Position: Parent

Must be an excellent spin-doctor. Must be patient, consistent, and creative. Medical, teaching, debating, and policing skills; ability to clean up puke in strange places; tears on small faces; to help heal hurt feelings and mend broken hearts: Required.

Assets: Thinking on your feet, running with sore feet; willingness to play the same (physical and mental) games over and over, to enthusiastically pretend to like the hokey-pokey and later, try to understand the latest teen craze; to explain things you don’t really understand yourself, to be fair and flexible and admit all your mistakes.

No paid vacations or medical benefits.
Hours: Long and variable.
Must accept frequent schedule changes without notice.
Pay: You’re joking, right?
Rewards: Endless.

There Will Be Giants

I was watching the morning news with our 4-year-old daughter, and couldn’t help but say aloud, “Oh no, Ted Kennedy died.”

I usually try to hide the heavier topics from her but for some reason, I didn’t this time. I thought she could handle it.

“Who was he?” she asked me.

“A pretty important politician in the States. People are going to be sad,” I replied.

She put her arm around me. “Well, did he get a chance to help people in the world before he died?”

I nearly spit out my coffee. “Yes, honey, I think all in all, he did.”

“Well, that’s good then.” And back she went to colouring Dora and Diego.

Everything became clearer to me in one short conversation with a four-year-old. We’ve lost a lot of Giants this summer,
but that loss seems a little less overwhelming when we look to the giant potential of our younger generations.

We just need to keep on listening to them, and pointing them in the right direction.

Promise

Today the lilacs opened;
and I almost missed it.

My spring tradition since childhood:
reaching up on my tippy toes,
plucking down a fresh bloom;
closing my eyes, memorizing that scent,
taking out the inner core, sucking
on the sweet nectar.

And I almost missed it.
I was distracted; glued to my computer screen,
stuck on my cell phone, head in the dirty laundry;
Caught up in things that just won’t matter
100 years from now.

Then you came home,
scooped up our busy
one-year-old, took us to a little lilac tree
you’d planted in our barren backyard.

The scent was so familiar, a reminder
strong and insistent like your
stubborn side,
damp petals poignant
grazing against my face.

So for a moment it was just the three of us,
carefree and content;
Surrounded by that powerful scent
and the promise of renewal:
The promise of purple.

'Promise' by Heather Grace Stewart

Perspective

Sick kid. Snow day.
Six-feet of white flakes at the end of
our driveway. At minus 30
with the wind chill,
my little one and I can only stand
and stare out the frosted panes.
I sigh:  boring day ahead.
“Cooold” she mumbles,
then sneezes and stumbles off,
drunken sailor style.

At nap time I check my email.
Good news: my interview with the
Peat-Bog Mummy researcher
is on for next week. Another hour
writing about spiders gives me shivers.
I set it aside, go make green tea,
wake my groggy girl.

Let’s make a lovely dress for Cinderelley, Cinderelley
Bippitty Boppitty Bippitty Boppitty Bippitty Boppitty
I might be sick myself if I have to hear that song
one more time today. Tick tick tick. 4 p.m.
Just three more hours, then Daddy’s home.
Perchance to sleep? Perchance to
soak in a bath with bubbles.

Before logging off for the day
I Google “Women in Iraq,”
Click on the daily Iraq Violence Report.
57 civilians killed in Iraq today alone,
most of them women and children.

My daughter’s small voice
singing in my memory, I read on:
Many Iraqi women have never worn
that smothering, submissive scarf,
but now, dead bodies of women and girls
are being found in rivers, on waste grounds;
veils tied tightly around their heads:
a clear message from extremists.

My cheeks kiss a soft pillow;
My own message clear.
Amen for sick days, for snow days,
for bubbles and Bippitty Bop.

Amen for boring.