Look at me Dad!

Cool

Gold medals in ice hockey aside, I think my favorite Olympic moment this year was watching snowboarder Shaun White win his gold medal for the halfpipe: dude is cool personified.

And balmy weather and career opportunity aside, I think my favorite part of living in Los Angeles is my proximity to Target: store is style epitomized.

So can you just imagine my joy at learning that Shaun White has a line of clothing for little boys available at Target?

Shaun White, Target and a little boy in need of new clothes: a perfect trifecta of my favorite things.

You can't handle the cool.

Hello from La-La Land

Rob headed back to Toronto two weeks ago for work but Grandma has been here in his stead and we've been showing her around.

La Jolla Cove...

Venice (yes, Graham's obsession with balloons now officially spans the continent)...

And La Jolla Cave (conveniently located at La Jolla Cove)

And also, the very day after that last picture was taken?


My baby got a haircut and a great big boy miraculously appeared in his stead.

Crazy

Did I mention Graham loves his preschool here in Los Angeles?

Well he does.

He loves it. LOVES it.

I think the fact that it indulges in "Crazy Hair Day" may be part of the reason.

Also? Apparently most preschool moms consider a colorful barrette or a silly ponytail to be a suitable celebration of said Crazy Hair Day.

Graham and I, we do not.

Well hello there

We are fine.

We are more than fine; we are happy.

That's not to say all of the changes we have gone through the last few months haven't been difficult and scary and enormously stressful.

They have been all of those things. But, for the most part, it's all good.

I had forgotten how beautiful it is in Los Angeles.

I had forgotten that on previous visits I had felt such love and affinity for her wild canyons and roaring surf and towering palms.

I had forgotten, also, how very alive a career challenge can make me feel and how exploring a new city has always sent a thrill through my bones.

I still haven't quite figured out what I will do with this blog. I do know I will not, cannot, maintain it as a forum for discussion and rumination as I have in the past, but I am reluctant to sever a means for far-flung relatives (who haven't mastered Facebook) to keep in touch.

I have been humbled by your lovely words and well wishes over the last few months. Thanks again and please know that we are fine.

We are more than fine; we are happy.

Following my sun: the one where I say goodbye

I know my recent absence from this space has been abrupt in light of the considerable effort I have spent the last two years convincing readers to invest in my life.

I know that radio silence for a month is perhaps even disrespectful, given the fact that I have often drank deeply, nay greedily, from your virtually never-ending well of support and goodwill.

But I hope you will forgive me when I explain that since I have last written, everything I used to assume about the way my life would play out has changed.

At the beginning of the summer I applied for what I can only describe as my dream job: a job that would catapult me several steps up a career ladder on which I already occupied a comfortable middle position. It is a job that represents an enormous challenge, a job that would move me into the inner circles of the film and television industry and allow me to advocate for the people and places I hold dearest in my heart.

I am not normally a humble sort, but suffice to say I firmly believed that my application was a long shot

But I got the job.

I got the job and in just a few days I will fly to Los Angeles, California on a nine-day business trip during which I will find a place for my family to live.

In mid November I will leave Don Mills and Canada and my life here behind to chase my dreams and ambitions in a place where success in my chosen industry represents the very pinnacle of success.

I have been offered what I believe is the opportunity of a lifetime folks and I'm going for it.

It will not be easy. It has not been easy. In the month since I accepted the offer I have plummeted down the rabbit hole into a vortex of details and lawyers and contracts and home listings and visas and export papers and anxiety and studying and disbelief and sleepless nights and joy and uncertainty and heartfelt late night talks.

I will pull up stakes and move south towards the end of November. Rob and Graham will await my return about a month later and after Christmas together we will return to Los Angeles as a family to build our lives anew in a sunny place, far removed we hope from the uncertainty and darkness of the past year.

It was on last New Year's Eve that we learned that cancer cells had been found in Rob's mother's stomach lining. That very day she was released from the hospital to our home where at midnight we raised a hopeful, if tentative glass to the possibilities that 2009 would bring.

We did not know then that we would mourn her death just 11 weeks later: we have learned since that, more often than not, both life and happiness are hard fought.

And so we are fighting. And we are moving. And I am moving on from this space which I believe is incompatible with my new job, at least in its present incarnation.

In just a few weeks I will be taking Don Mills Diva private and providing a password for friends and family who may be interested in photos and basic updates on how we're doing.

If you'd like to keep in touch feel free to request the password via e-mail and if you live in the Los Angeles area especially please touch base.

I will miss Don Mills Diva and I will miss all of you. It is thanks in no small part to my readers, supporters and even dissenters, that I was successful in obtaining this job. Even more than the guerrilla social media and Internet marketing skills I learned from the blogosphere, I learned confidence in the expression of my ideas and confidence in the importance of what I could contribute.

If there is one regret that I have with regards to my withdrawal from the blogging community it is the vague sense that I took so much more from it than I was able to give. During some of the darkest days of my life you gave me a renewed conviction in my personal power and there is no way I will ever be able to repay that.

Thank you each and every one for lifting me up and helping me soar.

Good bye and God bless you.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

There are some life-changing events afoot here at Casa DMD: I hope to be able to tell you what's happening in the next few days.

Thanks for your patience.

Schooled

The call from Graham's school came on Monday, barely an hour after I had settled into a busy day at work.

"We have Graham here in the office," said the voice at the other end of the phone. "He's not feeling very well and I think you'll have to come and get him."

"What?! Is he okay?"

"I don't think it's serious," was the reply. "Here, I'll let you talk to him."

There was a shuffling noise and then, Graham's voice, so thin and tiny that I instantly felt my chest ache as my heart swelled and pushed against it.

"I throwed up in the trash can Mommy. Are you going to come and get me?"

I went and got him.

I took him home and tried to catch up on work e-mails while he lolled on the couch and watched cartoons. I fed him chicken noodle soup and buttered sourdough toast and anxiously inquired about his well-being.

He appeared to be perfectly fine.

He appeared better then fine, actually: he appeared buoyant and, in retrospect, perhaps just a little relieved. That evening I even took him to the park and let him run off an obvious surfeit of energy.

Yesterday morning I walked him into his classroom where we were greeted by his teacher.

"Graham seemed fine at home yesterday," I told her.

"Well I think it was probably just nerves, but he looks way better today than he has since he started," she said. "I mean, he's just seemed so anxious."

He has?

Oh.

I decided not to make a big deal of it: when I spoke to Graham after school yesterday he was happy as a clam and assured me he had a "great" day. I decided not to say anything about it at all.

And then this morning, as I buckled him into his car seat, a look of pure panic flashed across his dear, wee face.

"I'm gonna be sick Mommy, I'm gonna be sick," he wailed. "I need a sick bowl."

I handed him the car's waste paper basket and stood there for quite a while, rubbing his back and trying to reassure him.

"It's okay. It's normal. Everybody feels a little nervous sometimes. Even Mommy when she goes to work. All the other kids at school probably feel a little nervous too".

After a few minutes he seemed okay and off we went.

I walked him into his classroom again where the morning story was already in progress and apologized for our lateness.

"Graham had a little attack of nerves," I whispered to the teacher, as discreetly as possible.

She smiled kindly.

"Yes, that happened yesterday as well."

It did?

Oh.

And so it seems that perhaps my darling boy is not quite as confident as he seems or as I so proudly asserted he was following his first day of school last week.

And so it seems that I must come to grips with the painful realization that the child I thought I knew better than my own heart has anxieties and fears that, for whatever reason, he feels he must keep hidden from me.

The heart, it breaks.

Forty

By all accounts today is significant, but it is especially so for me.

Today is my 40th birthday.

I celebrated with my family already last weekend and I enjoyed tons of well wishes and cake at work today, but despite all the exhortations from female friends who've already hit this milestone, I don't feel liberated. I have instead been unable to shake the melancholy that has plagued me since waking: it is nearly bedtime and I still feel unsettled.

I am happy enough, but not knowing if my family is complete leaves me unable to exhale and ill-equipped to make grand declarations about what the next year or the next decade will bring.

I cannot help remembering that last year I was so rushed on my birthday that I completely forget it until my sweet mother-in-law forced me to slow down for a birthday kiss: little did I know it would be the last one I would ever receive from her.

So what if I never expected my life would look like this at 40 - that's hardly surprising is it?

Just last weekend, between bites of an early birthday cake, my father quoted me an old saying that has rung in my ears all day today: "The secret to being happy in life is not getting what you want, but being happy with what you get."

And in the absence of grand declarations, that, I think, will be my mantra for the coming year and hopefully for all those that follow it.

Brave new world

As much as I deep down might entertain the notion that I am somehow different and perhaps even a little special, I was today humbled to learn that I am but a walking cliche.

That is to say, oh yeah, I cried.

Graham didn't, but I did.

He was a little nervous, but not overly so. He needed only some gentle reassurance and a great big hug before confidently taking his teacher's hand and allowing himself to be lead right out of his babyhood without so much as a backwards glance.

And I lingered, at the classroom door's edge, uncertain and teary, straining to keep him in my line of sight as he settled into a circle of his peers at the front of the room. The teacher nodded, a kindly cue for me to take my leave and even as I cursed myself for being that mom, the tears started to spill.

There's a reason why cliches become cliches and it was more emotional than I ever imagined it would be to know, at that moment, that the person I would die to protect was beginning his journey into a world where the sum total of the affections of a hundred friendly faces he encounters won't equal a millionth of the passion his mother has for his well-being.

So I cried, just a little, and I wished with all my heart that his Oma could have seen him today, so handsome, so grown up and so confident.

So yeah, I am a walking cliche and I cried, because even though Graham returned home today, looking exactly the same as he did this morning, I already miss the boy he was when he left.

How can you tell if your kid's a spoiled brat?

There are two ways of looking at the photos below: a selection of shots I took yesterday at the closing day of the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) in downtown Toronto.

If you just glance at the photos you will likely take in a scene that looks very similar to scenes I often present here, in pictures and in words: scenes of a carefree and charmed childhood enjoyed by a boy with two parents who, whatever their struggles, endeavor to create happy memories that will one day act as a bulwark against the complications and difficulties that adulthood inevitably brings.

Looks like a great day, right?


Wrong.

Yesterday was a terrible day.

Yesterday was a terrible day not because the CNE was hot and crowded and ludicrously expensive, though it was all of those things, but because it caused both Rob and I (though really mostly me) to question whether all the effort we put into creating memories with Graham is actually having the desired effect.

Let me be blunt: Graham wasn't just poorly behaved yesterday, he was insolent and just plain bratty.

Look a little closer at the photos.


Can you see the frustration and the exhaustion on our faces now?

We were exhausted - by almost constant, enduring temper tantrums that erupted over the most insignificant things the instant Graham's gratification was denied or delayed. We all know that keeping a three-and-a-half-year-old in line anywhere there are crowds and candy and rides and noise is bound to involve some major headaches, but normally the fleeting moments of joy and fun make it all worthwhile in the end.

Not yesterday.

I have never spent so much time correcting behaviour: talking, discussing, sternly warning and yes, yelling. I have never felt tears of frustration sting my eyes so many times in such a short time frame. The pain involved in yesterday's outing so far outweighed the pleasure that even a full 24 hours later, I still wish I had not bothered to go at all.

I still feel unsettled.

Graham's Labour Day weekend was a whirlwind. He celebrated his uncle's birthday with a big family dinner that went late on Thursday. On Friday we headed for the lake and spent Saturday and Sunday at Grandpa and Grandma's where Graham collected clams and played in the water with his cousins. He had a campfire and a sing-a-long and boat rides and barbecues. We came back to the city Sunday night for the express purpose of taking him to the CNE on Monday, our seventh wedding anniversary.

Was Graham overstimulated?

Maybe. Rob thinks so. He also thinks he was way overtired (true) and nervous about his first day of school on Thursday (possibly). He doesn't really think that Graham's behaviour, however awful, is completely out of the norm or that it indicates a problem with discipline or entitlement. He thinks I was right to be so hard on him, but that I should stop being so hard on myself.

But I'm not so sure.

Because I can't shake this nagging fear that my well-meaning attempts to make my son's childhood special have unwittingly contributed to the creation of a spoiled, entitled little monster.

First love

Many, many moons ago, before Graham developed his fixation on a certain comely neighborhood girl, he had another obsession.

And this obsession. I think, may well outlast his affection for any girl he has met or has yet to meet. This obsession, after all, has persevered since the very beginning of his short life; from the very first time he started to become capable of making his wants and desires known.

Graham is a balloon-a-holic.

He has been since birth and still is, as evidenced by the picture below taken at the birthday party for the daughter of a dear bloggy friend last weekend.

Yes, during a birthday party featuring wonderful food, tons of kids and a magic show with doves, a rabbit and an iguana, my boy spent most the time fixated on his first, true love.



Sigh.

Oh well, odds are balloons will never throw him over for the captain of the football team, right?