Catherine Connors: June 2009 Archives

Yeah, so. This is going to sound crazy - I am going to sound crazy - but I've decided to drive across Canada. Well, not just me - I actually don't drive, so this crazy lady is going to do it - and the kids, of course, have to come along - and we'll have to fly over parts of the country, because we don't have all year, and Canada, you know, is BIG, but still. Yeah. Driving across a lot of parts of Canada and flying over others and did I mention? BRINGING THE CHILDREN.

What I said up there? CRAZY. Yeah.

I'll be updating here regularly (and we'll have video and pictures and a mapped-out itinerary at the I'm A Mom On A Road Trip, Get Me Out Of Here website), so, you know, if you don't hear from me for, say, 48 hours?

Send the Mounties.

My grandpa died this weekend. He was elderly, but still. It was unexpected. It was totally unexpected. I was going to see him next week. I was bringing his great-grandchildren to see him next week. We were going to see him next week.

Now we're not.

We'll go on, we'll continue - of course, of course, we go on, we continue - but we won't see him again - the landscape is forever altered, our landscape is forever altered - and the sadness of that just defies words.

But we will go on. We will go on and we will miss him and we will be grateful to have had him and we will remember that and we will remember him and that will have to be enough.

Requiescat in pace, Grandpa. Love you.

Beat It was one of the very first albums that I owned. Oh, I had, of course, a collection of Disney Pops, and the soundtracks to Annie and Star Wars and the like, but Beat It was the first real pop album that I ever owned. And I listened to it endlessly. I danced to it, I dreamed to it, I rocked out to it as only a scrawny white pre-adolescent girl can: with utter abandon.

I didn't have a crush on Michael Jackson - I was young, and had already promised my heart to Speed Racer - although my cousin Christopher accused me of just that. He's BLACK, you know, he would whisper, the weight of the conspiratorial wisdom of all ten year old boys heavy in his voice. That means that you can't have his babies. I didn't understand what loving Michael Jackson's music - anybody's music - had to do with making babies - I wasn't sure that I understood entirely how one even went about making babies, or why anyone would want to (the narrative of Billie Jean escaped me entirely) - but I knew that it didn't matter to me what color he was.

This, of course, became the great cosmic joke about Michael Jackson: that even he didn't know what color he was. That he became devoid of color. Except that in the way that mattered to me - what his music sounded like, and how it made me want to dance - he was always full of color. And flashing lights and fireworks; explosions of sound and feeling. Beat. He remained full of that color, for me - or rather, his music did - through all the years that followed, through all the controversies and scandals and the gradual disintegration of Michael as a person that I could recognize (literally and figuratively) as sharing the same human world as my own. The music never changed. The music was always among the mostly deeply textured, the most richly colored, that I had ever heard. And it always made want to dance.

Like a white girl. Like a white girl who didn't know that there was such a thing as dancing like a white girl. Which is to say, like a person, just responding to the most stirring of beats.

And for that I'll always be grateful to him, and glad that he was part of this world, my world, for a time.

Be still, my heart.

A Wordless Wednesday Jam, which henceforth is going to be Wordless This Wednesday In History Wednesdays. Because I am forgetting too much. Join me if you feel so inspired.

I might be, I think, one of the very few people in the Western Hemisphere who is not, this very minute, watching Jon & Kate Plus Eight to hear Jon and Kate announce the dissolution of their marriage. Which is funny, I suppose, seeing as I have found them, and the media furor surrounding them, kind of fascinating - as a story in itself, and also as a reflection of North American attitudes about parenting and family and, especially, motherhood. But although marriage (or whatever partnering arrangement) is pretty central to the experience of parenting and family and motherhood for many - and so the dissolution of this marriage relevant to this narrative - I find that I cannot watch.

I can't watch because it is so tragic. The implosion of any family is tragic. I have spent many an hour crying with my mother and my father - together, separately - about the implosion of their marriage. I have spent many more hours still crying with my sister about the implosion of her marriage. I spent hours this weekend crying with a dear, dear friend as her heart broke over the implosion of her marriage. Love, marriage, family: when these fall apart, it is a terrible thing. It is no less terrible for Jon and Kate, whatever we might think of them.

It is, perhaps, more terrible for Jon and Kate. Or, that is, it is more terrible that I, that we all, witness this falling-apart. Because, it seems to me, their marriage has faltered, has fallen to pieces, in part, at least, because they lived their lives on the screen, because they exposed themselves so fully to us, because they laid themselves so bare and then found that they didn't have the resources - as partners, as a family - to cope with such a baring. And so although this terrible thing is as much a part of their story as any mundane detail of their lives-on-the-screen, I find that I cannot watch, because watching the tragedy, it seems, has everything to do with why that tragedy occurred in the first place.

It seems the least I can do, then, to look away just this once. To pretend, at least, that they will handle this worst chapter in their story with some dignity, some reserve. To pretend that it doesn't matter whether or not they do.

My Dad. Who was and is the first man in my life. Who has and will always have my heart. Who I love forever, and always. Happy Father's Day, Dad. I love you....

Me to Jasper: Say Mommy!Jasper: Dad!Me: Say Mommy!Jasper: Dad!Me: Say Mom!Jasper: Dad!Me: Mom!Jasper: Dad!Me: Mom!Jasper: Dad!Me: Please say Mommy! Mom! Mom! Mom!Jasper: Dad Dad Dad Dad DAD!And so it begins....

Emilia had her first dance recital this past weekend. There really are no words for how it feels to watch your daughter - your little girl! your baby! - walk away from you and then reappear on a brightly lit...

I spent yesterday morning in a hospital waiting room. Two hours or so, waiting for a doctor to see Emilia, whose face and neck had swollen grotesquely in reaction to a bug bite. Was she allergic? Had the bug bit...

So I wrote a post the other day, continuing my ruminations on Kate Gosselin and why she is  so judged and why that's a problem for me and for everyone, et cetera, but it was - as a few readers...

I know that this is terribly, terribly wrong, but I totally laughed when I saw this: I mean, seriously. I know that it's bad to talk back to police officers, I know that it's bad to curse at police officers,...

This post is part of the online celebration of Baby Week, hosted by Discovery TV. Because what better way to celebrate babies than to relive the terror miraculous experience of giving birth to them?It was the most awesome experience of...

Emilia has been toilet-trained since sometime last year. Which is awesome, because diaper and pull-up-pant changing are a drag. What is less awesome is the need to be constantly on the look-out for a bathroom because your small child can't...

Uh-oh.Let's do the math here: if my stock-in-trade is stories about and pictures of my kids, and one of those kids decides that she is JUST SO OVER having her picture taken, and we calculate that equation as x...

Here's the thing about parenting: it's hard. Really. It's hard. Oh, sure, it has its easy moments - and the reward is immeasurable - but end of the day it is a whole lot of hard work and it's hard...

(Because I needed some light in here after all the dark.)(Further reflections on Jon & Kate still pending. After a little more sunshine.)...

I can't stop thinking about the murder of George Tiller. I can't stop thinking about it because it is - as I said the other day - just so horrible. And I can't stop thinking about it because I wonder,...