Pesky Savings Time Changes

I was amusing myself this morning reading Rick Mercer's post about nearly hitting pedestrians in the morning after we change back to standard time.  Rick Mercer wins my vote for best on CBC... all time, and I had a high bar set... you have to be good to knock out Jerome from the Friendly Giant.

For the life of me I don't know why we don't go on daylight savings time and just stay there.  Accept the loss of an hour from our lives forever more and forget about it.

As a pedestrian though, I must protest the comment about pedestrians slowing down when they cross at intersections.  Where I live pedestrians have to slow down to accommodate all those drivers who, regardless of what we are wearing, or the fact that the intersection is lit with a dozen or so streetlights, still seem to forget pedestrians, walking with the light, might not want to come into contact with a tonne of metal before they get their morning coffee.

As for the texting while crossing the street folk... I figure it's just a matter of time before they run out of luck, and they are probably doing us a favour removing their DNA from the global gene pool.

So... be honest now, how many of you are humming  Early One Morning ?

Friends

So , some strange changes have been made on my blog.  I tried to alter the template and .... it's a work in progress, and what you see is not what I intended to do.  I'm going to try very hard to not click the wrong button again and make the entire thing disappear, but stranger things have probably happened on the internet. As soon as I get my act together I will sort this out.... I hope.

This past week, since I posted my story, I have received e-mails from women who have been on the same path I am.  Sadly, or perhaps blessedly, I stand on this path with a large number of women. Some of us have been on this journey longer than others, but, it has occurred to me that we all have one huge asset in common.  None of us want to see another woman enter this path today, if it can be helped at all.  Or, if she makes the choice to go ahead with adoption surrender, we at least want her to enter it knowing the truth of where this path may lead, or will lead at least some of the times in her future.  I have not always felt pain regarding this issue.  I tried very hard to get on with my life, as though nothing had happened.  I failed miserably, but that makes sense.  How can you get on with your life, as though nothing has changed, when your experience changes you so profoundly, that it alters the very root of who you are?

So, if you are on this path with us, and should you find that you are having problems with your section of the journey, just shout out, one of us will come and walk the path with you until the journey becomes less painful again.  No journey is so unbearable that having a friend walking it with you will not help ease the pain.

This past week has proven the truth to the saying that friends are like stars, you don't always see them, but you know they are still there.

edited.. while I'm at it, please accept my sincere apology for the fact that I desperately need an editor who knows the proper use of a comma.

The Thirty Six Year Scar

It may be true that still waters run deep.  I suspect, however, that still waters run both deep and turbulent.

A few weeks ago I went out for a walk and was greeted by a group of people from Faith Victoria standing on the sidewalk across from a block of clinics directly across the street from my home.   I had actually noticed a lot of chalked or spray painted writings on the parking lot and sidewalk of the street kitty corner to the group of people first.  Turns out one of the clinics is a woman's clinic, which according to the good folk of Faith Victoria, is an abortion clinic, or perhaps they only advocate for women who wish to have an abortion.  I don't know which, nor do I care.  Turns out I am being treated to a forty day prayer vigil which will end November sixth, being held by a group of anti-abortion folk.  I don't argue their right to be there.  I don't argue that they have the right to their opinion.  I have not gone to speak to any of these people, nor am I going to.  At the same time this started, three backbenchers of the conservative party in Ottawa took a swipe at planned parenthood saying that abortion is now an open debate within the government of Canada. The government of Canada is helping to fund International Planned Parenthood for the next three years. 

I want to make it perfectly clear that I have never had an abortion.  In 1974 when I found myself in an unplanned pregnancy abortion was not an option.  I was too far into my pregnancy to have an abortion, and abortion was still not as open to women as it is today.  I say this because I have no personal knowledge of the long term repercussions to a woman who has an abortion.  What triggers my anger at these groups who rally against planned parenthood and women's health clinics so aggressively is that invariably they offer adoption as the solution to every woman who finds herself in a crisis pregnancy.  They extol the virtue of adoption to no end, but they get pretty vague on any issue about women's rights once she hands over her baby to their adopting family.  In my humble opinion some of these groups would assume any damage done to the natural mother is just dessert for having sex outside of a marriage in the first place.  It never occurs to these people that a woman might end up in a crisis pregnancy even though she is married.

As any of you who have read my blog know, I was tossed out of my family for being pregnant, unmarried, and not in a position to get married.  I also lost a pretty good job, for the same reasons.  It was pretty much legal at that time for that sort of stuff to happen.  So, while I was not a teenager, I was in a very difficult position and in a fairly constant state of anxiety over my future with both the world and my family.

In the province I lived in it was required by law that all unwed mothers see a social worker employed by the provincial government. It was assumed the social worker was to be my advocate, to help me get through the next months, help me get back on my feet after I gave birth, and to educate me of all my options. I was young, scared, and to be honest stunned.  I rebounded from finding out I was pregnant and being happy about it, to telling the father, only to have him walk away, to telling my family, only to have them walk away, to moving in with a family who were kind to me, to a hostile social worker who really wanted to solve the problems of an infertile couple with my problem of a crisis pregnancy.  The very last thing this woman was to me was an advocate.  By law she was required to advise me of my rights as a mother.  My rights to keep my child, and raise my child.  Instead she made sure I was aware of every negative that decision would cause.  This advocate told me my child would hate me.  She told me I would be ruining my child's life.  She assured me no decent man would ever EVER want to have anything to do with us, because, decent men don't raise other men's children.  Ok, I confess, she did not say other men's children.  She used a somewhat different term that I will spare you from hearing.  She assured me my child would not miss me, nor would I miss it.  Her words were that having a child was no different than having the chicken pox.  Once the rash is gone, you go on with the rest of your life, and then assured me I would go on to have more children and would forget about this experience completely.  A branch of peace offered to a young woman afraid of being thrown out of her family for life due to her shame. She also informed me that the province had the right to refuse to accept my child for any reason they chose.  To ensure that would not happen she instructed me to write the provincial ministry a letter outlining all the reasons I could not possibly raise my child myself. Apparently my letter worked because I never received anything telling me they were going to send me back to my family with the same unwanted child that had me in their clutches in the first place.   In 1974 there were mile long lineups of infertile people begging to adopt babies, but I had to write the province a letter essentially begging them to take my child.  In hind sight I imagine that same letter would have reappeared had I thought to sue the province for any harm done to me by my experience with their protocols regarding unwed mothers. 

What she did not tell me, not even once,was that there would be a lifetime of adjusting to leaving the hospital with empty arms.  She did not tell me that I would be leaving a piece of my heart back in the hospital that would remain an open wound until twenty some years later when my son chose to meet me again. When my son walked into the room twenty years later I felt a piece of my heart slide back into place.  I remember wondering if everyone heard that sound or was it just me. What she did not tell me, was that statistically over fifty percent of women who "surrender" their first children to adoption develop secondary infertility thus never have another child.  What she did not tell me was that I should see a lawyer before I sign anything, because God forbid someone accidentally informs me I have rights.  She did not tell me that the governments had done studies to find out how best to sever the bonds of natural mothers and their children so that they would not have to pay the huge financial costs of helping the influx of unwed mothers caused by a somewhat more liberal  society.   She did not tell me unwed mothers were seen as the answer to the problems of the infertile.  These were things I found out thirty some years later when I found a large group of natural mothers who had also had problems getting over their experience.  Apparently none of these people so invested in separating mothers from their children felt any moral obligation to ensure we had counselling after we gave them our children.  We simply ceased to exist to the social workers.

 For what it's worth, we were not the only ones conned.  When I met my son's adoptive mother years later she said she felt as though she had stolen my child from me.  As if that isn't going to alter the bond between mother and child.  Essentially we were all lied to, and in some degree or another we all suffered from the effects of a faulty adoption protocol. 

After the first meeting I had with my social worker "advocate" she badgered me for weeks because I had refused to fill out forms and return them to her office.  When she found out I had decided to put my child into a non-ward adoption (something of an open adoption in those days), she told me that was not an option for me.  This wonderful advocate of mine showed up at the hospital no less than three times to badger me into signing her papers.  Her error was showing up at the same time as the adopting family, then causing a scene so ugly the adopting family filed a report against her with the ministry.

 Somehow the information that I had "surrendered" my child to adoption did not get passed down as I was treated to two visits from the local health nurse who arrived at my door with bath tub under arm, to check and see how I was making out and could we do a baby bath together to show her how I was getting on with my new baby.   Apparently she didn't believe me the first time I told her I had put my baby up for adoption because she showed up exactly a week later to repeat the scene.

Years later I discovered that in some provinces our children left the hospital for foster homes until the court could declare them abandoned and then they went on to their adoptive parents homes.  How in God's name any woman can live with the pummeling she took from the social workers, and then the shame of being accused of "abandoning" her child is beyond me. 

So, you probably wonder what this has to do with a group of anti-abortionists holding a forty day prayer vigil across the street from my home.  Well , it's two things really.  The first, and I cannot find the words to express how stunned I was at my reaction to finding them there, they sucked the air right out of my lungs on that day and have every day since.  I feel as though I'm walking out of the hospital leaving my son behind every single time I see them standing there with their signs and pictures. Their presence reminds me of all the things I did not get to experience, because I chose adoption.  Just as an aside I no longer feel I chose adoption.  I no longer feel I was given a choice.  I was legally bullied into giving my child to a couple who were only deemed more fit to raise him than I by virtue of the fact they were married.  The second reason bells ring loudly in my head when I see these anti-choice folk is that they also want planned parenthood ridden out on the same rail as the abortion clinic.

Had planned parenthood been available to me, instead of the mandated social worker my life would have been very different.  I may have still chosen adoption, but at least it would have been an informed decision.  It is not informed consent if you have failed to properly inform the person making decisions. Just because a clinic gives abortion as an option to a woman in a crisis pregnancy does not mean it is the primary focus of the clinic.  

The fundamental truth to adoption is while I was pregnant in a time which came to be known as the baby scoop era, the emotional grief I have had for thirty six years was caused by the loss of my child from my life.  Not the way it happened.  That means that the women of today in crisis pregnancies will suffer the same grief as the women of years past.  Until we ensure that our governments are going to provide a woman in a crisis pregnancy proper programs to keep the family together in a healthy situation, we need to leave planned parenthood alone.  We need to leave women's health clinics that council women in crisis situations alone.  I don't  know the long term consequences of abortion to a woman, but I certainly know the long term consequences of forcing a woman into a situation where she has no options and no information available to help her make an  informed decision, and unfortunately, I know a large number of women who had to make the same decision based on the same faulty formula I did.  I think it's about time someone told all the sides of the story.

When Tomorrow Comes

I have spent the better part of this past year adapting to the changes loosing my Mother made.  For weeks I would wake up in the morning thinking of getting to the nursing home, getting groceries , fitting in time to practice my piano lesson of that week, and all the stuff we fill our days with.  Then suddenly I would remember... no treks to the nursing home anymore.  My Mom had profound dementia and it is hard to imagine wishing anyone a longer term in a facility where they do try their best, but still, life is not what anyone could really call quality.  Instead my wishes tend to go toward wishing she had been able to forge a happier life for herself.

The week my Mom passed away I called my best friend and "other" Mom for our usual marathon conversations about what was going on in our lives this month/week/weekend.  She had some very upsetting news of her own. That week she had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma.  The next ten months were filled with different treatment options, and learning to live with the diagnosis.  For the most part her life remained good quality, and the different medications seemed to have few side effects. Or at least physical side effects.  I think all of us knew we would be saying goodbye sooner rather than later.  But none of  us were prepared for how soon that would be.

When I met Nora I was eighteen years old, just bounced out of college for a bit too much partying and a total absence of studying. Proof that if your kid says they want to take a year off before going back to school ... maybe try listening to them instead of forcing it.  Especially if said kid already has a job and isn't sleeping on your couch ... but I digress.  Nora was my supervisor at work, but somehow she adopted me into her family.  Apparently they had always wanted a daughter, decided to give up that quest when their three children turned out to all be boys.  God bless them because if either one of them had been a girl then my life might  have been very different.  So for the next forty years I was considered part of the family.  They needed a daughter and I needed a family. We adopted each other.  Nora's extended family was huge.  The words come to dinner just rolled out of her mouth, usually followed by stay for the weekend.  Maybe she liked me because I weeded her garden... or tried to help paint her fence when I was eight months pregnant.  Nora is the wonderful woman who said come home when I was twenty-one, pregnant, single, and desperately needed someone to make my life feel normal again.  Someone to say no matter what decision you make, we are here for you.

When Nora died earlier this month I was slightly prepared.  She had been in hospital for a few weeks with white cell count problems and I knew if they didn't get this solved soon she would develop pneumonia.  But still somehow we were all shocked when she did, and time to say goodbye was short for all.

The last year has been filled with the loss of a number of people from my life.  My Mom, of course.  The week after my Mom, my Mother in Law, my sixteen year old cat.. I know .. some of you are going to look at that and say what ??? a cat???? Don't knock it, some days I wonder who I miss the most.  One brother in law, and my Doctor of 16 years.. not family, not even a close friend, but still a loss.  I'm left wondering what next... and hoping for a long time before I find out.

This was written on Nora's order of service card, and I thought it pretty much said it all.

When tomorrow starts without me and I'm not there to see,

If the sun should rise and find your eyes all filled with tears for me,

I wish so much you wouldn't cry the way you did today,

While I'm thinking of the many things we didn't get to say.

I know how much you love me, as much as I love you, 

And each time you think of me, I know you'll miss me too;

But when tomorrow starts without me, please try to understand,

That an angel came and called my name and took me by the hand.

And said my place was ready in Heaven far above,

And that I'd have to leave behind all those I dearly love.

But as I turned and walked away, a tear fell from my eye,

For all my life I'd always thought I didn't want to die.

I had so much to live for, I had so much to do,

It seemed almost impossible that I was leaving you.

I thought of all the yesterdays, the good ones and the bad,

I thought of all the love we shared and all the fun we had.

If I could relive yesterday, I thought just for awhile,

I'd say goodbye and kiss you and maybe see you smile. 

So when tomorrow starts without me,

Don't think we're far apart. For every time you think of me...

I'm right here in your heart. 

It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World

It has occurred to me that I need to move to a quieter place on the planet.  Or perhaps I need to send myself back in time to a land far far away ... before cell phones and i-pods were invented.  You may remember this time as when people actually spoke to each other.  You know .... as in a conversation.  Speaking out loud. We did something very novel back then too.  We actually listened to what other people were saying to us.  We actually noticed that there were other people in our world.  Foreign concept these days it seems.  About as foreign a concept as common courtesy is today.

Where I live there is a year long project of major road construction.  While this is the excuse du jour for lousy driving and being assholes at the intersections, it is in fact not a recent behavior.  For the last few years I've noticed that I have to weave between cars in the left turn lane that are blocking the cross walk because the drivers, knowing they are not going to be able to clear the intersection before the light changes, make the turn anyway.  Because you know, their four minutes is of far more importance than the safety of any foolish pedestrian on the road.   There are signs all over the place, have been for a year now, for drivers to expect long delays while they blast out rock to widen the road two lanes to accommodate all those single passenger cars belonging to people who have moved to the suburbs.  Public Transit and carpooling are apparently non existent in these peoples worlds.  Apparently these people also think that pesky little flagperson will get those pesky little road graders to move out of the way if we just lay on the horns long enough.  Who cares that this is a residential area , after all I'm way more important than anyone else within a twenty mile radius.

Have you ever noticed how many people eat dinner in restaurants now with their blue tooth device still stuck in their ears?  Is the conversation at your table so bad you have to stay connected to the world by phone?  Why are we all so stuck on multi tasking.  Maybe we are afraid if we actually went silent for an hour no one would miss us.

Isn't it possible we all need to lower our image of how important we are to the planet and disconnect for an hour?  Perhaps if we actually had to communicate face to face or human voice to human voice for awhile we would remember that we are part of a planet of humans and we need to treat each other as such.  It seems to me since we started to isolate ourselves into our own little world wrapped up in music, texting, auto voice answering machines, and computers, we have forgotten to treat our fellow voyagers on this journey with even a modicum of courtesy.

She Don't Write , She Don't Call ... Where's The Love

It must be coming on fall.  I have the urge to write blog entries.  This reminds me of grade school projects where you had to write that essay " What I Did Last Summer."

Our last heat wave finally ended and while the whole province is under extreme fire watch, and I'm sure we will have lots of days where we complain it's too hot, there really is a fallish feel to the evenings.  I live on the island and we get all our seasons a bit earlier than everyone else. So here is my what I did last summer essay. If it really bothers your sensibilities come back in two weeks.

First of all I complained about the heat.  A LOT.  I'm just not a summer person. In fact I'm pretty sure one of the reasons I left the prairies and moved to the island was to escape hot summers.

I adopted  two kittens from a feral cat shelter.  One had been really badly treated by someone who should be covered in honey and left on an ant hill.  She was found at five weeks tied to a table leg, then abandoned. She is gradually getting her digestive system in order. The other one is a friendly little thing that seems to be fearless.  Stupid would be a fairly good word to use instead of fearless.

I have had many many lovely long conversations with my son this summer which pretty much makes this the best summer I've ever had.  Heat waves not withstanding.  Given that he has a new addition coming to his house in January I am also knitting a baby blanket.  My third attempt I gave up and returned to a pattern I've used for years.  Must have been the heat that made me think knitting a lace blanket where the pattern was 46 rows was more appealing than knitting a blanket where the pattern is a repeat of 4 rows... and it does not help my wounded pride that no one else on the planet would ever have known the difference.

My son has also come up with this great idea that we should go to Ireland and Scotland in three years to trace back my family heritage.  I cannot wait , when I'm not panicking about the flight.  I'm so excited I've even managed to curtail my shopping habit in order to save money for the trip.

And last but not least I have kept my promise to not backslide on the piano at least most weeks.

What I have not done this summer is work on my garden... but no one other than the slugs really noticed.  

Heart Felt Apology

Hi Everyone.  I'm sorry I have not posted in ages.  It feels like a year since I was here.

My Mom passed away May 14 and while I thought I was prepared, turns out there is no such thing.  My much beloved sixteen year old cat died a week later, my very much loved Mother in law a week after that, and then somewhere in between all this I broke off a bicuspid tooth at the gum line and next week I'm having dental surgery to hopefully keep the tooth or as much as is left.

My dining room table is still buried under condolence cards and thank you cards yet to be sent out. I'm half way through....  I have no idea how it became such a huge nightmare to die in Canada.  The paperwork is just amazing, and probate taxes are astounding and infuriating at the same time.  People talk about the cost of a funeral service.... not even close to what the probate tax is going to be.  Talk about a last kick at the cat.  A really really good reason to die bankrupt.  Your last comment to the government is to leave nothing they can tax!

So, long story short, I hope to be back soon.

On a very positive note however.  I have a new kitten coming.  She was born June 2nd so give or take a few days I should have new kitty pictures to post in early August.  However, my huge news is my Son and I have reconnected and all is going very nicely.  I have my fingers crossed , which is another reason I cannot post.  Who can type like that ???