...the Rae-Bordes Clan.
If you got this message already, please ignore. I got a msg saying that the original was not delivered so I'm re-sending, but I don't trust these server msgs as far as I can throw them. And since they're intangible, I can't throw them very far.
Wow, it's been a long, long time. I believe the last newsy thing I sent out was in August, before I'd started law school. So... stuff has happened. Lots of stuff. Law Stuff, Kid Stuff, Random Stuff and Tough Stuff. Standard advice: read in spurts, not all at once. Bad for the eyes.
Now, I asked Chris what he would like me to say about him in this update. Unfortunately, I asked during a migraine, so all he could come up with was, "My head hurts." So here you go:
Chris' head hurts.
I've gone through one semester of law school and so far, I love it. Don't know how well I'm doing yet, since I've only gotten one mark back, but I think I get it. Mostly.
The year started off a little slowly, though. Orientation Week was, overall, a collection of variations on one speech, the contents of which I already knew. I mean, I think I was pretty well aware before fifteen speakers beat the point into the ground that I was about to enter a profession with a long and hallowed history, one with great traditions and a crucial role in shaping society, and that with this privilege being granted to us came a great responsibility to work for the greater good of society, and that the future or Canada - no, in this age of international interdependency, of our world - lay in the hearts and minds of the bright young men and women of my faculty who were to become my companions, my colleagues, yea, my compatriots blah blah blah
Oy Vey. I heard all of this entering teacher's college.
I also skipped the whole drunken debauchery part of Orientation Week. I was never into that even in undergrad. I mean, I had a total of one beer during Frosh week at Queen's - half a bottle the first day, half a bottle the last - and a swallow of Purple Jesus, the official drink of Queen's Orientation. [FYI it's alcool and grape Kool-Aid, preferably mixed in a sterilized trash can. Creme de la creme of Canada's Youth, the hope of our future, and this is what they come up with.]
Anyway. Then we had a panel discussion on the Harvard Mouse case. It had to do with patents and intellectual property law, two things I'm not at all interested in, but it was gripping. The panelists were people who had brought the Harvard Mouse case all the way to the Canadian Supreme Court, pro- and anti-patent, and it was fascinating hearing their arguments pro and con.
I told Chris all about it and after a while he stopped me, gently saying, "Hon, you've been going on for half an hour... about a patent."
The year took off from there. Since I'm only part-time, I'm taking Criminal, Torts, and Constitutional Law this year, and leaving Legislation, Property and Contracts till next year. And I love my courses. Chris said he and my mom could tell because they could see me biting my tongue to keep from talking about them, seeing as how most of what I found totally fascinating would, I'm sure, be incomprehensible (as well as totally dry) to them.
My profs are also quite neat. My Constitutional prof rocked, and it's unfortunate that Const was only a half-year course. Although I had some misgivings the first day, when he walked in and I thought, Oh, goody,I'm being taught by a teenager. Dressed up like an adult.
Then he starts telling us about his background. Undergrad here, grad school there, PhD there, law school over yonder (and I'm doing math in my head and realizing he can't be that young after all) then a few years as a prosecutor over there, and five years of research over here... (and I'm thinking maybe he did one of these 1-year Masters and maybe he started undergrad at age 16... and maybe got into his Masters after an accelerated undergrad...)
Finally I was faced with the fact that Doogie up there was either about 3 when he entered university, or he must be about 40-50. And still looks about 20. Bloody intimidating.
Excellent prof though. Some of his memorable quotes include (after a very very long discussion on how a Constitution rests solely on the consent of the governed) "... and if we all, every single Canadian, decided tomorrow that we did not accept our Constitution, I can guarantee you exactly what would happen: absolutely nothing."
And right before Thanksgiving, as he finished lecturing us on the Notwithstanding Clause of our Constitution and its more sinister aspects: "Oh and by the way, all your rights could be gone tomorrow. Have a nice weekend! Enjoy your turkey!"
He ended off the year by thanking us for our attendance and telling us that he had thoroughly enjoyed our class because we were "not just conscious, but sentient." What a nice compliment!
Our Torts (aka Lawsuits) prof is also pretty good, and very funny, although there was one rather unfortunate day when I don't know what was going on with him - too little sleep, too much to drink, whacked out on painkillers, who knows, but he kept mixing up the words "plaintiff"and "defendant". I don't think you need to be in law school to know those are two pretty important words to keep straight. It was funny to watch the students as they got more and more confused right along with him, until they started to, one by one, just put down their pens and stop trying to follow him. Many put their heads down on their desks, opting for sleep as a far more useful way to pass the time than trying to decipher whatever the heck he was trying to say.
He did apologize for that class next time, starting with,"As many of you may have noticed, I was quite delirious last class. Let us re-do that section, shall we?"
He's also not above teasing my classmates, which he says is OK because "there is no Tort of Tease." Although he does fear that some day there may exist the "Tort of Looking At Me Wrong."
One thing I've noticed though, is that law profs are not like other profs, who bend over backwards to make sure that every student answer is a valued student answer. (You know, prof asks what's 2 plus 2, student answers 5, prof thinks for a minute and says encouragingly, "Yes, I suppose if you were using a different kind of numbering system it could be, but..."). Law profs just say, "Wrong!"
As to what it's like to be a "mature student"... well, working on my first legal memo, the case of the Naked Guy With Dead Chickens (I'll send a description of it, if anybody really want to know - it's cute), really brought home to me the age difference between me and most of my classmates. The case involved Public Nudity, and at one point my classmates were talking about which real cases to include in their memos. One of them said "You're including the Jacobs case, right?" "Oh yeah, you gotta have the Jacobs case" "Oh yeah" "Oh for sure" (chorus of agreements)
"What's the Jacobs case?" asked one. And the rest proceeded to explain it to him.
It suddenly dawned on me that to them, the "Jacobs case" was legal history - a definitive and binding landmark case in Ontario re. public indecent acts, just like we'd studied so many other definitive and binding cases re. other subjects.
Well, hell, to me, it's not history. It was decided in 1996, after going through the courts and the media from 1993 onwards. I was at Queen's, involved in campus feminism, and to us it was a live issue. Gwen Jacobs ("Gwen" to a lot of my fellow feminists, who knew her personally) was one of many feminists trying to change Ontario law that said that a man could expose his chest in public but a woman could not, since her breasts were sexual organs. She went down a street in Guelph with no top, got arrested and convicted, and provoked a furor.
Big debates, especially for feminists. Was it just about basic inequality, outmoded morality, prudery? Or was there a point to the ban, since, if it was decided that a woman's breasts were not sexual organs, that would probably affect cases of sexual assault that involved touching a woman's breasts?
Big issue. I remember it well. And my classmates call it the "Jacobs case". As much a part of history as Roe v. Wade. Which, by the way, turned 30 this year.
Feeling ever so very very old now. I think I'll go make myself some herbal tea to deal with this. Hope I don't break a hip on the way to the kitchen.
Daniel is in Senior Kindergarten, which is going much better than Junior Kindergarten. He's still a challenge, but his teacher seems to like him and he likes her. At his Christmas concert, after Daniel's class had done their song and dance (literally, a song and dance) and were sitting in the audience watching the other classes, Daniel started to fidget, to the point where the teacher in charge of his section of the auditorium had to send him to his own teacher. He very cheerfully went to sit next to her, not like a resentful and fearful kid being punished. He gave her a smile as if to say, "Hi! Me again!"
And she, rather than rolling her eyes at her problem child, gave him a quick reprimand, then patted the floor next to her and smiled. Her expression seemed to say, "Hi! You again. Should've known you couldn't get through the whole concert without getting into trouble, but what the heck. Let's watch the show together."
I was called by the school one day though, for a somewhat serious incident. Daniel got into a fight with another child at the bus and spat on him. Ick. So I apologized profusely, assured the VP that I would have a stern talking-to with Daniel, and went to get him from his babysitter.
I picked him up, and asked him about the incident. We got into the elevator, where another person was already there. Now, I don't generally scold Daniel in public, because he's old enough that that kind of thing is embarrassing to him, but I was still at the 'tell me your side of it' stage, not at the 'you're in big trouble' stage, so I figured we'd be OK. "So after you and Dan got in the argument, what happened?"
"Well... I spit on him," he said rather reluctantly.
"Mhhm... and then?"
"... and then everybody went CRAZY."
I discovered a sudden pressing need to look down, as did the other person in the elevator. I thought I was gonna lose it as the other guy shook silently, both of us trying very hard to not make eye contact with each other. Daniel continued, totally oblivious to our discomfort.
"You'd think it would be better for me to KILL somebody than to spit on them! Wow!"
He stopped and waited for my comments, but I couldn't talk without cracking up, so I had to say, very quickly, "We'll talk about it when we get home, sweetie," and hide my face again, and try to ignore the other guy as he quietly giggled into his jacket.
Happily, I was able to get it together enough to chew Daniel out properly by the time we got home. That was a close one, though.
***
We were on our way to the New Year's Eve fireworks on Parliament Hill, and Daniel asked, "What if there were no fireworks on New Year's Eve?"
"Then time would cease to go forward," said Chris. "It would freeze in its tracks. It would never be 2003, and we would all be stuck in place forever." (Ever read Calvin and Hobbes? Chris reminds me a lot of Calvin's dad sometimes).
"No!" said Daniel, laughing.
"How do you know?" asked Chris.
"Because then none of us would exist!! Because there were no fireworks in the time of the dinosaurs, for millions of years, but time still went forward!!"
Kind of complex logic for a kid who's not yet six.
***
Daniel has insight!
The kid next door, one year older than Daniel, was continually teasing him about being a 'baby' - "you talk like a baby, that's a baby toy, you can't play with my friends because you're a baby," other nice things like that. This,understandably, made Daniel rather upset.
Well, one day Justin did something (pull off his boots, wash his own face, I don't remember) that Chris and I celebrated and Daniel very disdainfully said, "Oh, anybody can do that! I can do it a lot better than him, look!! He's such a baby!" And went on to putdown Justin quite thoroughly.
Now, Justin, who inherited all of his unshakeableself-confidence from his father, couldn't have cared less, but Chris and I were rather disturbed. I took Daniel aside and had a long talk with him about this, basically pointing out that he was behaving just like the kid next door.
Daniel was horrified, and promised to sin nay more. Sure, I thought, how long is that resolution gonna last?
For good, it seems, with one or two minor lapses. It seems the lesson went pretty deep. One day, after Justin had done something (scribbled on a piece of paper in two colours, while Daniel drew a monster with six eyes and rockets coming out of his head) Daniel praised him quite genuinely. I was curious about this so I asked him afterwards, "Why did you say that was a good picture? I mean, it's not as good as yours, is it?"
"But Mama, he's just a little kid!!" he replied, rather scandalized at me. "It's a very good picture for a little kid!!"
I was so proud.
***
Daniel lost his first tooth. Sigh. He's now got a second one loose. Bigger sigh. And the one he lost, is growing back in. His first adult tooth. Biggest sigh of all.
***
He also started Beavers this fall. Very, very cute, and he very much enjoys it. I'll have to get pictures of him to post on our family website, although pictures couldn't do justice to how cute these kids sound when they recite the Beaver Promise: (I promise to do my best, To be kind and helpful, And to love God), and do the Beaver Prayer as they sit in a circle: God Bless the Beaver to the right of me (point to the right), God Bless the Beaver to the left of me (point to the left), and God Bless the Beaver in the middle (point to themselves).
Aaawwww....
***
Daniel has finally made a few friends of his own (not just children of our friends), some of whom come to visit. So far he's had his friend Laura and her sister Nicole over once, and his classmate and neighbour Dan, along with Dan's little brother Cameron a few times. Our house becomes Boy Zone when Dan and Camie are here.
And it's particularly funny to watch the Daniel-Dan dynamic. Daniel is unable to close his mouth, and Dan, partly by nature and partly because Daniel never takes a breath, is unable to open his. I don't think I knew what Dan's voice sounded like for the first two visits.
***
I realize there's not as much Justin as Daniel in this update, but that's in part because he's going through the terrible threes so a lot of it is just not that amusing. He's busy defining himself as a person separate from his authority figures. This usually means that he practices belligerence and defiance like they're going out of style. Lucky us. Sigh.
He's gotten so rebellious that he's even uttered words that I never thought would come out of his mouth: I DON'T WANT TO EAT!!
***
There are some cutie-pie moments, of course. Like the day that he was busy being defiant and yelling "I don't WANNA GO TO DAY CARE!!" and we were trying to convince him that he did.
"You'll get to see Melela."
"I don't like Melela!"
"You'll get to see Drayson."
"I don't like Drayson!"
"You'll get to see Jeremiah."
"Jehmiah pushes me!"
(OK, playmates weren't working, how about teachers) "You'll get to see Debbie."
"I don't like Debbie!"
"You'll get to see Beverley."
There was a long pause. Sudden brightening.
"I like Beberley," he said, "And Beberley will give me snacks. And Debbie will read to me. And Drayson will play with me in the sand." And he proceeded to enthuse about his day care for the next five minutes while we dressed him, and burbled happily in the car, and ran into day care with a smile and nary a backward glance towards us.
***
Speaking of Beberley, I've noticed that while Justin's pronunciation is usually very good, he can't say V. So, for example, when he bisits a friend and has too much chocolate and gets bery bery sick, he bomits.
***
He's also still very affectionate, when he's not whacking the heck out of his toys, his brother, and his friends. As a matter of fact, the end of the day, when we come and get him from the day care, is an extremely cute time as he rushes about hugging and kissing all of his teachers and friends. And his friends are used to this now too, so when I appear they often go running to him, arms outstretched, ready for their bye-bye hug and kiss. If only I had a videocam.
And he's pretty affectionate with his toys too (although see above re. whacking them). He often plays "daddy," and picks something to have as his "baby." We bought him a Groovey Boy (Sam) after we saw him doing this with various other toys, but in true boy fashion he cuddled Sam for a few days, then went back to cuddling rabbits, snakes, and currently, a rhino. It's pretty amusing to watch him patting his rhino, feeding his rhino, telling his rhino "Don't worry - I'll be right back!" when he has to leave him alonefor a moment. He'll make a great dad some day.
We took the boys skating on the Canal. Talk about the blind leading the blind. Chris and I hadn't been on skates in about 15 years, but we did OK. Longest Skating Rink in Canada, and I think we actually traveled about 30 feet. From the stairs, to the Hot Chocolate and Beavertails stand (and we were thinking of you, Mark :), and back to the stairs. Took about an hour.
It was a lot of fun though. Daniel was remarkably persistent - he tends to get easily frustrated and discouraged, and there's few things as discouraging as continually falling on your bum. But he has a goal: he wants to skate as well as his friend Dan, who's been skating since he was 3. So he's persevered and improved remarkably in just 3 sessions.
Justin was hilarious too. Got out on the ice, took one step, fell flat on his back, and lay there laughing his head off. A couple who had just arrived at the Canal remarked that he was in for a really fun time if he had that attitude towards falling - and they were right. He kept falling and laughing, falling and laughing, like he was on a particularly funny amusement ride.
***
My friend Karolyn and I had an awful moment this fall. We took the kids to the Museum of Science and Technology, and as we were going through the Communications section, they had all of these old communications devices - you know, Morse code machines, early telegraphs, switchboards, etc, and a rotary phone. So I'm explaining to Daniel how rotary phones work and all of a sudden, Karolyn and I look at each other, realizing that... man... the phones we used as kids are in a MUSEUM.
***
I experienced bathos this fall. I was introduced to the term by my Torts prof, who tries to putin a section on arguments and rhetoric in every class. He said that we must avoid, unless we mean to use it for a specific purpose, the use of "bathos" - a sudden fall from the sublime to the profane.
I wondered how to explain the concept to a regular person by way of example, and Chris helped me out by reminding me of one of my favourite non-rhyming poems from The Frantics, which goes something like this:
"Ah woman, as I lie and watch your soft sweet breath upon my pillow, I gaze upon your loveliness and I wonder who I really am... and who you really are... and... what happened last night after I blacked out?"
Anyway. So then we had an actual incident of bathos in our household. We bought the DVD of Moulin Rouge, and we're watching the video of "Come What May", and Chris and I are watching the beautiful flickering images, listening to Ewan McGregor's dulcet tones and Nicole Kidman's sweet harmony and admiring their gorgeous smiles and luminous eyes and then we hear one of our kids wake up, upstairs and I continue to dreamily smile at Ewan's lovely shy expression, so full of love and devotion and Chris cocks his head at a sort of crinkling-paper sound and says, What's that? and I say Nothing, it's just Daniel walking around and Ewan croons "Come whaaat may, I will be with you, Until my dying day..." and then Chris says, "He's PEEING DOWN THE STAIRS!!" and goes rushing upstairs where, indeed, our five-year old, fully asleep, was peeing down the stairs.
Bye bye, Ewan and Nicole. Gotta go mop now.
***
Small e-mail exchange with an e-friend. She says:
> ... so at onepoint I said,
> "can we wrap you're brother's present now? It's
> really irritating my skin,"
> quite possibly the most odd sentence ever uttered.
I answer:
I take it you're not a parent. I've heard the most amazing sentences come out of my mouth in recent years. "Put that booger back in your nose!" comes to mind.
***
We took the boys to the National Arts Centre to see a children's play. Yet another conflagration of cuteness. It felt very, very strange to be doing this with my own kids though - I remember many, many evenings at the NAC with my own parents when I was a kid. And they absolutely loved it, since it was very much made with kids in mind - lots of silliness, exaggerated expressions and costumes, and a cast who spent most of their time climbing up and down a wall. After about ten minutes, my arms ached just watching them.
***
I mentioned our family web page above, which I've been half-heartedly working on for a long, long time. Assuming it ever gets off the ground, one thing I'd have on it are the e-mails that were sent out back and forth after Chris' accident. Many of you sent us e-mails that we kept and treasured. However, since they were originally sent privately, and a website is technically public (even though most are hardly ever visited by anyone other than the home page's owners) I thought I'd send out a general 'asking for permission' thingy here. If any of you would rather not have your message displayed, let me know. If any of you don't remember what you said, let me know that too, I'll dig your e-mail out and send it to you.
We got rid of our red car. Sadness sadness sadness. It basically came down to rent or the second car, so guess which one we picked.
In a way, though, it felt pretty good to be able to do that. We originally got the second car when we were going through total hell, and had decided that, if we could fix anything with money, we'd go ahead and spend it, since there was so much going on that no money would fix. And boy, did we ever spend a lot! The car, for example, was our solution to the problem of "Chris works insane and insanely long hours, and Jim either has to chauffeur him around town at all hours, dragging the kids along, or be stuck at home for days on end with nowhere to go. Second car? OK!"
So it was good to be able to look at our situation, realize that we couldn't afford many of these 'fixes' any more... and that we didn't really need them anymore, anyway. The car, for instance, is no longer a necessity. Chris' hours, though still long, are no longer insane, and they're much more regular. The kids are old enough to take the bus with me. We're stable enough that being isolated every so often is not a big deal.
Although I must say, the first semester, when I was on the bus with Justin for 2hrs/day Mon-Fri... that sucked. This semester will be better - I'll only be doing it 3 days a week. Phew.
***
Our friends Todd and Susan's dog Luria passed away this fall. She had been ailing for a long time and it wasn't unexpected, but it was still difficult for them and difficult to explain to our kids as well. Although we're not dog people, Luria was a great dog, wonderful with children, and our kids had a fear-love relationship with her (she was also pretty big). It was difficult explaining her death to them, explaining the permanence of it. Both of them were upset for days. I can only imagine how Todd and Susan's daughter Turtle dealt with it.
***
In any case, the car and Luria's death kind of pale next to the really, really tough stuff that's happened in our family in the last few months. My mother found a large lump on her neck this fall. Somewhat concerned, she went to her family doc, who told her that it was probably nothing, but she should get some tests done anyway - soon, before she went off to Portugal for her holidays. She went and got the tests, but was told that she should still go ahead and take her vacation - there was really no point in missing out on Portugal just to find out results that were probably going to be perfectly normal anyway.
Well, I wouldn't be writing this if the results had been perfectly normal. Suffice it to say that she did not go to Portugal after all - the results came back and indicated 'cause for concern'. After an interminable period not knowing for sure what was going on, and lots of other tests, she finally got a diagnosis: lymphoma. She started chemo in December and has done two treatments so far.
It's been a difficult time. Although lymphoma is a highly treatable cancer and her prognosis is very good, it's still cancer and therefore pretty scary. And chemo has been very hard so far, although my mother is dealing with it as positively as she can. We've all had to do some adjusting, getting used to serious illness. It's hard to tell what will be helpful and what won't - will talking about it help? Will visiting with two active, noisy little boys be a welcome break for her, or an unnecessary annoyance? We've had some false starts and some misunderstandings, but I think we're settling in to it.
I just thank God that Guy's there. He's been like a rock, and my mother says he always seems to know exactly what will help. I wish I had that talent.
Anyway. That's been the worst thing going on so far - although my mother, channeling my ever-optimist grandmother, I'm sure, commented that, "As far as cancer goes, lymphoma's pretty good, really."
And there have been some pretty funny moments too. Like apparently, when the nurse was explaining chemo to my mother, Guy commented that it was "like Justin with a baseball bat...is going to hit whatever the f*** moves..."
Let's hope it keeps doing so. So far, her doctor's very pleased with her treatments, so apparently the baseball bats are hitting their targets quite well :)
And on that semi-positive(?) note, I'm wrapping this up. Phew! That's a lot of updating - I guess it's been an active five months or so.
-- Jimena
Obi-Wan Kenobi: Anakin, I swear you're going to be the death of me.
Anakin Skywalker: Don't say that, Master.
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones