account. And you probably know, if you go anywhere on the internet today, how entwined the social media site has become to pretty much every aspect of the virtual world. Businesses have Facebook fan pages, news reports have “like” buttons that automatically update to your “friends” what you’re reading, and smart phones can even keep track of your whereabouts so that every detail of your life can be properly chronicled.

Oh, it’s fun. I can be sitting in a café in Paris and a fly lands in my café au lait and I can get on my phone and update the world that this has just happened. And the coolest part is that people will actually care and comment back full of sympathy or support or jealousy or disgust! It’s a heady experience.

I was addicted almost immediately after joining, some four years ago. Friends and roommates, classmates and neighbours I hadn’t seen in decades were suddenly part of my life again, sharing their world and commenting on mine.

After telling my husband “Happy Birthday,” I got on Facebook and sent him a direct message because “it’s not official until it’s on Facebook.”

I once made the status update, “if something happens to me and I don’t write about it on Facebook, did it really happen?”

Of course these comments were made tongue very much in cheek. But lately I’ve been feeling increasingly bothered by the role Facebook plays in my life.

A couple of weeks ago I tried an internet cleanse – an attempt to sort of detoxify my mind from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Etsy, Youtube, email, blogs, news sites, and on and on and on and on…

Well that was a miserable failure. The more I tried to stay away the stronger the compulsion grew to just take a peek. Just 45 seconds. That expanded to a minute, and then two, and then five, and before the designated week was out, I was as bad as ever.

You’ve probably heard reports on how spending time on the internet rewires our brains. How it turns us a little bit ADD. I was seeing that. But what bothered me more was the compulsion – especially for Facebook, since the updates are frequent – to be “on” so that I don’t miss something.

My computer is stationed in the middle of our house, and – I kid you not – I could not walk by most times without stopping just quickly to refresh Facebook or add a comment.

Did anyone say anything new? Has anyone seen that pithy comment I wrote? Have they commented back? “Liked” it? And then I would base the cleverness of whatever I said on how many “likes” or comments I would get. Does anyone else find this disturbing?

But what finally put me over the edge, to say, “enough is enough,” to pull the plug on my dependency, was when I started to get cranky with my kids for bothering me while I was online.

“Just a minute,” I’d snap. “I’ll be right there – just leave me alone for one minute and I’ll be done and play with you then.” Five minutes later I was still absorbed in this virtual world.

I’ve never done drugs, but I’ve read about the symptoms of addiction and my behaviour was starting to resemble some of them.

So, one morning last week, I disabled my Facebook account. It’s not deleted. I can still go back. But I need some time away. Time to de-virtualize myself. Time to play with my kids and not just watch them out of the corned of one eye while 90 per cent of my attention goes to the screen into another world.

I never told anybody – I just quietly disappeared – and I wonder when (or if) they’ll notice I’m gone.

The first day was hard, I will admit. I kept wondering what everyone was talking about. I wrote “status updates” on post-it notes and stuck them on the fridge door (see photo, top).

It’s been a week now, and I’m actually starting to feel the littlest bit liberated. Okay, I’ve claimed that before, when I did the afforementioned internet cleanse, right before I fell off the band wagon.

My hope is to push past the feeling of liberation when I can pass my computer without hitting refresh, and get to the point of just feeling normal.

Because existing in the virtual world isn’t really existing at all.

The Mother Load is a syndicated column about writer Lori-Anne Poirier’s adventures in motherhood and runs weekly in the Penticton Herald and  www.beaconnews.ca.

- Words and photo by Lori-Anne Poirier

I went on a rampage today. A purge. A cleanse. A cull. Through the house, every room, closet and cranny.

I was merciless, chucking anything and everything that couldn’t first convince me it served a purpose outside of consuming precious space.

In addition to an embarrassment of stuffies, puzzle pieces, broken crayons and dried out felt tip markers, more stuffies and a vast collection of long-since abandoned baby rattles and thingamajigs, there was my stuff.

Think clothes I’ve held onto for 15-odd years, perfume bottles, hair accessories, chipped coffee cups, kitchen gadgets that never made it out of their respective boxes, and CDs that I repented of buying after only one listen. Don’t even get me started on the stacks of magazines, the little scraps of paper, theatre tickets and files of “inspiring ideas.”

A number of things precipitated this action. First and foremost was the desire to be able to walk across our garage floor without having to exercise our parkour skillz. In the four years we’ve lived in our home, our basement garage has been overtaken with a gobsmacking amount of “storage” as we’ve accumulated more things and fancier things and more technologically cutting edge things.

The second little prompt was Thanksgiving, last month, and the realization that we have so much to be thankful for followed by the deeper realization that so much of what I consider to be thankfulness for blessings is really more smugness about my personal waste. And the more I thought about it the more I decided that this is not something I or we should be proud of.

Like many kids in 2011, mine are so “blessed” with toys that there’s a pile of them taller than me down in the basement, in addition to the plethora upstairs, because if they had them all in their little bedrooms there wouldn’t be room for them in their beds at night.

This was never my intention. Before they were born, I had decided that we would have a simple life, with just a few well-loved toys. A few things to inspire their imagination and keep them occupied.

But we have generous relatives and friends. That’s a good thing, but it tends to add up to a ridiculous accumulation of stuff. Stuff, stuff, stuffity stuff. This week I reached my breaking point.

It was starting to feel, to me, anyway, like our stuff was controlling us, rather than the other way round. I want clean surfaces again. I want minimalism. I want order and charm and simplicity and lightness. I want my kids (and my husband and I) to value what they (what we) have instead of thinking of everything as disposable because there’s more – so much more – just waiting to replace it.

I admit that I’m a packrat. I save everything, from letters to keepsakes to buttons and little pieces that break off of I don’t know what but I might find out some day and be really glad I can fix them.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s not like I’m a candidate for A&E’s Hoarders TV show. I’m not that bad. But I live in a culture of accumulation and I fall for the hype that having more and bigger and better things will make my life more and bigger and better, too.

What I’m thinking, at least right now, is that it’s only making us – or at least me – messier and more weighed down.

And I’m feeling a little bit greedy – like a little squirrel collecting way more nuts than it will ever eat, just because it can. It’s a gluttony of a different sort. And I think I’m ready for a material diet.

I look at my donation pile and see books, hair curlers, a crimping iron, hats I haven’t worn in five years, little trinket boxes, purses, shoes, blankets, trinkets – in short, things and more things I’ve been holding onto, whether through greed or sentimentality, for way too long.

It’s finally time to liberate them. And me.

- Words and photos by Lori-Anne Poirier

The beach was all ours when we arrived last Thursday morning, just me and two small, adventure-seeking kids. And it couldn’t have been more enticing if it had been a hot day in June.

The clouds above were lowering. The lake was choppy, dark and frigid. A cool zephyr blew up the beach from off the lake.

Hardly the makings of a day at the beach, you say? Well we were, after all, more than halfway through October. But I have lately come to decide that beaches – especially in the Okanagan where there’s sand and surf aplenty – should not be reserved as summertime destinations only.

Just because there’s no sun to tan you, just because the water’s too cold to swim in, just because there’s snow on the ground (thank heavens, not yet, though), doesn’t mean it’s not a good day for the beach. In fact it’s better, because there’s no labyrinth of bodies to navigate, no personal body issue stress since you’re fully clothed with gloves and scarf to boot, and no worries about letting your kids wander more than five feet from you because there’s no crowd for them to get lost in.

I felt torn, standing in the sand with my wellies on and taking it all in, between feeling sorry that more people weren’t there to enjoy the amazingness of an autumn morning at the beach, and smug that we were the only ones privileged to be in that particular place at that particular time.

Leaves as luminescent as refined gold drifted around our feet. A few seagulls circled overhead, their melancholy cry carried over the breeze and out with the waves.

My kids and I played chase. We dug through the sand with our plastic shovels and buckets and sifter. We didn’t find any treasures or (fortunately) rubbish because the sand had already been cleaned. We could still see the lined tracks from the mechanical beach cleaner.

My daughter threw handfuls of sand in the water while my son pretended to fish with a long, skinny stick. I pushed them on the swings. And pushed, and pushed, and pushed. Swings are always a hit in our family.

Just before lunch, a kitesurfer showed up, and we watched him struggle to get his kite up before giving up and packing it in.

For lunch, we munched on peanut butter and honey sandwiches, an apple each and a coffee shop cake pop, while staring out at the water. We talked about anything and nothing. And then, just before we got into the cake pops, a few fat, sloppy raindrops began to fall.

They didn’t want to go. The kids, I mean.

“It will stop soon, mum, I’m sure,” my son assured me with his four-year-old trove of wisdom and experience.

He may have been right, but it was almost time to bring the adventure to an end, anyway, and the rain offered a valid excuse. We packed up our things and headed back to the car.

“We’ll come back when it stops,” my son insisted.

“We can come back tomorrow, can’t we?” he proposed.

I looked back once more, to see a young couple, holding hands, heading for a bench with a view. The entire beach was theirs, now. And I hope it was as magical for them as it was for us.

The Mother Load is a weekly column that runs in the Penticton Herald, www.beaconnews.ca and The Pear Tree.

- Words and photos by Lori-Anne Poirier