visibly transparent

One year and one month

ishai_wallace — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 22:00:43 GMT

I have this sweet baby, who is now one year and one month. His head no longer smells like newborn, but his hair is still baby-soft against my cheek. He's so much bigger than he was, in the way of very young things, but also still so little and so dependent upon his big people, also in the way of very young things. Some nights, after I get him to sleep, I just want to stay and snuggle and hold him as he silently sleeps beside me. Other days he's infuriating, throwing food of his highchair and screeching so-so loud. Some days, moment one and moment two are about fifteen minutes apart. I remember from the older ones that the first year is brutal with sleep deprivation and all, and it's not felt as hard as the last time, but it's not been easy either. Last weekend alone we missed two evening events I was looking forward to because it was clear that One was done for the day, and it's in everyone's best interest to follow the baby's lead on that. One is that precarious balance of loving the baby, and looking forward to the toddler that is going to start taking steps any day. And then probably running the day after that. One is great, and exhausting, and delightful, and hard, and perfect, and noisy all at the same time. Like all of us, One contains multitudes, and I am so glad to get to love One up close.

One is social. He's like a tiny mayor, or the ambassador for all baby kind. "Hi!" he says, "Hi!", "Hi!" as if every person everywhere in the world needs a personal greeting. Many people seem surprised to be hailed by one so small, but the ones who say hi back are rewarded with a big smile, and another "Hi!". One is not the kind of baby who makes strange. Rather he reaches out to strangers, beckoning them with his little fingers "come." he says, leaning his body toward them "come.". Sometimes he just wants a moment of being in their arms, but for the people he likes, he lingers. He loves his big sibling and wants to do what ever they are doing.

One takes great pleasure in having an impact on his environment. He wants to move things. Books, when not getting read to him, or being carefully examined page by page by him, get flung off the side of the bed. He wants to find out what kind of noise a thing will make when it is struck. He wants to put a thing in a thing. One is the nemesis of fridge magnets, and now he knows where the dustpan and brush live he's very effective at rapidly clearing them off the fridge. If there is a door, he wants to open it. If there is a drawer, he would like to open it and get in it, if there is a thing to climb, he will. One wants to know all the secrets of a place and sets about exploring.

One is full of strong emotions. He loves things, he rejects things by throwing things away. He reaches, he beseeches, he gestures. Between his clarity and the time he has invested in training us, what he wants is usually readily apparent, even if what he wants is up when he is down, and down when he is up. Over and over again. On a recent grocery trip, he pointed at the bananas and shouted "nana", and while they were not in my cart at that moment, they sure were after.

One is committed to decoding language. He talks in a steady stream and increasingly it sounds more and more like words. Maybe he did say "thank you"? Maybe he did say "help me"? He uses his dozen or so words loudly and emphatically, "fish" is said with great delight, face pressed against the fish tank, "up" is full of expectation. "Me" and "more" are most often used at meals and come with great desperation. It's true, words get you things and he is working on acquiring as many as he can.

Six lists One's words as: hi, oh-oh, fish, yay, more, me, come, up, book, hey, Abba, Papa, dog, mine, oh-no, baby, na-na (banana), that.

One sings. He loves a rhythm, and will sing along with a song on the radio, or a protest chant. The words aren't clear, but the rhythm is, and he is very pleased to be part of the group. He loves a game of making the same sounds back and forth. There will be call and repeat songs in our future!

One is most often a baby of great good cheer. One loves peek-a-boo. One loves a ball. One loves swimming. One loves chasing and catching a ball in a swimming pool. Although chasing and catching a ball in the house is now a thing too. He laughs to see me throw the ball up in the air and catch it again and has such a lovely chuckle. One is generally very pleased to be tickled or zerberted, and now that he understands the work of the zerbert will blow raspberries in the air if he can't reach someone's skin. It's a sign of love. In the last week he has discovered the playground slide and wants to go up and down, and up and down it. He slides on his belly, feet first and is delighted.

One is basically a cat. If there is a box, he wants to be in it. In the box, out of the box. In the box, out of the box. He knows how cute he is while he does this.

When travelling he prefers the bike to the car, although he has made relative peace with the car at this point, which is good. Early trips to visit grandparents were hard on everyone. One knows when he is being mischievous. The first time I saw this, he was at the end of our bed, and made something crinkle. He hid the crinkling thing and made a face of great innocence. He knows he's not suppose to climb the stairs alone, but seems to think its a game to race up them without adult accompaniment.

One likes food. Most food, almost any time. He likes to feed himself, and also others, in fact the best part of my lunch today were the goldfish he put in my mouth. First one at a time, and then as a big bunch. But still, it seems good that when he has a snack he likes, he wants to share. He seems to like spicier foods than his big sibling, but like his big sibling is not put off by a blue cheese or a strong flavour. One has sixteen teeth! Sixteen! And yet, he is committed to nursing, and even as I want less of it, he's clearly not ready to cut back. Yet.

One climbs everything. One loves to stand and bounce on the trampoline. One does not walk. Yet.

One also likes this car. Very much.

Six

ishai_wallace — Sat, 06 Feb 2016 06:46:11 GMT

The Small has now been six for two weeks, and it feels necessary to capture a snapshot of who he is now. After all, Six loves the list of things we do every year, Six loves a tradition.

Six likes puzzles, riddles, games and all things that are clever. Six asks unsuspecting guests "Do you like to play games? Do you like to play strategy games?" Anyone who says yes needs to be prepared for a serious challenge. Or several. Six likes constructing complicated marble runs, car levels, and other intricate routes for small things to navigate. Six is working on being a gracious winner, and also a gracious looser, although he has far more opportunities to practice the former than the latter. On the Ipad Monument Valley is a current favorite - he'd love to teach you how to play.

Six likes an adventure, a place to go, a thing to do, a new spot to explore. He shares our delight at sampling a new food or drink. He loves riding in the cargo bike, and likes it even better if he gets to navigate, either from memory, or using a GPS. There are places to go, and we should be out there going. He likes a hike, a creek, a river, a tree to climb, a wall to walk along, a place to ballance. He can walk a very long way. At the Terry Fox run at his school, they gave the children a popsicle stick for each lap they ran, and he ran until the sticks ran out and then three or four more. After school he likes a snack, and an activity. On Monday he adventures with Connor, on Tuesday it's piano, on Wednesday he studys Hebrew, on Thursday he has chess club, on Friday we celebrate shabbos (where he now knows the blessings and says them with us) and on Sunday we ski. On weekend mornings these days there can be video watching and Octonauts remains a favorite. I've asked him if he feels that is too much, and he replies that he thinks it is just right, and that he would like more. He would like more swimming lessons, and circus classes please if we could only figure out how and when to put them in.

Six is compassionate, cares about other children, people, animals, other mammals in general. He's generous. If he has a snack he likes, he almost always says "This is delicious, would you like a taste?" and offers some to whoever else is there. Six has swallowed our language, and offers it back up to us. He is "not particular", and has all manner of phrases and very sophisticated language that I recognise, and it startles me when it comes out of his mouth.

Six is a great big sibling. He's quite clear that The Baby is OUR baby, as much his as mine or Papa's. He is very willing to entertain the baby and excels at creating dances, and songs that make the baby laugh. He likes helping, picking out the baby's clothes, feeding the baby, generally offering nuggets of baby advice. Six still seems delighted to have a younger sibling and asked if we could make one more. Much to his dismay, Six does not get to make family planning decisions.

Six loves a choking hazard almost above all things, marbles, small rocks, little bits of things that a baby could easily swallow. Sure, he calls it his "Collection" and while it focuses on rocks, it includes bits of metal, bits of trees, dried seed pods, beads, random things he finds beautiful.

Six is right. It's very important to him that you know that, and acknowledge it. Even if he is only right on a technicality. Six shares the facts he knows. Six likes to remind you of the times you have been wrong, and point out it could happen again. Six is suspicious about whether "hangry" is a real word. Six can not imagine that there might be conversations that do not involve him. If his grown people are fighting, he would like to adjudicate, if a decision is being made, he wants to be part of it, he has told us to go to bed, and was annoyed that we did not go. He will stop asking if he is told that it is a grown-person conversation, but he does not like it.

Six loves an Adele spoof. Current favorites are Hello From the Dark Side and Shalom from the Kosher Aisle. If either link does not work, ask him, he can sing both from memory. Six loves Star Wars, despite having only seen the first two movies (first two by order of release). He's concerned that The Force Awakens might be too scary, and so we've not seen it. He likes a visual pun, like the day he wore his Guelph Storms hat and a storm trooper shirt, and if given a microphone will tell a joke. Before his school play, there was a gap between when the kindergarteners took the stage and the time the choir arrived. "Why did Adele cross the road?" he asked the room, and after a suitable pause, "To say hello from the other side."

Six tells me that he would like to grow his hair all the way down to the ground. Six finds the question of "are you a boy or a girl?" both infuriating and wrong. He reports that frustratingly some people just don't know that boths and neithers exist. He would like you to know that boths and neithers exists, and he would like you to make space for them. He is a kid, not a boy, a big sibling not a brother, and he finds other people's interest in his gender exhausting. That said, his gender is a shifting thing, some days he dresses femme, some days more butch, and while he lives and breaths that he can wear what he wants, he is clear it is one or the other, not a mix of the two.

Six loves numbers. Some times, time with Six is like being inside a math quiz. "How high can you count by 32s?" "Abba, add these numbers, 12, 5, 7, 9, 532." "Abba, what number is 5 ... 6... 32 ... plus twelve. He has become very interested in money, birthday money, money he finds on the street, frisking the couch for money, money-money-money. For that matter, he likes the Abba song Money-Money-Money just fine too. Six is interested in letters, writing them, sounding them out, but numbers are his greater love.

Six loves to be active. He loves skiing, and is already a faster and more confident skier than I am. He loves both climbing at Rock Oasis and racing around Pursuit. He likes a bouncy castle, a climbing structure, a patch of ice, you name it. He is fast. Six is regularly exhausting to his grown people, but we love him, and it's a happy exhaustion.

Six tells me that when he is grown, he will be a geologist like his Aunt Bron, so he is planning now for university and grad school.

I have read this to Six, and Six has approved of this message and instricted me to share it on the internet. Six adds that he likes to stay up late, the later the better. And likes screen time, especially when his parents are doing it in the living room and he's in a different room. And I come right over to the screen when it turns on. These are his only suggestions.

How has he changed? I did not look until after I had written this, but here are Five, Four, Three and One, he was delightful and different at each age, and I can see who he is now in each of them.

Obituary for my dog: Levi Jane Dog, June 2, 2000 - October 27, 2015

ishai_wallace — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 15:22:28 GMT

Levi and I were never meant to be a thing. She was to be my one-year foster dog, but I have always been found by love when I was least expecting it.

Like the royal family, Levi was born into a job. In the beginning she belonged to the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, and the plan was that she would live with me and my roommate for a year, and then go on to be trained as a guide dog, and then go on to be someone's assistance dog. Life and plans. It's a funny thing. That year there were interviews, references, and home inspections. She arrived with a training manual, and a little green vest that said "Future Seeing Eye Dog". For that first year, my roommate and I were suppose to take her everywhere and get her use to everything. She rode the subway daily, went to class, hung out in my office in the York Federation of Students. She was a regular at The Grad Lounge, came on dates with me, and sometimes slept in several different places in the same week. She knew our subway stop, and if I fell asleep on the train, would wake me up as we pulled in. She never let me sleep past St. Clair. I'd never had a dog before, and had no idea how I would come to love that puppy. She made me into a dog person.

I imagine everyone has heard the story of how we came to be together longer than a year, skip this and the next paragraph if you don't need to hear it again. At the end of the year, the CNIB called to say that it was time for their dog to come back. I rented a car to drive her out to Oakville. We had a long last frolic on a beach, some high-end dog treats and drove West. I felt a bit like Thelma and Louise, and considered that we should just keep on driving. But we didn't. She trusted me, and I took her back. I missed her so much. Missed, missed, missed, missed. Missed her so much I got a hedgehog. Three or so months later, they phoned me back. They liked her body and her temperament and said that they wanted to have her in the breeding program. Did I want her back? I said yes. My roommates said no. We moved.

When we were reunited, we slept on bunk beds. I put my bed up on stacks of milk crates three high, and she had a cozy den underneath. She no longer got to come everywhere with me, so we had longer walks, more off leash time, new adventures. When she was three, she had a weekend date with a hot stud, got knocked up, and had nine puppies at a facility in the country. All the puppies' names began with B. She didn't like all those little mouths, when I visited she was clear it needed to be all about her. The puppies, they never write, they never call, they too would be old now. The following year, at her physical, it was discovered that she had cataracts, which are potentially hereditary, and disqualified her from the CNIB breeding program. She became a dog without a job.

When we first met, she was small enough I could hold her in one hand. I never stopped calling her "little dog", and she never stopped thinking of herself that way. She would lie down on the ground for any dog, was scared of cats, and if something frightening happened when we were out together, she would hide behind my legs. She protected me in other ways.

We walked picket lines together, and trained for a half marathon. She loved both. She loved the mornings we would go down to the lake together. Levi loved a beach. Any beach, although sand is better than stone. Once, we rented a cottage on a beach and Levi could see the water from inside the living room. She was so infuriated at the injustice of being kept inside, when the water was out there. That first summer, when she was a puppy, when we went swimming, she rode on my back, but ever after that, she swam beside me, and when she thought I had gone too far from shore, she would swim circles around me to make me turn back.

Levi loved swimming. She loved fetch in the water, but found it incomprehensible on land. She had a face that said "human, if you wanted that, you should not have thrown it away. Fetching it yourself will teach you." She always wanted the biggest ~~stick~~, ~~branch~~, ~~log~~, whole tree. She could have been a doggy dead-lifter. She never met a snack she didn't like. She hated the rain, but loved being dried off with a towel afterwards. I think she only ever agreed to go out in the rain for the rub-down.

Levi was an actor. She was always ready with a rendition of "No, nobody has ever fed me, ever." and it's companion act "Really, a walk, and a cuddle, neither have ever happened in my whole life." The evening she got me and two room mates each to feed her dinner remained famous. I think it's the only time she got three people to feed her the same meal, but twice was not uncommon.

Levi travelled. We drove out to the East coast together, where she established that salt water is just as good as fresh water for swimming in, with the waves perhaps making it even more fun. We also discovered that she loved a hotel room, and that she preferred to be a dog of comfort, and luxury, with a white puffy bed spread if that can be arranged. Bear and Levi drove back to Ontario without me, sending pictures and postcards along the way. By then he was already family to her, as well as to me. Levi always had great taste in people, and I should have paid better attention to her on this. It would have saved my heart.

We joked that she was an Emotional Safety Dog. Levi didn't like it when people fought or even argued. She could tell when raised voices were in jest or for real and would sleep through the playful ones. If there was genuine upset she would try to get in the middle, and run back and forth, as if saying "hey, hey guys, cut it out". If that didn't work she would demand to be let out, and the sound of her breaking out often would end a disagreement. When a person was not good for me she would signal her displeasure by peeing, or by shredding their things. She was very targeted with both behaviours.

Levi loved the outdoors. She loved camping, perhaps because then we would share a tent and sleep snuggled up together. She loved snow, and even as an old dog would bound through it, sticking her nose it to sniff the frozen smells. She loved boats. She was very happy on a canoe trip, and didn't even mind wearing a vest and carrying heavy items, she was just glad to be together and part of the pack. We once went white water kayaking together, and she was unsure that I was safe without her and preferred to ride on the bow of my boat than be left on the shore.

She was my dog, and I was her person. She was my longest domestic relationship. She snuggled The Small when he was a baby, gained weight when he started on solids, and persevered as he learned to stand holding on to her. She made faces when he was not gentle with her but didn't walk away. If you have known me in the last fifteen years, you have known my dog. She was the kind of dog who inspired other people to get dogs. Big gentle floppy dogs. Dogs so nice, you forgive them for how much they shed.

She was my dog, and I was her person. She was my accidental dog, a one year volunteer project who became family. Then again, she was a girl dog who arrived with a Jewish boy's name, and pretty much everything else matched just as well.

Last year I was mostly pregnant

ishai_wallace — Fri, 07 Aug 2015 04:41:59 GMT

A couple of months ago I joked that if I was writing a book about last year, I would title it A Year of Being Pregnant. Books about doing a thing for a year still seem popular and trendy, so perhaps someone would publish it. Except there is such sadness in being pregnant for a year. No one pregnancy lasts that long. And yet, I was pregnant every month of last year. Starting in June, I was pregnant for at least part of every month. Before the pregnancy that resulted in The Smallest there was another, one that only resulted in loss and tears. This window, this narrow sliver of early August, this is the anniversary of when I was not pregnant.

This summer, with a glorious, chubby, curious, active, almost-three-month-old I find myself paying attention to last summer. Where was I? What was happening? Was I pregnant? The first time, or the second time? I think about the day in July of confirming that the pregnancy, that much wanted pregnancy, was not going to result in a baby, and deciding that I would rather end it than wait for it to end itself, and bleeding and crying and aching. I remember being afraid that this was it, that I had waited too long, that I wanted too much, that I was at fault for that ending. I think about the July days spent bleeding and crying and discovering how many (so, so, many people) I know who had had similar experiences. I remember the comfort of sharing experiences of miscarriage and loss and what succour there was in knowing I was not alone. Sometimes when I think about the crowd of people I know who find conception and pregnancy so much more difficult than desired, it seems amazing anyone anywhere ever has a baby.

This is the anniversary of the narrow window of deepest doubt, and of loss. The narrow window of trying to discern if we should try again, or if we should celebrate what we have and stop audaciously asking for more. In the window between pregnancies I took Stanley camping at a music festival just the two of us. I spent a week at a cottage with friends. I prayed. I paddled in a canoe and I asked the water for guidance. I felt so unsure, and so empty. And at the end of the week, as unlikely as it seemed, I decided that it was time, and I travelled, and I got pregnant again, and this time we made a baby.

Last year I didn't see many SummerWorks shows because I was away making a baby. This year, I won't see many SummerWorks shows because I will be home loving that baby. Last year - this year. This year - last year. I revisit the past and the emotions of the past visit me in the present. And it is still sad. With the wonder that is a new baby sleeping upstairs it seems indulgent to want to mark and mourn this loss, but I do. Something happened. Something started. Something didn't come to fruition, and even not knowing what that possibility was I mourn the potential future.

I'm not good at being pregnant. I feel pretty wretched most of the time, nauseous and exhausted, fearful and funny-shaped. I find many of the physical changes weird and uncomfortable. I don't like being pregnant, but I sure like being a parent. I did the former for the latter. I did the former for a year. I hope very much I get to do the latter for the rest of my life.

Five-in-the-morning

ishai_wallace — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 03:05:23 GMT

Five is fabulous. Bold and kind, surprisingly good at sharing. Five loves his people, all of us. And I love Five and all his many, many ways. I continue to feel enamoured by this kid and so glad to be his Abba.

Five goes to kindergarten. Which is day school, like a big kid, with a back pack containing all his things. He climbs up three flights of stairs with his tiny classmates, and the amount of his life that happens away from us steadily increases. He still tells us lots about it, but we seldom see his classroom, and I'm not always sure which adults correspond to which kids. Five is very definitely growing up, which is great and terrible. We pack Five's lunches everyday, and Five likes onagri, grapefruit, tiny cheeses, cucumber and red pepper slices, organic, gluten free seed crackers and a little bit of something sweet. He prefers to approve his lunch before it is packed away, and will give helpful suggestions if it is not yet acceptable.

Five is clear about what he wants, and what you should want, and is happy to tell you all about it. Five likes to pick out his own outfits, and may try on several outfits before choosing the one that is perfect for today. This might happen in the morning, but if he wakes up in the middle of the night, he might get dressed then and go back to bed ready to start the day. Most outfits include stripy leggings, but like all things, this can change. Five considers cold weather an affront to his fashion sensibilities. This morning Five charged me with the fashion crime of failing to provide red and white striped socks. I was accused of this in the shower, and was expected to produce new socks immediately. I failed.

Five wants to help with the driving, and will call out all the road signs he recognises. We'll never miss a lane ending, or a deer crossing again. Five is not enamoured with a road trip - he would prefer to fly and is not at all sure why that can not always be arranged. While most airlines think children should be 8 before they can fly as unaccompanied minors, US Airways thinks 5 is fine. Gulp. US Airways thinks he's old enough to handle direct flights alone. Five agrees. Back on the ground, if we are driving, Five never misses a pit stop. He's very interested in the machines that dispense small toys and candy. He'd like to buy several. At every stop.

Five is genuinely helpful, and able to do so much more. He is willing to get things for people, load the dishwasher, pair socks, feed the dog and more. Five likes to care for other people. He'll offer to get you a blanket if you are cold, or a drink if you look hot. Five offers sweet and tender suggestions, and really wants to look after people. He's very happy to share whatever he's got, even if it is a tasty treat - if Five has something good, he'd like you to have some too. Five is also very concerned about animals. He worries about extinctions, and always wants to help animals. He will stand up to bigger kids who are not being kind to animals, and will get help if he can't deal with the situation alone. Instead of gifts at his birthday party, he's planning on asking friends to contribute to animal protection.

Five is aware of more mainstream media than ever before - he's requested a minions themed birthday party. He enjoys a movie, and is particularly fond of Frozen, The Sound of Music and Star Wars. He likes a movie in a movie theatre, and thinks 3D movies are the best. He's quick to offer a snuggle if we are at home, and once the snuggle has been agreed to, he'll ask for a snuggle and a video. In the car, Five listens to the radio - as in intently listens and will ask questions about whatever is being talked about.

Five loves games. He was an avid member of chess club at his school in the fall, loves Connect Four, Labyrinth, and an assortment of card games, but he's almost always happy to be introduced to a new game. He is coming to terms with the notion that we expect him to clean up his games afterwards, although he thinks this is terribly unfair.

Five is the lord of small things. The above mentioned toys from pit-stops, rocks, Lego mini figs, buttons, coins, things he finds on the street, stickers, more things he finds on the street, scraps of paper, small things in general. Five continues to cultivate and curate a large collection of small things. Rocks continue to hold a special place for him, as do fossils, and if you asked him to pick a future career, he would probably say geologist or palaeontologist.

Five loves an adventure. That little person who use to joyfully sing out "We're going somewhere!" still loves going. He's happy to investigate new places, climb new climbing structures, go out for a meal, to a museum, an art gallery, whatever. Five loves a live show - all the better if it is a musical. Five thinks that Neil Patrick Harris is amazing and is disappointed to not have seen him live on stage yet. Five has not forgiven his parents for going to see Neil Patrick Harris without him. In our defence, it was Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and it was not kid appropriate.

Five continues to like strong flavours. He considers The Cheese Boutique an excellent destination and wants blue cheeses, strong cheeses and cheese with an edible rind. Now that I'm drinking beer without alcohol, Five's had a few sips and thinks beer is great - although not as good as kombucha. He was actually so excited about kombucha the other day that he sang about it "Kom-bucha-bucha-bucha-bucha yay!".

Five would like you to know he never sleeps. Never, ever. He is never tired, and he never sleeps. If he has to lie in his bed and rest, he would like to do so snuggling his alien. We actually have four identical aliens. At least two, and sometimes all four are always missing. Aliens don't stay still.

Five's favourite holiday is Halloween, which is almost always too far away. He has grand plans for next year's costume already, and wants to collect things to help put it together. Five can write words - not just his name anymore, but other words, and sends love notes to people he cares for. Living with Five is like living in a constant math quiz - he's very busy figuring things out with numbers and shapes all the time, and prefers it if the adults are too. Five is also full of questions - a drive to school might include questions about plate tectonics, outrage about poverty and questions about infinity.

Five is many, many things.

How has The Small changed? You can compare with four, three, and one. I know, I know he was two, I just did not manage to write a damn thing for his birthday that year. You can bet I am contributing to the therapy fund for that one.

Solo camping with The Small, in the heart of a village (or, talking to strangers)

ishai_wallace — Thu, 08 Jan 2015 20:20:38 GMT

Apparently I wrote most of this post back in August of 2015. I did not manage to finish it then. Then the school year started, and I was back to work, and The Small Person started kindergarten. I became pregnant, got sick, went to hospital, went to hospital again, went to hospital a third damn time, had surgery and began recovering. Just before I was well enough to go back to work, My Tender Beast had surgery (not the same surgery) and since then has had a series of surgical complications. It's all been very bad for writing around our house. This afternoon, stealing a moment from my burning to do list to write, it seemed to make sense to finish this post before writing a new one. So, uh, sorry if it seems out of date.

The Small and I spent the weekend at Blue Skies. We left on Thursday, and returned late Monday, and it meant that he and I had some intense time together. I was nervous about camping as just a twosome, but I need not have been. We may have been two, but we were two in the middle of a large village.

After I brought two cart loads of gear down to our spot (The small riding in the cart both ways) I had to go back and move the car. The Small decided he was not interested in getting back into the car, and our new neighbours said he could stay with them, and he seemed pleased with that plan, so I left him there, with strangers. When I came back he had a snack from our food bin, and one from each of two neighbouring cam sites.

Blue Skies remains my favorite music festival, and it lives large in the imagination of The Small too.

Earlier this year, we had received the gift of a s'mores kit. Back when I was a kid you had to buy the ingredients seperately and sharpen your own stick with a knife, but now, apparently, everything comes as a kit. The Small was excited to make s'mores. Late Friday night, we stopped at a communal campfire to do this. I roasted the marshmallows (because he was afraid he would burn them) and we assembled s'mores. He was disappointed. Still there was magic. In this case, the magic came in the form of a skilled hulla hoop artist who also stopped by the campfire. Her hulla hoop was lit, all around, with bright lights and she performed a mesmerizing dance for us. S'mores might be meh, but the dancing was brilliant.

Over the weekend I thought a great deal about children who are told not to talk to strangers. That's never been our rule, but The Small hears it often, strangely enough, most often from strangers (cautioning him not to speak to other strangers - you know, the ones who are bad dangerous strangers, not like them). The adults in our family talk to strangers, kind of all the time. We help strangers, we receive help from strangers, we make new friends, we get directions, we share what time it is. Talking to strangers is a way of making new friends and new connections in the world, a way of helping other people, and frankly pant of my work at My Tender Beast's as well. The line between stranger and person one is getting to know seems so mushy to me. What makes a person a stranger? What makes them safe? How is the small suppose to figure this out? Our rule is "Talk to strangers, but don't go with anyone without a parent saying it's okay first."

In August, The Small and I and The Teenager spent a weekend camping among strangers. Or we started the weekend camping among strangers, and made neighbours and possibly friends. At the end of the weekend, as one family was leaving early, they asked if we would give one of their teenagers a lift home the next day, and we did. We introduced her to our favorite maple syrup farmer, our traditional chip stand, and by the end of the ride she'd become one of The Small's babysitters. Because while we don't need more strangers, often you can make friends and neibours out of strangers, and we do need those.

Getting pregnant really isn't the goal

ishai_wallace — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 16:21:02 GMT

Warning: This is not a happy post. This is a sad and disappointed post about miscarriage. I still want to share, but you don't have to read it. Do what you need to do for you.

That said, if you don't read this, please don't ask me about this. I am writing this here in part so I don't have to have lots of in person conversations about it.

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Today I am seven and a half weeks pregnant. For those unfamiliar with "pregnancy math", this means I conceived about five and a half weeks ago, and have know for sure I am pregnant (as in been able to get a positive pregnancy test) for three and a half weeks. Seven and a half weeks is 19% of forty weeks, all of which sounds seriously on our way. After that last post about waiting, this sounds good - right?

Except it's not good. Because, as it turns out, getting pregnant isn't the goal. Growing a baby is the goal, and getting pregnant is just an early step in that direction. This pregnancy isn't going to grow a baby. I know miscarriage is common, that the first trimester is prime time for miscarriages, and this doesn't mean anything at all about the possible success or viability of a possible future pregnancy. The thing is, this is not about a possible future pregnancy. This is about this pregnancy, this one right now, that I had got excited about, that I was nervous about, that was and is real, and that won't result in a baby. Right now, possible future is not really much consolation for a crappy right now.

All that nausea and exhaustion and not drinking over Pride? All that being too exhausted to see Fringe shows? That was an investment in the future, and sometimes, investments don't turn out. This time, no baby.

I am trying to find consolation in the idea that getting pregnant twice in six tries is actually pretty good. It's pretty good at any age, and frankly great at almost forty. I'm trying to find consolation in the idea that my body clearly is trying hard to nurture and grow this pregnancy - even if the pregnancy is not doing it's own growing. Apparently my body is stubborn and determined, which should be a shock to exactly no one.

We are not sharing this with our small person. He is so excited about the possibility of a baby. He believes that he "turned our hearts" to make us want a baby because he wanted one so much. Earlier this week he started grilling us on where a new baby, if we have one, might go to school. He thinks a new baby should go to his current school, and he had a whole plan and a number of warnings for us about what we will need to remember and pay attention to. He did not know we were pregnant, although he does know we are trying. We're not going to tell him we're unpregnant. We will tell him when/if there is an actual baby on the way. It's very important to me that other people not share any of this with him. When I was eight, Heather Patterson knew more about my mum's pregnancy, and the sex of the coming baby, than I did, and I felt so betrayed. I'd had a big argument at school with her where she insisted the baby would be a girl, and I insisted that we did not know yet (because that's what my mum had told me). She so lorded it over me that she knew and I did not, and I felt so betrayed. So, it's very important to me that our small person hears about possible baby news from his parents.

As a further note on how excited the small person is, he once, months ago, come to the fertility clinic with me, where I explained that it is a place that helps people make babies, and that I was going to check on how my eggs were growing. He immediately told me that he is going to go there when he is a grown-up so he can have a baby too. Over two months later, at dinner with company, he turned to me and asked "Abba, how are your eggs doing? You know, the tiny eggs that are inside you, how are they growing?" The Small Person continues to be a tiny detective and is on the case.

If you know me in person, please don't ask me about how this is going. I'm sharing here, in part because I can do so on my own terms, when and how I want to. I'm not ready for every dog walk, every trip to the grocery store, any possible trip outside the house to be an opportunity to talk about miscarriage. Thanks, but no. I really do appreciate the love and support other people give our family. I appreciate the encouragement, prayers, community, friendship - but please, not in person or by phone right now. E-mail is great. Notes are welcome. This does suck, and I appreciate other people honouring that this is a loss and we're sad, but it really helps to be able to have a little control about how that happens.

If you are pregnant, or newly pregnant, or have recently had a baby, if you want to share, please do. I like babies, I like people having reproductive control over their own bodies. I can celebrate your success, joy and good fortune. It's not going to make this harder for me, this is not a competition and it's nice to have things to celebrate.

I'm going to need a little down time, but after that, I'll be in boxing class, in the sauna at the gym and drinking scotch (not all at the same time) because those are things pregnant people can't do, and I'm going to enjoy them now, and hope that I am giving them up again soon, but next time, for longer.

Waiting

ishai_wallace — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 22:01:36 GMT

Trying to get pregnant is a giant game of waiting around for the right moment to rush. First you wait to ovulate. You count the days, you measure, you interpret, you wait. Then there is a brief moment of rushing, of inseminating (although that too involves waiting). And then you wait to see if anything happened. If hopes are growing. The waiting is punctuated with more waiting - waiting at the fertility clinic, peeing on sticks and waiting to see what they say (ovulation: yes or no?, pregnancy" yes or no). Waiting and more waiting. We are most certainly expecting, expecting good news, expecting the end of this waiting and the beginning of another. There is absolutely nothing to report, except that we are waiting.

We started this game of waiting in December. And we are still waiting. We are patient people, we remind ourselves. In the waiting we talk with each other, we build possibility, we buoy each other up, we talk with mouths full of love, we entertain hope, we feel frustration and sadness. There is togetherness, planning, tenderness, and other good things in the waiting. We imagine what might be, and then we imagine other possibilities, then we imagine some more. In waiting, it feels like you should be prepared for any possibility.

I pray, and I think about how praying for a baby must be one of the oldest prayers. Is praying for the weather to change older? I don't know. I pray, and I think about generations of people who have prayed, prayed for fertility, prayed for a pregnancy, prayed for a safe delivery, prayed for a baby. Two months ago, in the mikvah I came up out of the water, and the song on my lips was the Magnificat "My soul, magnifies the lord, and my spirit rejoices in G-d my maker. For he who is mighty, has done great things, and blessed, is the Lord..." It's the prayer of a Jewish woman, grateful for her pregnancy, praising G-d. Alright, yes, now it's heard almost distinctly in a Christian setting, but the Magnificat comes directly from Jewish tradition.

I think about how all this waiting is driven by hope. Is it audacious to hope for another small person? Our Small is damn fabulous, might the gracious thing be to just celebrate that? But I don't think hope or fertility are zero sum games. My luck does not come at someone else's expense. My loss is not someone else's gain. And strangely, in months that end with "better luck next time" I am learning to value what I have more. Wanting more does not devalue what is. I love the Small and the Teenager fiercely, celebrate them both, and feel well loved and supported by My Tender Beast. I think about friends and extended family and friends that have become family, and we are already very rich. I am determined not to let a desire for more stop me from celebrating what is. So far, I am revelling in what I have.

In the waiting I act like I am pregnant. I quit coffee in November. Alcohol only in the pre-ovulation part of a cycle, and then not after. I do pick and choose what of the other food behaviours are in or out. So many cultures have such different advice, and it is often contradictory. My body, myself, no food policing please. I act like I am pregnant and keep well hydrated, and engage in regular moderate exercise. I am trying hard to have this body be a place I want to be, because I feel like how can I invite someone else to grow here unless I feel at home here. This too is getting better. My body is strong and able to do many things, I hope in time, this.

In the waiting, Google is not my friend. It promises all manner of things, including to help predict what is happening, or to interpret what is going on. Mostly what it serves is the experiences and opinions of other people also playing the waiting game. No more, no less. Each if them with their own experiences, true, but I am not trying to get any of them pregnant, and bodies can be so varied. There are few absolutes, few guarantees but time, and so little useful well collected data. I try not to pay attention to what's happening between ovulation and what has so far been the "better luck next time" moment. Sometimes being tired is just being tired. Sometimes what you want to eat is just what you want to eat. Sometimes I wake to pee in the night because I am well hydrated. The internet people are more than willing to offer to tell you what symptoms they had when they were pregnant super early on. What they don't say, is that many of them had exactly the same symptoms when they were not pregnant. Google wants your time. It does not offer much in return.

In February, briefly, it looked like we had graduated from this waiting game to the next, from the getting pregnant waiting, to the waiting for a baby waiting, but like a game of snakes and ladders, one can go up and down. We are back to the getting pregnant waiting.

So, I am inviting people to join us in our waiting. If you are willing, to toss your hopes and prayers in with ours. Love is good too. It seems like a good idea. If you have blessings, we'd like them. perhaps it takes a village not just to raise a child but to create one. We would like our villages' love.

If this works, there will be more waiting. I know pregnancy too is a waiting game. And then, then there are many other games, and so little time in which to wait.

Eight Kilometers to Away

ishai_wallace — Sat, 15 Mar 2014 03:20:24 GMT

I am away this week. Away, away, away. I packed up my clothes, a week's worth of food, books, my computer and my toiletries, loaded them onto my bike and I peddled off. Writing it, it seems simple, but to this parent, with a full-time job, grad school and a dog, it feels immense. This week, this gift of time and quiet, is a gift of the Toronto Arts Council, Artscape and my family. The TAC provided the money, Artscape is providing the space, and my family is helping me believe that a week of writing, alone, with time and quiet to think is something I can have. They are all helping me believe that my work has value, and they are investing in my writing, what I can create in the world through words. I'm feeling full of gratitude.

So, time. Riding the ferry over to the island was like a journey into winter - there was only a slender pathway of open water, and even that was crowded with ice. The sound of ice hitting the hull made the ride over interesting, and when the shelf was big enough you could feel it lift the boat and shift it just a little. On the island side I rode off the ferry, and along the outer side of the island. Four kilometers on this side of the ferry ride, four kilometers on that side, and eight kilometers feels like it is very far away.

Time feels like such a gift. Time to play with ideas, to rub thoughts together and see what comes of them, to walk, to ride, to take in sun, snow, ice and waves. I am liking this so very much. Not that I don't like all of the everyday things, but one can like one's lot and still enjoy respite. I will also like going home to my people, and my good dog and my comfy bed where the snuggles rest on Sunday. But right now, I am indulging in quiet.

I'm enjoying rediscovering my own rhythms - when I wake and when I sleep if left to my own devices. I'm enjoying eating the foods I want to eat - because living as a family means compromise between all of our food ways. Alone I eat more leaves. I brought more leaves and more fresh vegetable that was expected and had to engage in creative stacking to fit it all in my part of the fridge. I'm thinking about how we all eat at home, and how we can all get more of our individual preferences without cooking separate meals for each of us. I'm enjoying morning prayer - something that does not happen at home because I do not make time for it, and am thinking about how to build that in. I'm missing swimming, but enjoying being able to get up from my work, sometime in the afternoon when my body wants to move and the sun is bright, and going outside. For an hour. To just move. It was stunning to stand on the end of the pier, looking out at the lake, as the waves crashed in, alone today.

Sunday I will come home, but I have another precious day and a half to work on my book. It's better than this blog post, I promise, but it is perhaps sucking up all my good words.

Just-turned Four

ishai_wallace — Sun, 26 Jan 2014 02:42:41 GMT

In the last week the small person turned four. The Teenager made cupcakes, we all sang, and having been celebrated by his Wallace grandparents last weekend, he is spending this weekend being celebrated by his Bergman grandparents. This year, he will celebrate his birthday at school, slightly late, by bringing in 750 bouncy balls. He was inspired by this video. His teachers have said he can bring in lots of balls, but they have no idea what's coming. His birthday phone schedule was epic - all manner of family called to sing to him and celebrate him. Just-turned four remains fiercely loyal to his people, all of you, and was delighted. He talks about people often, asks to call, asks to Skype, and in the last week started bringing home handmade postcards from school with notes on the back. If you love him, Just-turned four loves you right back.

Just-turned four announced that now he is four he will have another new name, but we have to guess what it is.

Just-turned four cares about others. He worries about sick friends and family members, and shares advice on how to take care of others. He was very careful to ask about bringing the balls to school because he was concerned that a younger child might put one in their mouth and choke. Just-turned four chose a Chaunnuka present for me and tricked me into buying it (I thought it was for him). This charms me.

Just-turned four is both startlingly independent, and hates to be alone. If there is a snuggle or a hug he wants to be in the middle, although some times, a request to "snuggle on the couch" turns out to just be an opening to ask for a video. Just-turned four would like to watch Dinosaur Train. He'd like to watch an episode with you and then talk about it. Just-turned four has learned a huge amount about dinosaurs from these shows. He almost certainly knows more about dinosaurs than you. Unless you are cousin E. Inspired by Don on Dinosaur Train, Just-turned four now has "A Collection". Just-turned four's collection is extensive: shells, fossils, beads, rocks, seed pods, random things he has found, plastic insects, geodes, bits of glass. Just-turned four has a shelf full of his collection, and two draws, and a fabulous treasure box, and two bags. Just-turned four would like to have more bones in his collection, but his big people will not allow him to bring home everything he finds on the street.

Just-turned four is interested. He wants to know how things work, where they come from, he wants to peer, touch and smell. Just-turned four has a hypothesis. About everything.

Just-turned four is a rules lawyer and a champion negotiator. Just-turned four prefers to fly. "Driving takes too long" he explains, and also, driving is boring. Just-turned four is looking forward to being five, and being able to fly as an unaccompanied minor.

Just-turned four has no interest in sleep. He is not tired, he is not sleepy, and he does not want to go to bed. Just-turned four is a master at not sleeping, and will try to stay up as long as he can. Sometimes the big people want to go to bed before he does. Sometimes he falls asleep while insisting how not tired he is.

Just turned four likes art. He likes the opportunity to create, and to make beautiful things. He is very interested in beads, and beading, but will use other mediums too. Just-turned four is handy with scissors. Really handy. Almost all his art is trimmed these days into a shape he finds most pleasing. Just-turned four writes more than he draws these days. He brings home paper from school covered with letters. He writes his name, clearly and in block capitals, but then he fills the page with other letters. Just-turned four knows all the letters of our alphabet, and all the numbers, although some times one of the teens goes missing, and he thinks the number after "twenty-nine" should be "twenty-ten". He is clear that what he creates, both letters and pictures is art, and that it should be hung on the wall for all to admire.

Just-turned four loves hockey. Loves, loves, loves, hockey and is sure he knows how to play. Anytime there is a small piece of ice anywhere he wants to skate on it in his boots to practice and in preparation. He has a backyard hockey set of two nets and two sticks and he'll play that for hours with considerable skill. On a recent weekend, he and I watched a Ryerson Rams game, and he explained to me high sticking, and several other rules. I have no idea where this love or this knowledge comes from.

Just-turned four still loves a salmon and avocado hand roll, and will eat five in a single sitting if allowed. He prefers to go out to a restaurant for dinner than eat at home, and if we are going out he would like to be able to choose where. If allowed to choose where, he most often sends us to T and T, Sashimi Island or Guu. At home broccoli, salmon and macaroni cheese might be his pick. He does not like spicy foods, is seldom a fan of soup, does not want onions, and seldom mushrooms. Just-turned four has just come around to salad.

In the last week we have toured two possible schools for Just-turned four for next year this week, and as we discussed them over dinner, Papa shared that one of them has "a rolling start". Just-turned four declared that he should definitely go to that one as we are not very good at mornings. We are not very good at mornings, particularly Just-turned four, who would like to stay up until eleven, and then sleep in until ten.

Just-turned four is full of joy and conversation, full of interest in the world. We are delighted by him, and so glad of him. We look forward to our next adventures.

How has the small person changed? Here's three, and one, apparently I was so busy with two that I did not write something up for it. I should probably put $10 in the therapy jar for that.

What we tell other people

ishai_wallace — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 01:52:05 GMT

We're at the Biodome in Montreal, and The Small Person and I head to the bathroom. The Small Person refuses to come into the men's with me, insisting he is a girl. I decide it's fine for him to go into the women's, although I'm not prepared to go in with him. He goes in, and I sit down on a bench outside. Not two minutes later a woman sticks her head out to ask me if The Small Person is a girl or a boy. I respond she's a girl, and the woman goes back in, and even helps the small person wash her hands. In that bathroom, I stand up for the small person and whatever her chosen identity might be.

We're at the border, in the car, and the Homeland Security Officer asks me to lower the back seat window so he can see our small. "What's your name?" asks the dude in the uniform, and our small person answers "Julia Kerparsnip". "Julia Kerparsnip" is not the name on the small person's passport, and so, after we have cleared this all up, and we are across the border and away, we have a conversation about how there are some places that we just have to be whatever it says on our I.D. It feels like such a trans conversation, but not one I had expected to have before The Small Person was four.

We're visiting with Great-grandmother R in Baltimore. It's lunch time, and The Small is entertaining most of the residents. One person, across the table is delighted with her, and keeps complimenting us on what a "great little girl" we have. We thank her. The aid argues with her that The Small is a boy and then turns to us to support her argument. She is not pleased that we will not back her up on whether our small is a girl or a boy. Really, everyone is delighted, why does she care to disrupt the delight with this?

We emerge from a bathroom stall in a men's room in a gas station in rural South Carolina. The Small and I have been in the stall for a long time, and have been chatting. Part way through, Papa came in to see if we are okay (we were). When we emerge, I help The Small wash his hands. A total stranger claps me on the back and tells me what a great big brother I am for being so patient with my little brother and helping him out. The small clarifies that he does not have a brother. The dude claps me on the back, and says "well uncle then, you're doing a great thing." I don't correct him, and we head out to the car swiftly to avoid further conversation with him.

Names and genders, genders and names, bathrooms and borders. Apparently we are all playing. Certainly we are all learning the rules, whether we like them or not, and figuring out which ones we need to play along with, which ones we can bend, and which ones we can break.

“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive"

ishai_wallace — Mon, 30 Dec 2013 03:00:23 GMT

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

Becoming a parent is for me an exercise in compassion for my parents. As a child I failed to understand how constant children are. I failed to understand how much my parents might have their own interests and desires. They were my parents, and I understood them in relation to me, not in relation to their own needs and desires. Parenting is increasing my appreciation of my own parents.

I'm a parent of a queer and trans variety, and I spend considerable time thinking about parenting. Perhaps, more honestly, I spend considerable time engaging in acts of parenting, and sometimes, if I am up early, or if the small person actually consented to sleep, or if I am driving, I think about parenting: how to do it, what it means, how not to do it, how to do it better, what I am teaching through my parenting. I am imperfect in my parenting, and I try to remember that the goal is not just to "do the best I can" but to be "good enough" for the particular small person I am parenting.

So, having a small window of time when I am neither in school, nor working for one, otherwise know as the winter holiday, I have embarked upon reading about other queer parents, as seen through the eyes of their children. Between Toronto and Montreal I read Fairyland, by Alysia Abbott, leaving Montreal, I started Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter by Alison Wearing, and arriving in New York I saw Fun Home the musical, based on the book by Alison Bechdel. There are literally thousands of miles still to go on our vacation - feel free to leave suggestions of what else I should be reading.

I'm struck by the similarities - both Alisons search for clues in their childhood memories that their fathers were gay. Wearing writes that her father loved making pastry at home, was an intellectual, and sang songs from Gilbert and Sullivan operettas on the street. By this assessment, my father is also gay. Bechdel too describes her father's intellectual bend, a love of opera, and in his case, an intense interest in home restoration. Alysia Abbot and Alison Bechdel are both writing about deceased fathers, which I think gives them a certain amount of license - each of them are now the sole owners of their stories, while Alison Wearing is writing about her father who is still very much alive - although that alone can not account for how poorly crafted Confessions is in comparison to the others. Both Abbot and Bechdel write about their relationships, they use like "we" and "us". Wearing mostly writes about herself, her's is a book about "I" in which her father makes very brief cameos.

To add a final similarity, they are all, roughly speaking contemporaries, and my contemporaries. It makes me wonder if my interest in all three is about my age and life stage, of if there is a broader cultural force at work.

Fun Home was deeply satisfying. My queer self grew up with Dykes to Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel's comic that ran from 1987 to 2008. By the time I came out, anywhere, it already was. It modeled a world I wanted, centred around friendships, chosen family and a bookstore, it included people of a wide variety of sexual orientations, queers choosing to raise kids, trans people, and all manner of geeks with glasses. Some times I was Mo. Some times I wanted to date her. Some of the women I dated were very Mo-like. With Fun Home, Bechdel turns inwards, and writes explicitly about her own childhood, her closet gay or bisexual dad, her figuring out her own queerness, her mother performing theatre, and the funeral home in which they all live. I loved Fun Home as a book. I also love Fun Home the musical. It's clever, and beautiful, and hard. Seeing medium Alison sing about her first relationship with a woman "I'm changing my major to Joan" is delightful, and yes, pretty much exactly how I remember the heady early days of discovering sex and love. Seeing small Alison sing about seeing a butch delivery person and recognizing both something is desirable, and something that she wants to be, was a relief. When the world is so full of messages that children should romanticize heterosexuality, it feels emancipatory that a small person can sing on stage about something outside of heterosexuality. It's been extended again (for the fifth time) and I understand why. Go see it. It was what I needed in so many ways.

Fairyland is engrossing. While Alysia Abbott does not identify as queer, of gay, she grew-up culturally queer. For her, Fairyland was a magical time in San Francisco, before AIDS, when her childhood was full of happy men. It's a difficult read, in that she writes about hard experiences, including her father's struggles with addiction, and her being left to fend for herself far too often and far too young, but she writes about them beautifully. She acknowledges that her dad was struggling to meet his own needs, as well as hers, and their relationship feels complex and loving. It captures her experiences, and a particular point in time beautifully. It was a pleasure to read.

Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter is an overwritten insult. Clearly someone told Wearing that good writing uses lots of adjectives, and she took that to heart, adding adjectives in all manner of places, whether they are needed or not. It would be far more honest to call her book "Confessions of the child of divorced mother" - her mother being far more present both in her childhood and the book than her father, although "Confessions of a Narcissist" or "A Childhood of Unexamined Privilege" would also work. Wearing opts for a homophobic title, complete with a glib paragraph claiming that she doesn't mean fairy in a homophobic way so it's all fine. Except that her book is full of her own homophobia, and as a person who is not "a fairy" nor a part of fairy culture, it's not her's to use. If you feel compelled to read any of this book, the section titled "How He Saw It" is the one to read - Alison's father is by far the superior writer.

And from here, now, as a parent, what would I write about my childhood relationships with my parents? Earlier this spring, I read Andrew Solomon's Far From The Tree which talks about what happens when children become part of a horizontal culture to which the parents do not belong. He began the research behind the book spurred on by his experience as a gay son of straight parents, thinking about their differences and distance. He expanded this to other identities. It helps me think about how my queerness, my Jewishness, my vegetarianism all brought me into cultures that are foreign to my parents, and gives me a greater willingness and ability to contemplate what these cultural differences meant and mean in our relationships.

I parent. I hope to be good enough to the small person I care for. I wonder how he will tell this story.

Only Cisgender Children Go Through Puberty: The Invisibility of Gender Independent and Trans Youth

ishai_wallace — Tue, 29 Oct 2013 20:28:07 GMT

So in my spare time (you know, outside of work, and parenting and going to grad school) I agreed to give a short talk for Queer Ontario, for their Greg Pavelick Memorial Public Forum in Education. Since then a number of people have asked me to share my talk. Here it is:

Only Cisgender Children Go Through Puberty: The Invisibility of Gender Independent and Trans Youth In the Health and Physical Education Curriculum

Background on the Curriculum
Currently, Ontario has the dubious honour of having the oldest sexual health curriculum in Canada. In Ontario we are still using an elementary curriculum from 1998, and a high school one from1999/2000. I’m only going to address the elementary (K-8) curriculum here.

Many people in Ontario remember that in 2010, an updated elementary curriculum was released, received significant negative media attention from a small number of groups on the Christian right, and was then withdrawn. While the vocal critics claimed the curriculum had been sprung on them without consultation, it was in fact the result of a two-year process of gathering evidence and best practices. Consultations had been conducted with “thousands of experts, parents, and for the first time, students themselves. In addition, the original version of the 2010 Health &Physical Education curriculum has the support of many different religious groups, administrators, principals, public health professionals and parent groups.”[1] One of the biggest frustrations is that in Ontario we know what an update could look like – but we don’t have the update. It’s like the once and future curriculum. In some ways this is great as we can point to a possible update, and in other ways it is terribly limiting – it’s hard to call for inclusion of things that were not included in 2010. And while 2010 is a significant improvement over what we have now, we need better still.

The 1998 Curriculum
Returning to the one we have, the overview of Growth and development in the 1998 curriculum states that:

Growth and development education is more than simply teaching young people about the anatomy and physiology of reproduction. For example, growth and development education focuses on an understanding of sexuality in its broadest context – sexual development, reproductive health, interpersonal relationships, affection, abstinence, body image, and gender roles. Acquiring information and skills and developing attitudes, beliefs, and values related to identity and relationships are lifelong processes.[2]

Which sounds expansive, but the challenge with the curriculum is sometimes less about what it says than what it does not say. Many of the curriculum expectations are vague and leave the interpretation to individual teachers. And while it’s appropriate to give room for a teacher to use their professional judgment, the vagueness of what is said is well beyond “leaving room for professional judgment”. In addition, a study released this year by People for Education found that across the province, only 45% of elementary schools have a Health and Physical Education specialist (someone with specific training) – so in the majority of schools, there is a vague curriculum being taught by someone who is not a specialist in this subject area. Additionally:

particularly in issues of sexual health, individual teachers may fear parental criticism if they don’t have clear direction and be more conservative in their teaching.

10% of LGBTQ students who responded to the Every classroom in Every School study reported hearing homophobic comments from their teachers daily or weekly.

70.4% of all respondents reported hearing homophobic comments from peers daily.

and 22.5% of trans respondents reported hearing transphobic or gender policing comments from school staff sometimes or frequently.

Comparing to what might have been, 2010:
Measuring the number of times different words appear in both the 1998 and 2010 curriculum turned out to be a surprisingly effective way to give an overview of what is and is not talked about.

	1998 Curriculum	2010 Curriculum
“homophobia”	0	1
“gender identity”	0	18
“transgender”	0	1
“vagina”	0	11
“penis”	0	5
“same-sex”	4	7
“relationship”	9	102

Please note that while “same-sex” appears 4 times in the 1998 curriculum, every time it is in reference to same-sex education, and how you might want to use that for aspects of human development. At no time in 1998 does it refer to same-sex relationships.

After the preamble, the word “relationship” appears only 9 times in the 1998 document. The next time we read the word relationships is in the grade four expectations:

“identify the characteristics of healthy relationships (e.g., showing consideration of others’ feelings by avoiding negative communication);

identify the challenges (e.g., conflicting opinions) and responsibilities in their relationships with family and friends;

Interestingly, the students who identified challenges in their relationships with family and friends in grade four, are not expected to develop strategies to address these challenges, until the following year, when the grade 5 curriculum states that students should be able to:

identify strategies to deal positively with stress and pressures that result from relationships with family and friends;

In contrast, in the 2010 curriculum, the word “relationship” is used 102 times, and is first mentioned in the curriculum section in grade one, where students are asked to “demonstrate the caring behaviors that are found in healthy relationships.”

Considering all this, what’s remarkable to me is that a 2011 study of students found that only “45% of students did not feel that sex education classes adequately addressed topics of a sexual nature that they had or expected to encounter”[3]

Certainly, in my experience of working with high school students, I have yet to meet a high school student who would tell me that their elementary experience of health education was adequate. Most have described it to me as being just the biology related to reproduction.

But you said you were going to talk about gender independent children and trans youth!

So, the current curriculum is failing to meet the needs of Ontario students. OPHEA, the largest Provincial Subject Associations for Health and Physical Education knows this and is publicly calling on the government to address the “urgent need” for an update before fall 2013.

45% of students were willing to tell People for Education that they know the current curriculum is inadequate. In the same study, “students report that their sexual health education doesn’t focus strongly enough on building skills related to different types of relationships for all students, personal experiences, positive sexual health and sexual emotions.” This matches the conversations I have had with students.

So, if the curriculum is failing all students, and students and teachers know this, why talk about the gender independent and trans ones? Simply because we matter too, and because we attend Ontario schools.

While there is no population data about how many gender independent and trans students there might be in Ontario, in the US, in GLSEN’s Playgrounds and Prejudice Study, 8% of grade 3-6 students reported that they “do not conform to traditional gender norms”. So for 8% of elementary students, this is about them. For a greater number of students, it’s about someone in their extended family, or a friend. For all the rest, this is going to help prepare them for the rest of their lives, for the trans and gender independent people they will meet. Including trans and gender independent people benefits those who feel seen and affirmed by such inclusion, but it also benefits those who learn more about the diversity of humans.

What might inclusion look like?
The Supreme Court Decision in Chamberlain v. Surrey District School Board No. 36 clearly stated that it is the work of education to prepare children to live in a world greater and more diverse than their homes. It reinforced that tolerance is always age appropriate. It specifically talked about the existence of gay and lesbian people and that it was appropriate to teach kindergarten students that gay and lesbian people exist and are deserving of dignity and respect. It is, by extension, always age appropriate to teach that gender can be understood and expressed in many ways, and that all people, of all gender identities and gender expressions deserve respect and dignity.

Additionally, since 2012, gender identity and gender expression are explicitly included as protected grounds in the human rights code. As I like to remind people, the human rights code supersedes the education act, so there are now explicit protections for diverse gender identities and gender expressions in schools. Let’s have a Health and Human Development that reflects that.

Acknowledge we exist - all of us, including LGBTT2IQQA people.

Acknowledge we have existed and continue to exist, here and now, in history, and across cultures.

Acknowledge that we are all deserving of respect and dignity, and that diversity is normal. Being less common does not make someone abnormal.

Teach that sex does not define gender. Teach that everyone has a sex, a gender identity, a gender expression and a sexual orientation, and that there are multiple possibilities for each. In age appropriate language for young children, that might mean teaching “there are no rules for who is a boy or girl, or both, or neither”, and “there are no rules for what a boy, or girl, or someone who is both, or someone who is neither, can do or be.”

Teach that development of one’s gender identity is a life long process, beginning at birth. Teach that while one’s gender identity can change over time, those changes come from inside and can not be externally imposed.

Teach that building health relationships is everyone’s business, no matter what their sex or gender. This is true not just for big R romantic relationships, but all manner of relationships.

Don’t address students as boys and girls – that greeting tells some of us we do not matter. Don’t talk about body parts as “girl parts” and “boy parts”, use specific and accurate terms.

Teach that everyone has the right to feel good in their body, and control who, if anyone, touches them. Teach children to talk about their bodies proudly, and with confidence.

Challenge and address gender stereotypes. Phrases like “the weaker sex,” are slurs that only serve to teach girls and boys how they are expected to behave.

Let femininity be fabulous. Don’t mock boys by calling them girls, and don’t let others do this. Celebrate femininity.

Let masculinity be tender. Teach that there are many ways to be a man, and that not all of them are masculine. Teach that strength does not come from scaring or defeating others.

While we are talking about physical education, make sure that everyone has access to safe change rooms. Make sure that students understand that policing other people’s gender is not appropriate. Make sure there are single-user accessible spaces for people to change.

So, how do we do this? How do we help build and implement a better Health and Physical Education curriculum in Ontario?

The easy answer is do something – because many of us have been doing nothing. We need to be loud and clear that what currently exists is not enough, and not meeting the needs of students. We need to be loud and clear that we are ready for more. When it is released, and vocal parties are loud in denouncing it, we need to be vocal in support – particularly those of us who are parents. We need to connect with others calling for more and better – like OPHEA and support their efforts. We need to target the Ministry of Education, not individual teachers or schools, because the change that is needed needs to be Ministry lead. And we need to stay rooted in the research that tells us that knowing about human bodies and human relationships allows children to better understand themselves, advocate for themselves, report abuse if they experience it, be more accepting of others, and make better choices.

Since the event in September, OPHEA has launched a crowd funding campaign to have an updated curriculum launched. You can contribute here. You can read more about their advocacy here.

[1] OPHEA Sexual Health Education in Schools Across Canada document (p.5.)

[2] The Ontario Curriculum Grades 1-8 Health and Physical Education.
Ministry of Education and Training. 1998. p.10.

[3]Ontario Student Trustees Association/People for Education. (2011). OSTA-AECO 2011 Student & Parent Survey Analysis & Results. Retrieved from www.peopleforeducation.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/OSTA-P4EStudent-Parent-Survey-Final-Report.pdf

One's Entire Life on the Internet

ishai_wallace — Tue, 29 Oct 2013 20:01:57 GMT

Sometime last week The Teenager were having dinner. As part of my work, I'm creating activities about Cyber Bullying and recruited some real world help from The Teenager.

She said, that the big rule for her, is "Don't say anything on line that you would not say to the person's face in real life." She applied this to mean and to snarky comments, but also to Facebook status memes that attempt to pressure people into commenting on your status and then to post it as their status.

She said, "Imagine you are at a party, and someone walks up to you and says: "Hi - friendships are very important to me, I always love and honour my friends because they are the most important people in the world. If you really love your friends, give me a hug and turn around and say this to everyone else too." - it sounds like emotional blackmail, like they are needy and controlling, and you probably would not want to be friends with them." I too hate these memes, and suddenly liked the idea of imagining you were saying your Facebook status out loud at a party. Of course, you have to think about who is at your party - I keep my Facebook profile wide open, and so I know everyone, including my parents, other relatives, co-workers and young people - it's kind of like a wedding there, complete with wedding crashers. I didn't have an open bar at my wedding, and we did not let just anyone have the mike - similarly, not everyone can post to my Facebook wall. Sure, anyone can see anything, but I want to be able to control the content.

The teenager also has some strong feelings about the "never post pictures" advice and the "imagine what your future employer will think" advice that many adults dole out to teens about how to behave on-line. She went on to say that she had lived her whole life on the internet - she got a Facebook account when she was 13 and that employers are going to have to recognize that people who were on line at 13 will exhibit some jeuvenile behaviour. She's right. We expect juvenile behavour from young people, and we need to recognize that learning how to behave and have relationships (all kinds) on-line is an extension of learning those skills in real life. We expect that young people are learning, and we allow them some latitude. I think there are some things to avoid, and I have occasionally let her know if there is something that I am concerned about. She also said that anyone her age should have their Facebook locked down tight, so they can control who sees what. For me there is a balance between letting young people make their own mistakes and learn from them, and being available to help them do the learning and resolving part. Tight security controls, with some trusted adults in the mix.

I got stuck on the line that "she had lived her whole life on line".

I argued that actually she had not lived her whole life on line - but The Small Person has. The Small Person was expected on line, here, on this blog, and on Facebook; mine, my partner's and those of other significant people in the Small Person's life. We posted pictures of The Small Person when he was all fresh and new. We continue to write about him and talk about him. He continues to come with us to conferences, where he wants to introduce himself to people and delights in making new friends. Last night he played "chairing the meeting" at home, which should tell you a bit about his world. He began by announcing the agenda. He tried to not end the meeting as a tactic of stalling bed time. I do think about The Small Person reading all these things we have written about him. I think about his future friends, and their parents, and others reading it, and I work hard to make sure what I write is always kind about all the people he knows now and will in the future.

I keep thinking about what does it mean to have lived your whole life on line?

I think about who has the power to curate his on-line image, how that is shifting, and how that will continue to shift. While I did not ask his baby-self for permission to take pictures, or to post them on-line, I always do now. There was an outfit he wore a week ago that I wanted a picture of, and he did not want photographed - and thus I have no evidence of it. I think about this as modeling consent. Sometimes he asks me to share a photograph, and whether he asked me to share, or I asked him and he said yes, I usually read him the comments. This feels like the work of media literacy - I can teach him that one should always ask before taking a photograph, and that if asked, it's okay to say no. I can teach him that one should ask before sharing a photograph, and that again, it's okay to say no. I can teach him choices about who an image is shared with - do we text it to one person? a small group? or post it on line? I can teach him that people will see things that are posted on line, and help him think about the implications of this. At three and a half the most advanced technology I could operate was my Fisher Price toy record player - he can use the ipad fairly independently. His experience of technology is and will always be different than mine, and yet my job is to best prepare him for his future in the unknown. As a parent, I hoping I'm not messing it up too badly.

Coming Out

ishai_wallace — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 16:27:28 GMT

A teacher I work with requested a short story, by a trans* person, about "coming out" to use with a group of LGBT high school students. I was not able to recommend one (this may well be because my memory is bad, if you have a suggestion, please leave it in the comments and apologies if I am overlooking your work). I can heartily recommend a number of YA novels by and about trans* people that address coming out, and there are some brilliant short stories by and about trans* people, that don't directly address coming out. So I wrote him something. I'm also sharing it here:

_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________

I’m reluctant to tell a coming out story, in part because which one would I choose? There are so many coming out moments. I’m also reluctant to tell a coming out story, because there is such a cultural fixation on stories of starting to transition. The media likes to focus on the big reveal, the moment of first coming out, “the shocker”, “the betrayal”. My life is not a day-time TV special episode. “Transition” is presented as full of drama, but focusing on the one moment hides that we are all still daily making decisions to come out, or not. They make transition into the biggest events of our lives, and while for some of us that might be true, for many of us, we would like it to be a non-event, a time that is past, and we would like people to pay attention to our accomplishments, our writing, our work, the way we support our friends, the way we create our families, the things we imbue with meaning. Many of us would also tell you that there is no single moment of transition – it’s a process, and it takes time.

The other thing is that there is no single story.

Some of us never get to come out. Some of us are outed long before we know words like “trans” or “gender” and well before we can put them together as something we might be. Some of us come out on our own terms as part of a transition, and stay out for the rest of our lives. Some of us come out as part of a transition process - become who we know ourselves to be, and stop talking about our past. Some of us find that we have to come out, all the time, to everyone, as we carefully explain that neither “he” nor “she” is accurate, and that “they” or “ze” or no pronoun at all would be better. There are perhaps more ways to be out than there are to be trans, and there are many, many ways to be trans.

In 1973 coming out gay or lesbian stopped also meaning you were coming out as mentally ill. Coming out as trans has just maybe stopped meaning coming out as mentally ill. The Diagnostic and Statistic Manual V (basically a catalogue of mental illnesses) was released in May of this year and no longer considers all of us to have Gender Identity Disorder. It replaced that with Gender Dysphoria. It’s not clear how well that’s understood. I know an awful lot of trans* people who would say it’s not their gender, but their body they feel disphoric about.

For some of us, who were told we were girls, as children we were seen as strong girls, and good feminists. We were seen as athletic, resisting sexism and perhaps, as tomboys. We might have even been encouraged in that identity until we hit puberty. Then we were encouraged to learn about make-up, “act more lady-like” or “put a sexy wiggle in our walk”. As our bodies betrayed us with breasts, and periods and hips, our families betrayed us with skirts and bras.

For some of us, who were told we were boys, the kindest thing we were called as children was “sensitive”. We were told not to pick up the toys we most wanted, not to wear shiny, beautiful, or colourful things, not to swish, not to dance, not to be friends with the other children most like us, not to like pink, not to wear jewellery, not to be. We were punished.

For some of us, we were allowed to be who we are. Some of us had support at school but not at home. Some of us had support at home, but not at school. Some of us had some family who celebrated us, and others who stopped talking to us. Some of us told our family and were celebrated, but seldom encouraged. Everyone of us has a different story.

Some of us saved coming out until after high school. Some of us waited until we were away from the people we had grown up with, until we were not living in the same house as our parents and guardians, until we were somewhere we could try out a different name, a different pronoun, different hair or clothing away from people full of memories of us being someone else. Some of us selected a university program not for the courses or programs, but for the health plan. Would hormones be covered? Would electrolysis? Would any surgery?

When someone comes out as gay, all it needs is words. You can fill in the Canada Census form the next day reporting that you are in a same-sex relationship and they will take your word on it. When you come out as trans, the government wants other people to confirm this for them. You need a doctor’s letter to change any ID – you don’t get to come out to the government and say “actually I am a __________” you have to come out to your doctor, and then they have to out you to the government. Your self knowledge is less important than their assessment. Other people will demand to know “if you take hormones” and “if you have had the surgery” again, as if these medical procedures are more important that your self knowledge. Let me be clear, your self knowledge is the most important thing. You are your own expert, and the person who knows you best, governments, doctors and other strangers be damned.

Some of us come out and want to make changes right away – but nothing is fast, and nothing is free. Clothes cost money, and while a hair cut is quick, growing it long can take forever. If we want hormones, we need a doctor’s approval, and that might take weeks, or months, or over a year of visits, showing up in the doctor’s office, and coming out time and time again. We may need to find a new doctor, we may find after several visits that the doctor we have been seeing will never write us a script anyway. And when we start hormones, the changes we want, those too will be slow. With hormones and time, transguys will find themselves having the option to come out to friends who ask about our colds, worried that we sound hoarse. Transwomen weigh who they can come out to safely, who will respect their privacy, who will welcome them to womanhood, and who will be clouded by prejudice. Coming out can feel dangerous, and we might worry about losing friends, losing family, losing access to the bathroom, the swimming pool, the knitting circle, our sports teams, our place of worship, our jobs, any promotions, our lovers, our children. We all know too many stories of people who came out, or were outed and were met with violence, and we fear that too.

Before I identified as a man, I identified as “other”. I came out in a cartoon I drew for my campus’ newspaper. In the cartoon, I described how when my sister and I were small, we use to play “fat or pregnant” looking at people on the street and trying to guess[1] if the people we saw were fat, or pregnant. In the next panel I described how eventually the game became “male or female” and how we would then try to guess who was a man and who was a woman[2]. In the last panel I described how I now play “male or female” with myself, and how I no longer see these as a binary. I was not thinking about the cartoon on a Friday afternoon when my parents came to pick me up from school. My parents arrived early, and my dad picked up all the campus newspapers and read them while he waited for me to come out from class. When I got to their car, my mum greeted me with “You were a normal child you know.” My mum felt that me coming out was an indictment of her parenting, and cried. The car ride was uncomfortable and my dad was silent for a long while. Finally, he said “I think nationality is stupid, but I was born in Britain, and now I’m Canadian, it’s kind of the same thing isn’t it.” I nodded. That felt close enough to true.

But all those are pre-transition or early-transition “coming out” stories. If transition is what we want, ideally we go on to have long lives on the other side of our transitions. Post-transition, our histories never go away, our pasts never truly disappear, and being trans presents a life time of coming out possibilities. It’s the moment, years ago, working retail at Mountain Equipment Co-op, when Paul Abel came in and looked at me – “Hey,” he said “Hey, you went to O.T didn’t you? I use to run cross country with your sister.” Paul Abel use to run cross country with me, but seeing me, the male me, he’s rewritten his memories, and I have become my own brother. I have to choose, do I come out, or do I help him find the item he is looking for? How much of conversation do I want to have with him about who I was, and who I am, in public for $12.50 an hour?

Some of us have to come out in medical settings. Some of us have legal names that are not our real names. Our real names are the ones we choose, the ones that belong to us, the ones we feel good about, our real names are welcome in our ears. In waiting rooms reception staff call out our legal names, and everyone else who has nothing to do but wait looks around to see who Philip might be, as Sophia walks up to the desk. You can bet they listen in as she explains, again, that Sophia is her name. They keep listening as the receptionist asks, “If you are Sophia, why did you give me Philip’s health card – we have to see your health card.”

Many of us have had experiences of showing up in emergency rooms with urgent conditions, and being asked about our gender or our sex before getting treated “as it is just so fascinating” and “we don’t get many transsexuals here”. I know transmen who have had to come out to explain what might be causing their abdominal pain, or to request a pap test. I know a transwoman whose wife was going through fertility treatments, using the transwoman’s sperm, and every time she went to the fertility clinic she had to come out as trans, again, to access her own sperm. I know another transwoman, who does not want to come out, whose husband desperately wants children. She is struggling to explain why she is infertile.

As the world becomes more interested in security and I.D. if we have not changed, or are not able to change our documents, we have to come out in more and more places. It’s the big official locations like international borders, immigration and police checks, and airport security, and the small ones, like trying to get a library card for the first time, or rent a DVD. It’s being pulled over for speeding with an extra level of fear. It’s choosing to come out on a resume and be “the trans candidate” or not and having a much shorter employment history. Some of us have been able to change some of our I.D. but not all of it, leaving us vulnerable to charges of fraud, coming out won’t help you now.

Post-transition, some of us never want to come out again. We are “just men” or “just women” and our history is none of your business. We may choose only to come out in intimate relationships, and for some of us, not even then. Our trans* experience has no power to harm you or change your sexual orientation, and our choice to keep it confidential is the one that feels truest to us. Stop judging. This is not about you.

So. If coming out is so challenging, so frequent, and so unpleasant, why do some of us choose it? Because we exist. Because we are worthwhile. Because we want to be able to talk about our whole lives and our whole selves. Because we have enough safety or privilege that we are able to do so. Because our history is important. Because we want you to know we exist. Because we are storytellers. Because we want to change the world. Because we want to find others like us. Because there are experiences and insights, that only we have, and we want to be able to share them. Because we want to be able to tell you to your face that our trans* experience has no power to harm you or change your sexual orientation, and our choice to be out is the one that feels truest to us. Again, stop judging. This too is not about you.

[1] Don’t do this. It is a terrible idea. Judging other people’s bodies is never a good plan. We were very young at the time and did not know better. I regret this now.

[2] This is also a terrible idea. See above about judging other people’s bodies. Now I have a firm policy of not making assumptions – most of the time we don’t actually need to know, and on the occasions we do, politely and discretely asking is usually the best way to go.

Be careful what you wish for: snapshots from Toronto Pride, inspired by Pride 2013

ishai_wallace — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 18:36:47 GMT

::glitter in my eyes::

At the end of the parade route this year, marshals sent the vehicles off in one direction, and the marchers off in another. I went with the marchers, having been told I could join back in with the vehicle “just around the corner”. “Just around the corner” turned out to be several blocks further away than I had expected, and I had a powerdrill and a take-down job to do, so I moved the fence apart, thrust my bicycle through and followed.
“Hey!”, a fairly large cop yelled, “That fence is there to keep people out!”
“But I need to get in” I shouted, and kept going. The cop fumbled for a minute, looking at the still open gap in the fence, and then me, and then he went to the fence. Better to close it now, and have it be just me in the wrong place, than to go after me and have a stream of people.

What’s pride without a little police defiance?

I first marched in the parade in the 90s – at the time I did not write down the year because it did not seem important – now I wish I had. We called it a march then, not a parade, and there was nothing separating the crowds on the street from the crowds on the side walk. I had not planned on marching, but it looked like more fun than watching, so after kissing a marcher, I jumped in, and we marched south together. Yonge St. was a tunnel of love, cheering screaming people on all sides, all the way to College where our people delivered us into the latex gloved hands of the police.

There was a wall of cops blocking the street, like on our own we might not remember to turn left (we’re fucking queer, we have to turn left) and they all wore latex gloves. Those gloves made us all poz. I did not feel served or protected. Not then, and not now. At the same time, gloves. We were working hard to make gloves sexy, to see them as hot, to practice thrusting and loving with them on. We all knew what to do with a dental dam, although no one bothered, but gloves, gloves were for fucking, and then these gloves were there in fear and in judgement. Fuck them. We got close to them, blew them kisses as they awkwardly stood there, and then we turned left, back to the party, back amongst ourselves, back to drinking and dancing and looking for places to fuck. Cops taught me that to be queer was to be diseased, not human enough to touch, and I’ve not forgotten, nor forgiven them either. I also know that this is not a lesson that they stopped teaching in the 90s – now they just like to do it in smaller sessions, tutoring people privately, more violence, fewer witnesses.

Now the cops are in the damn parade.

This year an OPP officer tried to give my three-year-old an OPP crest temporary tattoo. He returned it to her saying “I’m not old enough to get a tattoo yet.” The people who donned gloves to avoid the danger of my skin want to brand the skin of my child. Not on my watch. The police don’t remember, in the way they institutionally and conveniently forget so many violences they have committed. Wearing a rainbow lei over the uniform today will not mean transpeople get appropriate treatment this afternoon, let alone any other day. The “Pride in Corrections” bus left me cold – I note they rented a coach for the day as presumably they know that those fucking paddy wagons become ovens in this heat. Their own tools, not good enough for them. Just for us.

………………

Again, some time in the 90s, I remember marching and shouting “Whose Pride? Our Pride!”. It might have been at the first Dyke March in 1996, it might have been somewhere else. We don’t shout that anymore, perhaps because we can not be heard over the roar of the giant speakers on the back of corporate floats. Perhaps because we are no longer sure whose Pride this is. Now I imagine that there must be a bidding war between the major banks to see who will have the honour of having the buffest pretty boys on their floats wearing tiny matching swimwear, just big enough to display the bank’s colours.

In 1995 I bought a house with my family. We were a triad, a man, a woman, and me. They were married, but with no official way to add me to the relationship, a mortgage felt as legal as we could get. The man had a broken credit history, so the woman and I were listed as the holders of the mortgage, which made us paper lesbians, even as we drafted an ownership agreement that made at least two of us look like bisexuals. The three of us did extensive research on mortgage rates, and financial policy. In the end we were offered mortgages by two credit unions, no banks being willing to lend money to a household of three queers. The idea that we were all moving from one one-and-a-half bedroom house to another we would own in common alarmed a number of the bankers we talked to.

We use to decry this kind of discrimination – we demanded our relationships be recognised, we demanded that we deserved access to services. And in a way that would have surprized me then, we’ve been listened to. And the same banks that did not want our pink mortgage now show up to Pride to woo our dollars. They make bank advertisements that show happy homo couples (always couples, still no triads) on their green furniture saving for vacations, opening joint checking accounts, and getting mortgages. We told them we existed, we told them they were missing out on our business, and they smelt money and started paying attention. In 2009, TD Bank became Pride Toronto’s “Premier Sponsor”, and promptly wanted to meet with the Executive Director of Pride specifically about who would be allowed to march in the parade. “Whose Pride?” - not our Pride anymore.

………………..

The straight guys with cameras have always been there in my memory. I remember at an early Pride, marching in a chest harness and cut-off shorts and having one of the tourists get too close. We turned on him. A growing group of us took pictures of him until he turned and left. But it feels more and more straight. More and more opposite-sex couples marching hand in hand, more overheard conversations between men about how many women they have hit on at the festival, this year a straight-identified trans dj cheerfully playing misogynist music. Facebook and Twitter stream with complaints of queer women about men with cameras, men demanding they smile, non-consensual touching. I know, not all the transpeople are LGBQ, and for those straight people this has always been their festival. This is not about them. I understand that for many straight people the idea of sexual freedom is appealing, but if it is not consensual it’s not sexual freedom - it’s just more misogyny, heterosexism and plain old sexism. It’s also assault. I want to say that it is getting less and less safe, but I also know that for some bodies Pride has never been safe – and I wonder, how many of us need to feel unsafe before we take action. I wonder whose bodies matter, and at the moment it feels like the straight ones, again, and still.

But the individual actions mirror some of the larger cultural flirting. We are like you, we are not like you. Notice us! Let us just do our thing. The relationships between queer cultures and trans cultures feels all in flux. If we are dancing no one is leading, and my toes just got stepped on again.
………………..

It’s six pm on the Sunday of Pride weekend, and I’m finally done working the festival. My husband still has two hours of hosting a stage to go, but we are getting close to both of us being through working. At eight we head over to the Wellesley stage, and skip the line to get in. He picked-up an extra three hours of stage hosting at the very last minute and part of his “Thank you for bailing out my sorry ass” package included VIP access to the main stages. We are up close to the stage, and there is comfortable furniture and snacks are served. Some of the people we know are here, and some of the people we know are still working, but there are an awful lot of people we don’t know. There are again pretty boys in matching linen pants posing with tourists, and bank executives, and other people who gave money to the festival. Some VIP status has been earned through service, but most has been bought with corporate dollars. We create our own VIP system, based on hours of volunteer community service and smuggle out our passes, hang them on other necks and smuggle people in. We are smuggling people from our community into our festival through the back door.

………………..

This morning, after Pride, still a little glittery, I’m revisiting the conversations I started at Pride in the 90s. Be careful what you wish for feels like my theme of the weekend, but it does not stop me from the business of wishing, or of wish fulfilment. But I am trying to think through my wishes, and all their implications, trying to remember that whole plans are needed, not just initial demands, always clear new wishes are needed.

For all those who do parenting work

ishai_wallace — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:29:43 GMT

I want to recognise people who do parenting work - whether or not they are afforded the title of parent. I want to thank the people who help us love and parent The Small Person, without deciding in a gendered way that some get honoured today, and some get honoured in May, and some don't get honoured at all. To all those who help us love and celebrate and care for the Small Person, thank you. I feel deeply honoured to have such a village and to be able to nestle the Small Person in our communities. Thank you.

When The Small Person arrived we were given a book called No Matter What by Debi Gliori - it's a beautiful story of Large and Small, and how Large will always love Small. It is refreshingly not a book about Mothers or Fathers, but a book about a child and an adult who loves and cares for the child. I think of it on days like Father(')s(') day. A day when the majority culture asks us to honour dads. I feel like my Facebook stream has been full of people talking about their dads: People who love and thank their dads, people who were harmed and hurt by their dads, people whose dads have died, people who are not quite dads, but are certainly not mums either, queer and trans people whose dads rejected them, people who use to be dads, and who would very much like to be mums. Father(')s(') day is hard for many of us, no matter where you put the apostrophe.

All day I thought about the movement that calls on people not to identify as allies, but to recognize ally as a verb, and to shows allyship through actions. I feel similar about parenting. Parenting is in the doing, in the tending, in the loving, in the work. I don't believe that there are universal "mothering" tasks or universal "fathering" task, but I am sure children need love, and care, and all manner of other things. As with so many other things I want to be able to recognise the important stuff, the work, the relationships, without gender being front and centre.

A few weeks ago I received a request from a parent, neither a mum nor a dad who was trying to respond to an invitation to hir child's daycare's "Father's Day Picnic". The parent asked me for help in crafting an answer. I'm sharing this here to help encourage schools, day cares and children's programs to think about how they celebrate all children, and make sure all families feel recognised and celebrated.

Different parents and different schools are using different ways of making these days more inclusive of all families. I’m aware of people doing the following:

Knowing a child’s family structure and then sending “the appropriate” invitations. If a child has more than one mum or more than one dad, making sure they have enough craft supplies to make a gift for each of gifts are being made. Some LGB families will really like this, as it means two mums or two dads can be recognised. This still assumes that there are “mum”s and “dad”s in all children’s lives. Because some LGB people really struggle to be recognised as parents this can be really affirming.

Using inclusive language for both the Fathers’ Day and Mother’s Day events (“celebrating care givers”, “celebrating all families”, “celebrating parents”). Celebrate both, on both days, making both non-gender specific.

Expanding both Mothers’ and Fathers’ days as gendered days, but more inclusively “celebrating moms, aunts, grandmothers and all the caring women in a child’s life” or “celebrating dads, uncles, grandfathers and all the caring men in a child’s life”.

Having the children create un-branded gifts for their caregivers for both days. The Small Person's first day care did this, and we received painted bird houses that say things like “Happy Day” or “Happy June 8".

Picking a date between Mothers’ and Fathers’ day and creating an event then. This could mean children brainstorm all the words they use for the people they live with who love them. This can be a powerful way of learning how different families name parenting roles, and who is significant to a child. The Small Person's first day care also did this. Our Small Person apparently had the longest list in the class, and made a great many cards.

Recognise neither. This makes these days like many other days, ones you can choose to celebrate at home, or not, it means there is no special pressure on families in the school/centre/group.

Add in a celebration of Family Equality Day / Family Visibility Day (http://www.internationalfamilyequalityday.org)

Many places are receptive to the idea that these days can be hard for many children. It’s often helpful to remind a school that some children have had a parent die, or may be estranged from one or more of their parents. Some families never get recognised by these days (foster families, families where people other than parents are raising children) and that recognising Mothers’ and Fathers’ day can be traumatic for some children and erasing of some families. My tactic here is to remind the institution that you are not just in this for your family, but also for a wider number of people. They need to think about not just how they can make your family welcome (although they should) but also about how they help families learn about each other and celebrate all families.

I don't think there is a single right answer. I don't think celebrating Mother's and Father's days in unexamined ways is appropriate, but I do think there is room to think about what will best meet the needs of the children and families involved.

Yesterday people also shared these with me, as further ways to re-think these days:
How two different men, both of whom are sperm donors think about their roles and fathers day.

How a family of two mums and two kids challenges how the school one of the children attends deals with father's day.

Princesses can break gender stereotypes

ishai_wallace — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 13:14:45 GMT

When I dropped The Small Person off at school the other morning there were already three children in princess dresses playing in a castle they had built out of giant bricks. The Small Person did a basic inspection of what was happening; in the pop-up tent, what was going on with the world map puzzle, and decided that the castle was where it was at. He clambered in.

"Hey!" said the Lead Princess, "We're playing a princess game, and if you want to play you have to be a princess too."

"Okay." said The Small Person, and he promptly went over to the dress-up rack and selected a small suit jacket. He put it on and came over to ask me to help him with the buttons. I helped and he went back to the castle.

I don't remember exactly what the Lead Princess said, but it was clear that in her estimation, what The Small Person was wearing was not sufficiently princessy enough. She told the small person that he needed to put on a dress. All the classic ball gowns were already in use, so she suggested the cheongsam. The Small Person came back over to me. "I picked the wrong thing." He said somewhat mournfully. "Would you help me put this on?" he asked, passing me the cheongsam. I did.

The Small Person in the cheongsam went back over to the castle and joined in with the other three princesses. Peace reigned in the realm.

I went off to work thinking:
1) I'm glad that who got to be a princess was not defined by a child's genitals. The Lead Princess' initial invitation was that, a genuine invitation.

2) This is obviously a somewhat regular occurrence. The Small Person was totally fine with the idea of putting on a dress, and none of his classmates saw this as notable in anyway. I'm glad that at this daycare who gets to wear a dress is not defined by a child's genitals.

3) The Lead Princess, a child who identifies as a girl, felt quite comfortable asserting her royal authority - the game did not need to change because a boy had arrived, and The Small Person did not challenge that. I was glad that everyone was comfortable with a girl being in charge.

4) My child listened to and cooperated with others!

All of that was great. I could have left it there and celebrated both the daycare and the children there, saving my worries for something else. As a professional overthinker of gender though, I was concerned about the idea that princesses have to wear dresses. To be clear, the problem is not femininity - the problem is that femininity is compulsory for princesses. If my Small Person felt like a princess in his suit jacket, I want him to be a princess in a suit jacket - right along with the princesses in the dresses. I wondered if there were some princess books I could share with the school that would model different ways of being princesses.

Truth be told, I'm not a fan of princesses - kings, queens and princes either. Monarchies are really not my cup of tea. I've never been a fan of hereditary authority, wealth being concentrated, "divine right", state control and all that. I also strive for language that is gender inclusive, and the words we have for royalty fail. I find myself torn between wanting picture books with titles like "Peasant Uprising" or "Creating a Socialist Utopia" you know, in a non-didactic kind of way, and wanting to challenge princess stereotypes.

In my book collection I pulled out the following, all of which I like, and all of which challenge the idea that all princesses must be hyper feminine:

Dangerously Ever After,
The Princess Knight,
The Paperbag Princess,
The Red Wolf,
Princess Max,

That seemed like a short list, so I hopped over to the very fabulous A Mighty Girl to check out their princess offerings.

Please leave in the comments both suggestions of books you like that challenge the notion that "all princesses must be hyper feminine" and that challenge monarchies.

A little later I realized that both I and the Lead Princess were focusing on appearances. The princesses in their ball gowns had built the damn castle. They were not helpless, and there was no compulsory heterosexuality - nobody was waiting on some prince on a white charger. They were not confined by stereotypes of a princess is - it just looked that way os you only focused on their clothing, and perhaps I as an adult needed to worry less about what they were wearing and pay more attention to what they were doing. Ultimately, that's the lesson I want to both deliver and embody - words and actions matter far more than appearances, and girls are far more than their clothing. Thanks kids.

Music to accompany this post - Meg Braun's Tomboy Princess.

Perhaps Sunday was not a reconnaissance mission

ishai_wallace — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 17:08:06 GMT

Last Tuesday evening, Stanley told me he wanted a haircut. Stanley has never had a haircut, and his beautiful long blond hair falls in gorgeous ringlets, which I was washing at the time. Stanley has always hated having his hair washed, and I though perhaps he was requesting a haircut as a way to avoid future hair washing. Anyway, it was after eight and we were well into the going-to-bed routine, so there was no haircutting on Tuesday night. I said yes, but not now.

On Thursday evening, as I snuggled him in bed, post stories, he again told me he wanted a haircut. Again I said he could get one if he wanted one, but that it was not going to happen tonight (it being after 9:30 by this point). We will not be getting haircuts as a way to prolong bedtime.

On Sunday, after we had been bowling, he asked “After lunch, we could go and get my hair cut?” And I said yes. We talked about it. He wants his haircut so that it does not fall into his eyes all the time, and he seemed clear and sure. So after lunch, we went to a barbers’ shop. We talked about how a white, blue and red striped pole indicates a barbers’ shop and he spotted it from a block away. When we got there, we exchanged friendly greetings with the barbers and we looked through a big book of haircuts so he could pick out the one he wanted. He declared this was a “lovely book”, picked one, and while we waited, and he explored a barber’s chair. When it was his turn to get a haircut he decided “Not now” and we left. I’d felt brave going in, in a parent-doing-the-right-thing kind of a way, and I felt relieved going out. I'm trying to let go of the relief - it feels uncomfortably judgemental. As I write this, he still has his long beautiful hair, although I suspect he will choose a haircut sooner rather than later.

On Sunday I feel like we got the messages right. It’s his hair. He can decide what length or colour he wants his hair to be. I want to make sure that he is making this choice out of his own desires and not because someone else is pressuring him – including me. I love his long hair. I love how beautiful it is. I love that it has never been cut. I love that his hair muddies how people read his gender, and that that makes some things easier, even as it makes some things harder. I love it, but it is his hair, and he gets to choose. I did not say these things to him, because I don’t want my kid to feel coerced about his hair.

He’s going to get his haircut. He’s been quite clear that he wants it cut, and on Monday, as I drove him home from school he pointed at a hair salon and said “Abba, that’s a barber’s, can we go there tomorrow and get my hair cut?” The salon he was pointing at did not have a red and white and blue striped pole outside, and was a salon and not a barber’s shop. Perhaps Sunday was not a reconnaissance mission – perhaps I had picked the wrong type of hair cutting place. Perhaps he had said no to the barbers’ on Sunday because he does not want to get his hair cut at a barbers’ shop. It was another moment of recognising my girl-boy kid entering another set of binary gendered spaces. That I was going to have to talk about salons and barber shops and the meanings of both. When I say that I find the gender binary exhausting, this is exactly what I mean. We not only have to navigate his feelings and my feelings about his first haircut, we also have to navigate a whole new set of gendered spaces and other people’s gendered expectations. So, a salon then. A salon for a hair cut, coming soon to a kid near me. My job, I remind myself is to make sure he has choices. His job is to make them.

And for the record, his gender is going to continue to be muddy with or without long hair – these days he most often tells me he is a girl-boy. They had the dress-up clothes out at school this morning when I dropped him off, and by the time he waved goodbye to me from the window, he was wearing a purple princess gown and a sever pilot’s cap. His choices. My job is to make sure he has choices, his job is to make them. I got the choice about a haircut. I missed the choice about where to get it cut, but he's giving me another chance. Next time I'll do better, and I'm glad he feels he can tell me what he wants that better to look like.

Edited, "recognisance" was removed and replaced with "reconnaissance". It's less fun to say, but actually what I meant.

"they were not like me"

ishai_wallace — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 15:01:51 GMT

They did not say "Bleecker St." on the news yesterday, but the murder they described as being at "College and Sherbourne" was on Bleecker St. Where I live. Thursday night I was in bed when I heard the gun shots. I recognised the first one as a gun shot, but then there were so many loud bangs, in two clusters, that I un-recognised them. I decided they could not be gunshots, but must be someone lighting short strings of fireworks. I went to sleep. It turns out, I am not a ballistic expert, no matter how many crime shows I may have watched. I did not recognize the gun shots, and on a night when someone was gunned down and murdered less than a block from my home, we went to sleep with the front door unlocked.

In the last five months, three people have been murdered in unrelated incidents within a block. Geographically these murders have been in my neighbourhood and all within a block of my home. I looked at the Toronto Police Crime Statistics, to try to establish how many of the murders in the city in the last two years have been on my street, but I'm not able to make sense of them. I know that two people were stabbed to death here in 2012, and yet the crime statistics for the city show only one stabbing homocide for 2012. It does not make any sense that 200% of the cities homicides via stabbing happened on my street last year. It defies math and reason. The police claim that in 2012 and 2013 to date, there were 23 homocides in the city of Toronto. Using their numbers, 13% of the homocides in the city in the last 15 months have been within a block of my home. Except their count does not match mine - the numbers tell me I know my neighbourhood better than the cops.

Yesterday I got asked two questions by people who had heard the news but who do not live in our neighbourhood. The first was about safety, and whether or not we live in a "safe neighbourhood". The second was if we were thinking of moving. Reflecting on the first question, I think about who the neighbourhood is safe for. Reflecting on the second question I think about who has the means to move.

In the last five months, our neighbourhood has not been safe for Nighisti Semret, Glenton Gibson and Nisan Nirmalendran*. The song in my head is James Keelaghan's Kiri's Piano, and in particular the line "The crime that they were guilty of was that they were not like me". None of them were white. Two of them were immigrants. Two of them lived or had lived in social housing, and one of them had been homeless and stayed in shelters. In these ways, "they were not like me". And while I walk through the ally where Nighisti was stabbed, and have been in the building where Glenton was stabbed, and regularly post my mail in the lobby where Nisan was shot, I don't think I had ever seen any of them. This morning I wonder if this means I have never physically shared space with them, or whether it means I never made eye contact and said "hi". Nisan did not live in my neighbourhood, but Nighisti and Glenton did, and yet, I did not know them as my neighbours. It makes me wonder if we did in fact live in the same neighbourhood, or if we lived in seperate ones, layered on top of each other, their neighbourhood and my neighbourhood sharing a geography, but not community. I wonder, did I make the neighbourhood less safe for each of them?

I'm thinking about race and class, and gentrification, and perception of safety. I've never lived in social housing - my co-op, that sits between the Toronto Community Housing Corporation senior's residence where Nisan died and the TCHC building where Glenton was killed, was no longer a TCHC building when I moved in. Our co-op has been gentrified out of TCHC, and as a result we pay more, we organize to collectively care for the space and each other, and as residents we control the building. Our building is in general good repair, wins awards for our gardens, and the common areas appear cleaner. Our co-op is 35 years old, but I suddenly find myself wondering about how it was created, who lived here before it was a co-op and what the conversations were around it. I wonder who was displaced so that I could live here. Class, poverty, race, privillege, safety, are all a-jumble in my head. I'm thinking about responsibility, and belonging, and how we knit ourselves together. I am not thinking of moving, but I am thinking very much about who are my neighbours, and who I have not known are my neighbours. I'm thinking about what I do and can do to make the neighbourhood safe for all people, reguardless of how many identity markers we share.

*I am not putting a link for Nisan Nirmalendran, as at the moment the only links I can find are links to news stories that do not tell us anything about Nisan as a person, they only document his death in a lurid fashion.

Masks fall from the ceiling

ishai_wallace — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:10:35 GMT

After synagogue last week, there were masks on the tables in the kiddush. The tables were covered in blue cloths and in the middle of each were stacks of beautiful feathered masks and noise-makers. Our synagogue was a little late celebrating Purim, but we got there. The Small Person was delighted to see the masks and sorted through them to find a large, brightly coloured, heavily feathered number. He put it on and was thrilled with his transformation. From small person to giant bird.

When he finally removed his mask to eat, he told me with great seriousness "I want to take it home, so I can take it with me the next time we go on an airplane.".

I was about to launch into how we are not allowed to take masks on airplanes, and caught myself."What for?" I asked.

"Because every time we go on an airplane, they tell us "masks will fall from the ceiling" but they never do."

Oh. Oh. And suddenly I had a vision of an airplane, full of passengers, where brightly coloured carnival masks fall from the ceiling. People put on the masks, probably there are streamers, maybe there is music, and suddenly the plane is a very festive place. It occurred to me that he has a giraffe mask, which makes the wearer look like a giraffe, an elephant mask, that makes the wearer look like an elephant, and a monkey mask that makes the wearer look like a monkey. I expect that he heard "oxygen mask" and understood it as a mask that makes the wearer look like an oxygen, whatever that is. And there is something about that for me - both how clearly it is him extending what he knows to understand what he does not know yet - and that it is such a safe understanding of the world. In the Small Person's world, the masks that should fall from the ceiling on the plane are to entertain and amuse, not safety equipment.

I did not say anything about masks and airport security, or 9-11, or the desire of people to see someone's face to "know who they are". I just let myself look into his reality and marvel.

... .... ....

Speaking of air travel, we have applied for a new Passport for the Small Person this week. The last one, that we applied for as soon as we received his "father and father" birth certificate, has expired, which makes sense - he's not looked like the squish of an infant pictured in that passport for some time. He went with his Papa to get new passport photos taken on Tuesday, and they quite clearly had a terrible experience. I was not there, but both of them have told me about it:

Quoting from a text message, Papa said:                                                     Stanley told me this about what happened:
The photographer said "young lady ... something, something".                    "We went to the photographer, and he said
I didn't address that directly, but I did refer to Stanley as "dude".                  something very mean to Papa. We got very mad.
The he said "that's a boy?" I replied in the affirmative.                                  Papa was mad and told him off and I was mad too.
Then he said "no it's not! Wait, is it?"                                                             We smashed out the door - but it did not break,
Then, he just started repeating : "what is it? What is it? What is it"               and then we went to the nice place."
I had a total loss of cabin pressure, screamed at him, slammed
his door as hard as I could, and we went to the place you suggested.

I have a whole range of reactions to this

How dare someone say this to my child? "What is it? What is it?" is not an appropriate thing to say to anyone. To say it to my personal very tender Small Person, who really believes that gender is a choice and something people get to figure out for themselves as they wish is totally upsetting. Bad photographer. Gender fail. Bad behaviour.

I know that it is his hair that people read as "girl". His beautiful, long, curly, falls in ringlets, never been cut, hair. He has long hair like that because I think it is beautiful. We do talk about "bodily autonomy" including that it is his hair, and that he can cut it if he wants to, but I am in no rush and am not encouraging that. Still, my choice that he has long hair, made him vulnerable to this person voicing his prejudice all over him.

I am sure that my parenting, in general, contributed to this. I have declined to train The Small Person into the societal gender box assigned to people with penises, which I think makes him fabulous, and allows him freedom to explore and figure things out for himself - but it also makes him vulnerable. The photographer was doing the work that we generally assume parents will do - squashing a child's gender expression, demanding gender conformity and punishing "gender transgressive behaviour". It made it so clear to me that it is not enough to make room for The Small Person to explore and play with gender, it's not enough to teach him that you need to ask what pronoun people prefer and then use it, it's not enough to teach him that his gender is right, whatever it is in any given moment. I need to also teach him how to respond to gender bigotry, and to defend our values.

I recognize that all manner of parents have to teacher their children how to respond to bigotries large and small. Not having to do this is a privilege. My responses are informed by my own white privilege. It feels emancipatory to teach him that he is already right about his gender. I'm going to need to do more work to recognise that teaching him to confront prejudice and hate is also emancipatory. Writing this helps. Putting it in this language helps.

Both of them, both the Papa and The Small Person thought they were responding in defense of the other. The Small Person did not feel personally target, shamed or challenged. And while I could feel good about the Small Person receiving the lesson that his Papa will stand up for him, I can also feel good knowing that his empathy is strong, and that he feels like he can do exactly the kind of advocacy work I want to teach him toward. We're trying hard to raise a revolutionary around here. He's clearly on board, at least at the moment.

I heard Papa's version of things first, and I worried that the photographer with his ignorant questions had made "the masks fall from the ceiling". I worried he had made the beautiful coloured feather masks fall from the ceiling, past people's faces to lie on the floor. Not in a festive way. I worried that The Small Person had heard and understood, and thate his safe and loving understanding of people had been irreperably damaged. I was wrong.

I have however been thinking a great deal about how we teach our children to have hope, power, strength and possibility in the face of hate. The answer, very clearly is that we teach our children that they have the power to change the world.

Something to get off my chest

ishai_wallace — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 17:08:41 GMT

I don't think that there is a single transition process, and I don't think there is a single way to transition. I don't think all transmasculine people need/want/desire chest surgery. I am also very clear that for some transmasculine people chest surgery is not a want or desire, but a need and a medical necessity. I want individuals to be able to make their own intensely personal decisions about what is best for them, about how, and when and where and frankly about what. I don't want money to be a barrier to access - I do think it is appropriate OHIP cover transition related surgeries, and that the current coverage is woefully inadequate. That said, as I go about the process of making my own personal decisions, about how to live in this body, it's clear to me that some of the intensely personal decisions I am making about my skin, and the shape of my skin may have the potential to impact others, and so I need to have a broader conversation, in community. This is a starting point, an opening, a beginning. Welcome to the work in progress. Come get involved at the ground floor.

*** Warning, the following blog post discusses surgical options and OHIP coverage for transmasculine people in Ontario in general, and my own experiences in particular. If you don't want to read this (I'm looking at you mum and dad) you should stop reading now. The internet is full of other things you can look at - go find something more to your liking. ***

The personal
Last summer, I made the decision that I wanted chest surgery. I've been binding my chest for, well, longer than I can clearly remember - maybe 15 years? I've used sports bras, and packing tape, tensor bandages, duct tape and compression shirts. I started binding as constantly shrugging my shoulders forward and curving my back to hide my chest was causing constant back pain. I've bound for a long time, and for me, last summer was the last straw. It was hot last summer, and always wearing a binder meant always wearing an extra non-breathable layer, and going outside was highly unpleasant. I was also finding that the combination of heat and asthma and compression shirt made bicycling very difficult, and this really matters to me. For me, the current shape of my chest began to seriously impact my quality of life. I decided I needed chest surgery.

The OHIP Approval Process
I had previously been a client at the Gender Identity Clinic at CAMH, and in July 2012 called them back to say that I wanted to return1. I was told that as a returning client I would not have to wait and could have the next available appointment - a little over a month later. I was told this was a surgery approval appointment. It was not. When the letter I expected did not arrive, I called them. I called them again. I kept calling. Meanwhile they sent a letter containing my confidential medical information to a neighbour, who opened it and then passed the opened letter on to me. Yes, that felt about as great as that sounds. I was finally given an actual surgery approval meeting on November 9th and 12th. While I was told in those meetings that things looked good, I did not receive the official letter that I had been approved until January 22nd, which for those counting is ten weeks later.

Where this starts to involve community
Throughout the approval process I tried to get answers about surgical options. Information about what is covered, information about procedures, information about post-surgical expectations, information about what I am expected to pay for. Ironically, part of the CAMH assessment involves needing to prove you understand the surgical procedures, but that information is not offered anywhere official. There is no centralized list. It's all word of mouth and community knowledge, and currently there is no central repository, Re-listing still is relatively recent, and perhaps the information has just not been gathered yet. I'm ready to take that on - if you are interested in that let me know.

What I can parse out, is that if you are approved and referred to Dr. Maud Bélanger in Montreal (Dr. Bélanger is now performing surgeries, this is Dr. Brassard's clinic) you have to pay for travel, but after that all costs are covered, including a mastectomy, chest contouring, and staying in their facility. When I wrote to OHIP about this asking why patients were effectively forced to go to Montreal, OHIP claimed:

         There is no requirement that patients attend Dr. Brassard's clinic for OHIP insured
          SRS. In order to have the surgery done by the physician in Ontario, you will require
          a referral from CAMH to the Ontario physician. This will confirm for the physician what
          has been recommended and approved, and therefore covered under OHIP.2

While CAMH would refer me to the Montreal clinic, I don't meet the clinic's own internal requirements for surgery. Additionally, they've been known to turn down fat guys, and do a surgical procedure that means no nipple sensation ever again.

I got a referral to Dr. Marc DuPéré, a Toronto physician, who a friend spoke highly of. Dr. DuPéré had performed the friend's surgery and the friend felt good about his work. The friend had paid about $6000 out of pocket during the period when OHIP de-listed SRS surgeries. I had an initial consult this week, and Dr. DuPéré is lovely in person, but he will only perform a technique I do not want (no nipple sensation afterwards) and with the OHIP coverage I would be expected to pay an additional $6780.00. That's right, the government says that I need this surgery, but to have it here in Toronto, covered by OHIP I would have to pay an additional $6780.00

Another friend recently had surgery in Mississauga with Dr. Hugh McLean, who does not accept OHIP (apparently it is too much of a hassle), and paid $6780, although Dr. McLean is now apparently charging $7400. He also performs the surgery that is likely to result in no nipple sensation after surgery.

Montreal, Ontario, why the different level of coverage for Ontario patients?
When I have asked both at CAMH and at the Trans Health Connection at Rainbow Health Ontario why OHIP would cover a full procedure at Dr. Brassard's clinic in Montreal, and only the mastectomy (not including access to an operating room, or an anaesthesiologist, or a nurse) in Ontario, no-one has an answer. The direction from CAMH is "don't make to much noise or you'll wreck it for everyone" and seems to be based in a guess that OHIP simply does not know what they are paying for in Montreal. I've heard speculation that perhaps OHIP gets a special bulk rate there, but no actual answers. I've also been told by staff at CAMH that OHIP does not cover any reconstruction for people who have had a mastectomy to remove cancer - however Dr. DuPéré claims this is not true. He says that's true if you have it done in a private clinic, but if you have it done in a hospital, it's covered. The problem with the "don't wreck it for everyone" line is that it's not working for everyone. If you can't travel to Montreal, it does not work for you. If you are fat it does not work for you, if you want a chance at having nipple sensation afterwards it does not work for you. If the cost of getting to Montreal is prohibitive, it does not work for you. The current option works for some, while the government claims they are offering this needed service.

The challenge of that statement is that my actions here might well have implications for other guys who need access to surgery. I been having some conversations off an on about this for a few months now, and it's clear to me that we need to be organizing to create a better system. When OHIP first re-listed surgeries the word was wait, we're about to announce a better access model. Many people were enthusiastic about the model offered by Vancouver Costal Health, which includes offering services remotely, because hello, not all trans people live in major cities. For quite some time Rainbow Health Ontario would say things along the lines of "we're almost ready to announce multiple access points for care" but the multiple access points never came.

So, if you are trans* in Ontario, it remains that the only point of care is the Gender Identity Clinic at CAMH in Toronto. It remains that for transmasculine people the only fully covered chest surgery option is in Montreal. I am actually interested in making this better for all of us. I want to share information, I want to make better use of the needs identified in the TransPulse data. We know that forcing people who need surgery to live without it is dangerous, and in many cases life threatening, but the current system asks people to do just that, or forces people to take "solutions" that are neither client centred nor based on the best surgical techniques available. I want to have a provincial conversation that does not prioritize the needs of Torontonians. I want to make links and build allegiences with others who are similarly left with out good appropriate options. At the moment this feels like transwomen and breast cancer survivors. I want a broad based coalition, where we all demand that we all get the care we need.

The system is broken, and we need better. We deserve better. Please, lets start conversations about how to do that. And yes, I'm saying lets start talking about how we do that. I can see the need. I don't yet quite know how to meet it, so more eyes, and more input are required.

1 I was a "patient" at the clinic shortly after surgery was de-listed and went mostly on the gamble that surgery would be re-listed and that CAMH would remain the access point. I basically wanted to be ready to go when this happened. I stopped going when it became clear to me that they had nothing to offer me.

2 Quoting a letter from Susan Pinney, A/Manager, Fee for Service Unit, Health Services Branch, dated Nov. 22 2012. personal correspondence.

Children lost and found

ishai_wallace — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 19:32:31 GMT

Three out of the last four nights I have be woken up by the Small Person calling out "Abba, where are you?" This is unusual. In general, the Small Person goes to bed in his own bed. We read him the customary three books, we generally allow for negotiations for a fourth, and then there is snuggling and sleeping. Sometime between midnight and three am he wakes up, and comes into our bed. He's got so good at this that often neither of us wake as he climbs in. So, calling out is unusual.

As I thought about it, over coffee, in the morning, it occurred to me that on two different nights this week I had read him books about lost children. It stood out to me that in neither book is the story told from the perspective of the child, and I wondered if that made them more alarming. Like me, he loves In the Night Kitchen, and he has encountered Hansel and Gretel, but neither of those caused sleep disturbances - both of those are about the children. When the children are strong, and able to figure their own ways out of situations it's not scarey. This week's books were about the adults who find the children. The adults were puzzled, befuddled, upset, and we did not get a sense of the children's own agency. This weeks books were scarey.

The first of this weeks books was The Green Children. I remembered, as a child, finding this at my grandparents home in the United Kingdom and loving the book immediately. It's a 1966 retelling of a story that is at least as old as 1189. When he presented it as a bed time choice, I told him that I had loved the book when I was small. As we began to read it though, I was surprized at how archaic the language is. Right away we encountered; demesne, balk, swath, cottars, sythes, flitch, and villein, all words I doubted The Small Person would know. It was a curious moment of looking into my own nerdly childhood and the experience of children as language learners. We talked about the words and the story. Somewhere, in the latter part of the book, after the boy has died and the girl has learned English, The Small Person fell asleep.

The next night his choices included Voice in the Forest, a 2006 book from Ghana, which was a gift from one of his uncles. The book tells the story of a villager who finds a Samanta child in the woods. He brings the child home, and among other things cuts her hair, an act that causes the child great distress "Give me back my hair!" she bellows repeatedly. The book is long and has a great many words (in the measures of reading for a three year old). Still, he wanted me to read all of it, and would not let me stop, right up until he fell asleep near the end of the story.

It makes me think about a whole number of things:

About how we as adults tell stories about things that are hard or scarey for children,
About how scarey things are less scarey when the children have agency and are allowed to make choices and solve problems,
About how important the love, trust and belief of caring adults is to someone who is only just now able to put on his own clothes,
That he's listening to the stories. He's paying attention,
That learning new words is a constant pursuit for three. Words from 12th century Britain are as unknown as contemporary words from rural Ghana, and both sets are worth learning, the meanings parsed out from context.
He's populating his imagination with the stories we share.

Change is hard, and happening right here.

ishai_wallace — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 19:07:20 GMT

Back in July, I was offered the position of Executive Director at the Lesbian Gay Bi Trans Youth Line. I received a great deal of support and encouragement from all manner of people as I took on this position; thank you to everyone who cheered me on, volunteered, advocated, donated. It's clear to me that The Youth Line is an important institution for many LGBTQ people and many of our allies, and it was a great honour to be offered the position of Executive Director.

The Youth Line is important to LGBTT2IQQ* youth who need the services right now, to adults who needed it when they were young, to former volunteers who's activism was shaped by the Youth Line and all manner of other people. Despite all that "it gets better" business, very much, there are still young people who need to know they are not alone, who are figuring out what their identity is, how to tell people, how to live their lives, how to love, how to survive, and the Youth Line is there to be community to all of them. Non-judgemental, sex-positive, anonymous support. That's a really amazing thing. And a really vital and necessary thing.

Over the last six months, I've put a great deal into the organization. I've put in really as much time, heart/brain/soul as I can. It's the kind of place that really demands that - the service is important and vital, it runs on volunteer labour and commitment, and other staff members are a committed bunch. The volunteer board put in all manner of their time, energy and resources, largely unseen, and deserve all manner of thanks and praise. In the last year, between the board, service volunteers, volunteers on committees, administrative volunteers and Line Art, almost 5000 volunteer hours were given to the Youth Line. It is my intention to be one of those volunteers in the coming year.

I have however resigned my position as Executive Director of the Youth Line. I'm leaving, as of this week, to continuing doing work with for and on behalf of LGBTT2IQQA* children and youth in another capacity. I'm feeling surprizingly emotional about a decision I have initiated, and one that really feels right. One of the very wise people with The AIDS Bereavement and Resiliency Program of Ontario shared with me that part of what is challenging working in LGBTQ non-profits is that it's not just our work world, it's also our identity. So in changing my employment, I'm changing my identity, and that's hard change work. I appreciate her insight. It's also been true that I've been talking about leaving and using lots of relationship analogies, there's a great deal of heart in this for me. Here's the ones I find myself using most often:

Please be friends with both of us. We're both going to need you.
We moved in together too quickly and have discovered we make better friends than partners.
Once we decided to separate, it's best not to keep on living together, we're making a quick separation as we would rather end on a high note.
We've both learned a great deal from each other. The end of a relationship is not a failure, it's a transition, and an opportunity to learn and reflect on how we have grown and what we learned from each other.

I've learned a great deal in the last six months. They really have been amazingly valuable for me, and very rich. I think I've also made some substantial contributions to the Youth Line. I do believe that I am leaving it better than it was when I started. Non-profits are always a work in progress, and there are lots of good things going on at the Youth Line right now. We've launched a new chat service in the last two weeks, we're adding service by text message. The Provincial Ambassador project is kicking off and looking darn exciting. The Community Development Coordinator is in Kingston all weekend working with LGBTQ youth and community partners. If you're not a donor, now's a great time to help the Youth Line by becoming one. If you'd like to be a super-star, become a monthly donor. Either way, you can donate here.

I'm starting a new position this week with the Toronto District School Board, with their Gender Based Violence Prevention Unit. It's a great place for me to be going, and I'm thrilled. I'm also looking forward to having more of me outside of work. More time with my family, more time for writing, more time for grad school. So, I'm leaving and I'm sad, and I'm starting something new and excited, and I'm right in the middle of a whole muddle of other things. Apparently change is part of living, and transition is part of being alive.

So then, three

ishai_wallace — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 01:46:09 GMT

The Small Person turns three on Monday, and while in the grand scheme of things three is still pretty new, from the perspective of this parent, three is an amazingly big kid.

Almost-three has been counting down the number of sleeps until his birthday party, in a way almost-two did not. Almost-two asked for two cupcakes for his birthday because he understood that birthdays mean cupcakes. Almost-three understands that birthdays mean parties. Almost-three anticipates things. On the way home from school on Friday he asked to call Papa. "Where are you?" Almost-three demanded, and when Papa admitted he was in the living room, Almost-three sounded disappointed "Oh, I expected you to be upstairs.".

Almost-two was confident that if we would just let him out of the house alone he could do anything he wanted, including ride the subway to go shopping. Almost-three can tell you exactly what streetcar to take to what subway station and where to get off the subway to make his shopping dreams a reality. He'll ask for money and TTC tickets too. Almost-three considers it one of the greatest indignities of our time that he is still not allowed out unaccompanied.

Almost-three is absolutely certain that his opinions matter. He'll tell you what he wants and where to go. Almost-three has plans, and like the adults he will build these plans all by himself without need of consultation or input. Almost-three does not like it when we are not able to follow through on his plans - "Abba, you broke my plan." he bemoans. Almost-three is a committed backseat driver - but only because we won't let him drive. He's sure that would be fine. "Hey, stop the car - you were suppose to go over there." Almost three calls out. Almost-three remembers where restaurants are, where his school is, the names of streets and other landmarks in the city. He gives guided tours from the backseat. Almost-three's favorite restaurant is Guu, his favorite treat location is Menchie's and he loves the special dinosaur exhibit at the ROM. He'd like to eat out in a restaurant most nights, and always has an opinion. Almost-three likes the zoo, and the art gallery, and does not understand why we only get to do such things on weekends. Almost-three would like there to be fewer week days and more weekends, more time to do things together, less time for school.

Almost-three's favorite food is a salmon and avocado handroll, his favorite texture is squishy, his favorite toy at school is Moon Sand. Almost-three remains committed to purple, and says his very favorite place is his old school. Almost-three loves snuggles and reading, and has a fondness of sea creatures. Almost-three likes jumping, making noise, trains and whatever the big people have. Almost-three loves cooking and wants to measure, chop and stir. He's careful about heat and is proud of his accomplishments.

Almost-three speaks in paragraphs, and tells stories both real and imaginary. Almost-three can add and subtract with great confidence and accuracy under five, and great confidence and less accuracy under nine. Almost-three can tell the difference between letters and numbers, and is figuring out more and more of the letters all the time. "Why does the alphabet in my room have an octopus and an O on it? There isn't an O in my name." Almost-three can really carry on a telephone conversation now, although he would prefer to Skype or facetime. Almost-three is just learning what our culture believes a girl should look like and what a boy should look like, although he is still not sure of this gender business. Almost-three talks about "a money" less now, and "money" more and is learning that different bills and coins have their own names.

Almost-three is a champion negotiator, willing to throw in prior precedent, stated laws, his own desires, examples from other people and future possibilities. Almost-three will win you over with his charm, even if you are not a kid person. Almost-three is almost never scared, unless the toilet is too loud, and if peeing out of the house will often require the grown person to investigate how loud the toilet is in advance and report back.

Almost-three has the sleep schedule of a university student. He'd like to be up until at least eleven at night, and then sleep in until at least nine the next morning. Almost-three is not interested in your schedule, or your need to be somewhere at a particular time. Almost-three likes rocks and sticks and prefers to have one on his person at all time. Almost-three has boundless energy, and wants to swing, swim, ride his bike, and run until the cows come home and then some.

Almost-three will ask you, "Abba, can we snuggle?" at the end of the day as he climbs into your lap. Almost-three loves books almost more than is reasonable and probably spends almost an hour a day being read to. Almost three likes Shaun the Sheep on television. On Youtube he's likely to ask for Ivor the Engine, and if there are videos, he would like it to be The Muppet's.

Almost-three is whatever the minimum age requirement is. If you need to be four to climb the play structure he'll tell you he's four, which is believable. When he wants to drive he's sixteen, when he wants to drink in Ontario he's 19, and in the U.S. 21. He is absolutely ready to have a pet rat. Almost-three wants to help. No matter what happened, no matter who you are, almost-three would like to be of assistance, and he's probably right.

Almost-three considers tomorrow to be one of the greatest mysteries of our time: "When will it be tomorrow?".

Almost-three is not tired, does not need to sleep, never naps, and does not need to rest - right up until the moment he falls asleep. Almost-three was a newborn who hated and resisted the swaddle, and then a baby who would cry if covered with a blanket, Almost-three still thinks blankets are cruel and unusual punishment and would prefer warm pajamas and socks on his hands and feet.

Almost-three has no idea how little he is, and he's certainly not going to let anyone tell him.