Lovers, haters, cretins and zombified pimps

I’ve always been ahead of my time when it comes to writing.

And it has always made people mad.

Or maybe jealous, I’m not sure.

To wit, I was a 13-year-old eighth grader when I became the youngest-ever columnist at the Haliburton County Echo. I earned 25 cents per column inch writing the Norland Natter and covering the events, news and gossip in the small village where I lived.

And kids used to tease me.

“Nooorlaand Naaatter” I remember one boy in particular chanting. “You think you’re sooo special writing the Nooorland Naaatter!”

I didn’t care.

He didn’t get it. I knew that writing in a real newspaper was an accomplishment, something of which to be proud. Something that one day I was going to be glad I got in on early.

And besides, he was just a big bully.

These days I write a blog that I like to think of as a lifestyle column. I call it Don Mills Diva and I write it on the internet.

And the big bullies are still there, tearing me down for having the audacity to think of myself or my writing as sooo special.

Many of you know that I was one of the bloggers interviewed for Tuesday’s Globe and Mail article on the ethics of mommy blogging. Many of you have already contacted me to express your shock and outrage over the multitude of nasty comments posted to the on-line version of the article.

It’s okay: it really is.

It doesn’t bother me because I know I’m ahead of my time.

I do wonder if Erma Bombeck or Dave Barry have ever been accused of being cretins or zombified pimps. I doubt it. But I imagine that maybe when they first started writing about their family life in the public sphere people were scandalized that they dared to – as a brilliant, fellow, zombified pimp put it – lift the veil on the intricacies and intimacies of family life.

In my admittedly small way, I’m trying to do what those writers do. I have talked before about emulating their style, about using my daily experiences only as a jumping off point for essays and musings.

We've all had moments when we look at our children or our parents or our aging face in the mirror and feel inexplicably moved by the passage of time and the richness of our individual experience. This site is about giving a voice to those moments, about finding beauty and poignancy in the mundane.

I’m just doing it on the internet instead of in traditional media because it seems to me that all the most compelling writers these days are fleeing traditional media for the internet.

And I’ve done the newspaper thing – I’ve done it on and off for 25 years.

I wrote the Norland Natter until the week I left for university and, incidentally, or perhaps not so incidentally, my mother kept every one of my columns, carefully clipped and labeled, in a scrapbook she whipped out at the slightest provocation, to my great embarrassment and secret delight.

Yup, my mother did what every damn, wonderful mother since the beginning of time has done: she made me blush with the unabashed pride she took in my accomplishments and in me.

And that, too, is what I’m doing here for my son. Here, on the internet.

And to those who taunted that my son will need therapy to overcome his shame over my exploitation here, I say this:

Mental illness drives kids to therapy. Drug and alcohol abuse – their own or that of their parents – drives kids to therapy. Childhood rape, incest, abuse, neglect, instability and pain drives kids to therapy.

Exploitation? I don’t have the stomach to discuss the ways that children suffer exploitation on the internet. It sure as hell ain’t on this site.

Proud, loving and enthusiastic mothers, even ones who “over share” are not exploitive and they are not the reason why kids end up in therapy.

I am a proud, loving and enthusiastic mother. I am, and always will be Graham’s biggest, and most embarrassing, booster.

What is Don Mills Diva, what are any mommy or daddy blogs, if not love letters to our children? (Thank you k-girl for the term)

This site is my love letter to Graham, my gift to him.

And I imagine one day when he is a strapping young man or even an old and grey one, he will delight in opening this gift, reading through these archives and seeing his family history unfold before him.

He will read the letter I wrote to him the week before he was born. He will read of his parents’ great abiding love for each other and his mother’s affection for his grandmother. He will read of his Oma’s survival under the Nazis and his grandfather’s love of bush planes. He will read of the tears, the awe, the struggles, the wonder, the pain, the beauty and the joy that, daily, his presence brought to my life.

And the love. Oh my yes, the love.

And secure in that love, I believe that one day Graham will be damn proud that his mother was ahead of her time.