One for the team

Rowan is wearing his Habs T-shirt to school today (and look at me, even knowing who the Habs are). We bought the shirt for him in the Montreal airport, en route home from Chicago (because of course why wouldn't you fly from Chicago to Thunder Bay via Montreal and Toronto, making what should be a two-hour trip into an eight-hour one?), and he's already customized it, scrawling “31 Price” on it for his favourite Montréal Canadien (goalie Carey Price, obviously. I looked that up on the Internet.).

The souvenir he really wanted from our trip, though, was a Chicago Blackhawks jersey. We didn't get him one, though, for equally obvious reasons, which I talk about more in today's post on Today's Parent:

I know I’m late to the party on this particular controversy, but, come on: how is it that we aren’t yet past the idea that it’s at all acceptable to appropriate First Nations names and symbols for sports teams? I’m not going to repeat the arguments that have been hashed out for decades now about the Cleveland Indians and the Atlanta Braves and the Washington Redskins. At best, the practice is insensitive and inaccurate and perpetuates stereotypes. At worst, it’s racist and potentially damaging — to both native and non-native populations.

For the record, we did talk to both boys about the hockey jersey — one of those talks where Rachel and I were completely serious and earnest and they were somewhat receptive but also kind of flighty and subject-change-y. In other words, it's going to be an ongoing discussion. But I think they got the basic gist of it — let's hope that the NHL and the NFL and the NBA and everyone else does, too.

Image courtesy shop.nhl.com.

You know what's awesome about Mother's Day? The Internet.

If you know me at all well, or if you’ve been reading here for a while, you know about my ambivalent relationship to Mother’s Day. I thought I was done with the story, but you never really done with those kinds of foundational stories, are you? Here’s one more version, for the Mother’s Day edition of Today’s Parent.

My ambivalence about Mother’s Day, though, is changing, in large part because of that whole Interwebs/social media thang. I know, it sucks up your time when you should be focusing on writing the novel rather than reading about attack cats and Solange, but the thing about the Internet is that it can create visibility and communities where before there were none. Which is what I blogged about this week at Today’s Parent:

When Mother’s Day isn’t a Hallmark holiday for you, it can be a very lonely time. You sit there, quietly smiling, and wishing that other people knew about the grief and complicated feelings that accompany—or eclipse—the joy for so many of us. It used to be that those of us with complicated relationships to Mother’s Day dealt with the day on our own. But with Facebook, and Twitter, and texting and Instagram and any number of other technologies, we can do it together.

So thank you to everyone on my various feeds who came together on Mother’s Day and made me feel like part of a community. That’s what real nurturing is all about.

Thanks to Alexandra, Cheryl, Dresden, Elan, Joan, Laurie and Tracy (oh, yeah — and my kids), who — like so many of you — have helped to redeem Mother’s Day for me.

On Magpies and Things We Thought We Didn’t Want to Do: Stuff I wrote other places this week

Just in case you’re not feeling full from yesterday’s photo-filled post on shallots and butter, here’s more stuff I’ve written other places this week: Over at VillageQ, I write about the challenges and rewards of forcing kids to do stuff that they think they won’t like that you know they will:

I’m not just talking about run-of-the-mill things like eating and sleeping and going to the bathroom, although of course most children at some point or another will swear up and down that they under no circumstances want or need to eat or sleep or poop even though you can tell — say, by the subtle hint of the series of massive meltdowns punctuated by alternate fits of giggling and sobbing and poking of siblings — that they desperately need to. I’m talking about things like going for hikes out in nature. Or going to see a really cool exhibit at the art gallery. These are both, coincidentally, things that I forced my children to do this past weekend. Things that they both swore up and down they would rather die than do. “You’re making me waste my weekend!” Rowan snarled at the prospect of a beautiful country hike with our good friends and four dogs. “I’m not going inside! I’ll just wait in the lobby the whole time!” Isaac whined in the parking lot at the art gallery.

At Today’s Parent, I write about Isaac’s propensity to — shall we say — “borrow” shiny things, like my new meat thermometer:

I wouldn’t say outright that Isaac steals shiny things. But he does borrow them, squirreling them away in several different hiding places. Yesterday, as I ransacked the house for the meat thermometre (perfect bait for my son with its shiny silver cord and pokey bit to stick into the meat, so much like a sword), I found one of my rings in his closet. Under his bed, I found, not one but two, pairs of shiny silver fingernail clippers. He takes fancy spiral paperclips from my desk drawers. A month or so ago, I found my engraved silver business card holder, a gift from a good friend when I started freelancing, tucked behind Isaac’s bookshelf. I put it in my pocket, and pulled it out when he got home from school. “Isaac,” I said, “guess where I found this?” And he looked at me and a grin spread slowly across his face and he began to giggle and then we laughed and laughed and laughed.

Have a great weekend! Go force your kids to do things!