Love for Lica.

So I'm sharing this here because this year my aunt Miriam has set her sights on raising money for an amazing young woman that I have had the pleasure of knowing through my time volunteering in Brazil. Lica is a young mother to three children and is in desperate need of a real little house to replace the one room her family currently lives in. I can personally vouch for Lica's strong work ethic, her undying determination, her ability to overcome adversity and above all else her unrelenting optimism and hope. The story below is my aunt's experience with Lica and it was Miriam who wrote it in order to pass the word along and gather support for the creation of a safe home for Lica and her children. Please give it a read. And if you are feeling generous this holiday season please contact me through the comments section or privately to donate or for more information.

LICA AND ME (Miriam)

I met Lica in 1997 when I arrived unannounced at her ramshackle home.  By then I’d already been volunteering in Bahia for a decade and had seen lots of grim stuff.  But I was shocked to come upon an enraged, drunken woman beating two very little girls. The older one, Lica, then just 7, was curled around a toddler, trying to shield her from the blows.  

Perhaps it was that protective gesture that stapled Lica to my heart. Or maybe it was just that I had the chance to watch this lovely child grow up under burdens and losses so dark they would have done most of us in. Who knows really why the heart lurches in the directions it does?   

All I can say for sure is that this kid captured me and during the two decades since, not that much has changed for the poor on the NE coast of Brazil. The descendents of African slaves and the aboriginal peoples still live at the ugly end of exploitation, corruption and violence.  The social service agencies are still under-resourced, overwhelmed and mired in a moribund byzantine bureaucracy. And Lica is now a young mother trying to protect her own three children from life’s harshest blows and I’m still asking my friends to help me help her.

LICA’S FAMILY HOME   

Lica’s grandmother owned the house. She’d had a steady job cooking in a restaurant 12 hours a day for 20 years and managed to buy a modest two-room house in a low-income neighbourhood.  Poverty,  overcrowding and gross neglect had reduced the place to a disgusting shambles: the dirt yard was filled with rubbish; the roof and walls leaked; the floors turned to mud in the rain;  the furnishings were broken cast-offs; closets were plastic bags nailed to brick walls; and the security system, two gaunt snarling dogs, crapped everywhere. Three adult women and six kids were living in these two rooms.            

LICA’S MOTHER   

Ana was addicted to cachaça, a local brew the abuse of which causes brain damage. She was already visibly impaired by the time I met her.  Lica has dim memories of a kinder Ana before she became a violent, confirmed alcoholic. But all I ever saw was Ana, even when sober, cursing and threatening the children, forcing them to do the chores she never did.  And when drunk, she would beat them with anything she could grab hold of.   

LICA’S DAD   

My old shrink used to say it only took one good parent to raise a healthy child. Lica had neither. The men in her family had spawned and gone.  Lica made several disappointed attempts to connect with her father, who lives in a neighbouring slum.  But he never came through with any support at all.   

LICA’S ELDEST SISTER      

Cristiane was 22 when I met her. She had taken the brunt of Ana’s abuse until she grew big and hard enough to punch her mother out. Unfortunately, Cristiane did not extend her protection to her younger sisters or her own children.  Only intermittently interested in them, she mostly left her kids behind with Ana while she hung out with sequential boyfriends.  

LICA HERSELF       

Lica was an unusually alert and responsive child with a robust survival instinct. She latched onto me and enchanted me with her mile-wide smile  and resilient spirit. She did me much good over the years. There were many times when I felt so exhausted by the unending obstacles we faced that I just wanted to quit. But then I would see Lica bent over a cracked plastic dishpan singing while she scrubbed the family’s dirty laundry.  I know it sounds corny: Lady Bountiful meets Baby Aunt Jemima, but Lica’s innate capacity for joy lifted my spirits and stiffened my spine. If this kid could cope, surely I could.

PROGRESS      

Despite the lack of a responsible adult in this home or any help from local agencies, with the financial support provided by Susan Adams and my sister Katherine Owen back in Vancouver, and the emotional support provided by the local leaders of Street Angels,  the kids in this family were eating better and  attending school.  But life in this impoverished, abusive family was always hard.

TRAGEDY    

When Lica was 10, her other sister, Vivienne, 14, went out one evening with a girlfriend and didn’t return. The friend was killed and Vivi was shot five times and left for dead. Somehow she regained consciousness and managed to crawl out of bushes onto a highway. Surgeons saved her life but they were unable to remove a bullet lodged behind her eyes. 

Vivi was left permanently blind and suffering from severe PTSD.  She refused to identify the assailants or leave the house. She was terrified that the killers would return if they learned she had survived.  Ana’s response to this tragedy was to be angry at Vivienne for having brought the attention of the police to her door. Lica was afraid to leave the side of her helpless sister because, “Someone has to stand guard over Vivienne”. Indeed, little mother, but it shouldn’t have to be you.

We scoured the city for a residential school for the blind and found nothing available for the poor.  Street Angels’ donors paid for a private facility.  After a year, Vivi was recovered enough to want to go home to visit her sisters. Within a few days of being home, Vivi contracted an intestinal infection.  Blind and disoriented with fever, she lost control of her bowels and soiled the bed.  Ana set to beating her with a broom handle. Lica ran to a neighbour for help. The police arrived too late. Ana’s blows dislodged the bullet and Vivienne died in her bed.     

There were no official consequences to the killing of Vivi. Since the  State neither removed Ana nor provided a safe place for the children, we built two add-on rooms, the larger one for Cristiane’s children and the smaller room (about 7’ x 10’) for Lica. We furnished both with separate entrances, lockable doors, a sink and a toilet so the kids could attend to basics without running the risk of disturbing Ana. And they could lock themselves in when she went on a rampage.

LICA’S TEENAGE YEARS      

Amazingly Lica continued to flourish. She developed into a strikingly beautiful adolescent.  She kept herself and her room carefully groomed. A diligent and ambitious student, she took, and did well in, every after-school training program we offered.  By 14, she’d set her sights on becoming a policewoman because as she explained: “I love their uniforms. And I’d be one of the good cops because I know what makes kids become thieves. And nobody messes with a policewoman.”  

By now, Ana had taken to screaming insults all night and wandering the streets semi-naked by day, obsessively cursing her thankless daughters.  Having a debased version of King Lear for a mother was a constant source of humiliation for Lica.  Faced with a daily gauntlet of local louts’ tormenting with lewd jibes, few teenagers could hold their heads as high or work as hard at improving their situation, as Lica did.              

But this girl did more than tough it out.  She often expressed genuine concern for her mum, especially when Ana’s physical health began failing. Lica was no Goody Two Shoes.  She could laugh with wicked delight when I mock--prayed for her demented mother’s demise. But the reality underneath our banter was that Lica longed for a kind, sober mum.  I’d often seen her patiently washing and feeding the blunted sot. And I knew she was doggedly searching for a free rehab centre in the enduring hope that Ana could be made sober and kind.  I was less optimistic but loved Lica for her tenacity, initiative and heart.      

One day Ana woke saying she had dreamt she was on a date with Zico, a soccer celebrity.  Lica got an idea.  Acting on her own, she contacted the producers of a popular reality TV show in which a poor person’s dreams come true (sort of a cross between Jerry Springer and The Wish Foundation).  Lica described her mother’s alcoholism and failing health (but not her violence) and suggested that Ana might be enticed into a treatment centre if a date with Zico could be arranged and that would make a super good double-dreams-come-true episode.    

To my surprise, Lica’s pitch was chosen for airing.  And there we all were, watching our enterprising Lica on TV cheerfully showing the blowhard host around the wretched family home while he badgered Ana into accepting the deal: 30 days in a recovery centre for a date with Zico. (The soccer hero was spared the date because Ana bolted and defaulted to booze after a week in rehab).

FIRST LOVE     

Of course, underneath Lica’s pride and resourcefulness, was an abused child hungry for love.  The first cute boy who kissed her hit pay dirt. At 14 she fell in love and happily flung herself into Eros Heaven. I’d been boring all the girls in our project for years with safe sex talk and we gave out condoms like Chiclets.  But often our prophylactic efforts proved to be straws in the wind of teenage passion.  Lica’s stay in paradise was unusually brutal and short.  

TRAGEDY AGAIN    

The cute boy, 15, had left school and was hanging around with the wrong crowd.  He was picked up by the police.  Fearing that all-too-common consequence of arrest for black kids - death-while-in-police-custody, Lica defied a big taboo. She raced to the police station to vouch for her boyfriend’s character. No one in the favelas trusts or turns to the police.  Even our enlightened local project managers were furious with Lica for involving herself (and, indirectly, them) with the police.  The police bullied Lica and slapped her around and locked her in jail for two days.  But eventually both kids were released.  A few days later, the undaunted, terminally-foolish boy tried to shoplift some candy from a drugstore. The owner chased him out firing a gun.  The boy was dead in the street before his 16^th birthday.

BABY MAMA    

And within a month, Lica, still devastated by the loss of her first love, discovered she was pregnant.  Lica was more afraid of Ana and an abortion than of having a baby.  Being a teenage mother is normal in the favelas; while abortions are illegal, dangerous and a deadly sin.  The birth was easy, the baby healthy and Lica a super conscientious mother at 15.

She missed a year of school and carried baby Andre with her everywhere as she struggled to feed and clothe herself and him on her bursaries which totaled less than $100 a month.  To make ends meet, she did daily domestic work whenever she could find it. But still hoping to become a policewoman, she returned to night school determined to satisfy the eligibility requirements for the police academy.

The psychological toll of extreme poverty is relentless.  There was never enough money to pay for the beans and the propane gas to cook them and the hydro bill. Their hydro was cut off. She worried constantly about baby Andre being left in her room in the dark with only a candle and a 12 year-old niece to keep him safe from Ana whose alcoholic storms continued unabated.   

At 17 she found Manuel to help her. He’s a decent, quiet motherly sort of young man, who offered her emotional support, kept Ana at bay, and patiently babysat Andre while Lica went to night school.  She, Manuel and Andre were now living together in her little 7’ x 10’ room.  She equipped herself with an IUD and for a year it looked like she might yet make it to graduation and the police academy. 

BIOLOGY, POVERTY, GOD & THE LAW EQUALS DESTINY   

Unfortunately Lica developed a pelvic infection and the IUD had to be removed.  In the month between its removal and the arrival of the free birth control pills in the public health clinic, Lica conceived again.  She didn’t want another baby but Manuel didn’t want her to have an abortion.  Eventually Lica decided she couldn’t risk losing Manuel and it wasn’t fair of her to ask him to look after her child while she “murdered” his. Besides, who was she to defy God’s plan?   

Baby Matias was born with badly bowed legs – probably a result of Lica’s deficient diet during gestation.  He required special medical treatment and leg braces which meant Lica had to trudge for weeks through the complex labyrinth of the public medical system trying to find help for him. Worried and exhausted, she lost track of the fact that conception can occur while still nursing an infant. Lica was pregnant again before Matias was 3 months old.  And this time, grim reality overcame all scruples. She wasn’t yet 20, had two children to support, no regular income and so she tried desperately to terminate this third pregnancy.    

Affluent Brazilian women of course have access to licensed doctors who for a fat fee perform safe abortions in private offices.  But poor girls like Lica rely on cheaper methods: handfuls of morning-after pills, toxic chemical brews, back-alley knitting needles.  Lica tried everything and nothing worked and now she was terrified the baby would be born deformed.  By the time I found out what was happening and a professional friend located a cooperative physician, he refused to perform the D & C because Lica had passed the first-trimester cut off date.  We all held our breath until Tisiane, a beautiful normal girl baby, arrived. 

Thanks primarily to Lica’s capacity for hard work and love, five years later, Lica’s three kids, now aged 5 to 10,  are healthy, lively and in school.  Unfortunately, Manuel, the father of the youngest two, has turned out to be almost as much a liability as asset.  He has a learning disability, left school in Grade 3, is illiterate and has no family to help them at all. In a region of widespread unemployment and fierce competition, only men with extraordinary determination and physical strength can keep up the daily hustle required to find, and do the hard dirty work of unskilled day labour.  And that’s just not Manuel.  

Manuel is passive and slow – both mentally and physically.  He would drive me crazy. But I can totally understand why Lica needs him. He’s non-threatening, affectionate, patient with the children and helps her  by running errands and babysitting while she hustles whatever work she can find – cooking, cleaning, taking in laundry.  His passivity gets on her nerves; her bossiness on his. But I’m not sure that she or the children would be better off without him.  

Ana and her dogs still occupy the main part of the house.  Lica’s  7’ x 10’ room is now insanely crowded with five living in it. Lica keeps it as clean and neat as anyone could.  But it’s so small the children must eat, sleep, play, do their homework, watch TV and fight on their bunk beds. Lica and Manuel have no privacy at all. Their bed is an old single foamy kept rolled up under the bunk beds during the day. When unfurled at night, it fills the entire remaining floor space of the room.  Living like this produces endless tensions and conflicts from which there is no escape except to the dangerous streets.

Lica has the birth control situation in hand and impatiently waits for the day she will be deemed legally old enough to qualify for a tubal ligation. In a machismo patriarchal society, a woman’s reproductive organs are not her own to command.   

(A couple of years ago the Church refused to grant permission to hospital physicians who applied to abort a 9 year-old girl who was carrying twins after having been raped by her step-father.  The doctors won the battle of public opinion but the whole ugly process made it clear that biology is still destiny for poor women in Brazil).

I know Lica has enough smarts and gumption to manage the daily grind but she will never produce enough to be able to provide her family with a modest 2-bedroom home.  In a similar low-income neighbourhood close to the city’s resources, you’d be lucky to find one for $CDN30,000. I planned to leave her a bequest in my will. But my parents lived to their mid-90’s. So I have decided to try and raise the funds while they still might do Andre, Matias, & Tisiane some good.  

The streets beckon seductively to kids forced to live like this.  Even good parents lose them every day to drugs, disease and death. I lost count after 55 lads were murdered by gang warfare in the small favela where we were based.  It’ll probably take me some time and numerous parties and garage sales to raise enough to get Lica and her kids a decent home. But I intend to keep at it.   And in the meantime, I just hope that she can continue to hold things together until I  can, with a little bit of help from my friends, do my part.  I’ll let you know how things turn out.  And thank you for making the time to read this too-long history.           

Little Rock Star.

Damn You, Sexy Nurse!

Babe just before her first Halloween. The day of she actually went out dressed as an owl.

Been looking for a Halloween costume for Babe.

I know this has been in the news around Vancouver lately but I'm getting so frustrated that of course I want to weigh in as well.

So,

To pretty much every Halloween store in the Lower Mainland:

Are you fucking kidding me with the options for little girl costumes this year?

Why are the only choices for my three-year-old daughter either a Disney princess or a sexy version of anything else?

When she was smaller I could get her the cute, warm, fluffy costumes from places like Old Navy. But now that she is bigger we have been looking at other ideas. And I am so disappointed.

Why is it that in order for my not even three-year-old daughter to dress up for Halloween she has to look sexy. Why can't we find a regular nurse costume? Why does it need to be Stripper-Nurse? For a fucking toddler.

Babe wanted to be a lady bug. I've been to a bunch of stores. But do you think I could find a regular chubby, round ladybug costume? Nope, not this year. (And I'm kicking myself because I actually do have exactly that in storage and can't find it.)

Every single one was ladybug wings with a short little dress attached. And when Babe's second choice was a cat I thought that would be easy peasy. But nope. Same shit. Every cat costume was cat ears, a tail and a tight-fitting leopard-print number usually reserved for the only clothed scene of a porno movie.

But one isle over, in the boy section - lots of realistic, warm and practical lion and tiger costumes.

I got so sick of seeing the same damn Disney Princess costumes and tight, short-skirted everything else costumes that I finally took her over to the boy section of the store. And I shouldn't have to do that. If she wants to be a doctor there should be an appropriate doctor costume in the girl section.

Because that is the whole point of a uniform isn't it? It's basically the same for everyone. Real firefighters, policemen, doctors and soldiers dress almost exactly the same, regardless of gender.

But not for Halloween. The boys can be regular doctors, the girls are limited to hooker-doctor. Like the only way a woman should perform surgery is if she still manages to look beautiful doing it and remembers to carve out time to perform blow-jobs in the evening.

At the last store we went to, the boy section had; dinosaurs, zoo animals, firemen, policemen, zombies and construction worker costumes. Perfectly age-appropriate and fairly close to realistic for $30. But the whole girl section was pink, sparkly and slutty. And the only costume that wasn't pink and slutty was an offensive First Nations costume...which was brown and slutty. And remember...I'm looking at costumes for THREE to FIVE year old girls.

Even the days of the ever-faithful, big round pumpkin costumes are gone. Or at least they're gone for the girls. The girls get Pretty Candy Corn Princess (which is just marketing for a striped orange miniskirt). Of course, in the boy section - regular fat pumpkin costumes.

And the sick thing is I can't even blame the stores because it's the consumer that's buying this crap. We continually overly sexualize women at younger and younger ages, hold them up to impossible standards of beauty, convince them early on that no matter how hard they work they'll have to look good doing it too and now a little girl can't even trick or treat on Halloween without freezing her buns off in some sick, booty-shorted version of a policeman costume.

And then we turn around and over-protect the same daughters because there's so many perverts out there who sexualize kids. Well, gee...I wonder why?

Over my cold, dead corpse is my daughter dressing up in anything even remotely sexy before high school, and definitely not before she enters kindergarten. For now, she can get something from the boy isle and I'll take another twenty minutes out of my busy day to talk her out of a panic because the costume is for boys and not girls.

And really? Like I said before, why is there even separate boy and girl sections for little kids costumes anyway. A doctor is a doctor, a dinosaur is a dinosaur and a pumpkin is a gourd for crying out loud!

Can't the kids isle just be for kids? Isn't Halloween supposed to be for kids?

It's supposed to be laughter and staying up late and ghost stories and candy - not JELL-O shooters and hooking up in a crotchless Catwoman suit behind your current elementary school.

Babe last year on Halloween in Smithers.

Amazing Art Project Showcases Gender-Coloured Toys.

Check out artist JeongMee Yoon's "The Pink and Blue Project" here.

I found this really interesting. When I was pregnant I made such an effort to avoid buying "girl-coloured" clothing that I realized later that my baby daughter had more boyish clothing than girly clothing.

Now, I don't try so hard. I buy what I think is cute. But I do try to avoid amassing a ton of pink and purple crap and so far I am desperately avoiding commercial stuff - such as Disney Princess everything.

I know that as Babe gets older she is going to have her own preferences and I fear they may lean towards the sparkly and pastel. But if that's the case I'll remind myself that it's just a faze and I'll suck it up.

My Mom was so wary of commercial brand toys that I rarely got anything I really wanted. It wasn't that I wasn't spoiled. I was. But I didn't have Barbies and Cabbage Patch Dolls, she wanted to avoid buying toys like that, which were so heavily marketed towards children regardless of their actual educational or entertainment value.

Now I totally get why she did it, but at the time I was dying to have the same things my friends had. And she must've told my friend's parents about her beliefs because while the other kids got hoards of My Little Ponies at their birthday parties, I always got art kits. I would think my birthday party would be my only opportunity to get a "commercial toy" because surely my friends would get me one...but it never happened. But now I'm glad I was different.

Speaking of hoarding toys, I don't know if this was the artist's intention at all, but equally as interesting as the colour of the toys is the sheer amount of them. It's pretty gross to see the excess of possessions a child has. And my kid is no better.

Her next series should be comparing the treasures of one Western child with those of a third world child.

She's a Girl.

When we were in Auckland E's daughter had a little play stove in the kitchen which Babe just loved. She played with it every day that we were there and littered the house with the pots and pans that went with it. She loved it so much that I made a mental note to try to find something similar here in Vancouver.

Then the other day we were in Walmart and I remembered the stove and decided to check the toy isle to see if I could find one.

Of course the one E's kid has was found in a second hand store and it's way cooler than any of the crap you'd buy at Walmart. It's plastic too, but not the China-lead-paint-cheap-ass-Walmart plastic. It's the hard plastic that snaps into dangerous shards not the soft plastic that bends forever like silly putty. And E's stove makes cooking sounds and the burners light up and it's actually the colours you'd find on a real stove. It's not a pink stove with purple burners and a sparkly flower oven door with a fucking Disney princess on it or something. And it's super small and compact and fits nicely in a real kitchen. But nevertheless, I wanted to get something...

But of course all the Walmart kitchens were huge and completely unnecessary for a one year old. I know I'll have to purchase one of them later but I'm not yet at the place in my parent-life where I'm willing to buy toys that come in refrigerator-sized boxes. But then just as we were about to leave we came upon a stack of mini-kitchens on sale for $20. The kids pictured with it on the box were Babe's age and the thing wasn't too big. And better yet, it was cheap, so I wouldn't feel bad about donating it to the thrift store in six months.

So I bought it and Babe seemed to know what it was by looking at the box and she seemed excited.

But when I was looking for the kitchens we passed a row of plastic tool benches. And the first thought in my head was, "Well here's all the tool benches, where the hell are the girl's kitchens?" And that thought bugged me on the drive home. Why did I so eagerly dismiss the tool benches as being for boys? Was I already falling victim to society's gender roles and guiding my daughter more towards Barbies and fairy dresses and away from Transformers and army men? It bugged me.

It was still bugging me two hours later when the Walmart kitchen was built and Babe was happily putting cups and saucers inside the oven.

Then I realized something cool.

I paid for the toy and hauled it in from the truck. I spent almost two hours with 500 parts scattered in a pokey puddle at my feet. Seriously, for $20 they don't get you started on fucking anything. For $20 you get 500 pieces swept off the factory floor and some generic instructions that apply to various models of similar toys.

My tool box was out and my screwdrivers were spread all over the place. Sharp tools that I had to continuously confiscate from Babe who would snatch one as soon as she sensed my focus was elsewhere.

Babe watched me sift through a hundred little pieces to find the right one. She saw me drop screws and bump my head on the table looking for them. She heard me swear more than once. She probably noticed my butt crack.

She quizzically listened while I explained what I was doing. She played in a poopy diaper for longer than is acceptable because I was too focussed on what I was doing to stop and change her. She saw her mom do all of that. And that's pretty manly shit I was doing.

So who cares if the end result is a kitchen set instead of a tool bench - we used tools to make it. Babe is gonna grow up in a house where it's her mommy that does the blue jobs and the pink jobs. And she wouldn't be lying if she told her baby-friends that her mommy can drive a forklift in high heels. (She'd be a genius - but not a liar).

Single moms do it all. So I guess being a single mom gets me off worrying if I'm stereotyping my daughter.

P.S. While building the toy I also had dinner cooking and the laundry on.

Flowers, Bows and Pom Poms!

It's no secret that I like DIY projects, arts and crafts. I'm always making something. I haven't had as much time to be creative since Babe came along (I did get three Christmas eggs made this year) but I have had enough time to make the odd thing.

I was seeing adorable baby headbands everywhere but I never came across any. I found a couple of cute ones at Target in the states but I wanted more, more, MORE! But when I got home I couldn't find them here and I'm too impatient to wait for orders from Etsy - but FYI there are adorable baby headbands on Etsy - so I did what I usually do when I want something that I can't find or afford. I make it. If it's makable. By me. That's how I ended up with my kitchen table, cat scratching post, sock monkeys, wall art etc...

So here are some pics of what I have so far. I'm not going to include how-to's here because there are a million places online that you can go to if you want to make these yourself. There are tutorials on YouTube, blogs and websites. I just googled "how to make..." and whatever I was looking for and then scrolled through everything until I saw something I liked.

Anyway, here are some of the highlights:

I started with these pom pom headbands.

I made two different kinds. One kind with fabric and one kind with felt.

Then I moved on to these rolled fabric flowers (top black and white and lower peach).

Then I tried this weird fabric flower which involves twisting and pinning (top multi-coloured) but it took a realllly long time. So I only made the one.

Next I moved onto felt roses. You can see a few others in above pics.

Then I decided that I wanted to make bows. So I started with fabric because I really liked the anchor material above.

But then I found a tutorial on these felt bows and I've been addicted to making them ever since.  

Cream.

White, blue, black. I can't stop.

 Bows without bands yet.

Babe and her pretty little roses.

Every night after Babe goes to bed I have been sitting on the floor in front of the TV with a glass of wine and my sewing kit.

Every baby girl I know is getting one.

I'm Flying Mommy! Part 2.

photo courtesy of feminists-eh.blogspot

Happy first Canada Day to all the new babies out there. 

Anyway, back to the first flights with Babe.

I was flying out of Seattle because it's so much cheaper than flying out of Vancouver. My round trip ticket from Seattle to D.C. cost less than $400 and a round trip ticket from Vancouver to D.C. would've been about $1300. So although it's a hassle to drive down to Seattle the price difference made it worth the trip.

I didn't have many choices for flights because I wanted a cheap direct flight. No transferring planes with a baby in tow for me thanks. So our departing flight was at 7:30 am which meant a sleepover in a local hotel.

On the moving walkway.

As I mentioned in the last post, my two main concerns were Babe's behaviour on the plane and of course, crashing. And I knew that both were mostly out of my hands. You can read in part one all the plans I had to try to keep Babe from upsetting the other passengers but if she was determined to kick up a fuss I wouldn't have been able to remove her from the area, and that was stressing me out.

As far as crashing was concerned there was nothing I could do except to not go at all.

So I did what everyone who is afraid of flying does. No, I didn't take a sedative, I have to nurse remember? I prayed and bargained and paced and fidgeted. And I sat at the gate scanning my fellow passengers trying to decide if any looked like terrorists or if the group looked like the type of people whose smiling portraits you see flashing on the news channel after a disaster.

And once on the plane all I could do was hug my baby tight and trust the pilots and crew. Part of me knew that we would be fine but a little part of me felt like I was putting my baby in danger uneccissarily - after all, we didn't have to go. But I really wanted to visit my friend and I hate bowing to fear so we were going. I had tears in my eyes when we took off though.

Babe was fine. She was actually in her element. Everyone around us was smiling and waving at her and she was in my arms for five hours straight. She couldn't have been happier. I on the other hand was really uncomfortable. She squirmed the whole time, constantly dropped toys and only slept for twenty minutes. She also desperately wanted to touch the man sitting beside us so it was a lot of work to keep that from happening. But she never screamed and showed no signs that her ears were bothering her - so the first flight was a success!

Arriving after a long flight.

The only time I wasn't holding her was in the last hour when I couldn't wait any longer to pee and asked one of the stewardesses to hold her while I went. I relished that five minutes in the crappy airplane john. It was my own little first class. So roomy, so quiet. I stayed in longer than I needed to.

The flight back was a little harder.

First of all I was absolutely positive that I was leaving on Friday. Not only had I checked my ticket a thousand times but I had also booked a hotel for my parents (who were picking me up) for Friday night in Seattle. The mix-up came because it was an overnight flight (so leaving one day and arriving - just barely - on the next) and combined with the time difference and the way the ticket read I got totally confused. Basically I fucked up.

You can see where this is going.

I hate traveling with dirty clothes so everything was washed, dried, folded and neatly packed (no small feat with a baby tugging at your heels). Half a day of visiting was wasted on getting ready to go. Babe was clean and in her airplane clothes and ready for the flight. My anxiety was on high again knowing we had to fly and the hour and a half drive in traffic was grating because Babe was screaming most of the time.

Getting all the way there only to find out that my flight wasn't until the next night was horrible. Never, ever let this happen to you when you have a baby. I felt like such an idiot. I was embarrassed that my friend had driven us all the way out only to have to turn around and do it again the next night. And I knew my parents would be less than pleased to have driven all the way to Seattle only to have no one to pick up at the airport.

The next hour sucked. There was no way of contacting my parents so I had to track down their hotel and leave them a message telling them they'd have to stay an extra night. The flight that I thought I was on was over-booked so there was no getting on that and the airline didn't have another flight to Seattle until my flight 24 hours later. I was so desperate not to go back in the car with my fussy baby that I seriously thought about getting a hotel at the airport. But we would've had to check out at 11 am and then what would we have done until our 9:30 pm flight? Plus it seemed dumb to waste all that time alone in a hotel when I could've spent it visiting with K.

So K drove us allll the way back to her place. I think Babe fell asleep...I can't remember. I was super bummed and really stressed out. I'm usually so organized. Always on time, everything scheduled in my day planner. I was so mad at myself for making such a rookie mistake.

That night I tried to unpack as little as possible and the next night we loaded everything back into the car and headed back to the airport. On a positive note; the extra day allowed us to fit in some sight-seeing that we hadn't had a chance to do and as another friend pointed out, it was better than arriving at the airport a day late and having to buy another flight home.

Our flight was delayed and so we didn't leave the tarmac until about 10:30 pm But that was OK because the Baltimore airport has rocking chairs lined up near the windows. At hours past Babe's bedtime and laden with heavy bags I couldn't have been happier to see them. Babe and I rocked and watched planes for over an hour.

Babe in her jammies waiting for our delayed flight home.

We had an aisle seat with two seats beside us. The plane was almost full when a family with two young daughters got on. The parents took the seats behind us and their kids took the seats in our row.

Just before take off the militant father leaned forward and giving his best drill sergeant impression said:

"OK. Don't take out your cameras on this flight. It's night time. No one wants their picture taken. There is nothing to see out the windows so just leave your cameras in their bags.

Be quiet. Play quietly. People want to sleep so be QUIET.

There will be no hitting. No punching. No kicking. No screaming.

Stay in your seats. No squirming and no getting up and down. If you have to go to the bathroom, go now.

There's a baby beside you. Don't touch the baby, don't talk to the baby, don't ask to hold the baby. Do you understand?
"
The girls looked genuinely concerned for their safety.

I thought that's a long list of rules buddy and I laughed out loud.

I shouldn't have laughed.

As soon as we reached cruising altitude and the parents fell asleep the girls got into a fight. I don't know what it was about. It was probably about nothing, but they really got into it. Before long they were kicking the snot out of each other and they continued for almost an hour. And when I say, "kicking the snot out of each other" I mean really beating each other up. They were as violent to one another as they could be within the constraints of their airplane seats. They punched and slapped and got their legs up and kicked each other - in the face!

They even used their seat belts as weapons!

I spent that first hour trying to protect Babe's head from catching a stray fist and willing the parents to wake up and take notice.

Eventually Drill Sergeant Daddy did wake up and he was mad. But not mad enough to actually do anything beyond whisper-yell at them. Guess he was all bark and no bite. And his daughters knew it.

So the next few hours were much like the first. A lot of fighting interrupted by stern words from Dad, but no real action. You'd think they would split them up and each parent sit with one. But I guess neither Mom or Dad wanted to sit with their own kids.

Luckily Babe slept through it all and neither of us ended up with a black eye. And eventually the girls fell asleep and woke only long enough to punch the other if a body part accidentally flopped over the arm rest.

I was again very uncomfortable. Babe was asleep on me which severly limited my mobility. I finally did get my tray down, my laptop open and the internet purchased and working (all with one hand) but Netflix of course doesn't work in the sky and all I had to watch was the Sex And The City disc in my computer. I really wanted to watch it but the Princesses of Hell ruined that. I couldn't very well expose them to Samantha's sex scenes, but I was really bored. So I ended up watching it and turning off the screen every time a dirty part came up.

But thankfully Babe slept, the plane didn't crash and my parents stayed an extra night in Seattle and picked us up from the airport on the correct night.

All in all I would say that the first plane trips with my baby went really well.

Judge Not.

I don't have a picture of me being judgemental so here is a picture of me and Babe.

I've noticed something interesting lately. Something about myself and something about the Mommy Club. There's a lot less judgement than I thought there would be.

When I was pregnant I tried to picture the new people I would meet and the people I would be friends with. I admit I didn't think that I would fit in with other Vancouver moms. This was partly because of how standoffish people in Vancouver can be, but mostly it was because of my personal situation. I thought that most of the new moms I would meet would be happily married and had intentionally started a family. J and I aren't married and probably never will be. And while I'm so happy to have Babe she was not the product of "trying for a baby".

During my pregnancy when we still lived in our apartment in Vancouver I watched as couples our age bought and moved into the new townhouses behind us. I saw their fancy strollers on their glass patios and wondered where I would fit in. I thought that the moms I would meet would all be of this variety. Property owners, not renters like us. They'd have their new condos and having started their careers ten years ago would now be coasting on great maternity benefits. Their husbands would all be working long hours in the hopes of making partner at their law firm.

I couldn't imagine having much in common with them. Or them wanting to befriend me. Despite having years of experience with babies and children I thought these other moms wouldn't see what I had to offer.

I would be the mom who had just transitioned from student to mommy. Who instead of launching her new career had to return to her old job and work her pregnant butt off to accumulate enough hours for EI maternity. Who was seeing a counsellor to ensure I kept my head above water and whose relationship fit neither the married nor happy category.

After Babe was born and I started to venture out I met lots of new moms at events and groups and I made a lot of snap judgements. I sized them up, expecting that they were doing the same to me. I watched them. I took cues from their clothes, their baby gear, their cars and their mannerisms. I thought I had them figured out. They all seemed so together.

But then I started listening to them and they started to listen to me and it turns out there's way less judgement among new moms than I thought there would be. It's not a competitive sport like work or school is. Instead of trying to get a leg up or shoulder someone out of the race everyone seems to be supporting each other. Maybe this part of life is so damn tough that we lay down our arms and all the tactics we use to assert our independence and finally reach out.

And none of us are so together. The ones I thought were rich, aren't. The ones I thought were happy, cried. And the ones I pegged as probable bitches lent me a hand. I have consistently been surprised by how helpful everyone is. When one mom does something one way and another mom does it a different way they don't each try to prove theirs is the right way. "Hey whatever works," seems to be the standard response.

There's a lot of sharing of information. A lot of helpful hints. A lot of offers of help and a lot of social gathering.

It's not just the moms either.

I'm so frazzled much of the time that when I'm out in public I just need people to get the F out of my way. But so many times someone who I thought was going to give me a hard time was surprisingly helpful or managed to provide a moment of sweet relief.

One rainy evening I was rushing to the supermarket to get food for dinner. I was exhausted and Babe had screamed all the way to the store. I was carrying her through the parking lot towards the line of shopping carts and there was a woman who was standing there with her cart. It was dark and pouring rain and I was hurrying. In my head I was already cursing her for being in my way because I could tell that she wasn't going to move. But as I approached she not only moved to let me get under cover, she gave me her shopping cart (which you have to pay for with a quarter) and then stood in the wet cold looking though her purse for a new coin for herself.

I almost cried with gratitude and I felt so foolish for having assumed she would be in my way.

Everyone has been so much nicer and so much more accepting than I would have expected. I've met so many different moms and they all have a different story but there are similarities too; rich or poor, happy or sad, married or single they're all doing the best they can and they all seem to recognize that in each other.

I'm so relieved to be letting my guard down.

PS: I'm not losing my sarcastic outlook...I promise.

It's a Girl! Probably.

I of course couldn't wait until October to be surprised.

My impatience may be surprising to some because I have no gift anticipation at Christmas or my birthday.

But babies are different. It is my child, who will be forever in my life, not a puppy under the Christmas tree and I want to know everything about my baby as soon as the information is available.

So two weeks after my ultrasound with Jaded Tech #2 I followed the advice of my boyfriend's boss, who is also expecting, and headed off to AIM Medical Imaging in my city (Vancouver) to try again.

This time the tech was perfect. She was kind and laid back. She spent half an hour with us, about twenty minutes of which was spent on the hunt for the family jewels. She was excited for us (or at least faked it) and I left with a bunch of cute photos. I guess when you're paying (tests not ordered by your medical caretaker are not covered in Canada) you are treated more like a client and less like a cliche.

Finally the tech was able to say that she was 95 per cent sure that my little he/she is a SHE! I couldn't be happier. There are no guarantees but she assured me that if a boy pops out and I have all the wrong clothes I can send her the bill. Any chance she is serious?

For $50 I am 95 per cent sure my baby is a girl. Money well spent.