WINNIPEG, Manitoba — I’ve had me just about all the Canada I can handle. One more day here in le nord grand blanc, or however they say it in Québec, and I can drag my worn-out ass home for a few precious days.
It’s been a bit of a rough week back home, from what I hear. The Young Daughter is not a happy little girl right. Quite frankly, she’s pissed, and she doesn’t give a flying shit what you think about it.
You know what? I am, too. I’m right there with her. This is no way to be 7.
The reality of the situation has started to set in a bit for all of us over the last few days, I think. We all deal with it in the ways that we can.
The Wife takes action. She spoke Wednesday at a luncheon for a local community organization that supports families who need help, families like, well, ours. She told me it was not easy. I know it was just about the hardest damn thing she’s ever done. This, of course, on the heels of having to explain to The Young Daughter that, just because she’s pissed and scared, that doesn’t mean she’s allowed to be mean, which, of course, was just about the hardest damn thing she’s ever done.
The Old Daughter writes, and we publish it without her knowledge. From earlier this week:
Dragging my five foot three frame through
What seems like miles of rickety plastic tunnels
May be hard, but the four-year-old in front of me
Had a spinal tap not four hours before.
Yet she turns around and grins infectiously
Her tiny nose crinkling and a bubbly laugh spilling over.
I got a crash course on how to be a mommy cat,
A mermaid, a baby cat, and a human mommy, too.
The tiny green globes ten feet up turn into ships
The brightly colored triangular steps morph into beds
And the slide is a death trap, to be avoided at all costs.
Wisps of black hair shift position as a hollow thump
Tells me that her head has connected with the ceiling.
She just laughs, calls, “Come on, come on!”, motions me onward
And I slither through more tunnels designed for toddlers.
Yes, it’s uncomfortable, but I’m laughing in spite of myself.
The Boy tries his best to be the 9-year-old man of the house. He wants to help. He doesn’t know how. It makes him angry sometimes, too. I can hear it when he talks, can see it in how he interacts when things get touchy around the house. He tries to be the peacemaker. He tries to be the good guy. Sometimes he fails, and gets caught up in it all. What the hell. He’s 9. He’s allowed.
Me? I go to Canada. Because people are paying me to be here, and fairly handsomely. If I’m here, people will pay our doctors. I hate it. I hate it with every goddamn fiber of my being. I’m fairly certain I’m going to start screaming at people myself at some point soon. Because I don’t really know what’s going on. All of the above? Guesses, based on what I hear on the phone, what I read from IMs from The Wife, what pops up in the RSS feed from the web site that the Old Daughter posts to. I don’t know what’s going on, and from north of the 49th parallel, there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it.
