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Chaos is inevitable

Chaos is inevitable

June has felt like the Kool-Aid man of busy-ness has crashed through our lives. As we transition from the end of the school year and the activities that run from September-June, we also ramp up with summer job training and activities. The crossover has been super messy and some days we find ourselves out and about most of the day, just driving around.

I could spend time listing all of the things we do but realistically it’s a reasonable amount for two teens and two adults: Mr. Tucker and I both have one ongoing commitment and each kid has two ongoing commitments. But what happens when we have school crossover periods is that the end of the year ends up being more events than one reasonable calendar can hold. Since we all have social lives as well, it is one of the few times of the year where I wonder to myself, “should we get a second car?”

(The answer is no, no we should not. [1] What sounds like an easy solution would be a lot more time and money compared to the few times we may have to get a ride service to make an event. Although, I can see the appeal.)

Sometimes I will pop my head into online communities that focus on intentional or simple living. I don’t wade in too much since a lot of these spaces comprise of posts either asking people how-to live this way or posting some revelation that even the Greek philosophers wrote about 2000 years ago. In other words, it’s just low value to me when I have a shelf full of books that detail these things. But every once in awhile a post pops up that says something like, “WELP. I simplified my life and now I am bored.” When I see posts like that I scream in my head, “Too far! Too far!”

I think when people think of bringing balance to their lives, they think that somehow everything can be in equilibrium, always. But the reality is that balance often means switching priorities based on what is screaming the loudest and giving everything else the bare minimum. Currently, the Eldest has a bunch of training sessions for her summer job at a place that has crappy public transportation. So the priority is arranging our schedules to get her there and pick her up. Once her job starts she can bike to work so it will be up to her to manage that and we won’t be involved at all. But for now, it’s really thrown a wrench in our other scheduled activities. Mr. Tucker had to cancel a class this week because he just couldn’t be in two places at once. It happens. I am bailing on dragon boat this week because both children have activities that evening in the east and the west ends of the city and it made no sense to try and get me south so I can paddle. Some things just can’t be worked out.


The Eldest made this amazing tofu Tiki Masala & fresh Naan & quick pickled onions

We are pretty good at ensuring that we don’t fill the calendar up completely so that we still have space to eat dinner as a family & to keep some nights free. But it isn’t always going to work out so we have also accepted a couple of hellish weeks a year to strike a balance between doing nothing and doing the things we love. Next year it looks like the Youngest will be volunteering at the library right smack dab in the middle of roller derby practice. So it may be that she can only attend her extra-curricular sport every second week. She’s going to roll with it.

Sometimes it is also worth it to take advantage of opportunities that come only once in awhile even though you know you shouldn’t be adding anymore names to your dance card! My friend Susan was in town for a law conference last week and even though our weekend was bursting at the seams, making room for her to come and chill at our house last Saturday was an absolute gift. The last time I saw her was in Oakland in 2019! We caught up, ate a bunch of great food and my cheeks hurt from laughing so much. Since she divides her time between The Bay Area and Toronto, it’s rare that we are geographically co-located. So it was amazing to make that work. Who knows when I will see her in person next? Even though we chat online most days, being able to connect in person was incredible.

So while the chaos of too many things leads to burnout and resentment, the opposite can also be awful: discovering that you can only do nothing for so long & that you’re bored. A good balance is when you do a bunch of things that you enjoy that are bookended by periods where you have nothing to do and sometimes that may end up feeling like you have too much to do.

I suspect things will fall into a lazy summer rhythm after Canada Day. The Youngest will be at camp, the Eldest will be working and both of them will be hanging out with friends. Mr. Tucker will take a couple of weeks off of work and we will spend our days just floating around the pool interspersed with naps, reading books and making art.

Until then, we hustle through life getting much accomplished which will be a nice juxtaposition for when we just get to sit down, relax, and are able to enjoy doing a bunch of nothing.

[1] My father keeps saying that he wants to give us his old car when The Eldest gets her license but all I can think of is the compound costs of getting CAA, gas, insurance, maintenance, repairs, tires etc. The idea of the costs associated with a second car makes my eyes water. Still, not getting up to driver her to band practice at o’dark early may be worth it…

The end of #12DaysOfChristmasMovies

The end of #12DaysOfChristmasMovies

I suppose it started on Friday when The Youngest was not at all interested in going to get a family picture taken with Santa OR The Grinch. I sort of pushed back thinking it would be a fun Christmas activity & they said, “I don’t mind taking a family photo for Christmas, I am just not interested in the Santa/Grinch part.” Fair enough.

The entire scenario had a bit of “the beginning of the end” vibes.

We first started our #13DaysOfHalloweenMovies and #12DaysOfChristmas movies events in 2020 when it was the height of the pandemic. I was looking for ways we could celebrate the seasons in the face of no trick-or-treating and, big family dinners & visits to see Santa. The kids were 10 and 12 at this point & they had just had the rug pulled out from under them: no school, no friends, no family, no typical holiday celebrations.

It worked. We watched movies, shared our reviews with family and friends on social media and a new tradition was born. People told me that they looked forward to the kid’s weird reviews of things they had never noticed about movies they loved. It was fun…for awhile.

It’s 2023 now though and the kids are 13 and 15 and have mostly gone back to a normal existence. So instead of a fun activity we do as a family, it’s slowly morphed into a chore. We have slogged through a few movies in the past week and a bit and quite frankly I wasn’t enjoying it and I don’t get the impression Mr. Tucker and the kids were either. So after a busy weekend full of whirlwind activities I announced to the family that #12DaysOfChristmasMovies was coming to an end. We were all relieved.

The Eldest pointed out that we were more of a Halloween family and Mr. Tucker mentioned that there were way more movies for that time of year anyway. He said the Christmas movies seemed to have a couple of good releases a year but that the majority felt like a slog through a low-budget swamp. Fair enough. We still will watch new movies that pique our interest (and revisit some classics!) but not on such a rigid schedule.

What worked during the pandemic when we were all home with nothing to do didn’t transfer well to kids who were older and developing their own Christmas traditions with friends.

This lengthy preamble has a point and it is this: if a tradition doesn’t work for you, feel free to change it. I spent many years rolling the holiday rock uphill like some modern-day Sisyphean Santa and quite frankly, I resented it. My mother did it, my grandmother did it, my great-grandmother did it and I am stopping it. It’s too much work and the return on investment is low. If the point is to spend time with loved ones, then that is what we should focus on, not a rigid standard of how we spend time together. The pandemic gave me a perfect opportunity to switch more things up, which I happily did & continue to do. Here is a small list:

– We no longer get a fresh tree: as I became more disabled, the work fell more on Mr. Tucker’s head to drag a fresh tree home and decorate it. Last year we found a pre-lit tree on sale at Canadian Tire and we’ve never looked back. The Eldest was a bit disappointed because she loves the smell of a fresh tree, so I bought her an electric wax melt contraption and some melts that smell like evergreens. Mr. Tucker is happy, the smell of balsam fills the air and we’ve reduced our fire hazards. I do have fresh greenery in the form of a wreath that was bought from a local farm that was a fundraiser for The Youngest’s school. A little bit from column A, a little bit from column B.

– We no longer host a HUGE Christmas dinner: Mr. Tucker and I are a> the only people in the family with younger children; b> the main connection between both our families. For years we hosted 11-15 people for a large family dinner. It was exhausting, expensive and hugely unappreciated. While some people helped clean and people brought things, we were constantly inundated with the odd snarky comment and the occasional heated discussion. When the pandemic hit, we breathed a huge sigh of relief and stopped doing it. Now we order Chinese food on Christmas eve to hang out with my dad, Christmas day we eat leftover Chinese food, and Boxing day my stepson comes over and he and Mr. Tucker cook an elaborate dinner together (they both love cooking & my stepson is a sous chef). Christmas is now a relaxing, calm affair.

– We no longer do a children’s cookie decorating party: We used to do the Christmas cookie decorating party every year and other friends hosted the Easter egg decorating party, the Canada day party, and the Halloween potluck where we’d hangout and have dinner and drinks before heading out en masse to go trick-or-treating. Sadly, while these were great times, our kids got older and aged out and the parents also aged and didn’t want to do anymore hosting. I have some fantastic memories from those years though! We’ve instead replaced it with decorating cupcakes for The Mission’s Christmas dinner.

– I stopped doing Christmas cards: I really thought I would do some this year! I have had The Eldest draw our cards in recent years but you know what? She is too busy being a teenager to prioritize that anymore. Christmas cards are also super expensive to mail, averaging about $75-$100 a year to send out 50 cards (depending on if we used Santa photos we had to pay for and how many we sent out). Again, this feels like a relief now that I have made the decision.

– We focus more on Advent calendars than gifts: This is kind of a weird one because it saves us not much money or time but as a family we have decided that a small gift every day is much better than a bunch of gifts on Christmas morning. The Eldest loves a good makeup calendar, The Youngest loves a tea calendar and we all have used book calendars. I find it makes the entire month special for us.

If the holiday season is stressful and full of expectations, I heartily suggest you reject all of that (as best as possible) and concentrate on the parts of the season you enjoy and that makes you happy. I love the midwinter season: I love crafts, good food, friends & family, The Vinyl Café Christmas album and chilling out by the fire with a book and a cup of tea. So I focus on those things and spending time with my immediate family & good friends. Whether or not you do all the things or if you don’t do all of the things I guarantee someone will be disappointed, so you may as well just disappoint everyone and save yourself the work.

You don’t owe your elders – or anyone – your presence

You don’t owe your elders – or anyone – your presence

Someone close to me was recently discussing how his parents had hated their grandmother but they had tolerated her under the “respect your elders” rule. It was only as an adult that he learned that his mother was born when the grandmother was very young and that they were raised together as sisters. Then – once his mother learned the truth and had moved in with her “real” mom – his mother was sexually assaulted for years by the grandmother’s partner while she looked the other way. But yet, until the grandmother died, she was part of their lives. When he learned this, he was pretty shocked.

I have seen this played out time and again under various circumstances. For some reason we have come to believe that somehow older people can get away with various cruelties and that younger generations just have to tolerate the abuse. It’s baked into our culture by previous generations all of whom have raised us and know how to push our buttons.

But I am here to tell you today that you absolutely do not have to take it. You can walk away from an abusive relative and if you have children that they’ve acted abusive towards, it is IMPERATIVE that you do so.

Recently, after tolerating years snarky comments, lies and manipulation I finally cut someone out of our lives. While I won’t get into the details, the reality is that for years I had tried desperately to maintain a relationship with this person for my children’s sake. The weekly visits were a huge imposition on our time and energy and Mr. Tucker had to actually be present in the room with this person or else they would say the most awful things to me. But I never wanted anyone to say that I didn’t allow this person to craft their own relationship with my kids. My kids loved them and thought the world of them – until this summer.

This summer they got to see the real person behind the mask when they took my kids on a trip. This person was the adult in their lives who was supposed to protect them but instead they would walk ahead and leave them behind on public transportation and even in airport security. They would pick fights with the kids if they didn’t give them their picture postcard Kodak moments. They lashed out cruelly and said horrifically homophobic things. My kids spent most of the trip terrified that this Dr. Jekyll wouldn’t provide their basic needs. My kids came home terrified with a horrible bout of Covid and this narcissist bailed on our quarantine plan because, they just “were so tired and can’t handle it.” It was heartbreaking when my kids saw the truth because a person they loved betrayed them so horribly.

But it was the catalyst I needed to finally cut ties.

Here is the thing about narcissists and people you let get away with cruel behaviour: your tolerance of it emboldens them. They ratchet up the cruelty and the gaslighting to see how much they can get away with. They are such little people that it makes them feel big to abuse people and get away with it so it just keeps happening. Even if you confront them they will give you a non-apology such as “sorry you feel that way,” and the abuse will stop for awhile. But just as you get comfortable and think that MAYBE, THIS TIME you will be able to have the respectful adult relationship with them that you want, it starts again. It always starts slowly and builds up like the proverbial frog in the pot of water being warmed slowly. The pattern repeats.

The horrid behaviour I can take becomes a problem when you target my kids. In my friend’s situation above, the grandmother was always good to him and it was only as an adult that he learned the truth. With my kids, they experienced the horror first-hand. I just ended all communication with this person. I won’t have anyone treating my children like that.

Of course, in true narcissist fashion, I received an email last week from this person. No, not accepting blame and apologizing. That’s what a normal person who wrongs someone does. Instead, the email was basically three paragraphs about how they were disappointed that I don’t provide them with the perfect familial experience that they feel they deserve. Then they tried to guilt me into allowing them back into our lives. Rinse, repeat.

I replied with pointing out that if my kids want to have a relationship with them, they will reach out. Until then, I am blocking all of their methods of contacting me and I don’t want a relationship.

It’s absolutely heartbreaking when it comes to this. I’m actually sad that they will miss so much of our milestones as a family because they are so obsessed with controlling and manipulating people. Yes, they lie to us – but they lie to themselves more, crafting a victim narrative and denying their involvement in situations even when there have been many witnesses who refute their claim. Alone and sad, they cling to the behaviours that don’t serve them, alienating friends and family.

The truth is though, it’s not my problem anymore. They need to do the work and I think we are way past the point of that happening.

So if I have words of wisdom for you, it is this:

No one is perfect and of course we are all different so we will argue, not agree, and generally live our lives differently than other people may. Be as tolerant as possible of people’s differences.

Yes, you can tolerate behaviour from less enlightened older members of your family who may not “get” it. Make those conversations off-topic. But that only applies to some topics. Don’t accept abuse and gaslighting.

Create boundaries and make them clear and non-negotiable.

If multiple people tell you that you are wrong, you are probably wrong.

You don’t need to respect your elders if they don’t respect you. Everyone deserves respect.

Guilt is never a good reason to do something.

You don’t owe anyone their ideal of “family.”

If it harms you, you should consider not exposing yourself to that behaviour.

If it harms your children, you should absolutely protect them at all costs.