By Karen Bannister

I live my life like I write, on a whim, without an outline. Don’t get me wrong – I am a passionate organizer. I write grocery lists, chart family finances in a spreadsheet and have even made a living — received accolades — as an event planner.

But when it comes to major decisions, I move with the wind. When I enrolled in university, I let drama choose me and I studied to be an actor until I realized I couldn’t act. When I left university with a degree in theatre but no talent, I let arts management take over my life until I realized there was no heart in it. I went back to school, to study another subject, one that sounded exotic, until I realized I wasn’t much good at that.

And then I had a child. I chose one day to stop taking the pill and in the heat of the moment, convinced my husband we didn’t need an alternate contraceptive. Then, the way the wind blew that night, my son was conceived. Two years later, the wind blew again and my daughter was conceived.

Being a parent has taught me many things: how to dig into my soul for the right amount of patience, how to clean vomit from bed sheets, how to cover my breasts while attaching a baby to my nipple in a crowded room. It has taught me a great deal about myself: I am driven, I don’t know when to step back, to let go. I cannot relinquish control. I can cry really hard. I can stand the pain and I am stronger than I ever thought.

But I am lonely too. The parts of me that make me Karen are somehow lost in the quickness of my days and in the routine of being a caregiver: feed, diaper, clothe, shop, feed, giving from my cup that is seldom filled enough to cover the want. I never settled on what defined me, before I became a parent. I never really “found” myself the way I imagine others must have. And even if I had, maybe I wouldn’t know who that person was now anyway – so much of moving on with life is giving up what came before.

What I do know and what I think about deep into midnight when I can’t sleep, is that I, like the person I stand behind in the grocery line – the one who smiles quite knowingly as I try to tame my toddler – have stories and I long to tell them. I long to make sense of what is a confusion inside of me by just writing things down. Even it if it is painful, even if it lacks a thesis and a through-line, even if it means no one will read it, or someone will and judge me.

I have had the fortune in my life to work with and write about the concept of storytelling, especially as it touches people in the last decades of their life. Maybe that is what I am meant to do. Because I can see in working with people to tell their life through story, the truth of my own. It is all just stories. Maybe no one has a through line, a thesis, the foresight to plan their life around singular or multiple goals. Maybe this is my journey, to have a winding path, some obstacles, so that when I get to a rest stop I can say: Wow, that makes a great story.

By Danielle Christopher

I shut my eyes really tight with my back turned to my young children. I am fighting not to cry in front of them. The lonely ache of missing my mom overwhelms me so much I can barely breathe. The whir of the dishwasher beside me drowns out the loud shouting from the kids who are playing eight feet away in the play room.

Normally, my townhouse feels big, but not today. The kitchen is cleaned up from lunch that was barely eaten. It is supposed to be quiet time. My youngest is due for her nap soon. By the sounds in the next room, it will be hard to slow my girls down.

I really could use my mom today. She has been gone for 26 years. Being a mom now, I miss her more.

Hours have flown by in a sleep-deprived diaper haze since my husband left for work. My three-year-old is a tiny tornado. My nineteen-month old is miserably teething. The rain pelting on the roof makes me wonder if it will cave in. The weather cancels our plans to go to a park which is their favorite thing to do. Just the idea of packing them up to go to a mall or the library is exhausting.

There is no one I can call to rescue me for even an hour. The small village I have created for support is all working the same hours as my husband. All my mommy friends have gone back to work. I feel lonely, but never alone.

A little head bumps me in behind. It is my toddler asking to be picked up. I scoop her up and she gives me the biggest hug ever. At that same moment my oldest runs up to me and hugs my legs, telling me I am her best friend. Swallowing the pity that bubbles in my throat, I kneel on the floor to hug them both at the same time.

Their unconditional love for me reminds me that while I do not have my mom, my girls need theirs.

By Liesl Jurock

“I licked my Mommy!” the boy in the seat behind me yells to the flight attendant.

“That’s nice,” she says, squeezing down the narrow airplane aisle to mediate between passengers. The father across from me has asked someone to move so he can sit with his daughter. I avoid eye contact with the father, pull my novel up in front of me.

Two rows in front of me, a baby is screaming that repetitive cry that pierces the ear with its high pitch.

I am a fellow parent. I know the agony of taking children on planes. But I can’t deny the voice in my head, “Will you please shut that baby up?”

I am alone on a business trip, and no one knows I’m a mom. And I’m not telling.

In front of me, there’s this monitor with an array of entertainment options. Buttons, buttons, buttons and all mine to press. I don’t have to share my console, don’t have to watch kid shows, don’t have to keep one earphone off in case I’m needed. I’m not needed.

During the layover, I browse shops and sit a wine bar, watching moms hauling babes in arms and pushing empty strollers while their over-tired kids whine, then I just close my eyes. No need to bear witness, offer sympathetic smiles or share french fries.

A parenting article I read recently haunts me, “If you don’t want to spend time with your kids, then why did you have them?” I love being with my son, but do I have to feel like Bad Mom of the Year when I enjoy being without him? When I get to the point where I’ve lost track of what makes me glow, I’m no good to anyone.

An entire week stretches out before me like a fantasy. I’ll be in Charlottetown for a conference, but there are delicious days before and after that are all mine - if I can manage to shelve the guilt.

* * * * *

7 days later

“I’m three!” the blonde pig-tailed girl in the airplane seat behind me says as I lean over to chat and pet her sister’s bald head.

Their mom looks up with a proactive apology. “She won’t be so cute when she’s crying, but once she falls asleep, it’ll be quiet.”

“Don’t worry about it! I’m a mom. I have a three-year-old too!” I laugh. This time, I wish I had a badge: I am Mama!

As I watch a film, I take one earbud out and listen to the baby coo and the little girl pester her mom for snacks. It’s all I can do not to leap behind me and cuddle both of them to me. My body aches for my own little one.

The past week was longer than I imagined. Guilt ate at me, but I intentionally savored each moment so that my boys’ week without Mommy would be worth it. I meandered with no need to get anywhere, read and wrote until ridiculous hours and just breathed. Every now and then I would look around as if I was forgetting something, but realized instead that I was finding myself again and was relieved

Sitting on the plane home now, I scroll through photos of my hubby and son, wanting nothing else. Grateful for the time I had to renew myself, I find that I’m still missing a piece of me. I envision running through the arrival gate and pulling my little blond boy into a squeeze then falling into my hubby’s strong arms. Then I will be whole again.

Liesl Jurock is a writer, an educator, and a mama. By day, she works at a university helping students, and by night, she writes about the joys and contrasts of motherhood at http://www.mamaslog.com. Her work has appeared in a variety of mothering websites, and she is a regular contributor to The Momoir Project, Hybrid Mom and Women’s Post online.

When I was in labour with my first child, during the first stretches of pain, the nurse leaned into me and asked if I wanted an epidural. I had prepared my answer in the last months of my pregnancy, weighing the pros and cons but ultimately deciding that in a choice between pain-filled and pain-free the answer was obvious – who wants pain?

And so I arched my back, held tight to my husband’s hands and prayed that the horrible stories about mistakes leading to paralysis were just urban legends, letting the doctor insert a terribly large needle into my spine.

I lay back in the bed and enjoyed the next 8 hours of labour blissfully unaware of the tug, pull and stretch my body was undergoing as my son descended the birth canal and squeezed from my body. He was born, with the doctor cheering me on, with the medical staff telling me when to push. I felt nothing.

I don’t really believe this. I am a rational person and I know there is no evidence in medical science that this can be true. Still I will say it, and have said it many times in my head: the numbness that took over my lower half crawled its way into my heart. I held my son for hours in the 365 days that followed and for 363 of them, I felt nothing. Looking at his face, curled to my breast or smiling in the arms of his father, I did not feel that pang of joy, the trickle of happiness or the crush of tears at the back of my eyes. Nothing - hollow.

I know an epidural did not give me Postpartum Depression, but I struggle to this day to dissociate the physical numbness of labour with the emotional numbness that followed.

So when my daughter was conceived, I silently resolved to forgo all medical intervention. I merely wanted a doctor there to catch her, a nurse to hold my legs, as I, with the sheer strength of my will and loins pushed her from my body.

When I first came to confess this, in the delivery room, my husband and mother at my side, my mother gasped. She had three natural births and did not wish the pain on me. I held tight to my resolution and even to my ridiculous reason for it.

Labour pain came in waves more excruciating than I could have imagined. At the precipice of each contraction, I contorted my body into startling positions, clawing the sides of the bed and pleading silently with God to make it stop. I experienced the burn of each movement in my uterus, the ecstasy of relief in between and finally the slip of my baby’s body down the birth canal. I yelled with amazement, “She is coming. She is coming.”

I was in love already – in love with the feeling of her falling, in love with the feeling of her coming out of me, in love with God and nature and my husband, that they should give me this awesome experience. I have thought about what drove this decision, to boldly declare I didn’t want drugs. It was not about taking my body to the limits of pain just so I could say I was there and came back again. It was not about ethics or comfort for my baby. It was, always, about externalizing the pain in hopes of setting my mind free.

The first scholarship is open to any moms who want to join the fall online session of Writing for Moms. The second scholarship is open to Vancouver-area moms who want to join the fall session of Writing for Moms. These classes begin Thursday, September 16th and run every other Thursday evening for six sessions. The classes run for 6 sessions, spread over 12 weeks and will introduce you to the basics of writing a good memoir. Through readings, in-class writing assignments and sharing your stories with other moms, you will connect with other moms, get inspired and learn a lot about yourself.

You must legitimately not be able to afford the classes, and be able to articulate why. You do not qualify if you have already paid for the classes, or if you’ve been a student before.

Winners will be chosen based on need and the quality of the writing in your essay.

Entry requirements:
All you need to do is write a personal essay explaining why you want to write and why you can’t afford the classes. Only those essays posted as a comment to this blog will be considered. Deadline is: August 30. Winners will be announced on September 5, by email. Only those who win will be contacted. Please remember to note which scholarship you are applying for in your essay.

Good luck!

By Liesl Jurock

As my son and I were playing outside the other day, we watched a bird land on our roof.

“Mommy, can I step on that bird?” my three-year-old son asks.

“No!” I yell, “Why would you want to do that?”

“So, I can smush it,” he smiles.

“That is… that is… just wrong, Lucas. We don’t hurt animals.”

“Why?” he asks.

“Because we just don’t. It’s mean. It’s horrible.” I try and convey in my tone how offended I am by his suggestion, but in his eyes I see a twinkle. I can see he’s enjoying getting a reaction out of me. I change the subject, unwilling to fuel the flame of rebellion.

I don’t want my son to want to hurt others. For this reason, I’ve carefully sheltered him from any television violence. So much so that he doesn’t know what a gun or sword is. We call them “tools” which he equates to Bob the Builder and assumes are for fixing things. Despite the fact he’s practically named after George Lucas, he’s never seen Star Wars — I think we can wait a little longer before light sabers and gun ships become part of his repertoire.

But how long can I shelter him from a boy’s seemingly natural interest in violence? Won’t I let him watch cartoons with his Dad? Will he not be allowed to play certain video games that his friends play? Will I deny him gun toys? How long can I put off, truly, the main source of entertainment for most boys? And if I do shield him, won’t he just find other sources of it, and won’t it be that much cooler if it’s forbidden?

Lighten up, people tell me. Little boys have been playing war for as long as history can tell us. But lighten up to me means becoming desensitized to the reality of what we’re talking about. Playing war, to me, belittles the reality of the many wars going on right now: the lives lost, the children dying. Maybe I do take it all too literally, but I just can’t take it when violence is a source of entertainment.

Worse, I can’t handle it when violence is not even given a second thought. I go to people’s houses and they have CSI playing in the background where some woman (always a woman) is murdered, and it’s background noise. It’s like the news - where a little ticker tape at the bottom of the screen tells me 14 people died in a plane crash today, a woman’s body found in a ditch today. It dishonors those 14 people, that dead woman, to just let them be information, like the weather report.

I know I’m not like most people. I know that because I’m so affected by media violence, I’ve made a conscious decision to censor it from my life. But is it my right to do that to my son, leaving him socially ostracized from his male peers as he grows up, unaware of the world around him?

I’ve created a bubble for myself and for my son as I try to protect us from images and messages of violence. I can try and seal the bubble shut as the messages get louder and images get bigger, but at some point, he’s going to want to pop it for himself. I guess my only choice is to be there for him when he does, and hope that he asks questions.

Writing Start: Guns

Liesl Jurock is a writer, an educator, and a mama. By day, she works at a university helping students, and by night, she writes about the joys and contrasts of motherhood at http://www.mamaslog.com. Her work has appeared in a variety of mothering websites, and she is a regular contributor to The Momoir Project, Hybrid Mom and Women’s Post online.

By Lizabeth Pirstl

Like many new moms, the allure of textured papers and delicate adornments tempted me. Friends showed me their elaborate and stunning scrapbook pages. For months I resisted – until the day a friend casually mentioned how much her five-year-old daughter loved looking at her baby scrapbook.

That’s when it hit: mommy guilt.

A week later, I crossed the line – from non-scrapbooker to scrapbooker – but I was determined to go on my own terms. My daughter’s book would be simple and inexpensive. A complimentary background here, a butterfly sticker there, maybe a caption or two.

With a plain scrapbook and some simple paper, I went to my first crop night – an evening for moms to get together to eat, drink, gossip and work on their scrapbooks. Overwhelmed by a sea of papers and tools, and intimidated by the foreign lingo, I panicked. I cropped until I had sliced each photo to within an inch of its life. Back home, I stashed my supplies away.

A few months later, Monique was nine months old and finally, got her first tooth. I asked a friend about her four-year-old daughter’s first teeth. She had no idea when they popped up. I couldn’t imagine forgetting these details, but I knew they would eventually become foggy. I decided to try crop that night again. At the end of the evening, I had mounted one picture and had a headache. That night, I decided to become a solo scrapbooker.

But when my daughter turned one, I still hadn’t gone beyond the first page.

To scrapbook or not to scrapbook – moms face this decision alone. Dads just don’t go there. They don’t lose sleep over which background papers and embellishments to use on the zoo trip page.

My daughter turned two, and I still hadn’t gone past the first page.

My husband suggested I just put the pictures in albums. A friend offered to buy my supplies. But I wasn’t ready to throw in the paper trimmer and admit defeat quite yet.

My daughter turned three, and I still hadn’t gone past the first page.

Today, Monique is five. Her sister, Claire, just turned one. A week before Christmas, Monique announced, “We should make a scrapbook with lots of pictures in it. When I’m at school and you miss me, you can look at my scrapbook. And when you go out, I can look at the pictures of you.”

“That’s a great idea,” my husband said, not suppressing the sarcasm. “I bet Mommy would love to help you make one.”

We gave her a scrapbook kit for Christmas. Before breakfast on Christmas morning, she had everything spread across the kitchen table. I tried to guide her, but she had her own design ideas.

Theme pages? Uh-uh. Chonological order? No thanks. Complimentary page spreads? Too dull. The first page has a photo of a local high school student she doesn’t know running in the Olympic torch relay. There are pictures drawn on post-it notes, Halloween stickers next to birthday party photos and a picture of her with a parrot at her old daycare is on the same page as a professional photo of her when she was three weeks old.

She diligently worked on her scrapbook over the Christmas holidays and had it filled by the time school started up in January. It has a prominent place in the family room, on a shelf low enough that she can reach it, but high enough that her baby sister can’t get to it.

And she was right. Once in awhile she takes it down and looks through it. And occasionally, when the girls are out and the house is quiet, I take a quick peek at the random family moments and my older daughter’s unique take on capturing our memories.

Writing Start: Scrapbooks

By Danielle Christopher

The shakes start again. I inhale and exhale in an effort to calm my nerves. I swallow hard to chase away the tears caught in my throat. The book I brought to read stays unopened in my lap. Music filters through the sanitized air. There are conversations buzzing around me in the waiting room. This waiting room means something different to me today.

“Danielle.”

I gather my things and follow the nurse to the changing room, put on the pastel gown that does not close all the way. I sit clutching my belongings, waiting for my name to be called, waiting to go into the ultrasound room.

For the first time, I feel like I know my mother. She was diagnosed with cancer for the second time when she was 36, the age that I am now. But I am here today to prevent getting cancer. To prevent dying from breast cancer, as she did when she was 38.

Waiting is torture. After I kissed my kids good-bye this morning, I drove through the suburban streets, anxious and terrified and thinking that when I return home, my time with them will be shortened.

The mammogram technician slips by. My irrational side convinces me that it is my time. All my immediate female relatives have been diagnosed in one form or another of cancer. My younger sister is a ten year survivor.

I am ushered into the exam room, as scared as I was when I was 10 and my mom died. All my work at trying to be healthy and fundraise for cancer will be for nothing if I am taken away from my little girls.

The nurse tells me it will be about a week before the results will be in. I thank her and leave, ready to let go of the stress over the next few days and enjoy my family. My mom is gone. But I still need her to tell me everything will be okay.

The next morning, as I get my three-year-old daughter ready for preschool, my doctor’s office calls. The nurse asks me to come in the next day to discuss the results. I plead to talk to the doctor but to no avail. She needs me to come in because of medical protocol- she can’t bill BC Medical unless I am in the office.

The remaining hours of the day are the longest in my life. I do not know what might happen. Somehow, I survive. The next morning, I manage to get my girls into the car and into the doctor’s office. When the doctor enters the room, my youngest starts crying, afraid that she will get another needle.

I distract her and ask the doctor to tell me everything. As she explains, every word washes over me with relief. There is no cancer at this time. I will have to take medication and keep testing for the rest of my life. I am not looking at the big C word. Yet.

When we’re back in the car, I whisper, “Thanks, Mom. We will meet again, just not yet.”

My three-year-old bellows her need for French fries.

“You bet,” I say, enthusiasticly. And we drive off into the beautiful world that is today.

Writing Start: Gratitude

by Karen Bannister

The line between us is an invisible cord that runs our voices across a vast stream, from one end of the country to another. I am in the East, tucked within the tan walls of my modern, suburban home. My son is running and yelling loudly around my feet while my husband prods him on with encouraging pokes and laughter. She is in the West, held within a home of stillness and order, surrounded by the beauty of open land and ocean air, my father’s breath beside her.

And yet, in spite of this distance we find togetherness in our daily talks. “I can hear him,” she says and I note the difficulty in her voice. I ponder regularly how the distance hurts her, as I nurse my own discomfort at being a family living apart. “Yes.” And I go on to describe to her what he is doing and how he is doing – growing and changing so greatly in the year that has now passed between her visits. I send her pictures regularly and occasionally, we try to convene in front of the computer, me holding my wiggling son still so she can catch at least a glimpse of him before he is off to play. When I ask my son, now two years old, where Grandma and Grandpa are, he points to the phone. This reality, his reality, breaks my heart.

Just yesterday, I spoke to my mother and father for the last time in what will be a two week bout of silence between us. They are in between homes on Vancouver Island and in the interim are jumping in the car to make the long-trek to my home in Ontario. They will arrive in advance of the impending birth of my daughter, their fourth grandchild and my second child. As before, my mother will hold my hand and calm my fears in the delivery room. And she will be there in the aftermath to share her wisdom born of raising three now-grown children. I look forward to this guidance, to the support before and after the birth, but most of all, I look forward to the time I know they will relish in the sweet aura of my son’s world.

My husband’s family lives close by. I know he sympathizes with the loss I encounter daily in having my family so far away from me. I also know he doesn’t quite understand the depths of this loneliness. It can be felt mostly acutely in the moments we do share together – my parents, brothers and I – when we realize there is a joy we miss daily. It can be felt in triumphant moments like birth, when a new presence shows us the beauty of life and the importance of family.

I am having a baby girl in just a few short weeks and before I even lay eyes on her, I feel a sting in my heart. More than raising a boy, I feel this sting because I long to grow as close to her as I am to my own mother, to have her nurture me and love me in the way I love my own mother. I know I will never want her away from me, and I want her to call me for my grandmother’s bun recipe and to help heal her open wounds.

Writing Start: ROOTS

by Erin MacNair

I have dreams that frighten me, stir me to wakefulness, often. Most of them lose their power in a respectable few minutes, but others stay lingering, like a bad ghost watching at the bedside. Tonight, a bad ghost. This was a dream about my mother dying, me having to call and break the news to my brother. I pushed the thought away and stared at the ceiling, a feeling of creeping dread fingering at my thoughts. “Paranoia,” I tell myself, paranoia, not premonition. Not this time. Tomorrow, we were going out on the town and I won’t let some hairy dream ruin it.

“I’ll have the omelette.” I decide, eventually. Mom went for a salad, a paired down affair of interesting greens and snazzy dressing. We were enjoying this rare moment of mother-daughter time, sans children. How often had I taken those everyday occasions for granted, before I had my own kids, before I knew what “busy” really meant? I settled into my cushioned seat and surveyed our surroundings. Despite our usual cautionary ways, we’d decided to eat at a place we’d never heard of, one that looked expensive. It looked like a place that may not even want to admit jean-clad women sporting multiple shopping bags. Perfect, I thought, I am going to treat her and she doesn’t know it yet. When we have to, we can use an hour or two for soul bearing and shopping, and today is no exception.

Midway into our delightful meal, Mom stops. She tries to cough, but nothing happens. I see her reach for her water, take a sip, and spit it out again. Then her eyes grow large, fear written into them. I feel the panic of my dream drain into the moment.

“Mom, are you choking?” I say, staring at her. She nods, yes. I stand up, though my legs feel strange, I think I am tilting. “Help! Waiter…help! She’s choking!” It doesn’t occur to me to use my own Heimlich manoeuvre skills, as they haven’t been updated since the 9^th grade. We unruly teens were all giggles and smiles then, wrapping our arms around a rubbery doll with a bad haircut. I should have paid more attention. Jesus, I have children, why don’t I know how to do this? I see she is trying to stand, but is sliding instead on the bench across from me, losing her balance. I panic, and turn to the woman sitting next to me. “Help me, please…” I beg her. I can’t bring myself to help my mother. I can see her frailty, her terror, and I am unable to do anything. This is my worst nightmare, and I am going to lose the person I love most in the world. My life feels like it is sliding away. “Can you do the Heimlich?” She asks.

“I don’t know if I can.” I squeak, thinking I will hurt her if I don’t know what I am doing.

“I can.” She states, moving behind my mother with a quick slide. Mom goes limp in her arms. She is barely breathing. With a few sharp movements it is over. She emits the aspirated salad piece, is coughing and taking in a large breath. I turn to see the entire restaurant ogling our terrifying ordeal. I am crying now, but my Mom just blinks her eyes in shock. She’s always good in a crisis. “Thank you!” she tells the woman. “I think you just saved my life!” The woman smiles and pats her, strokes her like a cat. “No, you just saved my life,” I say, awkwardly. Nothing I can say to this women will let her know what she has done for me. I am crying and shaking and I can’t stop, and the manager keeps coming back to see if we are okay. Our waiter checks in and says…”I’m sorry, I..I didn’t know what to do.” We say that’s okay, we didn’t know what to do either, make a few funny remarks about what a nice time we were having here, ha ha, but everything is all right now?

Mom pays for my saviours’ lunch. She tries to protest, but Mom swiftly insists that paying for her meal is the very least she can do. I just sit back and watch, as if this is all happening to someone else. I don’t get to pay this time.

We leave, silent and stunned. I take my Mother’s arm and put it in mine, as if she is 90 years old. I feel like hugging her and I feel like screaming. Trauma is not in my everyday emotional repertoire.

“Well, that sucked,” I say, in my usual understated humour. Mom looks at me and smiles, beginning to laugh. I crack jokes to separate the oily realizations sticking inside our heads. It doesn’t really dawn on her until an hour from then, when she is sitting quietly in her room at my house. Then she breaks down, realizing that her life very nearly ended.

Night comes with cool quiet and darkness. I don’t even attempt sleep. I want to go downstairs and lay in my Mother’s bed, to coo to her like a dove and stroke her arm, tell her that I love her. But I know that I will just bawl, upsetting her more. I want to be seven years old, and I want to curl up next to my soft, warm Mom, so she will tell me everything is fine, and I will believe her. But I don’t. I hope beyond reason that she is sleeping, and regret that now. I should have woken her up, to tell her she is my everything, that I’m sorry I failed her. That thought wouldn’t have crossed her mind. “Don’t be silly,” she’d say, brushing an invisible spider out of the air.

I lay awake, guilt knotting my insides. She needed me, and I was frozen, paralysed. I am usually the protector, the fearless one. Faced with this danger, I slipped into a tiny shell and watched from afar, as my whole world seemed to shrink into milliseconds, saved only by the strength and swift action of a complete stranger.

Learn how, now.

In Canada, contact St. Johns Ambulance:

http://www.sja.ca/Canada/Training/AtHome/Pages/EmergencyLevelFirstAid.aspx.

In the U.S.: www.redcross.org

Writing Start: Emergency