Thank you for your good thoughts and prayers. Jr. slept better last night. She even did a 5 hour stretch! Yesterday was a tough day. She was obviously feeling crappy and any little thing could bring her to tears. Like when I decided to give her some crackers to munch on (who doesn't like comfort food??). I gave her the package to hold as we went downstairs and when I took it away from her to open, she had a meltdown. She slumped over with her face buried in the play mat and sobbed-- like I had told her Christmas was cancelled! Even when I coaxed her to sit up to look and see that I had a cracker in my hand, she still cried and cried. Finally I scooped her up, wrapped her in a blanket, gave her her frog and suess, turned off all the lights except the Christmas tree and rocked her until she calmed down. It almost made me cry. This morning she seems to be doing better although she had a mini-meltdown at breakfast when I scolded her for knocking over her sippy cup and pushing it around her tray. You would think I had screamed at her! It made me laugh because I was the same way with my mom. She just had to look at me disapprovingly and I would dissolve into tears. Anyhow, I'm confident today will be a better day--but ask me at 6pm and I might be singing a different tune!
Right now I'm reading The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald. I found it the other day while cleaning up the office. My mom must have given it to me awhile ago and I forgot about it. I'm having a hard time getting into it. The author really gets into her descriptions but when I read before bed I find it difficult to read that kind of in-depth writing. Most of the time I skim through it until I get to the dialogue. I'm sure some would say I'm missing out on the best part, not giving it its due, which is probably true. But I did come across a passage that made me stop and reread it, something that doesn't happen very often.
If you move around all your life, you can't find where you come from on a map. All those places where you lived are just that: places. You don't come from any of them; you come from a series of events. And those are mapped in memory.
This made me think of when my family and I first moved to Montreal. Kids at school would ask where I was from and I would say, "Manitoba." And they would say, "No, what nationality are you?" And I would say, "Canadian." And they would say, "No, where are you really from? Like, where were your parents born?"
"Canada."
"What about your grandparents?"
"Canada."
"What about your great-grandparents?"
"Canada."
They would push and push until finally I would say, "If you go back far enough, my ancestors came from England, Scotland, Poland, Germany."
How far back do you have to go? When are any of us actually Canadians? And more to the point, does it really matter if you're from Italy or Germany or Egypt or Australia? Does that ultimately define you as a person? What happened in those countries may have shaped you, the events may have contributed to your character. As MacDonald wrote, you come from a series of events and those are mapped by memory.
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