Note to Self

This moment is important. 

Stay in it. 

Don’t miss it.

Babies soon become toddlers. 

Wedding days quickly become 6 years of marriage. 

Time, slow down. 

One

Every stick and pebble is a toy. 

Every puddle is a possibility. 

Every animal equals love. 

Every baby needs a hug. 

Every kiss ends with a giggle. 

Every time we put on shoes it means we’re going on an adventure adventure. 

Every meal is for throwing on the floor. 

Every parent is a jungle gym. 

Every auntie wants to share her food. 

Every stranger is just hanging around waiting to pick up Kitty from the floor.  

Every evening ends with trying to fall asleep in the bathtub.

Every outside time includes a chat with the cat and a hug to the dog.

Every social event for your parents is one fun game if catch-me-if-you-can for you

Every cow says “eee eee”  

Everyone who drives a quad or dirt bike or lawn mower is doing that only because they know you want a ride.

Every problem is solved by your momma and daddd. 

when you’re one, and it’s summer.

One Year a Mother

Mid morning today, sitting on a blanket by a pond with my baby I live my ideal version of being a mom. Keeping it real, the sky is grey with smoke from distant wildfires, the baby is sick, the ground is a little wet through the blanket. But still there are those stupid happy tears again. 

And by happy tears I mean that weird prickling in my eyes and a tear drop or two if I’m really out of control. These Happy tears were something I wasn’t prepared for. I’d never cried happy tears in my life before I became a mother. Now I can’t stop. 

You might be thinking, “shes taking post partum hormones seriously ?!” but I think it’s more than that. Motherhood has changed me irreversibly and one of those changes has been crying when my heart is too full to hold any more happiness. This first year has been a collage of moments when I think life can’t get any better than it is this is exact second. 5 extra minutes rocking the sweet child just so I can watch his perfect sleeping face, the split second when I turn around and catch Little B hugging Rebel the dog. Introducing Little B, 52 times the age he was last year at this time, to outside in summer -gurgling water, warm wind in our hair, grass on bare feet, mud puddles. BTT and Little B being silly together.

So I cry when I’m happy. It’s fine. I’ve changed in other ways too. My heart has changed, softened in many ways and hardened in a few. My brain has rewired itself irreversibly, my arms that used to be independent now feel empty when my child has long naps. And most embarrassingly, the cliches I’ve ridiculed pre motherhood all hold true for me -I wouldn’t have it any other way, my child is the cutest cleverest one that’s ever existed, they grow too fast, love is blind. 

There’s a lot of talk about how hard being a mother is. And it is sometimes. But today, on Mother’s Day, a year after become a mother, I celebrate the best, the happiest, the every dayest parts of my year as a mom.

Naloxone.

A guest post by my Mother on a difficult but real topic. 

Naloxone is a medication that rapidly and temporarily reverses the effects of opioid poisoning. Anyone can carry Naloxone, administer it and potentially save a life.

I just completed St John Ambulance’s Opioid Poisoning Response Training Program. The training consisted of a virtual nearly 2 hour meeting where we learned about

•stigma & harm reduction 

•how to respond to an opioid poisoning 

•how to administer nasal Naloxone

•self care after a traumatic event

I wish i could remember everything that was said but here is some of what remains with me:

*Language - rather than calling someone an addict, we can say someone who uses drugs. Drug misuse or just drug use instead of abuse. And this one really made an impression on me: drug poisoning instead of overdose. Almost all people who suffer drug poisoning have not done it intentionally. They have not deliberately taken more than they can handle. One reason for poisoning could be that they have bought a drug that has been mixed with something else they weren’t aware of. For example, pure heroin that is actually 100% heroin is rare so the person thinking that they’re taking heroin may also be unwittingly using other drugs.

*Destigmatizing. Being judgemental as a society of drug users does in no way help them. It can rather prevent them, because of, for example, shame or lack of services, from getting any help they need.  For me, this seems obvious. I, who long to show the love of Christ, cannot in anyway treat anyone as if they are worth less than others. In God’s sight or in mine. 

*Naloxone. We learned how to administer nasal Naloxone and the steps leading up to treatment. And also afterwards. If the person is responsive, you need to obtain their consent before administering Naloxone. Some will not consent due to their (legitimate) fear of “dope sickness” or withdrawal symptoms brought on by Naloxone treatment. These can be horrible- pain deep in your bones, the sensation of bugs crawling under your skin, nausea and so on. Also, Naloxone is only effective for 20-40 minutes so you need to continue watch carefully for returning signs of poisoning.  More doses of Naloxone may be necessary. 

The last part of our education was on self care. We learned how to figure out who and what can help us feel positive after a traumatic event such as assisting someone suffering from opiod poisoning. I feel i will always have the support of family and friends and I am thankful for that. 

I’m very happy I took Naloxone training although I wish there was no reason to ever need it.  And because I took the training through Siloam Mission, Siloam gets 2 free nasal Naloxone kits. I feel like i have done a tiny bit to help our community.

This Land

This house, I know is ours. We’ve paid for every piece that’s gone into it. We’ve built so much of it ourselves. But this land we set our house on, i have a complicated relationship to our land. How can we own this —This expanse of prairie. This strip of clear air with a window to the stars. This wedge of moonlight. This meadow of snow drifts. This stand of trees, and that one. This wood pecker destroying this old wooden hydro pole. How can a human own nature ? Isn’t that God’s thing ?

The incongruity of my name on the title of land taken away from other people doesn’t escape me. There’s a real irony about me as a Mennonite woman owning this land in this country. This land has been fought over at great cost to the original inhabitants. My people had their lifestyle upended and were chased out of  Europe right around the time the First Nations people were having similar but more horrific experiences in Canada. Did my ancestors understand that their displacement displaced others ? Did they realize the irony in them being chased from their homes in Europe straight into the homes others had been recently chased from in Canada ? I do know that their stance against war, fighting and government involvement will have kept them from being an active part in chasing the First Nations people from their lands. I do not know how much they knew of what was going on in Canada before they arrived. This was several generations ago; there’s no one left to ask.  I only see from the benefit of over hundred years of hindsight and Canada’s true history finally coming to light that my ancestors inadvertently benefited from others’ misfortunes. Generational Guilt.

Land ownership, especially in this country is full of ambiguity. Until we owned land ourselves I didn’t think much about this. Now I can’t unthink it. I often wonder about the people who lived here a couple hundred years ago. Did they have a fire ring near the place where mine is today ? Did they hunt deer, moose grazing in same meadow they graze in today ? Did their babies grow up under this same patch of stars ? What did their life look like before roads and cars and ugly Europeans? Did they feel as secure and happy as I do ? What things did the women of that day worry about? Did a tiny human learning to stagger from one parent to another bring them the same delight it brings me ? How did it get to be me raising my child on this peaceful beautiful bit of land ?

Mary and Me

Fully a month after Christmas and here’s me still thinking about Mary, a major character in the Christmas story. I think it’s because we had one final Christmas gathering last weekend and my dad read the Christmas story. The phrase about Mary pondering all the things really caught my attention. I thought I had a momentous year with the birth of my baby boy and so many other more minor but still major events and happenings. Compared to the year Mary had when her first child was born, however, my life seems very manageable.

Mary’s life, the year Jesus was born:

 -an engagement (to Joseph of course. They’d been friends for years; but still the proposal had been a surprise.) 
-then something stranger: an angel visitor with an unbelievable message that took her days, months, a lifetime to process. 
-ostracized by all the people who didn’t believe her unbelievable story about where her baby was coming from (those weeks when Joseph was considering breaking off their engagement were especially torturous.)  
-then one day the first strange and miraculous movement of a super human baby insider her and everything started to feel more real and doable
-a long trip with her fiancé and his family to their home village (so many distant family members she had to meet when all she wanted to do was sleep. In a real bed. Not. A. Pile. Of. Hay.) 
-the trauma of giving birth in a barn 
-then finally meeting the newborn that immediately changed the whole world, not just her world. (She had to share her baby with everyone from the very beginning. How hard must that have been for her protective first time mom heart?!)

Mary kept these things and pondered them in her heart. Everyone else was talking about them: the neighbours were gossiping about her and Joseph, the shepherds were telling everyone they met about this Baby, the Saviour, and the angels and their amazing song. The wisemen asked so many people where to find this Little King that they accidentally alerted a jealous murderer to the birth of this baby King. Old people were waiting in the temple to meet the Baby.

 It must have felt to Mary like everyone was talking about her and her baby, and no one understood what she was going through. She had no choice but to quietly process everything internally, to ponder these things in her heart on top of second guessing how to mother a Holy Child, how to share Him with everyone in the world, how to cherish every single smile, giggle, silly game before He grows up……………………

Disclaimers. I took a lot of poetic license with the Christmas story and humanized it to the point where it is relatable for me.  No irreverence is intended. 

 

Janvier Hurts

Janvier hurts. While I spend the whole day giggling with my 8 month old or if we’re not giggling he’s being clever or cuddly, January hurts. 

For little things: it’s post holidays, post all the parties, what do we cook now that we don’t cook Christmas food. It’s the air stings my face when I go outside and the snowy fields don’t hold the magic of angels singing I could easily imagine 2 weeks ago. It’s day 5 of fog, and, yes, the heavy layer of frost on everything is beautiful, but give me clear skies already. It’s unexciting planning meetings for all the winter responsibilities we could do without -crafts with the kids and Bible study for the whole congregation.

It’s bigger things. It’s Sissy going back to BC when we all are so used to her being here. She says families are meant to spread out, but we kind of disagree. It’s all the brothers drama all the time that we want to avoid, but also spectate on because it keeps life interesting.

There’s scary things. The man on drugs who really could’ve frozen in his vehicle just down the road from our house but amazingly didn’t. It’s Gun shots fired in the night near where we were winching a car out of the ditch at Keeseekoose, the popo coming to find out if we’d seen the “guy with the gun, wearing a plaid jacket.”  Although he must’ve been nearby, we didn’t see him. 24 hours later we’re still saying dramatically to each other “what if.” And then 48 hours later I finally think to think, “what hurt made this human want to hurt other humans to this extent?”

There’s so many hard things happening around us, more than to us right at this minute. There’s hurting people, hurting children. There’s so much hurt this Janvier, every Janvier, every month, every day, every year.