Percentages

0% chance of cure means manicures right?

#icebergrightahead #fuckcancer

This was the facebook status I read. This was how I learned that my daughter’s first love was not going to make it.

Mary met Andrew at nursery school. It was not love at first sight. While he was a confident four-year-old senior, she was a timid junior, only three at the time. She sat at the playdough table watching the other children, too shy to join in.

When both children graduated to kindergarten, Mary attended a small community school. Andrew bravely took the bus to the French-immersion school in a nearby city. For many years, they lost touch, even though they lived only four kilometers apart.

Everything changed in high school, when their love of the arts reunited them.

All grades played and worked together on drama productions and symphonic concerts. Andrew’s seniority no longer mattered, and Mary was beginning to find her own voice. He drove her home after late night rehearsals of “The Crucible”. They laughed together in the back row of the school band as they kept the beat in the percussion section. She finally announced to me that they were “going out”.  Andrew was her first boyfriend. She was sixteen. She was head over heels.

When he started coming around our house on a regular basis, I was so happy for both of them. They giggled. They made silly videos, always including Mary’s little brother. They hosted parties for their group of self-proclaimed band geek and drama nerd friends. At Halloween, everyone wore costumes. Mary was a rag doll and Andrew was a ghost. They played hide and seek in the dark outside, screaming and squealing and stealing kisses, I’m sure.

Andrew charmed Mary’s grandparents by attending family dinners. His ability to chat with anyone put us at ease. And he treated Mary like a queen. They got all dressed up to attend symphonies and plays, she in her vintage black cocktail dress and he in a sharp suit, both beaming from ear to ear.

Ready for a night on the town.

But over time, some distance developed. Andrew moved into his own apartment while Mary was still finishing high school. One afternoon, as I was packing to go away for a few days, Mary came out of her room in tears. “Andrew broke up with me,” she sobbed. “I don’t know why.” I held her as she cried and cried and cried. And I was cursing him in my head, knowing that I had a plane to catch and couldn’t stay with Mary for very long. She assured me she would be okay and that she would get together with her best friend while I was gone. We talked on the phone several times a day, and when I returned, she seemed to have accepted the situation. I was probably angry longer than she. How dare he break my daughter’s heart?

Some time later, Andrew moved to Toronto. Mary went to his going-away party and I marvelled at her open-mindedness. I was still holding a bit of a grudge.

The going-away became Andrew’s coming out.

Freed from small-town Manitoba, Andrew found his true self. My daughter’s first boyfriend became her best gay boyfriend. Suddenly, it all made sense.

When she moved to Toronto a year later, Andrew was there for her. He took her to Nuit Blanche and they recorded a tangled video of themselves wrapped in string, laughing hysterically in the middle of the night. They posted YouTube videos, with Andrew giving garish make-up lessons to Mary. As I watched their antics from afar, I felt so relieved that Mary had a hometown friend with her in the big city. He was an anchor for her. He was a comfort for me. It was a new kind of love.

Glitter Fest 27th birthday party!

And now, Andrew has cancer.

It is terminal.

He is twenty-seven years old.

Mary phoned me last night. She was crying again. She had said her final good-byes to Andrew at a “funeral dance party” in Toronto. At the end of the night, Andrew said to Mary’s friend, “Take good care of my Mary”.

Andrew is headed back to Manitoba with his mom. He is coming home to die. He has planned his funeral. He wants glamour, glitter, Madonna and Cher. I know I will fly Mary home for this.

100% chance she will always love him.

Glamdrew

ÓConni Cartlidge

February 27, 2016

Ambitions: Child Care in Canada because it's 2016!

Sitting in a booth at the Winnipeg Folk Festival, I watched young children playing delightedly with the wooden toys my friend was selling. As a disillusioned men’s hairstylist in the late seventies, I thought I would scream if I had to attempt one more “John Travolta Saturday Night Fever” style on a balding middle aged man who would never measure up on the disco dance floor.

“These kids are so cute,” I commented. “Maybe I should work with children.”

My frustration led to new ambitions. My goal was to earn my degree in Developmental Studies at the University of Winnipeg and my Child Care Services diploma from Red River College. It was a joint program between the two institutions that intrigued me. It cost some money, but part-time barbering wages saw me through. In 1981, I packed away my shears and clippers and began work as an Early Childhood Educator (ECE).

Now I read that the Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos is meeting with provincial and territorial counterparts to discuss their ambitions in moving forward with a national child care system. (http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/social-service-ministers-child-care-meeting-1.3433626)

I am sad that he didn’t stop by rural Manitoba. I would have been so happy to give him a cup of coffee and tell him about my thirty-five year career working with children and their families, college students, and dedicated but exhausted ECEs throughout Manitoba.

I would tell him:

·      About a roomful of two-year-olds chanting “Conni Bonni! Conni Bonni! Conni Bonni!” as I entered the centre that first hired me after graduation. I thought, “How lucky am I to have this hilarious, joyful job?”

·      About the distraught single parent, sobbing as she arrived at the child care centre at the end of a long day of college exams. I sat close and held her son for a while because she needed me to.

·      About the eight-week old baby I was trusted to care for, as her professional parents needed to get back to their jobs as doctors. I felt thankful and proud that they respected my education and expertise.

·      About the young boy who was diagnosed with the somewhat unsettling label of “oppositional defiance disorder” that I was tasked with caring for. I knew that everyday he would throw stones at me but he would never hit me, because he knew I was his ally.

·      About the nervous high school students that planned activities for the children at my nursery school, and then implemented them as best they could. The big kids helping the little kids. Everybody learning together.

·      About the hundreds of college students I worked with as an ECE instructor, with their own perspectives and ambitions changing as they learned that children were not just cute. They were smart and creative and dependent on the adults in their lives.

·      About the many, many child care centres and family child care homes that I visited over the years, where staff were enthusiastic, professional, worn-out, under-paid, nurturing, disrespected, light-hearted, frustrated, educated, loving people. But often, like the exasperated barber that I had been, they were ready to leave the field for new opportunities.

·      About the local politician that presented herself as an advocate for child care but then told me how lucky she was that she could stay home with her own kids and “didn’t have to put them in daycare”.

Yes, I would tell Jean-Yves that it is high time for a child care framework that ensures quality care for all the children that need it. A framework that supports Canada’s families, and respects their differences and their shared needs, is crucial. There will always be some families that do not need or want early childhood education services, but for those that do, Canada should be providing the best.

And like my post-secondary education, it will cost some money. It will take some work and effort. But if it is truly the government’s ambition to create change, come and have a cup of coffee. Early childhood educators can make some plans with you. They are a very innovative bunch. Parents can help too. 

The kids are counting on us.

©Conni Cartlidge

February 2016