If you had asked me to describe our family back then, I would have proudly told you we were a mom, a dad and three little boys. Perfect in our typicality, with a nice sodded lawn and everything.
Blending in felt so good.
* * *
—
After the arrival of our second child, I opened a home daycare. It was a chaotic and messy business, but a great work-from-home option for a parent with young kids. I had also recently discovered blogs and wanted to start one of my own in my so-called spare time. Six months pregnant with my third child and putting in nine work hours of wiping bums and noses (side note: Bums N’ Noses would make an excellent name for a cover band), I needed some form of relief. Writing had always been cathartic for me.
I wanted my blog to be edgy and funny: a less-than-perfect look at motherhood. At the time, a lot of parenting blogs—or “mommy blogs,” as they were often called—showcased the best of parenthood: perfect crafts, delicious recipes and clean, happy children. I could relate. Much of my life was spent trying my hardest to look exactly like that. As a young and formally uneducated mom, I overcompensated in everyday life. I was that blog, and keeping up the facade was exhausting. No one can be that perfect.
Instead, I wanted my blog to be honest, humorous and relatable—something that reached underneath the surface of motherhood and scratched an itch we all needed scratched. When it came time to create a name for it, though, I paused. What do you call the sage voice of chaos?
And then it came to me.
“The Maven of Mayhem,” I said out loud as I typed.
Perfect.
I ended up closing the daycare shortly before Jackson was born, but kept the blog. Wise choice.
* * *
—
A few months after becoming a family of five, we moved from our starter home to one a mile down the road, in the same neighbourhood I grew up in and my parents still lived in. It had more square footage and a half-acre yard for the kids to play in. Our 1946 post-war house needed lots of work. But a giant tree with a tire swing and floorboards that creaked when we walked down the halls gave us the charm we were looking for after years of living in a cookie-cutter house. The neighbourhood association had family events, from corn roasts to sleigh rides. The retired neighbours across the street, Len and Claire, welcomed us immediately, and we spent many hours drinking coffee on each other’s front steps. I got gardening tips from Claire (the world of perennials was new to me), and Len would bring out popsicles for the kids whenever he saw them outside on a hot day. Most importantly, in a neighbourhood this relaxed, weeds were more than acceptable.
The house, the neighbourhood, our family—all of it screamed “typically average.” I loved it.
For years, I had wanted nothing more than to feel like I fit into the life I was leading. I’d wanted to own my existence as a mom, wife and budding writer. I might have called myself the Maven of Mayhem, but I often dreamed of being the Tyrant of Typicality. When your world has been turned upside down a few times—and especially when you suffer from sometimes crippling anxiety—it’s not unreasonable to want normal as your main course at the buffet of life.
Here, finally, was my normal. My average family and I lived in the town where I grew up, in the very neighbourhood where everything was familiar. And I could now walk those familiar streets with my head held high because I had done well in life, despite everything I’d gone through.
If your foundation is solid, you can do just about anything. For the first time, mine felt earthquake-proof.
SIX
roots
“YOU WANT TO do what? No. No way!”
It was early January 2013, and the year was starting well. We had the cutest house in Aylmer, Quebec. We had neighbours we loved. I was working part time at my children’s school and slowly building my freelance writing career. I had a group of friends who had kids the same age. My parents lived three blocks away.
And now my spouse had just announced that we should move back to Kanata, Ontario. There were a variety of reasons: It meant no more forty-five-minute commutes to work across the bridge in Ottawa. It meant lower provincial taxes. It meant English as the primary language, which would make accessing services a lot easier for my anglophone family members. Most importantly, it meant better access to mental health services for our middle child, who was riddled with inexplicable anxiety and depression. (That apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree.)
When we left Kanata nearly two decades earlier, we had sworn never to return. Now my partner wanted to leave a community where I finally felt accepted and settle in a place where I felt anything but. I didn’t want to go back to a place where the line was so clearly drawn between being a part of society and being shunned by it.
“But we’re not going back to that,” came my spouse’s retort. “It’s different now, more diverse and relaxed than it used to be. And we’re not kids anymore, Amanda. We have a family too. We’ll fit in.”
“So we’ll be just like them and that’s how we’ll fit in?” I shot back. “Great.”
“I can’t live here anymore. I’ve given it fourteen years and two houses. I’m just not happy.”
“Oh, my husband isn’t happy!” I said with mock surprise. “Well, there’s a shocker.” I walked out of the room with frustrated tears in my eyes. Why stay for the whole show? I knew how it ended anyway. We were moving.
I had some specific criteria that needed to be met for this move to take place: four bedrooms with a garage, easy walking distance to stores and at least one coffee shop, good schools and public transit for the kids, and a neighbourhood that was older and full of trees and parks. But it couldn’t be pretentious. I wanted relaxed and diverse, just as I was promised, with weeds on lawns. We found it.
So guess what? We bought a house in Kanata.
Our realtor walked us through the home with our kids in tow. It was a private sale, so we warned our offspring not to act interested, even if they were. “Poker faces,” I said sternly.
Five minutes into the tour, they were arguing loudly over who would get which bedroom. The homeowner smiled knowingly. We put in an offer the next morning.
Our realtor took a picture of us on the day we signed the papers. It looks like the most heteronormative scene of all time: a husband and wife standing in front of a house in late winter, holding each other and smiling excitedly. A new life! A new beginning!
Oh, if only we’d known how true that would be.
* * *
—
I had to admit that Kanata wasn’t awful. While I was sad to leave the comforts of Aylmer, my social media presence made getting established elsewhere a lot easier. I had mentioned on Twitter that we were moving, and before long, we had a thriving community of friends. Sarah invited me over to talk neighbourhoods before we got serious about putting in an offer anywhere. Stephanie met me at the local Starbucks after we moved in and became my first friend within walking distance.
Moving schools was arguably the hardest part. We had been a South Hull Elementary family for more than a decade, with our last child starting kindergarten shortly after our first went off to high school. As a mom who worked and volunteered at the school, I knew everyone. I sat on parent council. I attended nearly every event. When our kids were struggling—especially our middle one—I knew exactly who to talk to.
“He’s having a bad day,” I would say, and the admin staff would nod in understanding. When we needed support, they provided it. One day, after my middle child flat-out refused to get dressed or go to school, I walked in carrying said child in one arm and a bag of clothing in the other, set both down in the front office and said, “He’s all yours.” I didn’t worry about being judged. By then, they understood that I had simply maxed out my nice-mom quota after many mornings just like that one.
But now I had gone from a school where I was on a first-name basis with everyone to one where I knew nobody. Each day, I would walk through the field to pick up the two younger kids and watch as other parent
s gathered together in groups to chat. Nobody said hello.
Well, that wouldn’t do.
One day, I saw a notice on the front office wall introducing that year’s parent council. One of the faces was familiar. Allison was the chair, and she was one of the few parents I had spoken to during a field trip not long before. She was funny and chatty, and I knew what I had to do.
I was now in my late thirties, and life experience had afforded me a bit more confidence. I hunted Allison down in the schoolyard and mustered up the courage to walk up to her while we waited for the bell to ring.
“Hi,” I said. “I don’t know if you remember me from the museum trip, but my name is Amanda. I saw that you’re the parent council chair, and I figured we should be friends. No one will give me the time of day here, and that’s too bad because I’m pretty great.”
Sunny, funny and charming. This girl still had it.
“Wonderful,” said Allison, meeting my sassiness with an equal dose of her own. “Because I’m pretty great too.”
We were friends from that moment on.
Allison introduced me to the rest of the parents on the council. They were a friendly bunch, eager to make school fundraisers wildly successful and have a good time while doing so. I began attending meetings and volunteering as frequently as possible. I bagged popcorn, parcelled out subs, sold movie tickets and raffled off cakes. It was a great way to get a good sense of the school culture and meet other families.
As I watched the kids start to settle into their new routines—the younger ones in grades one and six, and Aerik in grade ten at the high school down the road—I breathed a sigh of relief. There. We had successfully made the move, and my fears of what awaited us in Kanata were unfounded.
This was our new normal. We fit in here.
Well, at least some of us were fitting in. One of our kids wasn’t settling into our new life as easily as the others and was, in fact, struggling in a way preteen me would have related to.
“I don’t understand what’s going on with him,” I said to my mom on the phone. “I thought changing schools would help. A new neighbourhood, new friends, a fresh start, you know? But I can’t get him out of bed again today. I’m at my wits’ end.”
Our eleven-year-old, the Most Planned Baby in the Universe, was inching toward a crisis. Anxiety had always been an issue, but it had taken on a crippling form, coupled with depression. Basic things like getting out of bed were impossible most mornings, and school attendance was poor. Hell, life attendance was poor.
Meltdowns had been a regular occurrence for years, but they were now becoming an almost daily event. They came out of nowhere, erupted over inconsequential things and put us all on edge. Objects were thrown and doors slammed, and our other two kids would disappear into their rooms, frightened and upset. Our middle child’s screams were so loud that we had to shut the windows to contain the noise. (I even approached the neighbours on either side to let them know our child was dealing with mental health issues, not abuse. Thankfully, they were understanding.) At other times, anxiety would take the form of immobilization. If school felt overwhelming, there was no coaxing our preteen out of bed. At eleven and nearing a hundred pounds, the days of underarm pajama drop-offs were behind us.
Therapy wasn’t helping. We had tried several different specialists over the years, from social workers at our local community resource centre to a world-renowned child psychologist. Nobody could dig deep enough to unearth the core issues. We also worked on improving nutrition and sleep habits and more exercise. At various times, we tried being firmer or more permissive. We created rigid schedules or took more a laissez-faire approach. Nothing worked.
At least there were more options available now that we had moved, and we were using nearly all of them. When our child threatened self-harm, we went to the children’s hospital for emergency help. Because we didn’t have a family physician yet, we visited every walk-in clinic we could find until one doctor referred us to a pediatrician who specialized in mental health. We had regular communication with the teachers, administrators and support staff, who worked hard to make school a positive experience. We had a therapist who was an expert in anxiety. We were administering antidepressants under the close supervision of the new pediatrician. Still, nothing seemed to be working.
“It’s hard when our kids are hurting,” my mom said as I cried to her on the phone. “I remember it well with you.”
SEVEN
catalyst
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2014, was the eve of Pink Shirt Day—a day to flash some pink at school to fight homophobia, transphobia and bullying of all kinds. Being my usual last-minute self, I took the kids to the store after dinner to find them something to wear. We searched the racks and kept coming up short. Everyone was getting frustrated.
“They don’t have any pink shirts anywhere,” my seven-year-old said, sounding flustered.
“You’re right,” I agreed. The boys’ section was a muted wasteland of blues, browns and blacks. “I’m not finding any either.”
“It’s stupid!” he replied, a little too loudly. “Boys can like pink too. It’s just a colour! I like pink, okay? It’s nice. I should be able to wear it if I want to.”
“You’re right,” I said again. “Isn’t it weird how we separate colours by gender? It doesn’t make any sense. Boys can wear pink, buddy. It’s not a big deal. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You wear what you want, okay?”
“Well, yeah,” he replied, as if I had just said something extremely obvious.
We eventually found one vivid extra-small pink shirt in the women’s department and a light pink golf shirt in the men’s section for his older sibling. There! I thought. Both boys have shirts, and you are not the worst mother ever. Oh, and you even busted some long-standing gender stereotypes!
I felt like a great mom that night—to my seven-year-old.
But there was someone else listening to that conversation who needed to hear what I had said even more than he did.
* * *
—
“Honey, you need to read this. Right now,” my spouse said.
I was sitting at the desk in our bedroom after the pink-shirt escapade, trying to finish up a school project—my school project. Grade eleven English—Shakespeare Analysis, to be exact.
After moving back to Kanata, I had enrolled in an online program through a local adult high school. The fact that I didn’t have a diploma was keeping me up at night. I didn’t feel independent or accomplished, and I wanted to fix that. So now I spent my days writing parenting articles to pay the bills and my evenings writing essays on the symbolism in Hamlet. It was short-term pain for what I hoped would be long-term gain.
I pulled my eyes away from my large screen and focused on the smaller one on the phone being handed to me. On it was an email from our eleven-year-old, sent a few minutes earlier. All thoughts of Hamlet immediately fell away.
Please don’t be angry.
Please try to understand.
I am a girl trapped in a boy’s body.
My vision narrowed to a point and fixed solely on the words in front of me.
More than anything, I want to be a girl.
Please help me.
Don’t come into my room until you’ve had a chance to calm down and think about it.
I love you. Please help me.
I immediately flashed to a day a few years before, when my mom and I were cleaning the playroom at the old house. It was as messy as a playroom for three kids could be, and I was grateful for the help. I put the TV on in the background while we dug in, and in short order, we both found ourselves captivated by a talk show featuring a family with a transgender child. The young girl was in a dress, her hair long and shiny, and she was truly indistinguishable from other girls her age. The large screen behind her kept flashing “before” photos, where she sported a more masculine haircut and clothing.
“I’ve always known I was a girl,” the child said to the talk show host.
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The audience members were not quiet in their judgment. People spat comments into the microphone like “What you’re doing to your son is awful!” and “You’re confusing him!” All the while, they were glaring at the mother. (It was always the mother.) The rest of the audience clapped, growing louder and angrier with each statement.
The host, while making a show of calming the audience, was demonstrating clear biases against the family. I felt for the mother, and especially for the young girl.
“This is so sad,” my mom said.
“I don’t really understand it,” I replied, not taking my eyes off the screen. “I mean, is that kid old enough to know? Is it some kind of chemical imbalance? I just feel bad for the whole family.”
“I knew a boy who was absolutely a girl,” my mom said. “Everyone knew it. I think his parents even knew it. But those were different times. There was no way he could be anything but a boy.”
In raising a child like that, and being advocates for her so publicly, the parents on the talk show exhibited a level of strength and self-confidence I couldn’t imagine.
“You know,” I said, going back to sorting toys during a commercial break, “I’ve been through a lot with my kids. But I don’t know if I could handle that. It’s too much.” I was glad that girl had those parents instead of us. We wouldn’t know what to do.
And now here we were, and as predicted, I didn’t know what to do. I was still taking in the words on the screen, my thoughts coming faster than I could process them.
I had a son, didn’t I? That’s what I had believed from the moment the ultrasound technologist showed us what was between our baby’s legs. I thought it was that simple. I thought we were raising a boy.
How did I miss this? How did I not see it coming? What kind of mother overlooks the clues that her child doesn’t feel like the boy she thought she had?
Love Lives Here Page 5
