Discipline and Celebrity Dolphins

In mid-December of last year, when the agony of getting the kids into three layers of clothing every morning reached peak intensity, I had an epiphany.

My usual approach to get everyone out the door on time--loud, accusatory sighs, shouting, arm-waving, and then a final, angry lecture--wasn't working so well. 

"Be more strict," my husband offered as he flew down the stairs, past the mayhem and out the door on his way to work. It was his way of helping.

As for the kids, they seemed mildly entertained. They would get progressively goofier and sillier as my own frustration increased, like rebellious baboons banding together under threat of a screaming chimp.

By the time we all traipsed into school late, the kids actually thought it was all quite fun. They found camaraderie with other late kids. My youngest, not yet in kindergarten, demanded the school secretary give him a late slip, too, so he could be like his big sisters. 

Clearly, I needed a new approach. I flipped through my mental catalog of Supernanny episodes, and decided a reward system would work better.

The kids had recently seen the movie A Dolphin Tale. It tells the true story of a dolphin named Winter who, as a wee dolphin calf, got caught in a crab trap in the Gulf of Mexico, then washed ashore near Clearwater, Florida. 

Beached, and with a gravely wounded, infected tail, the dolphin seemed doomed. Winter was rescued, but her infected tail had to go. The dolphin vet at Clearwater had to amputate.

Of course, a dolphin sort of needs a tail. A good, strong tail, one might say, is a dolphin's raison d'etre. Without one, a dolphin won't be able to swim, hunt for food, or attract a mate. So the staff at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium made her a prosthetic tail.

The movie was a big hit. Love triumphs over Darwinism.

It just so happens that the Clearwater Aquarium is about two hours' drive from the place we stay when we go to Florida for March break, which we were doing this year.

I told the kids that we could go see the dolphin if we all got to school on time, most days of the week, until March break.

I still did my fair share of arm waving and shouting, but now I added “And don't you want to see Winter?” to the mix. 

It worked. When I reminded the kids of their favorite celebrity dolphin, they tried harder, and most days we made it on time.

So, when we finally got to Florida several months later, we were on the hook. 

“We're not really taking them to see an amputee dolphin,” said my husband. "Are we?" 

The look of resignation in his eyes told me he knew he wouldn't win this one.

“We made a deal,” I said. “What do you suggest we do?”

He called our eldest daughter, who is nearly 8, and was the ringleader of the campaign to see Winter. She scampered into his lap, pretending to be an eager puppy sitting up on hind legs. She made her eyes big and bright with anticipation.

“Fifty bucks,” said my husband. “I'll give you fifty bucks to not go see Winter. You guys can all go get a new toy.”

“No way,” said our daughter flatly.

“A hundred.”

“Nope.”

“Name your price,” he said.

“A gazillion dollars,” she said, and stuck her thumb in her mouth, glowering at him. End of conversation.

“OK, what about Busch Gardens,” said my husband. “We could go there. They have roller coasters and a zoo.”

She stopped sucking her thumb. “A zoo?”

“Sounds fun,” I said. “But let's check the price on that.”

It was five times the price of admission to the Clearwater aquarium—not quite a gazillion dollars, but close. He gave up.

“We're going to see Winter,” he said, shoulders slumped.

We read Google reviews to see what we should expect. 

“Long lines,” wrote one person. “And the tanks are filthy.”

“We traveled from New York to see Winter,” wrote one enthusiastic fan. “Our son has autism. Winter is an inspiration to us all!”

"Oh no," my husband groaned.

“Nothing to see,” wrote another. “Hardly any animals. You might get a glimpse of Winter if you're lucky.”

“It's perfect,” I said. “We'll be in and out in an hour.”

Upon our arrival at the aquarium, we took our place in line with tourists from all over North America and Europe to see this inspirational dolphin. While waiting to buy our tickets, we noticed a sign out front.

“Clearwater Marine Aquarium,” it read. “Rescue. Rehabilitate. Release.”

“Release?” my husband scoffed. “There's no way that money-churner is being released.”

It was a little too loud. The family of normal, sensitive people behind us--their daughter in a leg brace-- looked offended.

It was all kind of depressing--for the dolphins more than for us. I'm no expert, but I've seen dolphins in the wild. They don't do a lot of tricks, usually.

There were some happy moments at Clearwater. Watching our youngest cover his eyes when he saw an eel in a tank was pretty funny. Watching Winter strain to do her show-the-tail-stump-to-the-crowds trick was not.

By far the biggest bonus, we thought, was that our eldest daughter was now obsessed with dolphins. One of nature's quieter animals, one would think, being underwater and all.

Our daughter's fascination with all predators means we have been subjected to, on a daily basis, gutteral roars, hawk screeches, and her interpretation of a velociraptor squawk.

So an obsession with a relatively quiet, underwater creature obsession was a welcome relief. Until we heard the incredibly shrill call that dolphins actually make.

Bad enough on its own, but when she saw the trainer imitating the dolphin's shriek, we knew we were done for.

All the way home in the car: shrill dolphin screech-cries from the eldest interspersed with her four-year-old brother's cry of “Shaaaadaaap!!” When I glanced in back at them, our long-suffering middle child had her hands covering her ears.

My husband drove on, hunched, jaw tense, eyes bulging, bracing himself against the onslaught of noise. He looked like someone had scooped his soul out of his body.

"Good idea," he said, managing a smile.

Body Renos

It all started with a mole.

During my checkup last year, my doctor noticed a mole that looked a little smudged. She removed it. Just to be on the safe side, she referred me to a dermatologist to have him look at my other moles.

I have a lot of these “beauty spots”-- my preferred term. Under the unforgiving fluorescent light of the dermatologist's office, I had to strip completely from head to toe while he used a giant magnifying glass, lit with yet another fluorescent light, to scrutinize every inch of my skin.

“You know this is a woman's worst nightmare,” I said to him.

“Well, at least you shaved your legs,” he said with a pinched little smile. “So we're good.”

Bitch, I thought to myself.

He then found my birthmark, at my hairline. I was told to remove it when I was 13, but at that point in my life I had seen too many milk cartons with photos of missing children on them. The usual identifier? A birthmark. I thought it best to keep mine, lest I be kidnapped at some point and have nothing special about me for my mom and the police to write on a milk carton.

That was then. Now that I am a mother of three pushing 40, I can only dream about being kidnapped. It was time for the birthmark to go.

The thing exceeded the diameter of what was removable in a dermatologist's office. He said I'd have to see a plastic surgeon.

I'm going to pause here for a personal history moment.

I come from Vancouver Island, where many people are fans of the “natural” or “outdoorsy” look. Mussed hair, over-sized second-hand sweaters over scruffy jeans--it's a look that is carefully contrived to show you don't give a shit about the dull, conventional ways that employed people dress. Here in Toronto this look is called “disheveled hippie” or even “depressed halfway-house dweller.”

But I was brought up to fiercely protect the natural look. I was weaned on Free To Be You And Me and The Paper Bag Princess. I came of age reading Our Bodies Ourselves at Lilith Fair.

All the self-acceptance and feminism, however, couldn't crush my vanity.

The plastic surgeon's office was the forbidden fruit.

I'm sure some of his patients were the real deal – people who'd had unfortunate, disfiguring accidents or needed reconstructive surgery after a mastectomy.

But not the couple with identical facelifts sitting next to me. Their eyebrows were arched in an aloof, mildly curious way that remained unchanged whether they were reading magazines or talking to each other.

The doctor's assistant came out and greeted them. They were waiting to take their friend home.

“Is she rejuvinated?” asked the woman, her brow still immobile but her eyes wild with enthusiasm. This was place where shallow, self-absorbed, bored people could cater to their vain whims.

I felt right at home. You didn't even need the 20 large in your pocket. All you had to do was drain your savings and apply for a Capital One card.

It was okay to be selfish here, to take a risk and make a big change. And as such it was a terribly exciting place to be.

Upon seeing the surgeon, he said I should indeed have the disagreeable spot removed. Seven little stitches along the hairline. “It will give you a slight temporal lift,” he said. It was covered under OHIP.

He glanced at my intake form.

“Other than this, you are a healthy, 38-year-old woman?” There it was. A slight emphasis on that evil number, 38. An invitation to enhancement.

“Yes,” I said, beginning to perspire a little. “I am. Healthy.”

“Alright, if there's anything else I can do for you, let me know.”

The surgeon smiled. It was a warm, friendly, comforting smile. A new, perfect body seemed so entirely possible.

Three weeks later I found myself deep into a mental rabbit hole at JustBreastImplants.com. Women were talking saline and silicone like guys talk V-6 and V-8 engines.

“Just replaced my 350cc's with 750s,” wrote one woman. “Barely made it to the big girls' club, but I did!”

“Couldn't wait for my 1000's!” enthused another. “They're much heavier than my 650s. I need to wear support 24/7.”

“I can't wait for a reason to need a bra 24/7,” gushed another woman.

But for every enthusiastic new recipient, there were several posts from women whose surgery wasn't quite right. One boob bigger than the other, or hanging differently, or it leaked, or they got the wrong size implant, or there was something called a capsular contracture. (Google it.)

“Having issues shaving my armpits,” wrote someone called Leesa. “The implant is still so high and in the way.”

Tummy tuck recipients needed to take several weeks off from any lifting or driving, and had tubes in them after surgery to drain the fluid that accumulates after you're flayed.

How did they do it? How do women with careers and families have the time for elective surgery?

I was pondering this question one evening in the bathroom. I had just finished having a shower when my five-year-old barged in, unannounced and unapologetic.

“Um, may I have some privacy please?” I said. All the plastic surgery thoughts were having an effect on my self-esteem.

My daughter looked me over and started to giggle.

“What?” I said, feeling a little more self-conscious than usual.

“I love your boobies, Mama,” she said. “They're so silly. They look like googly-eyes.”

I still can't figure out why I took it as a compliment, but I did.

Party Hats

When our eldest daughter was five--this was a couple years back--she came into our bedroom early one morning and started rifling through our nightstand. We had long ago given up defending the “Master Retreat” we'd fantasized about while house-hunting several years back. In place of the relaxing, romantic bed-and-reading chamber we'd envisioned, what had developed was some sort of feral sleep den.

As our daughter marched in, unannounced of course, and opened one of our drawers, my husband and I suddenly turned to each other, eyes wide.

There was a box of condoms in there.

These were not just any boring Trojans with boring packaging that she might ignore. These were condoms in all the colors, textures and flavors of the rainbow, including glow-in-the-dark.

This particular box of “party hats,” as my husband calls them, came in packaging that had cool splotches of neon graffiti art and silly cartoon characters on it.

All of which was instantly appealing to a five-year-old.

“What are these?” our daughter asked.

I panicked, and said the first thing that came into my head. “Oh! Don't touch those! It's mommy's candy.”

Yes, that's what I called condoms. Mommy's candy.

“Candy!” she shouted indignantly. “Why do you get candy?”

“It's grown-up candy,” I said. “You won't like it. It tastes like coffee.”

Our daughter seemed to accept this, and the day went by without further mention of it.

The following week, I was vacuuming under the same daughter's bed, when the vacuum's hose suddenly became clogged. It made a peculiar high-pitched wheezing sound, like air being slowly released out of a balloon.

Something rubber was in there.

I untwisted a wire hanger and poked around in the hose. What came out were four unrolled condoms. I looked at my daughter, who was standing nearby.

“They're not candy,” she said, with a look of disgust.

“No honey, they're not.”

“What are they?”

“They're to keep mommy and daddy from having more babies.”

A big smile lit up her sweet little face. She had never really forgiven us for bringing not one, but two, younger siblings into her life. Condoms might not be candy, but they were, in Martha Stewart's words, a very good thing.

Primping the Nest

A few home improvements have been pending since we bought our first house four years ago and realized we didn't have a landlord to take care of us anymore. The jobs had accumulated—badly-needed wallpaper removal, some proper light fixtures, some curtains and blinds, and a coat of fresh paint.

My husband and I are not home reno types. We're proud of ourselves if we manage to vacuum the carpet or rake leaves.

We weren't always so negligent. When my husband and I met 10 years ago, he had built a rooftop deck for his apartment and I had just finished painting my whole apartment—in two days, ceilings included. We thought we were capable people.

Then the kids came along.

Now we can barely keep one room tidy, let alone make time for home improvements. At almost any hour, you will find dishes in our kitchen sink. The main floor dining table is a repository for bills. On the coffee table, books and the week's newspapers pile up. I keep collecting them, in denial of the fact that I don't actually read anymore. In the basement, toys lay strewn about like shrapnel after a mess explosion.

I never thought anyone but us would care, but I was wrong.

“I love you guys,” one of our neighbors said dryly. She's renovating her three-storey from top to bottom. “You moved in and didn't do a thing.”

Hers wasn't the only back-handed compliment. Friends who visited often remarked, “Nice place! There's so much potential!”

When our mailman confessed he was concerned he might step on the wrong spot of our front steps and end up with a two-by-four in the face, we finally got the message. Time to suffer through renos like all the other grown-ups we know.

I'm sure what those other grown-ups wanted was for me to taste that bitter regret you have when you can only access your house from the back door, your furniture is pulled away from the walls, your house is covered in the fine, powdery dust leftover after drywall repair and painting, your bank account is dwindling, you and your spouse aren't speaking to each other anymore, and all the stuff that's usually kept in cupboards and on shelves is sitting in the middle of your living room.

The inconvenience of it all makes you wonder: What was so wrong with some peeling wallpaper in the first place? And couldn't the mailman figure out how to get around that bad stair? Couldn't he see the slapstick hilarity of getting a two-by-four in the face?

By the standards of middle-class Toronto housewives, last month was only mildly trying. We did not, as many do, relocate our family to a cramped apartment and learn how most of Toronto actually lives, all while borrowing the equivalent of our life savings to finance a gut job. We merely had our deck fixed, painted the walls, pulled up a bit of carpet, and installed some new light fixtures.

It did render us semi-homeless for a while though, and momentarily broke, as we paid out tradespeople. And it wasn't fun keeping the kids out from morning to night, dragging them from to one time-killing activity after another as we tried to avoid things like our son getting naked and leaning against freshly-painted trim or our daughter finger-painting on the floor with a mixture of drywall dust and milk (both of which did eventually happen). 

Though it is dusty and in disarray, our house does look a little better.

More importantly, however, I lost weight. Just a little bit but a couple of people noticed. Turns out even minor renovations are terrible for keeping regular meal times and eating in general. I missed breakfast every day for two weeks, and was running about so much that I forgot to do my usual furtive eating between meals. I lost a pound-and-a-half without even trying.

As the Italians say: Since the house is on fire, at least we can warm ourselves.

A Positive She-Male Role Model

I didn't post last week; it's been that special kind of busy that happens when your spouse is away.

It's not just the lack of another pair of grown-up hands. What's particularly trying is the emotional toll on the kids, who miss their dad and have an upset routine.

My kids seem to sit in a persistent malaise when their dad is away for long. They inevitably become fascinated with other guys around them—usually manly guys doing manly things. Guys doing construction work, stocking product at the local grocery store, fixing the road, pruning trees.

This time, they slouched around watching a carpenter we've hired to fix our front porch. They asked him questions about his circular saw, how many kids he has, and whether he had built them a tree house.

When a painter came over to do an estimate, my son, who is three, hugged his leg and wouldn't let go.

But it wasn't until one particular morning that I really understood, in the most visceral way, a boy's need for a male role model.

After I saw my girls onto their school bus, I had about 45 minutes to kill with my son until his preschool began.

Let's be ambulance drivers,” he said. This is a game we sometimes play when we're walking somewhere, just to pass the time. He pretends to turn on flashing lights and drives me, the other ambulance driver, as we try to figure out what to do about--as my son puts it-- “the guy in the back with his leg broke off.”

When playing the ambulance driver game, my son finds it necessary for both of us to speak in deep, masculine, ambulance-driver voices.

This time, we played for a bit but soon I got bored. Plus, my vocal chords were feeling a little strained with all the man-talk. I decided we'd go for a coffee.

It was crowded in the coffee shop, and my son was getting a little restless. We got to the front of the line and I ordered a coffee for me and hot chocolate for him—in my normal voice, of course.

“NO!” shouted my son. “We're AM-bulance drivers!”

“It's a game we play,” I said apologetically to the cashier, who smiled weakly, then lifted her eyes to the next customer. We moved down the counter to wait for our drinks.

“You know,” I said to my son. “There are lots of girl ambulance drivers.”

“No!” he said. He seemed to be gathering steam, but then our order came.

I now had two hot drinks to pick up, one in either hand.

“Thank you,” I said politely to the barista. Then I turned to my son and offered him his drink.

"Here's your hot chocolate," I said in that saccharine, placating voice that panicked moms get when they're trying to ward off a meltdown.

“No!” shouted my son. “It's COFFEE!" 

"Ambulance drivers drink hot chocolate," I said, completely missing the point. 

"Say AM-bulance driver words!” commanded the mini dictator.

Crying and totally frustrated, he dropped to the floor.

Here was my choice. In a packed coffee shop, I could speak to my son in a deep, macho voice, or I could let him continue to scream and go floppy, put down the coffees, pick him up and leave.

I think it's testament to just how badly I wanted that coffee: I chose the voice.

“Come on,” I boomed gruffly. “Let's go check on our truck.” I think I even spoke out of the corner of my mouth.

“Yeah,” said my son, smiling through tears. And we swaggered out of there together as ambulance drivers—one of them a pint-sized coffee drinker and the other a sort of confused man-mom.

Hallowe'en

We have been blessed with a daughter who has always loved simple costumes. Princess, vampire, spider, zombie. Her little sister is even easier—she always wants to be what big sister was the previous year.

Then there's our son.

“I want to be a school bus,” he declared when I asked him, two weeks ago, what his costume would be. My reaction: despair. Though I did look forward to getting mildly high again from the spray paint, I still had nerve damage and Popeye forearms from cutting cardboard boxes last year, when he was a monster truck. (With scissors, of course. Finding the X-acto knife? Needle in a haystack.)

“Maybe he'll change his mind,” I thought. A couple days later, he did.

“Merman,” he said that morning. He had put two feet into one pant leg, a makeshift fish tail. “I want to be a merman.”

Unconventional, perhaps, but doable. No boxes, no paint fumes. I was optimistic. It wouldn't take much to make our lavender-and-turquoise sequined Ariel costume a little more boyish. If not, we'd do it up—a wig, full makeup. A three-year-old boy in mermaid drag would be adorable. The grownups would shower him with candy—half of which I would later stash for myself, of course. It could be a banner year.

But that night, all hope was lost.

“I want to be a streetcar,” he said, and before I could confuse or distract him out of it, he flashed a wide, sparkly-eyed, “you-can-do-it, Mom” grin. Who was I to crush his dreams? He only got one Hallowe'en as a three-and-a-half-year-old.

I set to work making a fucking streetcar costume. 

I cut thick cardboard with dull scissors. I spray painted boxes. I actually did this two days in advance, to allow the paint to dry. In my distracted rush I painted the boxes on our deck, and got red spray paint on it. I made a towering, unwieldy box costume that my son—bless him—thought was awesome. My girls also got into it and painted him a steering wheel and dashboard radio--so he could drive while listening to top 40 hits.

The costume sat in our dining room for two days, during which time I constantly fended off my son for fear of my own shoddy construction.

"Stay away!" I shouted. "The sides need more duct tape!"

"Don't touch it!" I said. "The roof will come off!"

In the end, he didn't want to wear it to school, for fear the other kids might want a turn in it and break it. On Hallowe'en night, the cumbersome ensemble barely allowed him to walk, let alone to make it up the stairs to a neighbor's house, without teetering over. He lasted about 15 minutes. Once back in our yard he left his meager loot on the ground and proceeded to do what he had wanted all along: to play in the damn thing.

Surviving Parental Abuse

My husband and I, like most parents, have been the recipients of mouth-smacks, blows to the stomach, vicious shin and groin kicks, bites, headbutts, running headbutts, and whatever that WWF wrestling move is where the one guy brings his knee down on the back of the other guy who is already lying helpless on the floor. Can't remember the name of that move, but it was big in the '80s.

“Broken noses are a very common injury for parents,” my doctor once told me flatly, while she was checking the corneal damage I had after my adorable then-12-month-old daughter had poked me in the eye. "You know, if you try to carry a toddler having a tantrum and they fling their head back? Yeah. I've seen lots of parents come in here with broken noses from that."

“Make sure you keep her fingernails trimmed,” my doc offered, hinting that my eye damage could have been prevented had I properly groomed my kids. I left with the understanding that parental abuse was one of the few types of abuse where no matter what happened to you, it was always your fault.

Case in point.

A while ago, when my husband was hiding from us in the mountains of Peru on another seemingly interminable business trip, I was near my breaking point one night at dinner time. All three children—then aged 6, 3.5 and 2—had begun their nightly caterwauling when faced with their meal. The littlest, my son, was being particularly bothersome to the other two, so I decided it would be a good idea to have him eat his meal on my lap.

He began waving his arms around in an attempt to entertain the table. It was cute, and seemed to diffuse the negative mood, and I was brain-jammed from the caterwauling.

I didn't notice that in his right hand he was tightly gripping his fork like a switchblade. After one particularly erratic movement, he flung his arm backward and stabbed me in the eye with the utensil. The pain was dreadful, and when I took my hand away from my eye, there was blood seeping from the corner.

I felt terribly sorry for myself, because there was no one else there to do it, and I began to cry.

“Eeeew!” said the girls, looking at the bloodstained tears coursing down my face. I went into full breakdown mode and began to weep openly.

“Are you ok, mom?” said one of the girls, though I quickly realized from the expression in her eyes that it wasn't a question about my injury, but about my sanity.

“It's just really hard being a mom sometimes,” I said between sobs.

“Uh-oh...” the girls said in unison, giving each other a look before breaking into a fit of conspiratorial giggles.

They began to eat finally, and in the end the eye stab was a plus, since it distracted them long enough to forget about hating their dinner.

As I finally tucked into my meal, holding a napkin to my still seeping eye. I thought, “I should never have put him on my lap to eat. He's too big for that now. Really, it was all my fault.”