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The Choice You Thought You Wanted.
As I said earlier, Christmas forces you to stop and look around you, and where you’ve along the way there. It is the predetermined milestone that marks the best and the worst of the year.
There was my first Christmas with Peter, where he learned that light strings, tinsel, John Denver, Boney M and all their holiday specials could live together in the same 200 sq foot home.
There was the Christmas after my grandmother died. She was the matriarch of the family and the centre of my mom’s life since she started being her primary caretaker. My aunts could distract themselves with their grandkids, but Peter and I were it for my mom, so we had to begin creating new traditions for her to replace the old.
There was the year of the Snow Beaver*, which was the year when I learned that bursting into tears at the car rental agency can get you pretty far.
There were the years when my friends’ kids had their first Christmases. And the year when I had just found out that we couldn’t have our own.
That was a strange time for me. I had never wanted children. I had joked since my 20s that if it wasn’t for the fact that I’d grow a beard, I’d have a hysterectomy. I never liked being a kid – I know I’ve gone on at length about this before – and consequently I never waxed nostalgic about my childhood, and never looked forward to having my own. And on a less philosophical level, I thought they were sticky, smelly, and took up a lot of your time. I always thought that public restrooms in malls were the best form of birth control. Before the days of “family restrooms”, you would have to hold your breath while edging around the poopy diapers on the sink. I know a lot of women start out with that opinion and it changes, and I’m sure if I’d ended up having kids, I would have loved them and turned into one of those people that smells babies heads, but I’ll never know. One way or the other, I never felt that instinctual need to be a mother. I had to abide years, after I’d met my husband, of people asking when we were going to have kids, of one aunt audibly whispering “oh, look at them, it won’t be long now! I can see that look in their eyes!” To this day I don’t know what look that was. Maybe gas. I think I probably had just been looking at my cousin’s new baby, and if you have a uterus, you’re obliged to make cooing sounds and gaze adoringly when presented with an infant. Its expected. No one likes it when you go “oh, very nice… Have you met my dog? At least he poops outside”. You have to play the game. As a side note, I have learned the hard way that parents don’t like it when you equate your dog to their kids. Even when you’re being nice, and saying that they both have big eyes and floppy ears. But as more of my friends had children, the questions got harder to avoid. I would make excuses like “oh, we really don’t have the money” or “our apartment is so tiny, maybe when we get a house”. So many couldn’t understand the idea that I did not feel incomplete. I always felt that we’d be judged if we just told the truth, and made to feel that we were selfish. Although I’ve never understood what’s selfish about the choice not to procreate. If you don’t have that maternal instinct, if you worry that you’re going to be haunted by the feeling like your kids are stopping you from living the life you want, you’re not going to be capable of giving them the life they deserve. There are so many that want kids, need kids, let them be the ones. Our planet is overpopulated enough, without adding those borne out of guilt and duty.
So in my late thirties, and having some issues with high blood pressure, I suggested my husband have a vasectomy. Pharmaceutical birth control was becoming more of a health risk for me, so it seemed an obvious choice. He went to his doctor to discuss it, and was informed that due to a botched surgery as a child, he was probably sterile. His doctor did a some tests, and we joked that if it turned out he was right, we’d go ahead and get a second dog since we would never need to save money for kids. When my husband got the news that not only did he have a low sperm count, he had NO sperm count, he called me at work, laughing and asking “so what dog do you want?” And I burst into tears.
And kept doing it on and off for a couple of years. My husband was confused – the woman who had joked that children are like snowstorms – they seem great until you’re surrounded by them – couldn’t pass a child in a stroller without looking lost. He even accused me of lying to him all these years. But I hadn’t. I don’t think I had even been lying to myself, but suddenly being told I couldn’t have them made me desperately want them. We found out only a few weeks before my grandmother’s memorial, so I was forced to face my family. My kind, well-meaning family where there is no such thing as TMI. There is no reason on God’s green earth that I should know when my cousin got her period or if my uncle had erectile problems, but somehow the more personal the medical information, the faster the news travels. So for three days I was treated like I was a big blubbery bomb that could go off at any second. Three days of grimaces and hand pats, three days of whispered “oh, shhhh, don’t let her hear you!” And the pity wasn’t just for me, but for my mom, who had always wanted grandchildren. To her credit she never once made me feel like we were letting her down, but I know that sadness was there. So here I was stuck between a mother that was disappointed, and a husband that was confused. And I had no idea how to feel from one day to the next. That Christmas Day, while my mom, my sister-in-law and I were having tea, my aunt called with the news that her son was going to have a baby. I tried to keep my shit together and keep breathing normally while the two of them descended on me, their arms outstretched with kind, suffocating hugs. The last thing I wanted to was to be that poor thing. To be pitied and cajoled. I just wanted it to be like any other day. To shrug my shoulders, say something a bit sarcastic and go on. But instead I pushed them off, and ran down to the basement and sobbed in a corner.
Its been over 5 years since then, and I’ve more less come to grips with it. The feeling of missing out has slowly ebbed away, mostly since those adorable little sausages have grown into pre-teen brats. I don’t get watery eyed at baby showers, I don’t think of names. I still have little moments at Halloween when my uterus twinges, watching ridiculously cute little lions and princesses get led around by their proud, unicorn-outfitted dads. But then I’m reminded of the sticky sugar-driven balls of insanity they’re going to become later tonight, and I close the door, take a drink of my very adult beverage, and go to bed.
*The Snow Beaver: A common occurrence in Canadian winters. As we drove at night down a cold northern Ontario highway, we swerved onto the shoulder to avoid a beaver standing in the middle of the road. We winced as the transport behind us, unable to react as quickly, ran right over the poor animal, scattering the well-disguised chunks of ice and snow in a thousand directions. Poor snow beaver. It never had a chance.
Christmas part 2: Fine china and a Box of crackers
After we were married, my husband and I started spending Christmases together, and learning about each other’s family traditions. His was very proper and British. Everyone shows up, all are slightly subdued, and you eat a very nice and very normal Christmas dinner off a…
Christmas Part 1: The Turkey and the Tree were both named Charles
Christmas is always a bit weird. No matter what kind of family you come from, even if you’re not from a religion that celebrates it, such as it is, I think it always stops and makes you reflect. It’s one of the few times of year when you find yourself whoever you are, surrounded by this giant whirlwind of people and stuff and music and diabetic coma-inducing food, whether you’re part of it or not. A storm of white fun fur and glitter that can stop you in your tracks for almost a month. And when you’re stuck inside during that festive blizzard, you can’t help but think about the other times you’ve been there, and what was going on then.
I did always like Christmas, and reveled in the chaos. The closer it was to Christmas and the fewer gifts I’d managed to purchase, the more I was filled with warrior bravado, gleefully pushing my way through the shiny malls, almost disappointed if they weren’t crowded with my fellow latecomers.
Christmas as a kid was, predictable, my favourite time. I loved every minute of it. I loved singing off-key carols at the top of my 7 year old lungs, while seated on the cold floor of the school gym and reading the lyrics off blurry overhead projectors. I played many the angel and shepherd in the pageants, as we gazed beatifically at the plastic baby doll in the plastic hay. At least until – in grade 3 I think – the principal actually cancelled Christmas celebrations. Said they took too much time away from the teachers’ duties. And a few years later, when that wizened old bitch retired, each student was asked to write a “favourite memory” of the woman to put on a bulletin board. How many kids have fond memories of their principal anyway? It’s like asking for a nice memory of stomach flu. At best you never had to deal with it, and at worst it wrecked your life for a short time. Unfortunately didn’t have the sarcasm skills necessary at that point in my life to communicate my feelings on the matter, and no one would have allowed a pretty thought balloon pasted on the wall with the words “You’re the rotten lady who cancelled Christmas” scratched on it in angry red crayon.
It was always a bit weird being an only child of a single parent at Christmas. I know the grass is always greener, and that I can’t even count the kids out there that would have traded their tooth fairy money for a year to not have to deal with their sisters and brothers Christmas morning. To play with their new race car set without their little brother swallowing a piece. Or to be patient while EVERY OTHER Person opens a present too. But all I wanted was a big family at Christmas. And I know it made my mom feel bad, as if she wasn’t enough. I always begged for us all to go sleep over at my cousins’ house on Christmas eve, just so there were lots of people there in the morning. I usually had to made do with dragging my grandmother over to our apartment. She lived across town in the senior’s complex, and by the time she made it over it was always around 11am, which is a torturously long time for a kid on Christmas morning. But I waited for her. I don’t think it’s that I just wanted an audience. That was probably part of it but really I just wanted the busyness and the noise and the whole Whoville experience. Not quiet tea and toast and cookies. But I did at least have the two of them,, and they cared so much, and did their best. So still, our Christmases were good. My mom did her best to make sure I had presents. On the income we had, it was more likely that I should have been a Christmas Cheer recipient, but somehow she managed. And I may not have received computers or video games or trips, but I had more stuffed animals, and Barbies and requisite whinge-inducing clothes than a kid of my background should have had. I even got a cat one Christmas. Years before, my aunt had unceremoniously foisted her cat onto us. Its name was Honey it was a long-haired calico with lovely green eyes. And a mean,
nasty, revenged-based disposition. We figure it had had it in for me from the beginning, since I was competition for my mother’s attention. AS long as I lived, the cat figured, it was relegated to second place. So she set about working on my demise. She waited in repose when I went to bed, and stared at me through the darkness, jumping up and clawing me the second I would cave and hide under the covers. She would slink between the wall and the sofa, which sat at the edge of the hall, and spring out to scratch my ankles as soon as I passed. So in hopes of giving me something that loved, rather than thwarted me, I got my own, doomed cat on Christmas morning. Its first strike was that I named it Tinkle. It should have just laid down there and then and realized things weren’t going to get better. But then Honey zeroed in on it and realized that her chances of ending something so small were pretty good, so she spent the better part of Christmas morning, hissing and chasing the poor thing around the apartment. And then, a few days later, we found out that the entire cat population of the Humane society, including the valiant Tinkle and her compatriots, had distemper and had to be put down. It was a bit scarring, all things considered. And Mexican jumping beans aside, it was the end of me of receiving live things on the holidays.
We had the habit in my house of naming inanimate objects, and for some unknown reason, the name of choice was Charles. The little china cabinet, held up on books and holding 3 cups and saucers, was named Charles. The Filter Queen canister vacuum, little brown R2D2 that it was, was named Charles, and the temporary residents at Christmas were no exception. The Christmas tree, the squat, bulky pine draped with tinsel was named Charles, and of course, the turkey was Charles too. It gave us the unique opportunity to say things like Hurry up and gut Charles so we can get him in the oven!” My grandmother loved gutting the turkey. She took a certain amount of murderous glee in stuffing her hand up its cavity and grabbing the bag of innards, usually cackling a bit while she did it. Somehow in her head I think she was turning it into a brief moment of feminist revenge on poor unsuspecting Charles the turkey. She was awesome.
To be continued.
Hot Glue and Hope Part 5: Design Flaws
As usually happens, I think, with university, the most important things aren’t the things you learn in your classes. Unless you’re studying to be a doctor. Then those are probably pretty critical. My first year really just taught me what I didn’t want to do. …
Hot Glue and Hope Part 4: The Menstrual Hut
My first and only paying acting job now behind me, I started my first year of my university theatre program. I think we all knew that the main reason we were all at a university and not a private swanky theatre school was that this way, when we failed at our initial career choice, we already had a BA and were potentially only a few semesters away from a job that made money. In fact the professors would often say to us “If you’re so good, what are you doing here?” Which not only worked to reinforce the above choice of schools, but also did a good job of sucking the life force out of you early on. I tried my darnest that year to make an impression and maybe continue to the next year of the program. I tried to buy into it. I bared my soul, quoted more of those depressing monologues, and created ever so poignant tableaus with the best of them, but when they asked us to run around and wail like a woman in a menstrual hut I did start to wonder if this form of artistic expression was really for me. My ability to take it very seriously rapidly declined. A teacher soon criticized me for “constantly trying to be funny”, as that apparently was the death knell of a performance career. I tried to explain that there were many very funny people out there doing quite well for themselves, and I doubted that very many had spent time in a make-believe menstrual hut.
So after being unceremoniously dropped from the acting program, I applied for the Production stream. I spent the next three years not only learning to build props, scenery and costumes, but also developing a keen sense of bitterness and sarcasm that I hold dear to this day.
