Social Reproduction...

Or, the struggle is (semi) real.

Or, on raising feral boys.

Oh, hey. How's by you? Remember me?  **I** don't.  I feel no shame in saying that the last two week's have ROCKED me.  And you know what?  It's 10pm on a Friday night.  I stayed late at work to sort my emails, get up to speed on files that I had been neglecting, made a task list for next week, and otherwise, set myself up for success.  Came home, ate a healthy dinner, banged off a batch of Thomas Keller Oreos.  Put the kids down to bed with minimal fuss.  Did a long stretch while listening to a podcast (this one, if you're interested, which I kind of adore), had an even longer epsom salt bath while catching up on my Book Club reading, and I'm listening to the Anderson .Paak album in preparation for tomorrow night's show while catching up on my online shopping and getting ready to blow the dust off my keyboard and do some serious, processing, practice writing in the form of a blog post...WHEN A GIANT FUZZY BUGGY (I think they're called house centipedes?) just scurried down my shoulder and arm and disappeared into the couch crevices.

LIKE, REALLY.

I get it, universe, I'm f**king done.

First days. A wave of shiny, scrubbed, beaming kid faces junking up my FB feed and I'm yelling at all my kids in an increasingly frenzied tenor: "HURRY UP WE'RE GOING TO BE LATE" and I made a commitment to taking the Big Yam to school for his first day of grade 1, even though my manager was kind of being not chill about it when I gave her the head's up on Friday before the long weekend.

Grade 1 is a big deal.  They go from being in the idyllic world (Songs of Innocence) of the kindergarten playground/pen...separate recesses, separate lunches...to the gen pop (Songs of Experience).  The yard is BIG.  EVERYONE is there.  The first day was chaotic.  A teeming mass of confusion and scared looks.  And I couldn't even watch him go in.  I had to leave him there as soon as I found his teacher and hop on my bike and haul a** to work, because...I don't even know why.  Because I needed to be reminded that leaning in is hard?  Because I sadistically wanted to carry with me all the day the memory of his little clueless face in that gongshow sea of heightened emotions?  No wait, it's because I had to work on an RFP for procurement.  Right.  Of course.

I mean, he was fine.  I didn't get my first day photo.  The world didn't end.  Mom guilt is real.  And look, the Dotytron is ONIT.  You know that package of about 29 different forms that comes home on the first day?  Lice checks and snack programs and media releases and codes of conducts and classroom procedures and school procedures and signing up for a million different ways of being contacted (text message, email, app, phone, passenger pigeon, parchment scroll, cuneiform tablet)...he did it all, bless him.  He packs the lunches, most of the breakfasts, supervises piano lessons, starts dinner, and does most of the homework supervision.  I couldn't do it without him, as evidenced by the fact that last night, when he was at school late because of curriculum night, the entire house dissolved into a mess of uneaten dinners and unorthodox tv-on-a-school-night, and the twins rolling around naked on the back deck in two (!) giant upended bottles of bubble solution, and a whole lot of stern shoutiness (from me, obviously).

Anyway, we collectively got rocked the last two weeks.  Downside to being a professional cottager, I guess?

When we came back from the house in Prince Edward County, we rolled into town, unpacked, started laundry, began the slow process of putting our lives back together, and met my mum at Petit Potato for dinner.  Petit Potato pros: extensive menu of Asian desserts, most of which you don't get outside of Taiwanese snack bar type places; we get 10% off there thanks to my Congee Queen loyalty card; the space is nice.  Petit Potato cons: the non-dessert items are kind of meh - I'd rather go to Phoenix or a dedicated ramen shop for ramen.

People go to Petit Potato because of their "giant toast" which is in fact, the giant-est, rendition of giant toast that I've ever seen.  They pride themselves on this giant, 18" stack of soft, white bread, that has been toasted, the innards scooped out, cut, buttered and toasted to buttery-crunchy-crouton-y perfection and then the whole thing is stacked and slathered with whipped cream and ice cream in various flavour permutations.  They're famous for the mango but I find mango puree cloyingly sweet so we got the Oreo flavour to appease my kids.  Anyway, the Dotytron ordered ramen which was good, but not exemplary and I had the Japanese "omurice" which is Japanese-style English food and consisted of an omelette, wrapped around fried rice, with some kind of protein (in my case, pork tonkotsu) and a slathering of decent (read: from the Glico box) Japanese curry.

My kids needed massive appeasing because after a whopping 15 days away from regular life and "Lord of the Flies days" and general abdication from any semblance of a routine outside of being a beach bum, they got smacked in the face with the "giant toast" of reality sandwiches (I'm quite proud of what I did there).  I remember when we were sharing with Momma D and Ehdmo, at one point, as the twins chased each other in endless circles around the main floor of the country house, screaming at the top of their lungs, Momma D turned to me and said, exasperated, "IT. IS. QUIET. TIME. THEY SHOULD BE QUIET RIGHT NOW." And I was like, "IF I COULD MAKE THEM BE QUIET, BELIEVE ME, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS PURE AND GOOD IN THE WORLD, I WOULD."  (except not quite like that).

Later, when the Roomie and the rest of the gang had joined us, there was a moment when she came down and was super-freaked out at how hard the twins were hitting each other and wrasslin': "It just seems like they're being very rough with each other.  Is it normal for them to slap each other?"  Now, I know the Roomie.  She's a sweet, classic hippie.  I get that.  I really do.  But I ALSO get that I felt incredibly judged by this perception of my children as violent.

I carried that with me for quite a few days.  And it all came to a head at Petit Potato.  The kids were fractious and non compliant.  The food took too long and we ordered the wrong things.  The meal was unpleasant on all counts and all the hissing and threats and hauling stiff bodies out to sit in the car didn't make a lick of difference.

I was done.

And then...and then I sat with it for a few days, and really looked at my kids.  I looked at how sweet the Big Yam is with little ones and how caring and helpful he is.  I looked at the fact that the twins NEVER, EVER (*knock wood*) hit anyone other than each other, and how the majority of their time they're rolling around on the floor wrestling and grunting like a pair of labrador retriever puppies, and I settled on this: the twins are rambunctious kids.  That's who they are.  They have a lot of kinetic energy.  I don't know where it comes from, I don't always know how best to serve it, but I know that this is them, and they will tussle, and they're not unkind and they dish it out to the people they think can take it (each other).  They only very, very rarely hit us, or any adults, really.  They don't hit other kids.  They are two exuberant, slightly wild boys, and I don't know where they came from, but they are ours and we're doing the best we can with them.

Things I want to always remember:

Twin B clumping down the stairs with the iPad, unsanctioned, under his arm, repeating the mantra, "Please say yes, please say yes," which he does sometimes before asking the question he wants the yes, to.

Dr. Rei going into the dining room at the cottage and I overhear her say, "Twin B!  Where did you get that?  Should you be playing with that?" and Twin B replies, "Don't tell my mom. Don't tell my mom. Don't tell my mom."

Twin A doing the entire opening sequence for Sponge Bob Squarepants, complete with growling pirate voice.  Hearing him try to say, "absorbent and yellow and porous is he..." is a gift.

Walking the Big Yam to school and the ridiculous conversations that ensue.  Most of which requires me to say "Uh-huh" "wow" "really?" at appropriate intervals during an interminable Minecraft-related monologue.

Week 3 folks!  We made it!  Stay strong!  I will try to post more regularly.  I have many, many things to share.

Fin.

Postcards...From the Edge

Cottage vacations are life, man.

I'm midway through week 2 of 2 weeks of additional cottaging, over and above that week we spent at the beginning of August with my family.  When you have kids, there is nothing better, vacation wise. We rented a cottage with Dr. Rei and Hanbo and baby Zoony and it was perfect.  It was perfect because they are perfect people and best friends. It was perfect because you never have to worry about haggling over who gets what room at the cottage, or money, or anything that can remotely be a chafe with other people because they are exactly like us and they know how to be and are chill and fair and make things easy.

Things I'm Going to Strive to Always Remember:

 the intonation of how Zoony says "yeah" and "I don't have it"

city slicker sees a beaver dam, loses her G-D mind.

my kids floating in the lake

The Dotytron calling me "Future" every time I donned this sun hat 

 watching my three kids launch themselves off the dock, in Twin B's case, preceded by his own cheer: "Go, Lindsay!" 

Hanbo asking Twin A if he's going to do a cannonball, and Twin A replying, matter-of-factly, "No. My feet are too smoll-uh [small]"

- a blue heron taking off in flight during one of our runs

 this GIANT frog, who was a dead ringer for Michigan J. Frog

- playing Catchphrases and Dutch Blitz
- watching Dr. Rei do a choreographed 90s video dance to Dotyron DJing
- arguing with everyone on the dock about Peter Thiel and his relative goodness/badness
- recording the first episode of my podcast with Dr. Rei...it's a good one guys, it's gonna be our ticket out of this two-bit town
- a visit with some K-W friends
- discovering the Swiss Bear Schnitzel House and Tarts store in Apsley, Ontario
- the terrifying appearance of a bold water snake, our first day at the cottage
- Hanbo riding hard for me learning how to dive
- So. Much. Laughter.
- a week that went by too fast for words

From there we drove from the Haliburton area to Prince Edward County and we're holed up in a house built in the 1820s with wide-planked hardwood floors and exposed beams on the main floor.  We're here with the Dotytron's mum and sister for the first half and then we'll be joined by the Roomie and family, our friend Montréal I, and our friend Pingy.  This house is about a 4 minute drive from North Beach Provincial Park, which is a more chill, low-key version of Sandbanks, so we've spent about 4-5 hours of the past two days camped out there.  The glacial sand deposits made thin strips of beach that made a little calm lake one one side of the strip, and angry, wild, Lake Ontario on the other side.  We set up shop on the calm side and let the kids splash in calm waters with the minnows and roll around in the sand dunes.  Today we convinced the kids to go to the wavy side and I watched the Wonder Twins continue to show their general fearlessness and life gusto, by hurling their bodies head-first into 2 foot tall waves (which is almost their height?) and living out a less sexy version of Madonna's "Cherish" video, with about 100000 times more metric tonnes of lake water consumed.

Things I'm Going to Strive to Always Remember:

- the sight of Twin B running towards...anything.  His little legs egg beater out in opposite directions and his heels comes thisclose to touching his bum, like a little drunken leprechaun.
- getting thrashed by the waves and rinsing sand out of every unmentionable nook and cranny
- Twin B in the car, as we got looped around some farms, after taking a wrong turn, "Are we going to a little farm? Is that a little farm?" *pause* "Oooh! I see a little farm!  I see a little farm dere!"  Twin B's stream of consciousness and his little exaggerated, "ooh!" and exhalations of surprise and joy, are so endearing. That kid is basically like a giant St. Bernard in human form.
- Momma D doing her obligatory small-town bakery run and coming back with half the things in a store.  There's nothing Momma D loves more than a small-town bakery.
- playing games with my outlaw sis and Dotytron, laughing at all kinds of in-jokes
- getting an annotated close-listen of Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill, courtesy of my outlaw sis
- Twin A's "bobs" in the water.  He knocks his head back, pauses for a millisecond, and then throws his whole face into the water with gusto.  He also has a way of pronouncing the o-sound in words like "bob" that makes him sound so funny...almost like a Jersey boy.
- my nature boy kids. Never wearing shoes, if we'll allow it.  And the shoes are the thin edge of the wedge. If they had their druthers, they'd be naked running around and tackling each other all the time. They are rambunctious, feral, wild boys...especially the Wonder Twins.  They do best allowed to just express that side of themselves, much to the chagrin of most adults.

I'm so grateful for this opportunity to give them these memories.  Of seeing so much of the beauty of this province. To be in nature and to glory in being wild and dirty and unkempt and unstructured. I love the rhythm of packing coolers and dragging deconstructed loose lunches to the dock and back.  I love watching the circuit of bodies in and out of puddle jumpers and the lake.  Teeth chattering and hooded towels stretched out like capes or wings, the sound of fat, flat feet slapping the worn wood of a dock, the scrape of shovels in wet sand, the cycle of making and unmaking in double-time.  I loved watching Dr. Rei, Hanbo, the Dotytron and I positively decimate a 1 lb baked brie in about 5 minutes and then push the tray away from us in self-disgust.  I love that my kids will know some of Ontario's provincial parks and be used to hiking trails and camping.  I love that the Big Yam learned how to cast at the Dr. Rei and Hanbo cottage.  In fact, he got so into it that he stepped right off the dock one morning.  I love detaching from social media and spotty internet coverage and shedding the layers of caring.  I love this all.

Fin.

On Capitalischm...and Race

I recently watched the Dardenne brothers' Two Days, One Night, which is as straight-up a critique of capitalism as I've ever seen in a film (note: I haven't seen that many films in my life, so maybe that's not saying all that much?).  It was the first film I've ever seen by those two and if it is any indication of their work as a whole, I'm hungry for more.  There are few things that get to me more than old French Marxists, with their shocks of white hair and their solid, insouciant belief in the primacy of class.

The movie is about a woman, Sandra, played by Marion Cotillard, who is on leave from her factory job (I know, I know...as I said to my friend, "What kind of factory is this? A babe factory?!") (it turns out to be a factory making solar panels), because of her depression.  In her absence, the company finds that they can get the work done with one less body, as business is decreasing due to cheaper solar panels from...wait for it...you guessed it...China.  They take a vote, and her colleagues choose to eliminate her position so that they can split her wage in the form of a bonus instead.  Discovering this information on Friday, Sandra scrambles and the foreman agrees to re-take the vote on Monday.  The malaise of her depression threatens to make Sandra submit to her proscribed fate, but at her husband's urging, she spends the weekend methodically contacting each of her colleagues to convince them to change their vote.

This kind of story, where, as Junot Diaz says the "meta" or the "machinery" is hidden, is totally up my alley.  Sandra's depression standing in for the malaise of the prototypical factory worker under capitalism is an incredibly apt device. The "choice" her fellow workers are given, to prioritize their own material circumstances over hers, is one that capitalism asks of us, on a near-constant basis.  In fact, that choice might be intrinsic to the very construction of right-leaning capitalism.  The conflation of capitalism with democracy (the individual "vote" as the foundation for our subjectivity) is also bang-on.  As the film progresses, we meet her colleagues and understand why some of them made the choice that they did.  Some succumbed to group-think; some are seemingly amoral; some were able to make the choice in her absence, when she was an abstract construct versus when she stands before them in her subjectivity; many are in dire financial straits and the bonus is necessary - they too face difficult day-to-day choices - the Dardenne brothers understand and deftly illustrate the difficult decisions we face under this system.

Many agree to change their votes and when the final vote comes, we see Sandra emerge from her depression, smiling, proud of the "good work" she put in with her husband.  I'm not going to spoil the outcome of the vote, but the film is so smart - by actively taking a hand in her direct material reality, by taking up her agency, she is emboldened and alive.  In those two days and one night, her labour was her own.

Guys, I'm getting goosebumps just  thinking about that.  I love the power and clarity of that metaphor.  I like how tight the story is.  I love how effective the film is.

Shortly after that, the Dotytron and I went to see Zizek speak at the TIFF theatre, as part of this conference that York U (of course!) put on, called Coming to Terms With Film-Philosophy.  Not for nothing guys, but York U conferences are THE S**T.  This is who I've seen courtesy of York University: Jean Baudrillard, Gayatri Spivak, Susan Sontag, and now Zizek.  U of T has given me Bruno Latour, which was cool...but C'MON.  Zizek is a Lacanian Marxist...and well, you know how I am about such things.  I AM HERE FOR IT.  He gave this long, rambling, stream-of-consciousness, very Zizek-ian talk on film that talked about "capitalischm" (as he pronounces it) directly and indirectly.  He talked about Children of Men, a favorite of his and mine, and how he loves it because it is not about sexual productivity, there is no romance, and he lampooned the Michael Caine character for being the ideal of an aging, bourgeois, white, hippie liberal...and well, you should ALSO know how I save my most special disdain for white bourgeois liberals.  He talked about how his nightmare would be a world in which freedom is found through collectivist, democratic action.  How he would hate nothing more than to be forced to vote on everything all the time, like in a co-op, and how his dream scenario would be a world in which an invisible state apparatus took care of those mundane decisions and allowed him the time to do what he does best: write, talk, think, explore things at his leisure.

It was as you would expect a Zizek talk to be.  A little difficult to find the thread, but full of bon mots that speak to me and my praxis.

Finally, you might have noticed that I've been sour on white people lately.  I mean, I've been sour on white people (not individual white people, but white people, The Franchise...does that even have to be said?  If it does...I mean, I probably can't help you and you should likely be reading something else?) probably my whole life, but I've become more vocal about it of late.  It feels good.  There is nothing I love more than the groundswell that is destabilizing and decentering white, heteronormative hegemony.  It feels GOOD.  Let me tell you why it feels good.

Because, now, yt pipo are finally getting a taste of what it feels like to be EVERYONE ELSE, for a hot minute.  To know, however fleetingly, what it feels like to grow up as the child of immigrants, to have people stumble over your "weird" name, to feel a little uncertain that everyone doesn't celebrate Christmas, or camp, or get birthday parties, or know how to skate, or give a flying F**K about the Tragically Hip or whatever.  To know what it feels like to have your existence questioned.  Back to Junot Diaz (and have you listened to that talk yet?  If not, you should!  You really, really should), I'm glad that white people are getting a taste of their own medicine.  "I am white and therefore I am human.  You are not white and therefore I'm not sure that you are human."  To have your existence questioned.  To know the burden of POC who have to know about stupid Franchise s**t AND their own cultural idiosyncrasies at the same time.  

I spent the bulk of my life feeling like not the norm.  In retrospect, that was a gift and has made me who I am, but when I didn't think I could be attractive, when I didn't think I was seen...it was hard, man.  Ultimately, those experiences allowed me to cultivate the perspicacity that allows me to revel in the weird and the stuff that's a little outside the norm.  That makes my friends the very best people in the world.  That allows me to find my kindred spirits and love them for their ability to know what it's like to not be that.  

It's just good for the Franchise to get a taste of its own medicine, ya know?  

Basically what I'm saying is: I never need to see a white kid dabbing.  It's gross.  Please stop.

P.S. Lots of catch-up writing happening this week at the cottage!  Keep scrolling because I'm hoping to have a lot of new content up.

Fin.

I Love...

...napping in a screened porch, hazily hearing the buzz of bugs that want in, but can't.

...putting on a pair of dry underwear after a full 8-hour day in a bathing suit.  Really, that feel of dry underwear hitting your nethers is a golden gift.

...long canoe rides with the Dotytron, exploring a lake's nooks and crannies. We've been doing it for so long...I think the end of our second year together we went up to his family cottage for the first time.  No lake will ever be as magical as that one.  The sun burning the mist off an abandoned beaver dam we happened upon; drifting into a mess of lily pads and catching glimpse of a 1 1/2 foot shell of a turtle disappearing beneath the canoe; bobbing beside a family of loons; hearing the reedy scrape of grasses against the canoe hull as we pass through a cathedral of fallen birches; watching a blue heron take flight off a rock; pretend-buying cottages.  Healey lake is filled with so many fingers and inlets and bays - I loved that time we spent there with the Dotytron's mum and dad and sister, before we had kids, when we were still kids, pretending at being grown.

...canoeing with my kids now.  Perfunctory canoe rides punctuated with constant sharp admonishments to the twins (mostly Lenny) to STOP LEANING OVER and to PLEASE SIT STILL.  Loud canoe rides because my youngest (Lenny) is so pure of heart and without guile and filters and lives in a perpetual present, and therefore, the canoe rides are filled with: "I want to go over dare, wit the grasses. Ooh!  We're going over there!  Are we going over dare?  Are we going over dare...wit the grasses now?" Endless loops of his stream-of-conscious narration, scaring off any potential wildlife for a 5km radius.

...being with my family.  My crazy, loud, contentious, hilarious, inappropriate family.  Building upon nearly 40 years (!) of sibling in-jokes and now inter- and intra-generational jokes and folding in outlaw siblings by marriage.  Seeing my eldest nephew forge a special bond with Twin A (Quincess), the two of them thick as thieves.  Little little Cuz and the Big Yam skulking around pretending to be spies and sitting, heads together, lost in their Minecraft universe.  I have the best family in the world.

...being with my kids.  The twins have a knack for finding frogs?  And we never believe them, and each time, they find a bigger one.  When we went camping we did a gentle hike on this path through an abandoned beaver village (?), and Twin A and Twin B ran up ahead and we saw them crouched over a bridge over a small creek and babbling away: "We found a frog!" The Dotytron and I were very skeptical and we walked up and sure enough, there was a tiny dark green frog head just popping out of the water.  We showed up at the cottage this week and they immediately ran to the dock and when we checked in on them after unpacking, they were once again crouched with their little butts in the air, peering over the dock and yammering again about a frog, and once again, we were like, "Yeah, whatever, I'm sure it's a rock or something," and we look over and it's a GIANT BULLFROG THE SIZE OF A COW HEART.  LOL!  It's just so funny how these clowns legit can't "find" a giant toy that's right in front of their faces and meanwhile, are frog-spotting savants, and each time we doubt them and the frogs keep getting bigger and bigger.

...playing board games.  Taboo, Catchphrases, Telestrations, Apples to Apples, Pictureka, Guess Who?

...eating a giant baked pasta dinner after a day spent basking in the sun, lazily floating on my back in the water

...floating on my back in the water.  Ears submerged, my hair fanning out in the current, the sky above me, the sound of my breathing filling my ears, buoyant, relaxed...like I'm in a sensory deprivation tank.

...all the good food.  Bags and bags of salty snacks, multiple desserts, big egg-based breakfasts, everyone trying to outdo each other in the cooking department.

...the mostly stupendous people in my life.  My family, my friends, my bff.  I'm in love with all the inspiring, beautiful people I've met and continue to meet, who are all so different but at some level all share the quality of wanting to unravel the universe with me.

...time to read, and write.  Plowing through books. That little death you feel when you get to the last page of a book.  Time to spend thinking about what I want to write, how I want to write.  Time to let the words come to me, the things I want to capture, to reflect, to talk things out with smart people I love.

...being with the Dotytron.  Always.

...turning 37 (!).  Being firmly in the back half of my 30s. Spending my birthday surrounded by people I love, with the sun setting on a gorgeous lake, the smell of outdoors in the air, lazily working on a blog post while various people are splayed on in repose in various parts of this giant house.  Being okay with my age and mostly okay with who I am at this very point in time.  Settling into it.  Feeling myself.  Feeling so much love for the people I know.  Just being in love with it all.

 So basically, the cottage is great guys, is what I'm saying.

Fin.