Bought the t-shirt

Today, my son wore his Istanbul t-shirt that a friend got for him last year. It fits now and the weather is warming up so it seemed the perfect time. I loved seeing him in it. I loved watching the parents at our mom & tots activity double-take on it then double-take on me ("Is she Turkish? Is his father?"). I love that this t-shirt makes him a traveller, pushes him out beyond the boundaries of Montreal, Quebec and Canada into the wider world of exotic clothing. I love the humour in the image of an almost two-year old, world weary traveller.

He also has a silk pyjama set from Vietnam and an Indian outfit, with sash and draw-string pants. But these I am less sure of. Can I put these on him? Will I be just another middle-class-ish white woman dressing my boy 'ethnic'? I know exactly the thoughts that would go through my head if I saw someone else's white kid kitted-out in a Peruvian poncho and faux-African print pants. My eyes would be rolling in my head. I would be mumbling about cultural appropriation and colonial grabbing.

But a t-shirt? That seems ok. Right? It claims exoticism yet is in a form that says North American. It says "I travel but I know my place. " It says "There is irony here, below my chin and above my diaper."

Inspired by the Istanbul t-shirt, I picked-up a Cuba one at the friperie.

Emotional Twos

We are in the home stretch, reaching towards my son's second birthday which falls right in the middle of the summer. When people ask me how old he is now, I just answer "He'll be two this summer." The coming months are a preparation for the much feared terrible twos.

I am starting to get a taste for what lies ahead. My son's favourite word is 'no'. I thought we had skipped this stage but I was wrong. "Shall we go to the park?" "No." "Time for a bath." "No." "Time to put the markers away." "No." "Do you want to snuggle with mummy?" "No." It has become the most powerful word in our house. And he uses it with the disdain usually reserved for fourteen year-old girls. "Do you want some cheese?" His look tells me that he can tell I am trying too hard, that what I am offering is second-rate, that by merely asking I have lowered myself in his esteem. "No."

And the emotions. Oh, the emotions. Tears at the drop of a hat, in fact, sometimes the hat doesn't even need to be dropped, just mentioned. "Shall we put on our hat?" "No. Wahhhhhhhhh." Excitement so bright and loud that it often takes a tumble to calm it. To wit, watch him climb in and out of the crib in near hysteria for as long as the mood holds or he lands on his head. He is autocratic. A second favourite word after 'no' is 'more'. More songs, more stories, more snacks. But beware the fool who chooses the wrong song, story or snack. "No, no. Wahhhhhhhhhhh."

I think this is about proportion. Proportion and emotion. Up until now my little man was a fairly straight-forward kind of guy, a meat and potatoes, I know what I like and I like what I know, two-car garage and an unquestioned house in the suburbs sort. Now, he's getting the emotions flooding in and he sure doesn't know how to handle it. He's signing up for 'wild man' weekends, he's calling his friends up in the middle of the night and flying into a rage about missing a parking spot. Everything is off-kilter. One minute it's 'I'M SO HAPPY!" the next it's "I NEED THAT CELLPHONE OR I WILL DIE!"

Maybe the next year will be a process of learning how to deal with strong emotion: joy, disappointment, frustration, excitement, pride. But for now, they sweep over him like a wave, he totters and sometimes goes under, consumed by the feeling. Maybe the unending 'no' is his way to slow the flood.

(The image, by the way, is from Jill Greenberg's series "End Game" in which she photographed children after she had taken away their toy or candy. Ouch.)

The attraction of memoir is (dis)honesty

I have been thinking about writing lately. I am seeing if I can go from one who reads to one who writes. It is a humbling challenge especially when I read lines like "I was a young woman of occasional good looks" or references to childhood as the murky sea-floor while the world of adults happens up on the surface of the ocean (Nuala O'Faolain, Are You Somebody?, 1996). Now that is writing but then again, she was someone who dedicated her life to the literary way. I am just playing.

I have always thought to write about my family. If no one does it before me, I will write about the women who came before. Because of world wars, migration and Nazi ovens, my foray into the past can only go so far. In fact, the furthest I can get is my grandmother who died many, many years before I was even a thought. But my grandmother and my own mother are interesting enough in their own right to fill at least several hundred pages.

This is what I know about my grandmother: She survived the war. She was beautiful and blonde and jumped from a train on her way to a death camp. She loved to skate, something my mother, for all her effort, was never able to master. She had an affair with a well-known writer who demolished her in a short story. She was bossy and proud and smart. She was good at maths at the local gymnasium.

This is how I would recreate her:
-Summer in Poland, in a thin dress with washed out flowers on it, squinting maybe, as she looks across a field of dry grass. I would like to feel the ambition coursing through her veins, reaching into her hands, pushing down into her feet, putting her on edge. It is a small town.
-I would like to give a voice to her own survival. Everyone who survived did so through luck and finger-nails-scratching-the-dirt determination, through conniving and betrayals, and walking on when you really want to turn back. And then they all came here and pushed the horrors of what they'd seen and done far, far away. I would like her to speak. To speak with pride. To say out loud the inherent victory of "I survived" that wipes out any hint of shame.
-I would have her skating in fur-trimmed coat and warm gloves; laughing and looking like a cross between Ingrid Bergman and me. Maybe a cigarette between gloved fingers (let's make them turquoise) and that old fashioned, too bright, chalky lipstick from the fifties. Men watching as she glides past, her legs encased in stockings. Snow on eyelashes and laughter in frosty gusts.

The sound of silence

This blog business is rather interesting. I have, in recent days, not had much to write. I have tried to think of various topics of interest but have excluded them for being too chatty, too personal, too keen, or just too boring. I started an entry about the surprising number of parents killing their children in recent weeks but that was too morbid.

In an online world where there is often too much blather, spelling mistakes, misinformation, and stupid opinion, I have been silent. Maybe that is a good thing. Creativity comes and goes like desire, like the moon.

This process is for me one of exploring writing, of embracing the word as a creative force. I am trying to respect the ebb and flow of that energy.

In other news, I have finally joined the 21st century and have decided to get a cell phone. I am thinking of using the following as my ringtone. Rock it, Billy!

Reading round-up

I found Chuck Palahnuik's Lullaby (2002) on the sidewalk a week ago. I read half and then gave up. I don't usually give up on books halfway through but there is so much good stuff to read out there and this book just wasn't it. Long on description, light on credible characters and a rather irritating obsession with some white girl rasta's shaved hoo-ha. Probably why it was on the sidewalk in the first place.

Before picking up Lullaby, I read Shakespeare by Bill Bryson (2007) of Notes from a Small Island fame. A quick and light read. Like a panini in an airport, it won't really fill you up but the grilled veggies are nice if expensive. This was a loaner so cheaper than a panini.

I am onto Amos Oz's To Know a Woman (1991), a pass-on from a friend trying to lighten her library. I am only a few pages into it but at least it is decent if somewhat depressing writing.

And finally, I picked up David Adams Richards's Mercy Among the Children (2000) at the second hand shop (I also picked up a plastic dump-truck). It has won many awards, sometimes a sign of good things.

What are you reading?