Wordless wednesday – Memorial
No knee-jerk reactions needed
Yesterday was supposed to be my catch-up day, a day to run errands and get some work done, but a flu-ish little boy meant that I had to modify things a bit and had a side-kick for the day. We happened to be coming home from grocery shopping when I drove down Woodroffe towards the lils’ school. Noting a couple of police cars on the side of the road, I assumed that there was an accident, and slowly moved towards the school. I saw pretty quickly that there were not two cars in front of the school, but closer to a dozen police cars. My heart leapt into my throat; this was not at all normal. The worst case scenarios began to run through my head.
I turned into our community, and drove parallel to the back of the school, on a route that took me towards the church where the students are evacuated to in an emergency. I hesitated for a brief second, trying to decide if going to the school would add to confusion. I didn’t care, I needed to get Goose.
As I parked the car, I saw two moms walking out from the church lot with their children. One of them very calmly explained that there had been an intruder in the school, he’d had a replica gun, and that he had been apprehended without anyone being harmed. She’d read in my face that I was panicked (apparently I was looking a little green) and it was a composure that I desperately needed. When I entered the parking lot, I was amazed at the lack of chaos. The classes were sitting in their groups, for the most part quietly chatting and engaged by their teachers. The teachers looked stressed, but very together. After a quick word with her teacher, I grabbed Goose and carried her to the car, hugging as tightly as I could.
The rest of yesterday was a blur. I cuddled and read stories, made jell-o, offered sundaes, and baked their favourite muffins, all the while answering their questions as best as I could. The answers ranged from: yes, there was a man in the school, he was probably sick and needing help; I don’t know why he did it or where he came from; it’s Ok that you were wearing your inside shoes outside; I promise you can get your lunch bag into morning and am sorry that you don’t get to eat today’s lunch. All of the questions were their way of processing, so we worked through it.
I knew that the rest of my community would have questions too, questions about who he was and how he got into the school. I know that this was a scary experience, but after hearing from school officials, and what was relayed to the lils in their classes, I firmly believe that this was a cry for help, despite the appearance of threat. Yet much of the discussion surrounds how the school can be made more secure.
As a parent of two small people attending that school, I want to ensure it’s a safe and nurturing environment. Simplistic approaches like buzzers serve only to reinforce the notion of school as jail. These systems would not have prevented the events of yesterday, nor will they prevent similar events from happening in the future. They are security theatre, designed to make one feel better about a specific situation, without actually doing anything concrete. If someone really wanted to bring harm to those attending the school, they would have, and could have adapted had these measures been in place.
I now know that the teachers and staff know what to do in an emergency, that they will take excellent care of my children despite being scared, and that the police response is way more efficient than I ever thought it would be. THAT is what makes me feel more secure. What I would like to see come of the events of yesterday is a discussion about how the mental health needs in our community are not being met by the current system, and how we as a community can help, not some knee-jerk reaction that isn’t going to “fix” anything.
Honey, I think you have a problem
Since we moved home, I have tried really hard to only do our laundry during the off-peak rate periods for Hydro. Through trial and error, I have determined that this time, for me, is on the weekend. If I try and wait until after 7:00PM, I frequently forget about the laundry until the following morning (at the earliest!), at which point it needs to get washed again. If I set the time on the washer to have it finish before 7:00AM, I forget it until much later in the day, or the next day, at which point it needs to be washed again. Saturday and Sunday works, and we usually have about four loads, which get done pretty quickly.
This weekend featured the perfect storm of two weeks’ worth of laundry due to our trip to Toronto the previous weekend, clothes from a business trip for Willy, tonnes of new clothes procured at a local consignment sale, and the extra laundry generated by the shoulder-season weather we have been experiencing, hot and sunny – cold and rainy – hot and muddy. As the TENTH load of laundry went into the washer last night, I sat down to fold and sort the other nine.
The actual folding was pretty fast, but I enlisted Willy to match up the socks. I’m not a fan of socks in general, and matching them up is a bit of a pain to me, so the sorting goes to him on a regular basis. We chatted as we worked, and when the matching was completed, Willy looked over at the piles, and said, “how did that happen?” Neatly stacked on the end of the couch was a pile of socks for Willy, and a pile of socks with roughly the same number of pairs for the rest of the family.
“Oh, I can tell you how that happened,” I replied, “you have issues with socks.” I’ve known this for a while about Willy. The man cannot let go of a pair of socks, regardless of their condition. It seems that the hole-y socks are the most loved, despite my efforts to throw them out on laundry day. Case in point, today’s socks:
(not pictured, the hole on the bottom of the left foot)
He claims that he needs different socks for different sports, and I accept that is a valid argument. To a point. Willy currently plays two sports, and only one of them on a regular basis. He owns roughly a hundred pairs of socks, which he sorts by colour and stores in two drawers of our dresser. His socks, approximately 100 pairs of them, take up more room in the dresser than all of the shirts I own. Oh yes, I can tell you exactly how that happened. You have a problem with socks.
Willy’s sock drawers
Three was not enough
When we looked at booking a train trip to Toronto this fall, Willy suggested that we take the early train on the Friday morning. While the main purpose of the trip was to visit Willy’s family, my sister-in-law was due to have a baby in early September, so planning to have more time in the city seemed logical enough. I booked the tickets and forgot all about the itinerary until it became clear that Willy was going to be in India over the same weekend as our trip.
Using my inside voice, I grumbled a little bit about him missing out on the trip and not being around to help out, but it was mostly out of jealousy over the fact that he was going to India without me. I told myself it was going to be ok, and spent a good chunk of yesterday packing and prepping everything so that we would be ready to get up and leave, long before dawn. I tucked the lils into bed in their today clothes, set three alarms, and went to bed earlier. I was ready.
I am usually one of those people who can’t get to sleep if they need to get up early, and then wakes several times through the night, so I was amazed when I woke up and saw that the clock read 5:55AM. “Right on time” I thought, as I sat up and reached to turn the alarm off. Then it hit me. There was no sound emitting from the radio, and the time was wrong. We needed to be on the train right now. I started to move in a hurry, but realized that it was futile. The train had left the proverbial station.
Hoping that I could salvage the trip, I picked up the phone and called VIA Rail. Luckily, they were up on time, and had someone answering the phones. I spoke to the nicest, sweetest agent, who sensed my upset and tried to make me feel better for having slept in and missed my train. Then he blew me away and waived the far difference on my three tickets. Tickets that were bought on the best sale that I have seen in a while, and normally would have cost a fortune to change. Knowing how disappointed the lils would have been if I had had to cancel the train and just drive, I was grateful to not have to make that decision. So I started to cry, and he was sweet again and made me laugh.
The lils woke up shortly after my call. Woo was first and he was crying when he found me in the family room, worried that just he had slept in and I had left without him. Goose joined us, and we cuddled on the couch until it was time to leave and catch the second train of the day. Today may have started abruptly for me, but with the help of a really caring agent at VIA Rail, a few stolen moments on the couch, and the promise of snuggles with my new baby niece, it ended up being pretty darn good.
Summer days
As the summer approached this year, I made a conscious decision to skip the camp circuit and keep the lils with me all the time. I wanted to spend the summer exploring our city and beyond, and figured that the lils were at the perfect age to accompany me. I jokingly told the lils that they were going to “Mom camp”, and that we would spend the summer going on adventures together.
They bought in, in a big way. After the first week, they would wake each day and ask what our daily adventure was. The plan to go on two or so adventures a week grew to almost daily outings. We added weekend adventures so that Willy could join us, and the weeks just flew by. Since late June, our adventures have taken us to:
- Mud Lake
- Mer Bleue
- Bate Island
- Andrew Haydon Park
- Dick Bell Park
- The Museum of Nature
- The Museum of Civilization
- The Agriculture Museum
- The Aviation Museum and the Star Wars Identities exhibit
- The Museum of Science and Technology
- The National Art Gallery
- Upper Canada Village
- Several of the local farmer’s markets
- Berry picking (followed by jam making!)
- Glow in the dark mini golf
- The Senator’s development camp
- Several public skates
- Wading pool at least 1/2 a dozen times
- Splash pads
- Playdates with friends
- Photowalks
- Toronto and Meaford where we spent ten days on the beach, in the pool, playing mini-golf, exploring the farm and it’s fabulous old barn, visiting old friends, Junior Caribana,but most importantly, connecting with family.
- Montreal for a trip on the train, some wandering, a new Science Centre, the Biodome, and some time with an Uncle.
- Numerous biking adventures, longer and longer trips for both lils.
- Spelunking at Bonnechere
- A tea party at cousin V’s
- Wandering in a couple of sunflower fields
- My Uncle’s orchard to pick the earliest apples
- Wednesday trips to the library, where each lil logged almost 200 books read this summer, as part of our library’s mission to have children read over 14,000 books (the goal was met with two weeks left in the summer!)
- The ‘Tech Wall’, one of Ottawa’s legal graffiti spaces
- Parliament Hill to see the changing of the guard and explore
- The locks where the Rideau Canal meets the Ottawa River, to follow a group of boats as they moved down
- Ribfest
- Shakespeare in the Park
- The Dragonboat festival
- The Lumiere Festival
- Greekfest
- The fire station, for a tour
Last week, I started to write out this list so that we would remember, and have something to add on to. As I kept listing the adventures, it dawned on me that our pace this summer might be why I am so tired these days, and why the lils are somewhat out of sorts. I decided to see if the lils were still interested in attending the hockey camps that they had seen weeks before. They assured me that they were and I signed them up. I figured it would give them a little bit of structure, and give me a small window of time each day that was mine and mine only.
Today was the first day of camp, and it was my busiest day of the summer! By the time I’d gathered their gear, made their lunches and snacks, gotten them appropriately dressed and packed the changes of clothing they needed, driven to the rink, signed them in, changed Goose and gotten her on the ice, ensured that Woo ate while watching Goose, helped Woo get ready, got Goose off the ice, and fed her lunch, I had just enough time to quickly duck out and get groceries before I returned to the rink for Woo. It was way more work for me than just hoping in the car and going on an adventure!
With all that we have done, there are still a handful of places that we did not get to, places that I am not sure we would have gotten to this week. Places like Wakefield, Gatineau park, and Saunders farm among them. These are places that are thankfully still nice to experience in the fall, nice because we can keep on “adventuring” for a while yet, but also because it gives me a time to recover, once they are back in school!