Community of Criminals, Little B’s Pacifier, More About the Dog and How to Follow This Blog

Community of Criminals 

There was a song I used to listen to, when I was a kid dragging Main in Steinbach. Back in the days when 1D was a thing. If you know you know. (Sorry, gen z; I’m sure it was before your days.) It referred to the bad things happening in people’s lives not changing them. “Even when the night changes, it will never change me and you.” * In a chaotic world, I found that thought comforting. Almost 10 years later I know that, in a way, it’s patently untrue. 

 The change that happens in a night does change us. 

The story of teenager recently kidnapped and then miraculously rescued right on our doorstep (within our community) changes us. It makes us question things we hold to be true. It makes us mistrust our neighbours’ motives and lifestyles. It creates a new band of fear in our newly parented hearts. 

At the same time, many things remain. We are strong, we communicate, we get annoyed, we don’t get enough sleep. The line of flame glazing the field behind our field doesn’t waver. In the northwest a haze of orange glows thoughtfully, reassuringly around 3 sides of a stand of trees. 

Moving on (forever changed), we have a few boring life stories.

Little B’s Pacifier

He refused it for the first few weeks of his life, but sometime between month 3 and month 4 he decided he liked it. Why we kept offering it, I still don’t know. A First time parent obsession..  I’m pretty sure this decision constituted two parenting mistakes in one go -first the soother addiction that we will some day have to break and second the fact that we pay ten whole dollars for each of these pieces of rubber. very aesthetic pieces of rubber. But still.

Moving on. We only have one of these soothers  for the first few months but it start making odd squeaking noises when Little B sucks particularly hard.  20$ Later we have new ones. Then the old one disappears. It’s fine. I was only keeping it as an emergency backup. A couple weeks, 2 trips and 2000 km later we lose another one on a Sunday evening. It’s not in the car seat. It’s not in the car. It’s not on the driveway at our friends place.  Little B is grouchy as we try to have coffee with our friends. I didn’t think he was  uemotionally attached to his pacifier, but I was wrong.  I know it’s gone for good because it’s nowhere. Somewhere in there I pray because I do that a lot when I lose things and I lose a lot of things. (The things that keep us close to Jesus.) Still the paci doesn’t appear. I reluctantly pull out the last new soother that I had hoarded for a proverbial rainy day. It’s the rainy day. In fear of losing our last pacifier I buy some cheap ones as a stopgap hoping Little B might be okay without lux. He’s not.  I resign myself to seeing if I can get soothers on an Amazon subscription.** a few days later I’m cleaning up outside. I find the original soother, the one destined for the garbage / saving an emergency before it disappeared, taken, I now realize, by Rebel the thief of a dog. It has teeth marks; it’s destined for the garbage now. The next day Big B walks across the yard very near where I was yesterday. He comes inside chuckling and holding out his hand. The missing pacifier -the one lost Sunday night enroute to a friend’s place- is found! Rebel the thief of a dog found it on the ground near the vehicle before we got home and looked for it there. This one she was gentle with -it’s intact and like new; there’s nothing on it a good sanitizing won’t take care of. We love our little thief of a dog and she loves anything she thinks she’s not supposed to have. 

Prayer answered. But Only after I’d 1. Given up 2. Been dramatic about it 3. Told my sister not to hook her baby on a $10 pacifier. 

Small things magnify in my life these days. 

More about the dog. 

She’s been accepting but wary of Little B from the beginning. As he’s grown more interesting, noisy, and movey, she’s grown to like him and learned how to be gentle with him. She’s his guardian and he adores her. His whole face lights up every time he sees Rebel. He  screeches with delight and wiggles all over. She sits down beside him and lets Little B pull on her fur. When she’s had enough she moves just out of his reach; he doesn’t mind and  continues joyous screech-growling at her. She’s an excellent babysitter -more of a distraction, because I don’t lave them alone together. I trust my dog near my child, but she is still a dog. I can’t read her mind or have an English language conversations with her (although I do try) so I play it safe.

And One Last Thing

Finally Blogger followed through with its threat to delete  all my followers. It also allowed me to add a follow button back to my page. If anyone is desperate to read my monologues or needs something to gossip about, you can follow me again.

*Night Changes by One Direction 

**just kidding. That actually never crossed my mind until this minute. It adds to the drama tho.  

Goodnight Moon

There’s a goodnight moon tonight, not the genial full moon but the moon with the cow jumping over it.  Except. There’s  no cow jumping over this moon.  The goodnight moon swings above the moody horizon.Things always happen when the moon is a cowering sliver buffeted by clouds. I should know to beware on these nights.

They start out peaceful. Very peaceful. Sleepy. Goodnight light and the red balloon. Goodnight little house. Goodnight nobody. Goodnight everybody.

Then comes the phone call. In Malawi I knew those night phone calls usually meant someone had died or was dying. Since I’ve been married middle of the night phone calls aren’t usually bad; 97% of the time it’s someone who’s hit the ditch and needs a winch or the RCMP waiting beside the road with an intoxicated driver’s SUV. But on these nights, the moody ones with a goodnight moon, the phone calls do carry sinister messages.  There’s a delirious dehydrated child who needs to go  to the hospital . A diabetic 20 who may be in serious medical distress or maybe just drunk.  A fire. A nephew who needs a place to sleep while his parents drive through a blizzard to find an ER. A missing mother. A violent teen. And tonight, the quavering call for help comes from a little one huddling at the sidelines of a domestic violence battle miles away, out of my (/our) reach. 

There’s no cow jumping over the moon for this baby girl. No quiet old lady whispering, “hush.” The old lady (sorry, Mom) would do anything to be whispering, “hush” to her right now. She’ll whisper her “hushes” extra lovingly next time she gets a chance, trying to delete the horror with a few nights of security and safety, green rooms and red balloons sock monkeys. 

The crisis is deescalated and the emotional scars on baby girl are deep and irreversible. They reflect onto my mother and me; they haunt the night , casting a sinister shadow on things normally safe and beautiful . Helplessly I hold my own baby tightly, waiting for the next horror that surely will occur. I try to convince myself it’s safe to relax;  I try to slow my racing pulse .  A sleepy baby smile and the goodnight stars whispering promises from their Creator calm me back to sleep while my heart breaks on repeat. And as always I pray for Jesus to stand by all the hurting children, everywhere, healing the wounds I can’t fix.