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. 

Someone Else’s Baby

If you were someone else’s baby I’d say you needed a bath right now. 

You smell like the milk that dribbled from your mouth when you were half asleep this morning and still lingers in your onesie. You smell like baby barf that I couldn’t sleep quite wash from the fold of your little neck. You smell like autumn wind and maybe a little of dog. 

A ring of dirt sits under your chins, your hair is a little stiff where the dog licked it. There’s a tiny piece of green cattail laced into your red brown hair from me pulling you onto my lap to cuddle as I wove a basket. You have dirt between your tiny toes  because  your dad dipped them into a mound of cool sand . 

If you were someone else’s baby I’d be judging your mom right now  

But you’re my baby. 

Baths mean bedtime to you. So, although bath time, together with outside time and dad coming home from work time, is your favourite time of day, we’ll wait until bedtime when the chances of you getting dirty again are minimal to get you really clean. Right now I’ll squish you 10 more times before I get around to buckling you into your stroller. Then we’ll head back outside to get more wind blown and more dog kisses and a little layer of dust and sunshine on our skin. Because you’re not someone else’s baby.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

The Cranes came to say goodbye to me today, just before they left on their extended winter vacation. They say they won’t even be back for Christmas. To be honest, I thought they’d already gone. They’ve been pretty quiet the last few weeks, a change after their ubiquitous 5pm dramas all spring and summer. Their farewell was poignant and noisy. They landed in my bald browning meadow for a few minutes, updating me on their flight information and taunting Rebel the Dog. For a moment the dread of another long snowy winter swept through my veins and I wished I could join them on their graceful journey south. To fly off to a place with no winter only to return to this beautiful place when the sun is once again warm and the prairies and forests verdant, would the best of all the worlds. Then, with a majestic slapping of massive storm cloud blue wings and another round of raspy goodbyes, they were off. They flew a final circle above the yard and I with Little B and Rebel watched them disappear. 

I’m going to miss this weird couple. They’ve been here for everything this summer. Days before Little B was born they cackled from the air when Rebel tried to chase them and then settled back into the swamp to watch my heavy waiting body trudge down the road. They communicated to me through the quiet days of new motherhood. They must’ve been having their own babies right about then. They knew what it was like. They’re a dramatic pair. Life must have been a little stressful for them for a while because for weeks they had noisy arguments I could almost set my clock by. They went on daily flights across my yard from one slough to another. They were predictable when many things in my life weren’t. 

It seems a little early for even the cowardliest of birds to be leaving, so perhaps they are making some stops (to see relatives? to tour the marshes on the other side of the quarter?) along the way and forgot to inform me. Nevertheless, this feels like the beginning of the end. Summer is ebbing. The fields are browning. The weeds in my garden of weeds are dying. The sun is still warm on my face, but the evenings and nights have the whisper of winter in their breezes. @RobertFrost said it best. Nothing gold can stay.

 *poetic license was taken in the narration of this tale 

The Almond Milk Woman and Mother Intuition

I wasn’t prepared for the sheer amount of  people who want to talk to me about my baby when I’m in public with him. 90% of them are women around my mother or mother-in-law’s age who tell me that their children aren’t planning to have children or that they only have one grandchild and that grandchild lives two thousand kilometres away. All of them tell me how adorable and precious he is.  I already know this, of course, but I love hearing it just the same. There’s also a few men who like to talk to bébé. They say gruff things like “high buddy” or “this year’s model, eh.”  Big B finds these conversations amusing. He loves the “aww he’s with daddy” or “he looks just like you” comments he gets when he carries bébé  around.

Most of these people and conversations are forgettable and
similar, but a few stick in my brain. The Almond Milk Woman is one of them 

You are a good mother, she told me she when we met in the organic aisle in Superstore only a few weeks after Little B was born. We were standing in front of the coolers that held milk alternatives. More specifically we were both reaching for the almond milk. Her words tried to make my hormonal sleepy new mom brain tearful a little, but luckily i realized that Superstore wasn’t the place for that. You are a good mother even when you make mistakes or think you aren’t. Always trust your *mother intuition. You know what is best for your child. And then before she left she said, I usually make my own almond milk, but today I was lazy. Now I know it was because I was meant to speak to you. 

No one else has been quite this dramatic or full of advice. None of the others have told me they were meant to speak to [me.] My little judgey heart says that if I hadn’t been wearing my newborn in a linen sling and standing in front of the almond milk display in the natural foods aisle  Almond Milk Woman wouldn’t have deemed my level of crunchiness high enough for her to speak to. Nevertheless, I was happy that she did. And,  Almond Milk Lady, if you ever happen to read this, please know that, even though I don’t make my own almond milk like you think I should, my sourdough starter was rising on my counter at home as I spoke to you in Superstore and I have since started a kombucha journey. 

About mother intuition / parent intuition -I would love to know other parents’ thoughts on this topic. Is it legit ? Not a real thing ? One Mother I trust and love told me something similar not in this exact terminology but still about trusting my mother intuition, since I became a mother. My sissy passed on  something she’d read on this topic: a mother’s intuition is right 80% of the time. For intuition being just a feeling, 80 is a high percentage of correctness. Are you a believer in mother / parent / caregiver intuition? Do you have experiences where your intuition has been right? -or wrong ? 

VBS

 

Vacation Bible School

We’re now on the VBS committee. An ambitious gym building project at the school complicates tradition / habit so we had to host VBS at church this year. The guys hauled in swing sets and play houses and soccer nets to entertain the children at recess. We brainstormed to create 3 large classes out of one big open space and banished one group to the too-small nursery. Everything was labour intensive but it also worked better than expected. Still, we spent a lot of time at church organizing, facilitating, cleaning, and just being there to do whatever needed to be done and help out with any kid drama such as gravel scrapes and forgotten lunches .

Here’s how it went:

One class had an usually large amount of kids so I got to spend some time with them several days. It made me feel like a school teacher again.                                    Frisbees on the roof every day. Children on the roof, too suddenly. 

The back row of boys cutting up, singing crazy, their favourite song the duck song. Bébé B is enthralled. They like him too. 

No throwing rocks near the church windows. no throwing rocks full stop.

Say kind things. The group of preteen boys I worked with a couple days seems to have forgotten what those are. The girls conversely are full of over the top compliments they don’t actually mean.       

Beading. Macrame. Hot gluing.                       

Painting. Signs at the road, verses, something pretty for the walls.      

Flower arranging. Foraging. Everything looks like autumn. 
Crafting with the big boys. There’s so many 11 and 12 year olds this year. Their crafting skills are above par. Otherwise they act 5 but with 15 vocabularies. Little B watches in awe. As do I. 
Food. Juice boxes. Chatting with the snack ladies every day. Someone always asking to hold bébé, giving me a couple minutes to be more efficient. 

Killing time but always busy. 

Picking up “my” girl (Lexus) every day. She is such a joyful sweet child. 

So many tables and chairs and glue sticks and pencil crayons and a hundred or more pairs of scissors. 

Muffins from Paula, buns from  Val, supper from Paula and her girls, kombucha scoby from Heidy, a housewarming snake plant for my entrance from Paula. Cucumbers and another housewarming gift from Heidy . Kittens from Tiffany.  Generosity abounds. 

Pizza party to celebrate the last day. Pop pizza Caesar salad ice-cream. Food of champions. The children are all joyful and foodfull and some are a little sad that it’s all over. 

The program is great. The silent skit of the first and second graders. The only half wild Only a Boy Named David and If You’re Happy and You Know It. The hauntingly harmonized God Makes a Lot From a Little. BTT gets to do the thanking and do the closing praying. 

The after party is long and exhausting because we are in charge of making sure everyone gets fed and then we  have to stay until the end to clean up. 

Then we go home and rehabilitate our new kittens and my sister and her husband come and we go to the lake and drink ice coffee and cook over the fire and talk a lot about Airbnb and babies and sleep. 

 

Another Summer of Bittersweet, But Different

It’s been five years since the original summer of bittersweet. I am not the person I was that summer; loss, marriage, time and now motherhood have changed me. 

The bitterness that started one late spring afternoon in 2017 as I sat in the ditch of a lonely Saskatchewan highway haunted me for long. It still can when I give it power. It’s especially real at this time of year, the time when everything went down. 

The summer of 2022 has its own sets of bitterness and goodness, possibly bringing the bittersweet into higher relief  than recent  years. I’ve relived the intensity of emotions that crammed into the weeks before and after our wedding. There was so much tragedy happening to people I knew that summer, not only to me, but, at the time, my pain was I all I saw.

This summer there was the bitter again.  The days of shuttling my infant through hospital hallways, both of us dreading the next medical procedure or bad news from a doctor. That’s the bitter. The long lonely hospital nights. I despaired of ever finding the sweet again. Those days passed and are mostly just something I complain about now. I’m not good at handling the bitter parts of life. It’s easy to be happy, to smile, to praise when the bitter is over and I’m sitting on the rocks at the lake cuddling my contended 3 month old and dangling my feet in the icy waves. But on the hard days when Bébé was being poked by careless nurses, when a doctor wasn’t  careful with my newborn, when i face any hard thing I dissolved into an angry mess. In hard times my entitledness fully lives these song lyrics: “I was sure by now, God, You would have reached down And wiped our tears away Stepped in and saved the day. But once again I say, A-men, and it's still raining” * When things get better and they inevitably and unexpectedly (not the way I imagine) do, I wonder why I can’t live the rest of the song: “And though my heart is torn, I will praise You in this storm.”* 

Now there is the sweet. When I’m rocking my precious child in the cool breeze wafting in on the sunset and drinking Agua Fresca or iced coffee with my husband, that’s the sweet. I want to freeze this moment and replay it infinitely on repeat. This is your cue to gag, my unsappy people. There’s so much more good. A sunset walk with my puppy and my child, days at the lake with BTTs family, fresh garden produce, sunshine, having coffee with the neighbors. Many days have felt too good to be true. 

*Praise You in This Storm by Casting Crowns