So I’m driving home from Co-Op when Mark asks to drive home through the alley across the street. He wants to see a 1950’s vintage car that a neighbour has in his yard, ostensibly to restore. He calls this car the “Old Hudson Hornet” after the character in the Cars movie. It certainly does resemble that character, or would if it a) had an engine, b) was painted blue, and c) had a face. Anyway, I agree. As we are driving past, I can’t help but notice that, hanging from the place its engine would be if it had an engine is a deer. A field-dressed deer. A field-dressed deer that is looking at me with its big dead eyes.

I don’t say anything. The boys don’t say anything. Did they notice it? If so, why aren’t they saying anything? If not, is there something wrong with their vision? I drive home in silence, remove boys and groceries from the van, uncharacteristically order the boys to “sit on the couch and watch TV”, and phone Rob at work. When he answers, I burst into tears, and he naturally thinks that some disaster has befallen. When I finally choke out what happened he starts laughing uncontrollably. “Aren’t you surprised this hasn’t happened before?” he asks, appropriately, since our neighbour wears camouflage on a daily basis and has a bumper sticker stating that his truck is protected by Smith and Weston.

This incident reminded me of a story I heard many years ago, back when I was gainfully employed as opposed to the bon-bon eating housewife that I have become. Back then, I was working for an oil company and drove out to visit and tour one of their terminals located in Rimbey, Alberta. For those of you who don’t know Rimbey, it is a typical small Albertan town where about 90% of the vehicles are pickup trucks, and 90% of those pickup trucks are equipped with gun racks.

After my tour of the terminal, the operator took me out for lunch at the ubiquitous Chinese-Western restaurant, the sort of establishment at which you can dip your dumplings in Thousand Island dressing. Over lunch, Larry related the tale to me, tenderhearted, mostly-vegetarian, 24-year-old innocent that I was, the gory tale which featured the one and only time that he had hit an animal with his car.

It was Christmas Eve. Larry was heading home from the hardware store with his two small children in tow. A deer jumped in front of his truck. When he got out he realized that the deer was still alive, but injured, and the impact had sent the deer flying into, unbelievably, a barbed-wire fence. There was really only one humane thing to do, but Larry realized he didn’t have his gun with him. He began searching for something heavy. Fortunately a co-worker drove by and stopped when Larry flagged him down. The co-worker did have his gun with him, which he promptly lent to Larry. The gruesome job finished, Larry got back into his truck which contained wailing and hysterical children. Not only had they just witnessed the tragic scene, but they assumed, on account of it being Christmas Eve, that their father had just taken down one of Santa’s reindeer.

It just occurred to me that my children have never made a list for Santa. It also occurred to me that Christmas Eve is three weeks away, and they have never stated “I hope Santa brings me ____”. Hmm. My first thought was “Do they know that it is acceptable to make a wish list at Christmas time?” Certainly I am frequently guilty of not giving them enough information. Is this something that I should bring up? My second thought was “Is it possible that they have so much stuff that they can’t think of other things to want?” Because really, between two sets of highly indulgent grandparents, plus aunts and uncles, they certainly do amass a lot of gifts, at Christmas, on their birthdays, and on other occasions throughout the year.

I don’t really think that explains it though. We have been reading many books about Christmas, and a lot of them center around receiving gifts Christmas morning. They do have a lot of stuff but take them into Costco and they instantly covet a tow truck nearly identical to one they already own. This brings me to my third thought, which has to do with advertising, or lack thereof.

During the day, the only television they are exposed to is the morning and evening news (if you can call Breakfast Television “news”) and Treehouse. The greatest thing about Treehouse (other than the great new show Toot and Puddle) is the lack of advertising. Sure, they have “this program brought to you by…” but, with the exception of a spaceship/ rocket launcher advertisement, none of those “brought to you by’s” have ever captured their attention.

Recently on the news (or maybe it was Breakfast Television) Calgary was stated as having one of the highest rates of consumer debt in the country. This didn’t overly surprise me as this city has had a boom for a long time, and seems to have been relatively insulated from economic downturns felt in other parts of the country. Calgary seems especially bad in terms of “keeping up with the Joneses”. You have an Audi, I want a Jag. You have a giant house, I want a bigger one. Throw in some sly advertising, and suddenly you have a city choked with consumer debt and facing economic crisis.

So what does this have to do with Christmas and parenting? It’s a tricky one. This is the time of year that we are supposed to, as Charlie Brown says, focus on the true meaning of Christmas and teach our children about giving, not receiving. And of course we all try to do that. However, advertising is everywhere, and even if it hasn’t hit my children yet it certainly hits me. Who is immune to some good advertising? I look around my house and although it is nice, cozy, and paid-for, I experience dissatisfaction when I think about my friend’s bright new infill. I go to Lululemon and instantly think that my yoga practice would be better if I just had that new Ujjayi top. Then I pull myself together and think a) what a terrible way to think about yoga, and b) I actually already have that top, just in a different colour.

How do you teach your kids about the true meaning of Christmas? There are all sorts of answers in parenting books and magazines, such as filling a shoebox for the underprivileged or having a family volunteer night, and I agree with those sentiments. More importantly though, I believe you need to start with yourself. I think that if you can stay above the wave of consumerism, if you can pass on something that you want, if you can watch that commercial or read that catalog and not submit to instant gratification, you will pass that important message along to your children.

High and mighty words, I know. And I will certainly struggle with it. I will let you know how it goes.

Although Mark is very much like his father in personality and looks, there are a few traits of mine that he also possesses: his ability to leaf through a book for hours, his highly selective eating (read: picky) eating habits, his inability to handle a sad or scary television show. These are traits that, while I’m not particularly proud of them, I’m not particularly unhappy to pass them on. Sure, it can be annoying when we are eating anywhere but at home (“I can’t eat that, Mom. It just doesn’t look right”) or when I just want to ply the kids with a TV show so I can make dinner in peace (“I can’t watch this show. That guy hurt his friend’s feelings and it is too scary”). But for the most part I am understanding. After all, I am the same person who sobbed for hours after watching “Life is Beautiful” and avoided any conversation involving said movie for years. I also scan menus online before going out to ascertain what I am going to eat, and I recall on many occasions sitting at the table as a child long after everyone else had left because I had refused to eat “shipwreck” casserole or fried liver. So I’m sympathetic to those little idiosyncrasies of Mark’s.

Jake, however, is what you might call “my son”. He and I are so alike in temperament, it’s uncanny. For the most part, that’s fine, except when he exhibits certain behaviours: perfectionism, frustration, and an overwhelming need to be number one.

Today’s Parent magazine recently ran an article detailing a woman’s struggle over accepting her daughter’s personality traits which mirrored her own. Or rather, her struggle over accepting those traits which she disliked in herself. This is exactly what I struggle with, every day.

Jake, as a second child, is sort of used to having his older brother do things easily that he himself is just learning to do. With the two of them so close in age, it’s hard for Jake to see that he is good at the alphabet too, he can count too, he is learning the same songs at preschool too. What he sees is that Mark can count higher, knows all the letter sounds, is faster. It’s frustrating for him and this I can really understand.

What I have a hard time with is that he can’t accept himself. When they are running around the house, pretending to be race cars, Jake can’t not win. (“I win!” he shrieks, despite the fact that there is no finish line. “I won the race!”). He can’t even discuss not winning (“I think it was a tie, Jake” Mark says kindly. “NO! Not a tie! I win!”). It’s this that I have a hard time being sympathetic to and understanding of, despite the fact that as a child I was the exact same way.

I believe this is called projecting. It’s painful to be reminded of personality traits that you may not like in yourself, and see them mirrored back to you every single day. Friends of mine who were shy children, and who now have shy children, tell me the same thing. It’s so hard to be reminded of something you don’t really like in yourself, and to know that your child will be going through similar experiences that you went through. This is where it would be of utmost importance to be supportive and accepting, but this is also where it is hardest to be that way.

As Rob reminds me, there are benefits to having a perfectionist, number one personality: achievements, high scholastic grades, quality workmanship, and I agree. I think it’s important to set high goals and reach them. However, I see the drawbacks, namely a hard time accepting yourself for who you are and the feeling that you are never good enough. And that is why I have trouble when I see Jake like that. I want him to achieve things, yes, I want him to reach for the stars and grab one, but more importantly I want to make sure he feels that he is good enough, in fact more than good enough, and that he is a special and wonderful person no matter what.

Later, I take the tearful boy on my lap and listen to him. “I really wanted to win, Mama. I really wanted to”. And all I could do was hold him and say “I know, love bug, I know”.

I don’t want to discuss the politics of war, not today. I don’t want to discuss egos, power struggles, or strange ulterior motives. I don’t want to discuss how looking at the young, young faces in war footage makes me sad or how images of rows of white crosses makes me feel physically ill. I am fully cognizant about how wars begin and about both sides of the story. My husband has a dear friend in the military who has already completed one tour of duty in Afghanistan and may be sent for another. But that is not what I want to discuss.

What I was thinking about today is that I have two boys. If they were growing up in a different era, say an era of conscription, maybe I would have none. Or maybe I would still have two boys, but they would be scarred for life, mentally or physically. Maybe I would be waiting months for a letter, only to get a censored one with little information. Maybe the boys would be suffering in ways I can’t even imagine, for reasons that start small but grow to be bigger than life. When I see the wreaths being laid by the mothers and families of the fallen, that is what I think of.

The boys came home from preschool with their poppy crafts and lots of questions. I tried to answer with honesty, yet who wants to be too honest with children that age? How do you discuss war with children who don’t comprehend why so-and-so hit another kid in their class or so-and-so called someone else a stupid-head? I used words like bravery, respect, standing up for what you believe in, but the explanations are too vague even for such young children.

When I see an elderly man in a parking lot, getting out of his car with a veteran license plate, I swallow hard and think about the mother who cried with joy when her son came home.

As parents, we have more influence over our children than anyone. When the children are small, especially, one area in which this is very apparent is the way in which they speak. Nothing is more warming to the heart than your children repeating something kind that they have heard you say. For example, the conversation that occured earlier today between my boys.

Mark: “Jake, that is a really nice tower you are building. You are really working hard!”
Jake: “Why, thank you Mark”.

Less warming to the heart was the announcement from Mark that our “garage door is a piece of shit”. Clearly, he was in the garage with Rob when our psychotic garage door started its semi-weekly hooligan activities. But I digress.

I try my best, I honestly do, to speak to the kids as I wish them to speak, with good manners and what we call my “nice voice”. It’s a bit of conversational karma. I can’t justify forcing them to behave a certain way if I do not behave that way, and so I say please, thank-you, sorry, excuse me. Mostly.

Last week was a crazy, busy, overscheduled week for us and, as is usually the case when things are crazy, busy, and overscheduled, the children were threatening to make me check into a mental hospital. Kindergarten tours, dentist appointments, a three day visit from my sister-in-law, and Halloween with all its sugar-infused festivities, in addition to our usual playdates and preschool all added up to an exhausting week. I found myself tired and snappish, and, if I can quote Jake, “speaking too sharply”. Not surprisingly, this is what I was getting back from them. It’s funny how when I’m busy and frantic, I seem to expect them to be Little House on the Prairie children: seen but not heard, maybe working on some needlepoint or silently drawing on a slate. I never seem to remember that when I am busy and frantic, they become frantic, and all of a sudden they need need need things from me. In a five minute span they need snacks, and drinks, and the markers down from the high shelf, and also paper, and then I need to read a book, and also play farm animals and where is my little blue car, you know, the Hot Wheels one, the little one, no not that one! And then it’s no surprise that I hear my own voice coming out of their mouths, directed at one another: “Jake, I want that book right NOW!” “That is ENOUGH out of you!” Then I realize that the whole week I have been snapping “Why don’t you have your shoes on?” instead of “Please put your shoes on now”, or slowing down a bit to help.

And so today we start a new week, in a new month, and I resolve anew to take the time to treat the kids as people, who don’t need to be shrieked at to behave a certain way, but just to have behaviour modelled for them from their number one influence. I guess it’s behavioural karma.

If anyone told me ten years ago, or even five years ago, what my life would be like today I would never believe them. In fact, I would probably freak out.

5:25 am – alarm goes off. Feel unusually refreshed as NO ONE WOKE UP LAST NIGHT. Leave the house to go to the yoga studio, after consuming a fruit leather and thinking I probably didn’t need that second supersize glass of wine last night.

7:00 – get home and immediately start feeding the dog and the kids. Prepare breakfast smoothie for Mark and Dino Egg oatmeal for Jake, while simultaneously scarfing down cereal and wondering why the coffee takes so long to perculate. Clean up breakfast disaster and gulp down coffee. Spend the next hour and a half showering, etc., getting the boys dressed and cleaned up, etc., cleaning the bathroom and starting the never ending laundry.

9:00 – feed the children a snack while slicing up grapes, as it is our turn to bring snack to school and apparently preschoolers are not able to eat whole grapes, which seems ridiculous, however, it is the rule and am way too intimidated by Miss Jan to not slice grapes.

9:30 – attempt to make Halloween crafts with the boys while being reminded why it is the boys are inept when it comes to crafts. It’s genetic. The ghost’s head keeps falling off and Jake snaps the tail off the black cat. Stop the craft making process midway through to “let the glue dry” although it is really because I feel like I might lose my mind gluing on the teeny tiny googly eyes that come in every craft package. Resolve to complete craft later.

10:00 – reluctantly get talked into a rowdy game of “Weebleville” while simultaneously playing with the dog so that he does not eat the Weebles. Wonder why boys have to make so many vehicular sound effects and why said sound effects have to be so LOUD. Practice thinking positive thoughts. Have many conversations about different trucks and cars, and what kinds of vehicles I would like to drive someday (in reality, none, but I always valiantly rise to the occasion and say I would like to drive a fire truck or maybe an excavator).

10:30 – boys are happily playing by themselves, so I make stir fry sauce, continue doing laundry, and troll the internet for instructions on how to make turkeys out of pine cones, again thinking positive thoughts. Glue the fucking head back on the ghost.

11:00 – allow children to watch Berenstain Bears while I cut cheese into little cubes for preschool snack, fold laundry and prepare lunch. Feed kids and dog and realize I haven’t eaten, so scarf down a cheese sandwich. Consider writing a witty weight-loss book (“Never sit down! Get so caught up in mundane day-to-day details that you forget to eat!”) but on second thought consider that the reality is more pathetic than witty.

12:00 – get the boys ready for school and read books until it is time to leave. Halfway through Blue’s Big Birthday realize that I haven’t got a gift for my father’s birthday dinner on Sunday.

1:00 – drop the boys and massive amounts of muffin, cheese, grapes, and chocolate milk off at the preschool. Hope no moms hate me for supplying their children with chocolate milk. Realize there is no way I’m getting through the afternoon without a pick-me-up, so stop at Starbucks for a chai. Spend the remainder of the afternoon going to Golf Town for a gift and then walking the dog.

3:30 – pick up boys, come home, prepare stir-fry, realize that there is no chance in hell the boys will eat said stir-fry, think WTF, it’s Friday, make them chicken fingers and oven fries to go with their carrots and peppers.

5:05 – in preparation for becoming a senior citizen, dinner is now finished. Realize, depressingly, how much of my day is spent either preparing food or cleaning up from meals. The boys play outside, Rob comes home, I feed them one more snack, then start bathtime by 7:00. Put kids to bed by 7:30.

7:35 – crack open a bottle of wine, following my general rule of alcoholism-avoidance – do not drink until kids are in bed. Totally relax by reading, oddly, Barbara Walters’ memoir.

I write this as I want to one day look back and see, what exactly did I do all day when the kids were young? Also, I don’t want to forget the utterly sweet moments that occurred during the day that made all the strange drudgery and busyness worthwhile. Like when Jake announced, with regards to our dog, “Barkley is my best friend. Other than Mark that is”. Or when Mark whispered so softly in my ear while I was reading Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, “I have a secret, Mama. I love you.”

Alice Munro wrote in “The Spanish Lady”, about a woman riding on a train recalling a similar trip with her now-grown children,

“I had to sleep close beside them at night and sit with them climbing around me in the daytime; my body felt bruised by their knees and elbows and feet. I did think then that it would be lovely to be a woman traveling alone, able to sit after a meal drinking coffee and looking out the window, able to go to the club car and have a drink. Now…all that time of care and confusion that seemed as if it would never end seems as if it never were.”

I am trying to remind myself of these words, to cherish these fleeting moments. When I see the boys careening across the lawn together, chasing each other like the race cars they were in another life, I recall the days when they weren’t allowed outside by themselves, when they couldn’t walk or run or even play together in a meaningful way.

And so it is that I remind myself to cherish the constant, unceasing stream of chatter that follows me from room to room, leaving me with zero personal mental space. If conversations were a Venn diagram, then the content circles would only slightly overlap. The timing circles, however, would be directly on top of one another.

Mark (whose conversational style follows the three R’s – rapid, repetitive, and reference-book-like, if said reference book contained only vehicular information): “Mom, who do you like on the Cars Movie? Who do you like that starts with M? That could be Mater, or McQueen, or Mack. Or maybe minivan? Who do you like that starts with M? MOM. MOM. Mark is not a name on the Cars Movie. Would it be funny if I drove a cement mixer, but I put the chute down when I was driving, and cement was everywhere? Would that be funny? Do you like Doc Hudson’s tires when they are orange or silver? Mom? Orange or silver? You know the Caprice by Mike’s house? It’s not street legal. It doesn’t even have a license plate.”

Jake (whose conversational style mimics a Brad nailer – loud, staccato-like, and occasionally punctuated by a booming, air-compressor-like announcement): “MOM! Do you know what? MOM??? MOM??? I look like a bunny rabbit when I hop like this. Hop hop hop. Do you MOM??? MOM??? Do you know what else I like? I like elephants. I like Malti and also MOM? I like Spike! But he pooped! MOM! He pooped on the floor! At the MOM?? At the zoo!! Dad’s Cruiser has a cargo cover and he put, he put, he put, he put, his golf clubs in it! MOM! His golf clubs in it!! MOM???”

When the boys have left home, and call on occasion, and speak to me briefly, I will recall these days and the ensuing silence will be deafening.