Baby

Tonight after you had taken your bottle in the dark and quiet of your room, I couldn’t bring myself to put you down, couldn’t bring myself to let you go, and so I stood there, a foot from the edge of the crib, with your little hands draped around my neck and your head resting on my shoulder, felt your tiny ribcage expand and contract with every breath as you drifted into the precursors of sleep, felt you be, and just loved you, and just missed you, and just poured all that love and all that missing into the space around us. You are so still when you’re sleeping, so the opposite of your little hurricane self when you’re awake, crawling or twisting or turning or grabbing or pulling (on hair, clothes, toys, furniture, yourself or anything you can reach, really.) And in that stillness I feel your vulnerability, your not-even-one-ness, and it breaks my heart, makes my breath catch for a moment in my throat, so that I have to remind myself to breathe again, to be ok with it.

You are little but getting bigger every day, growing in tiny, imperceptible ways, learning, kitten-like in your mannerisms, your noises, your expressions. I swear I have heard your purr. And I want the moment next to your crib to last forever, but there are lunches to pack and clothes to put away and even if I ignore them, the phone is ringing and your brother is calling me urgently from his bedroom, where he’s probably put his pj’s on backward, and I have to put you down, my love, I have to tend to other things and other people, and pray that in the morning, I’ll get to hold you again in peace, if only for a moment, before we go out into the tornado of the world again.

Motherhood

I have lost the ability to put together multiple coherent sentences, sentences that matter, that mean something to someone else, sentences that discuss something other than mealtime or bedtime battles, clothing wars, potty training progress, teething or growth percentiles. 

I have lost the ability to read anything longer than 2000 words - unless you can show me pictures, unless they are shiny, or the target audience is 15.

I have lost the ability to write, the words flowing off my fingers, through me and into a pen or onto a keyboard, writing unbidden, phrases coming faster than I can put them down somewhere permanent. On the rare occasion they do come, I am in the middle of bath time or bed time, my arms preoccupied with the rocking of an infant or the changing of a diaper, impossible to drop the task at hand. and by the time I get to the pen, the words are gone, vapours in the air, traces of what they were when I first thought them, gifts with the shortest lifespans, available only to those who can quickly, greedily hold them down.

I have lost the ability to fall asleep at a moment’s notice just when I need that ability most, just when my opportunities for sleep come in 10 and 15 minute intervals, just when the duration between the end of the baby’s feeding and the pre-schooler’s rising is exactly that amount of time, lost the ability to power nap when the power nap would give me the most power, refuel me enough to keep my eyes open, my voice answering ongoing, random questions I’ve never considered - what is the sky? Who is grandpa’s brother? Are you going to wash your shirt because it’s green? 

my voice singing - alternately in English and then Arabic and then French, A-B-C, aliph-ba-ta-tha, the wheels on the bus go round and round, rocking the baby, my mind spinning with so much and so little. 

For my baby...

It’s that last moment before bed, when you’ve finished your bottle and we’ve read your Quran and I’m standing up to put you down into your crib, that last moment when I’m holding you around your chubby little waist and I pull you in for a kiss and tell you “tisbah ‘ala kheir’, that I want to last forever. No matter how tired I am, no matter what kind of day it’s been, that kiss on your cheek is never enough, that moment always, always ends too quickly.

And you’re starting to squirm, even now, when I prolong it. When my lips don’t leave your cheek in sufficient time, when I go for a third, or a fourth, or a fifth. You know your routine: the room is dark, we’ve drank our milk, we’ve said our dua, don’t confuse me, Mama, I think now it’s time to sleep. But this is when I ache with my love for you. This is when I don’t know if I’ll be able to bear it to put you down, while you’re still so warm and so soft and so pudgy in my arms, while I’ve forgotten that you whined while we made dinner, or smacked me in the face, albeit playfully, while we sang and clapped.

And then when you wake up at 2 a.m., I think to myself, “Dear God, sleep, Child!” and yet, right at bed time, I wish I could freeze time and stay standing there, suspended above your crib, holding you, rocking you, kissing your delicious little face with your fat little cheeks and your dimpled chin and your extra rolls of adorable. I wish I could freeze it and stay in that moment, just you and me and our love, before you want to run away, before you’re focused on impressing someone else, before you talk back and try to escape your homework, before life.

The one in which baby acts like a bobblehead doll and also has a bald spot

When Baby D was born, one of the mos noticeable things about him was his full head of black hair. It was everywhere on his head, beautiful and thick. Each nurse would note it when she came in to check on us or take his temperature.
After a few weeks though, it started thinning all over his head except right on top, so that soon he was down to a faux-hawk... Now, I've heard that babies often lose the hair they're born with, and that eventually it gets replaced with their "real" hair, so basically, you don't know if the colour or texture is going to stay the same. I've also heard that sometimes they're totally bald in between the two stages, and other times the old hair is falling out while the new hair is growing in, so you can't really tell it's happening.
All I know now is that, after thinning out for some time, Baby D's hair has been seeming to grow back in for the last three weeks or so. Of course, when you spend as much time, continuously, looking at something or someone, you usually can't see the change. It's like trying to figure out on a day-by-day basis if you're gaining or losing weight. It's basically impossible. So, while the hair on the sides of his head is maybe-sort-of growing back in, the hair on the back of his head is gone gone gone!
That's right ladies and gents. Baby D has a bald spot. It's not on the top, it's right on the back of his head. It's what my older sister lovingly refers to as a "pillow spot" and is apparently common with babies who sleep on their backs (which is basically the safe way for all babies to sleep)... Until they start sitting up, a lot of babies spend so much time on their backs that they essentially rub their heads clean of any hair there. Of course, the truly hilarious aspect of all of this is that he has hair again at the nape of his neck, so it looks like a really hilarious rat tale situation. I call his hair situation "the reverse mullet": it's party in the front, business in the back (and then a rat tale - heheh).
The other hilarious thing about him now is the bobblehead situation. While he learns to hold his head up, he's in this in-between stage where he seems to think he's a bobblehead. If he's sitting, he's bobbling constantly. I've seen this with all babies I know passing through his age and stage, so you'd think I'd get used to it, but instead, it never ceases to amuse and amaze me.
So, I have a balding, bobble-headed little man to take care of. And I couldn't be happier :)

From the Mouths of Babes (part 4)

This one comes to you from the UAE, courtesy of Abu Dhabi Angel.
The setting:
Angel is watching a program on TV in which they are eating hot dogs. At the same time, Abu Dhabi Mama is cooking burgers in the kitchen.

Angel (in utter amazement): "Mama, I can smell the food from the tv!"

Ode to Skype

About a year and a half ago, I wrote this very frustrated post about a skype catch-22 wherein M and I lost our credit and couldn't call our family in Egypt. Well, since that time, I've become a super avid Skype user, and I felt they deserved a much-love shout out right here. It's only fair, since I took them to task when they were making me unhappy.

Ode to Skype:

My sisters live two airplanes away
timezones, miles, landmass and oceans between us
hours of sleep and waking upside down
or inside out
Days and nights reversed
Lives inverted

My sisters who
shared my room
whispered late into
the night with me
were the cause of my drowsy eyes
at the kitchen table
my sleepy smile

My sisters who know my secrets
who keep me grounded and help me fly
who giggle better, hug better, bake better, tease better
than anyone I know
My sisters who gave me
the nieces and nephews
I long for all year
who keep me counting down to summers together
when we can laugh at the kitchen table
over breakfast, eyes half open
bleary but dragged to life by the kids
who slept at eight

But
until the kitchen table
until the hugs in person
until the wiping off each others' tears
I see them through the screen
the kids running to and from the computer
voices ringing with excitement
saying hi to their cousins
cooing at babies
shouting to be heard over the din
of all the voices

and the kitchen table spans three continents
an ocean
twelve hours worth of timezones
(some for breakfast, some for supper)
and we're still together
despite the world of bustle in between.

Of Grocery Shopping and Cake Baking

It's really very hard to believe that I've already been off work for three months. I started Mat leave on December 3rd, and when I think about what I've been doing with my time "off", I have to remember to change my perspective significantly...
Left t0 my old ways of thinking, it's tempting to say 'I have nothing to show for the last three months', but, uh, HELLO, I have a two and a half month old baby to show for it! And that's what I mean by a shift in perspective. Because after you've spent your whole life in school, followed by 6 years at an office job, you measure productivity by deliverables. For as long as I can remember, I've had something to submit: homework assignments, first drafts, book reports, lab results, presentations, standard operating procedures, flow charts, meeting minutes, work tickets... The list goes on and on and on.
This project though, the one I'm working on write now, project Little Boy, is not "deliverable based". I don't get to submit Dude to anyone for evaluation every two weeks. I don't file a report nightly ('today Dude slept 10 hours and was awake 14 hours. He had 8 diaper changes, 10 feedings and a bath. He spent one hour being burped, one hour in his baby swing, and 15 minutes doing tummy time. He looked at me and laughed 7 separate times. He cried 12 separate times.')
No, Dude-raising is a long term project, a VERY, long term project, and while there are milestones by which I can assess how I'm doing, there are also a million little repetitive tasks that fill up the day before I add anything extra, like, say, cooking, or laundry.
Still, on the one hand, though my tasks now never end and my time isn't mine any longer, on the other hand, my schedule is as open-ended as it's ever been. At this age for Little Dude, so long as he's fed, burped, changed and warm, he really doesn't care about anything else. And so I can decide at 1:30 pm that I will do some grocery shopping at 2, or bake a cake on the fly, or try a new recipe I've never made and spend 40 minutes going through the store aisles painstakingly searching for ingredients. I can spend all day reading a book while I feed, burp, wrap, and rock the Little Dude. And that is what I have to show for the last three months, because soon this stage will be over: he'll be crawling or teething or talking or going to playgroups and my schedule will be tied down again, and 2 a.m. will no longer be the same as 2 pm., so I'm enjoying it while it lasts...

From the Mouths of Babes (or actually second graders: part 3)

When my mom was still here in January, Cali Angela, who's now 7 years old, would call often to chat with her Grandma, and check up on Little Dude. Cali Angela's pretty used to having her grandparents around for a couple of months every winter, and the fact that she was Grandma-less meant that she spent a great deal of her phone calls to us devising ways in which we could all go down to Sacramento and visit her and her family, instead of the current arrangement wherein we were all in Montreal, so far, which made no sense at all.
During one of these phone calls, M had just come home, and she was explaining to the rest of us that we should come with the phone on speaker when she heard him enter. After saying "salaam" to him and filling him in on her brilliant travel plans, he broke it to her gently.
"The problem is that I have work, so I wouldn't be able to come to California".
"That's not a problem," Cali Angela replied, un-phased. "My dad goes to work every day. You could just go with him."

Oh Angela, if only it were that simple...

From the Mouths of Babes (part 2)

This little gem comes to you courtesy of Dubai Angel, whose name is now Abu Dhabi Angel, thanks to their move to the UAE Capital this year. Abu Dhabi Angel is now 3 (like his little cousin, Cali Angel), and an avid cook who follows his mother into the kitchen every chance he gets, planning to help her in whatever meal she's about to make.
My sister tells me that the other day, they were all out shopping at a mall, and passed a store with a set of pots and pans in the window display:
Abu Dhabi Angel stopped dead in his tracks and called her back over, his voice extra excited:
"Mama!" he said, "when I grow up and get married, I want you to bring me right back to this store, so I can buy this set of pots and pans, so I can cook for my wife!"

Ha! Here's hoping he remembers this when he does get married, because if he does, right now there's a little girl out there who's going to be VERY happy some time in the future.

From The Mouths of Babes (or should I say preschoolers)

The latest and greatest tidbit from the youngest Cali-Angel...
Grandpa is currently there visiting, and he and our youngest Cali-Angel have many opportunities for bonding (Grandpa drives him to preschool everyday, so that car time is just for them). The kids are used to seeing both my mom and dad together when they go to visit, but right now of course, my mom is preoccupied with the newest grandchild here in Montreal, aka, my son "Little Dude".
So what does Cali-Angel, now a glorious 3 and a half years old, say upon seeing his grandfather at the beginning of this latest visit?
"Hi Geddo (Grandpa). Where's your friend Teta (Grandma)"?

Ha!

The Case of the Magical Mommy

This is a belated Thanksgiving post, not because it was supposed to be written at Thanksgiving, but because there is just so much to be thankful for. M and I were blessed with a little boy a little over two weeks ago... The Little Dude (henceforth to be referred to as LD) is an absolute joy - it's amazing how much fun can be had looking at an infant make silly faces, open and close his eyes, turn his head... It's also amazing how someone so tiny can completely shift your entire schedule: eating habits (what to eat, when to eat, how to eat), sleeping habits, noise around the house - everything changes... Through out my pregnancy, I was rather lax with my food sensitivities... I felt sick whether I had wheat or not, so why not enjoy that croissant... Now, if I feel sick, so does Little Dude, and if Little Dude feels sick, he doesn't sleep, and if he doesn't sleep... well, you see where this is going. I haven't been this good about avoiding my food intolerances in over a year. He's re-introducing discipline to my life.
Of course, just because I eat right, doesn't mean he will sleep either. In fact, so far LD has a habit of sleeping during the day and waking up at night ready to par-tay! Most days from 1-6 a.m., he's like "Mama, this is where it's at!" and nothing, not eating, changing, swaddling, being rocked, being burped, or playing will change his mind. And this is where part two of the Thanksgiving comes in... My mother has been hear with us since before LD arrived, waiting for his arrival, coaching us through the arrival, and coaching us since his arrival.
Sore and in need of a back-rub? Have no fear, super-mommy is here to indulge you, even if it's past midnight... Baby won't settle down at 2 a.m.? Super-mommy to the rescue - hand the baby over once he's fed, and she'll take care of the burping, swaddling, rocking and changing. Don't want to eat take out, but have no energy to cook? Mommy's been keeping us going with amazing, healthful, home-cooked food that tastes great on top of it... and it's not like she has all the energy in the world. She does this on the little sleep she gets between each Little Dude hand-off...
I wake up at 5 a.m. for a feeding and she's got a little breakfast in bed tray set up on the night table: Kamut bread with sheep's milk cheese and tomatoes, or salmon salad, clementines, prunes, water or herbal tea. I can't imagine what I would do without her here.
I'll be home with LD this year on Mat Leave, and bit by bit I plan to get the hang of this whole 'sleeping enough with a baby' thing. But for now, having super-mom around is just a God-send. She's always been super mom, but there's nothing like becoming a mother yourself to really show you how amazing yours is.

About this summer...

The post I'm writing right now was meant for July. That's the kind of summer it's been. My internationally-residing sisters and their munchkins were here for the summer, and by here I mean Ottawa, and my younger sister and I took every opportunity to get down there and see them. It was glorious - the joys of extended family - because, let's face it, our nuclear family, with all the kids and the husbands and the in-laws, really has become an extended family - were so so so apparent. I don't know how to describe how I felt, the complete and total enjoyment of being together, the first night my sisters and I were all in the same room again and within 5 minutes of all arriving were acting like teenage girls (but only in the "we're so inhibited and we have so much fun" way, NOT in the "we can be super annoying" way). It helped, of course, that the kids were sleeping that first night, that we were able to regress to our silliness unobserved by curious 5 year-old eyes and get it all out of our systems before they had a chance to see us in the morning.
Ah, the kids... they are growing: My Cali Angela is 7. 7! Her little brothers are 6 and 3. Dubai Angela (who will need to be renamed since her family is relocating to Abu Dhabi) will be 5 in a couple of months. Her little brother is 3 and then there's the Baby Angel, who's been on the seen for less than two months... Remember him? The quiet one? His voice is still very soft :)
And of course, there is Montreal Angela - she who will soon be 1... Montreal Angela is no longer the baby of the family. Of course, don't try to tell her that... And this summer, she was old enough to play and be played with. The other kids, particularly Dubai Angel, adore her. And she adores being adored...
Cali Angela and Dubai Angela do everything together. They even draw pictures for each other and send them in the mail. They remind me of my relationship growing up with my cousins in Egypt, how we missed each other all year but for a few weeks each summer, were bound together, given endless days to play and run and talk and get covered in dust and grime... how those precious weeks sustained our entire relationship, how our sense of family grew defined by that time... The kids are still little but they're growing. They ask new questions every day. Harder questions, ones I have to think about before answering.
And this summer is officially over now in our family... The last "crazy/busy" trip to Ottawa was last week... Now we start the countdown to next summer, sustain ourselves with the phone and the internet for a year, and that's ok, because we're good at it, because if you're close enough, distance is hard, but ultimately, irrelevant...

Baby Angel Arrival Bulletin

Extra! Extra! Read all about it here!
Auntie Noha is now an Aunt times 7!
His Tiny-ness arrived last Sunday, 9 days overdue, in Ottawa, and will be continuing to grace us with his presence until his Mama and older siblings (Dubai Angel and Angela, respectively) head back to the UAE in early September...
He is the first baby in our family that I can remember who seems to have a fairly quiet cry - ha! I'm not sure it'll last, but right now, even at his most cranky, his "waaah, waaaah", isn't a "WAAAAAAAAH, WAAAAAAAAAAH!". I say enjoy it while you can, Mama Angel!
His older brother and sister are taking their new arrival very well, and are happy to help Mama and Baba hold baby, dress baby, feed baby (mind you, they don't really do these things, but they are extremely supportive, and they frequently get their parents whatever baby-item they need from across the room or downstairs :))
Dubai Angela also has plans to put on a puppet show for his Tiny-ness. I'm not sure how she'll manage that, as his eyes are frequently closed, but I wish her the best of luck!

The Angels are Coming!

Yes, it's true. A couple of weeks ago, I got the fantastic news. After several months of bracing myself that my various international little angels would not be visiting this summer, a twist of wind blew fate the other way and both (both!) of my out-of-country sisters will be coming to visit.
What does this mean? Well, first of all, it means that my Dubai Angela and Angel will soon be meeting Baby Angela (our beautiful latest addition who arrived last September) for the first time, and I'm sure they'll be doing their best to "babysit" her from day 1. My younger sister tells me the story of speaking on the phone with Dubai Angela, who announced to her last fall, "Auntie, when we come in the summer, I'll be four and a half, so you can leave baby with me and take a nap or go for a walk!" (oh, to be four and a half again and think that four and a half is old!).
The California Angels will arrive shortly after, in June, and then the party will truly begin. Luckily, they'd met Baby Angela this winter when she and her mommy took a little trip south, and they took turns "babysitting" too. Ah, the fun.
What else does it mean? It means that Ottawa will be loud, filled with that gorgeous, ear-splitting decibel of children everywhere, in the back yard running through the sprinkler, in the kitchen asking for peanut butter and honey sandwiches, under your arm momentarily when you manage to scoop them up for kisses before they run past you to go fight over a toy or finish a game of tag or tea.
There is nothing I love more than watching my parents with their grandchildren, the conversations that take place between a child who still stares at the world with wonder and a parent whose wisdom and lifetime of experience has shown him its reality. Last summer, a couple of days before Dubai Angela went home, she and Grandma had the most beautiful conversation on the carpet in the living room after night prayer. The rest of us listened as Angela asked Grandma why she couldn't go back with them to Dubai, as she painstakingly explained where everyone would sleep, how there was enough room for everyone there around the supper table, convinced that if she solved this one little problem Grandma and Grandpa could get on the plane and come back with them... My mother evaded, pointing out that she hadn't bought a plane ticket, that maybe there would be none left, and finally saying to Little Angela, "but I can't live in Dubai - Ottawa's my home"... It was beautiful and sweet and funny and sad all at once, and you could see three and a half year old Angela growing up with the realization that sometimes you have to be apart from the people you love, sometimes it's not as simple as getting a plane ticket...
I don't think I'll ever forget that conversation. It reminded me of one I had with my Grandfather, long ago, on his veranda in Alexandria, the moment between my mother's father and I, his kind, knowing smile, my young mind struggling to understand. I used to cry each summer we would visit Egypt, when we'd get in the car to leave Alexandria for Cairo, and again, when we'd get in the car to drive through Cairo one last time for the airport. I'd look behind me at the waving hands and cry and cry, and ask why they couldn't all just live in Canada with me. I remember learning Little Angela's lesson and growing older with that knowledge. I remember, when I was little, it not being enough that I would see all those loved ones soon. And now it is enough. And now I'm grateful.

Sports-fan Vengeance

When M and I were engaged, I constantly told him that he was a nicer, more discipline version of me. Being so nice, he of course protested and denied my point, but after 2+ years of marriage, I am convinced that I'm more right than ever.
Exhibit A: we went on a little trip to Boston over Easter - and the city is gorgeous! Beautiful architecture, gorgeous nature, nice people, incredible history. The only thing I couldn't appreciate was their hockey team - the Boston Bruins. Now, the Bruins are major rivals to my boys, the Montreal Canadiens, and we were there in the thick of the play-off race, so when Boston lost one of the games they had that weekend (to Toronto, no less!) I was smugly satisfied. "But why?" M asked, "why do you want them to do badly?"
"Because they're our rivals - I have to hate them. I DO hate them." and I meant it. Not the individual players or people - I have nothing against those, but the team, the Bruins as an entity: I can't want them to do well. What kind of a Habs fan would that make me?
Exhibit B: My beloved Canadiens have pulled off a miraculous upset in round 1 of this year's play-offs, beating the unbeatable Washington Capitals, a team with Ovechkin, Backstrom, Semin, Knuble, and a defenseman named Mike Green who's been nominated for the Norris trophy this year. I'm listing all these guys so you realize who GOOD washington was. And we beat them. And on the night of their elimination, as we were leading the score 2-0 with 5 minutes left, the TV panned across the Washington audience and showed us their desolate faces. M felt sorry for them. I laughed at them. I may have said "Nana nana boo-boo". Mature. I know. But the point is, I felt pure and total glee at their frustration. Again, my bewildered husband asked "Why?" - and I truly can't remember what I answered, but I justified my behaviour. Now, to put it in more articulate words, I think this is the reason: this is the joy in being a fan. You laugh at the other team because if they weren't losing you'd be losing. Victory and defeat in sports are mutually exclusive. Victory only goes to one side. So I'm laughing at them not so much because they're losing, but because the fact that they're losing means I'm winning. In life, this is different. In life, you can make yourself a winner and help other people be winners at the same time. I would never allow myself to laugh at another's misfortune in life. But in sports, I more than allow it, I enjoy it. M still thinks this is unreasonable, and that's all the proof I need that's he's nicer. Waaaaaaaay nicer. I'm lucky my husband is so awesome.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go get my hate on for the Pittsburgh Penguins. This is gonna be more difficult. Crosby was Canada's golden boy 2 months ago, and now he must become an enemy. Wish me luck!

Closing thoughts

I was going to write a long, after-the-fact post about the Olympics, but the fact that I wanted to make it long was putting it off, so I've decided to ramble a little instead, and include what I felt were a few links to other articles/media that gave me the warm and fuzzies inside.
General thoughts are:

• I love this country. It's huge and generous and physically cold but emotionally warm and inviting. We smile at each other. We generally mean well. We have a lot of wonderful things that some of the bigger, more powerful countries around us do not (hello healthcare!) and I'm perfectly happy with out humble approach to patriotism. I don't see it as essential to have a flag on hand every time we finish well in an event just so we can wave it. It's enough to be wearing our colours, to be smiling, to be us. I also didn't truly care whether we "owned the podium" or not. Long after the rest of these Olympics are forgotten, the two Canadian moments most of us will remember are Alexandre Bilodeau hugging his brother Frederic, and Joannie Rochette, going out there and giving the skate of her life while still grieving her mother's sudden death. Sports are a symbol of what we love and who we aspire to be, not the real thing.
  
• The men's hockey final was awesome, but I think for many, the game that really made us feel it was the quarter-finals against Russia. I, for one, came into this game with dread and fear and foreboding in the worst possible way. I always always always feel my team (no matter who) is going to lose, and last Wednesday was no exception. But we won. In fact, not only did we win, we KILLED. We were very, very good. At one point, around the time that the score was 4-1 or 5-1, one of the Canadian commentators said, "we came into this game talking about the Russians' skill, but what about the Canadians' skill..." and you know what? He was right? I think of our guys as hard working, I think of them as tough and honest, and taken individually, each as a star with his NHL team, I would trade the entire Habs roster to have any one of them come play in Montreal, but altogether, as I was comparing teams, did I think of them as skilled? No. And why is that? Is it our humility taken to an unproductive level? I think so, and it begs the question, could we stand to feel a bit more pride not just in our work ethic and tenacity, but in our competence, in our skill? Again, I think so.
• That said, I like our humility... I like our ability to laugh at ourselves, as we did during the tongue-in-cheek closing ceremonies (apologizing athletes? William Shatner? giant flying moose and beavers? It may just be that I have a corny sense of humour, but I LOVED). So, I suppose it's a balance of confidence and humility together.
• You know I love hockey, and you know my little sister hates it, but even she was moved when she saw the men's team win gold on Sunday. And hockey does something to most of us as Canadians, seeps into us and becomes part of who we are as people, even if we aren't huge fans or don't know the stats. This fantastic article by Michael Grange really captured the spirit of hockey's effect on our identities, and I had to share.
  
• And now, because Stephen Brunt said it so much better than I can, here's a great photo essay about how I, and many others, felt about the games.
  
  

Sisters

We are four sides to a square, each holding that precarious balance, their piece of our existence as a whole. We are a range of colours and shapes and emotions, an abstract painting done in some dream of light, a reflection through a foggy mirror, each of us swimming into the next, the distinction so clear and yet so blurry. We can be the same person if we swim far back enough, can reach that point where our hearts are still beating in one spot, are still fed directly from our mother, where our minds do not yet fully exist, where our worlds are warm and fuzzy and hold you so close, so protective, there is nothing to do but be held.
I am a different person with my sisters, different with each of them and yet exactly the same because it is not a secretive change, but a natural one. I am a clown with S, a writer with H, and a sweetheart with A. We fit into each other’s clothes, steal shoes and thoughts and old headscarves, steal ideas. We steal and are stolen from willingly, listen and talk silently, hug and cry when there is nothing else to be done. My sisters stretch before me like sign posts, they stretch after me like a trail of fans, following every step, waiting, breath held, to see what I will do next.
A is the oldest, and so sweet there is something beguiling in her smile. You can’t help but have some of it rub off on you when you’re with her – you start to think more kindly, to talk more earnestly, to ignore the things that drive you crazy. A tricked our parents into thinking all little girls were so angelic, so they went and had more of us, and for that we all owe her.
H is the witness, the one who chronicles our lives, all the joys and the heartbreaks – the graduations and marriages, the births, the reunions and separations. H will make you cry no matter how determined you may be to keep your eyes dry and your face stern. She will find that spot in you by telling, by reminding, by making you soar first and dive later, reach your humanity, your longing. When we are 80 and we want to remember, it is to H’s words that we will turn. When we are 80, she will still find ways to make us cry.
S is the baby and the joker. She is the opening line of a performance that started off as a simple phone call, and the comic relief at the end of any hardship. S has a knack for words and keeps it a secret, tucked away beneath a straight face, sparkling eyes deadpan, waiting for you to crack first. And though she’s the baby she’s been everywhere and done everything. She steamrolls right past you – not showy or obvious, but quietly doing her exceptional thing as though it was nothing, and blushing when you point out the accomplishments, wishing you would stop.
I do not know who I am without them – I am attempts at A’s kindness and gentleness, H’s intensity and lyricism, S’s wit and humility. I am attempts to emulate each of my sisters, falling short and hoping to some day catch up, happy in the meantime that I at least have the teachers to guide me.

Little Angel Bonding Time

I have had the pleasure and joy of seeing Baby Angela two days in a row this week: last night, my sis and brother-in-law were over for dinner, and of course brought the tiny little bundle of adorability with them, which allowed for much cuddling time. Today, I babysat her for a couple of hours after work. Baby Angela is still only 3 and a half months old, so me describing to you in excruciating detail what she does is really not interesting unless you're one of her doting relatives, you kind of have to see it yourself. But let me just say that up close, this little girl is spunky and has a lot personality. When she's lying on her back on the ground, she raises her hands and legs in the air and circles her legs as though she's riding a bicycle. I think she's just inspired a new exercise method!
Also, the mohawk: Baby Angela has a mohawk right now. Not a real one, but an "I'm semi-bald and when my hat comes off the hair in the middle of my head makes a bee-line for the cieling" kind of mohawk. So cute. She rocks the look like the little punk that she is...
In other Little Angel news, a hilarious story from my Dubai Little Angel, who is turning three in a few months. Apparently, his mother took his teddy bear "Bobbo" from him one day in order to wash it a while back. She told him Bobbo was taking a bath and put him in the laundry.
A few days later, my other sister (Baby Angela's mom) reports over-hearing this conversation while on the phone with her:
Mother: "Little Angel, how many times have I told you, take your foot out of the washing machine".
Little Angel: "But I want to take a bath".
Ha! From the mouths of babes, indeed.

Awesomest Eid Ever

We are on day 3 of Eid Al-Adha, but really wrapping it up because tomorrow's a monday and we'll be back at work. Normally, we end up celebraiting Eid for a day because it's too hard to take more time off, or we're travelling to and from Ottawa or TO, but this Eid, this Eid was different. My parents were coming to Montreal, M's parents and brother were also coming, and my younger sister's in-laws were also in town. Basically, we celebrated in true family style, as-in a bunch of people around an extended table, elbows pressed together, laughter and conversation and ladels being passed from person to person to person. The food was delicious and the company even more so.
It was such a success that M and I (and my younger sister and her hubby) are all insisting that there must be one communal Montreal-style Eid each year.
Repeat, for sure!

A little dose of inspiration and beauty

The words in this are perfect, so I won't add my own: