Tag Archives: motherhood

My Earliest Memory

Posted by on July 12, 2011 No comments

In my earliest memory is of my late stepmother Jocelyne. I was very young at the time, maybe four or five years old. My dad was a sawmill foreman and was working the graveyard shift when one night, I woke from a nightmare and went barreling into the living room of our house on the farm, looking for comfort. My father wasn’t there. My mother wasn’t there. But Jocelyne was.

In my fear and half-asleep upset, it wasn’t my father I was longing for, it was my mother. I remember climbing into Jocelyne’s lap and crying for my mommy. I wept like I’d never see her again. And while I wailed and lamented my loneliness, Jocelyne crooned and rocked another woman’s child until she felt comforted and loved.

How Far Would You Go To Protect Yourself?

Posted by on March 17, 2011 1 comment

Imagine yourself in physical or mortal danger. If you don’t do something to protect yourself, serious harm or death will befall you or your family.

How far would you go to protect yourself? What would you do? I’d do anything to save my family, you’re  thinking. I would kill to save my son. I would do whatever it took. No questions asked.

Would you lie? Cheat? Steal? Would you defend yourself physically, even if it meant the harm or death of your attacker?

What if your attacker were your own child? Would you kill your own child to protect yourself, if your child were trying to kill you?

Seems a little far-fetched, even to me, that this would happen. I mean really, what child would try to kill its mother? And what parent would, in turn, place more value on her own life than their child’s, and actually kill that child to save their own soul? I can’t imagine that ever happening.

Unfortunately, I don’t have to imagine it happening. Reality has supplied us with this exact scenario in Calgary, Alberta, where Aset Magomadova, a refugee from Chechnya, stands accused of killing her fourteen-year-old daughter Aminat by ligature strangulation [link] in what she calls self-defense.

[link] Toronto Star article
[link] Global News, Calgary

According to the media, the fourteen-year-old girl had a history of drug abuse and regularly took crystal meth, which is known to cause erratic, violent behaviour in users [link], as well as mood swings and unpredictability. The articles go on to say that the police had been called to the home five times in the last five months, by the mother, who feared for her safety and that of her young son, who has muscular dystrophy. Aminat was often brought home by police, high, after violent fights with her mother.

This family obviously had a lot of problems, but despite repeated visits from police for domestic disturbance, no authorities were ever brought in to assist the family, despite Aset’s desire for intervention. She felt she could no longer control her daughter, and with the help of her sister, attempted to convey this fear to the police. She even stayed in a battered women’s shelter for a few days, less than a month ago.

Nobody ever referred her to the appropriate social services, such as the Calgary and Area Child and Family Services, or the Domestic Dispute and Cultural Resources units of the Calgary Police. This family could have been helped. This girl could have been saved.

How did Calgary fail this struggling family after it survived refugee untold horrors at the hands of Russian soldiers? Who knows the horror in that girl’s mind after living through what we can only imagine in our worst nightmares. It’s no wonder she turned to drugs to alleviate the damage done by terror. But it all went horribly wrong.

Now, the girl’s mother is in jail, charged with second-degree murder, and her wheelchair-bound son is in foster care. It breaks my heart. However, I am torn.

I’m trying to put myself in this woman’s shoes. I imagine that Gwen Junior is older, the same size as me, and prone to violent drug-induced rage. I imagine that she beat me. I imagine that she smashes furniture, breaks windows, and runs away constantly, only to be brought home by police time after time. I imagine her coming at me with her fists or with a weapon, hatred and rage in her eyes, intent on causing me physical boldily harm. What would I do? Would I allow her to hurt me? Would I try to protect myself without causing her pain, if it were at all possible? Or, with my backagainst a wall, would I fight back?

The thought haunts me. What would be more powerful: maternal instinct or fight-or-flight response?

* Article originally written in March 2007



Overheard In The Office!

Posted by on February 10, 2011 No comments

While it’s definitely true that I’m a nosy Nellie and no cubicle conversations are safe when I’m around, on this particular occasion I was actually trying not to hear my colleague talk to her girlfriend on the phone in a very exasperated way about her failed attempt to determine her unborn baby’s gender. But I thought one thing she said was so hilarious that I immediately sent the quote to OverheardAtTheOffice.com which I absolutely love.

Fast forward several months. Yesterday, I got an email from a guy named Morgan over at OHATO who told me that my quote would be published that day!

I trolled the site obsessively until, at just after three o’clock, there it appeared!

Pregnant employee on personal call: I tried to have an ultrasound done but it didn’t work out. Nothing to do with the baby–it was my uterus. It’s an asshole.

Toronto, Canadia

Overheard by: Gwen Styles

Yay! I’ve been published!!

My Daughter Is Smarter Than Me

Posted by on January 21, 2011 3 comments

There comes a time in every parent’s life when it becomes evident that they obviously did everything right, because their child is high-five calibre smart.

Well, I guess maybe this doesn’t happen to parents of stupid children, but I digress.

I need no reminder that my teenage daughter Gwen Junior is one smart-ass kid (both figuratively and literally), but a text message this morning was a pleasant reminder that she seriously rocks the casbah.

There’s a poster on the subway that I noticed a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t help but laugh because it’s just so tacky. It’s an ad for a no-frills funeral service here in Toronto. I remember laughing about reading such a depressing ad on the way to work every morning, and even took a picture of it:

This morning, I received a text message from my daughter, who was on her way to school. It read:

Funerals have finally become affordable.  ”improving on the traditional through convenience and affordable choices” whoever made this ttc poster needs to go back to school.

I knew right away what poster she was talking about, but spent a few minutes wondering why she thought the ad designer should “go back to school” based on that line (which, although you may not be able to see it in my photo, is in the gold bar). Then, it hit me: she thinks the grammar’s bad!

See, the way I initially read it, “convenience and affordable choices” sounded okay, because the convenience of the service and the affordable choices it offered were mutually exclusive. But evidently, my daughter felt that “convenient and affordable choices” was the correct way to go about it, illustrating that the choices were convenient as well as affordable. Which… makes total sense.

It could be argued that both ways are technically correct, but this illustrates that my daughter can, and does, explore alternate and improved ways of expressing one’s thoughts and intentions. Which I think is fucking awesome. So I replied with a ‘Omg ur right, it should be “convenient and affordable choices’. Good eye!” and spent the rest of the morning basking in my obvious superiority as a parent and all-round human being.

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