there is no end in sight

i first met her a couple of days after i moved into this house. her name is irene and she lives in the little grey house across the street. she is elderly, into her eighty ninth year now, and rather grey looking, much the same grey as her house in fact. she has this warm voice that immediately makes you think of wisdom and experience. i was drawn into her the moment i met her. it only took a minute though to realize that she wasn't completely there mentally, her stories repeating like a broken record, her stare unwavering. marko and i entertained her cyclical conversation for five, maybe even ten minutes, and then we made up a reason why we had to leave. she was enamored with ada, touching her toes and smiling off into the distance.

i just realized that i am talking like she is dead, but she isn't. this isn't about death at all, in fact it is almost about the opposite.

mostly the relationship that i have shared with irene has been from afar. i later learned that she lives alone in that house, except for the home care workers that come to see her for an hour here and an hour there, making sure all her ducks are in a row, pills taken, stoves turned off. she has lived there, in that very house, everyday of her 89 years. in fact, i am told, she was born there, in the grey little house. she lived with her parents and then when they died she stayed on and kept living. she has a sister who wants to put her in a home, but irene knew what was coming for her and she made it clear before it was too late that she didn't want that, she wanted to die in the home too, it only seemed right. so she is over there, across the street, doing whatever it is she does all day, and waiting.

a kilt maker by trade, she worked for a fancy boutique on granville street, but one day, when she couldn't take her boss anymore, she decided to try it out on her own. legend says that she was even commissioned to make a custom kilt for the queen. "it isn't easy getting it just right you know, not just anyone can do it". so she lived with her parents and made kilts for the queen and never left.

all through the summer i would watch her as she sat on her front steps. it is a steep set of stairs that leads to her house and she would often sit, in the early evening, right in the middle, and she would look around carefully like a cat. her face was always set the same, serious with deep lines carved into the skin. sometimes the soft last light of day would hit her just right and i would grab my camera, but i couldn't take the shot from my house, it wouldn't work through the trees, and i was much too afraid to ask her. i dreamed of that photo though, every time i saw her out there, it must have been two or three dozen times. often as people walked past she would say hello and they would say hello back, a familiarity seemed present. if a block has a matriarch i guess she is ours.

i have come to accept that i have a bit of a fascination with irene. i think it is because i don't understand what it feels like to stick something out so fully. sometimes i wonder if it was giving up more than staying put though. i have often thought that irene's story is a sad one, tragic even. no children or grandchildren to fill her quiet life with joy, hardly any visitors and then alzheimer's to leave you confused and frustrated. she has people who come and take her out, and others that bring baking and groceries by, but by and large she is in the house, alone.

i was brought back to thinking about irene this afternoon as the snow fell. you see, living in a house there is a certain amount of work that needs to get done, garbage taken out, leaves raked, lawns mowed, that kind of thing. periodically throughout the summer i would see someone over there mowing, or raking, but i never gave it much thought, i guess i thought she had a gardener, but then today something unexpected happened. after more than 8 inches of snow fell, leaving everything white and new, six of my neighbours showed up in front of irene's house with shovels in hand and they cleared her walk, her stairs and iced, and then they each went back to their own home. a few hours later they came back out and did it again. there seemed to be a silent understanding. it wasn't just adults either, a couple were teenagers, no doubt sent out by their parents, but there they were out none the less. for me it seemed like a scene from a christmas movie, the cheesy moment where everyone comes together and spreads love, or something, only in real life it didn't seem cheesy, it seemed kind of incredible.

when i saw another neighbour hours later and i asked about it she said that they all pitch in to help, that it was each of my neighbours in turn that i had seen mowing the lawn or raking the leaves last summer. "some who can't help physically bring by baking and dinner already cooked", she said. even the wreath hanging from her grey door was brought over by someone who thought she could use it.

i have never known this vancouver. i have never even heard about it through legend. it seemed like a scene from the seventies, when no one locked their doors and everyone had neighbourhood barbecues. too good to be true, and yet it is. everyone doing something that gets them nothing in return, other than the right to say they are a community, that they are neighbours in the true meaning of the word.

i am not sure why i wanted to write about her tonight, so many times i have thought of it and turned it down. maybe it is because i am a pessimist, the one in the room who can be heard whispering, "i hate people", but then there is this, the opposite of what i have known, and it filled me with optimism and hope. maybe it is because i think her story needs to be shared because maybe that is what she is to bring to the world, a reminder of the way things used to be, could be, everywhere again. if the worth of a life is the mark it leaves on the world, then from over here it seems like she is doing alright.

a liquid cure

after a couple of weeks of holding, twisting, licking, shaking and tipping, today she finally figured it out. oh how her eyes lit up as cohen's watered down juice hit her tongue. she's got perseverance, i'll give her that.

one for the money, two for the show..

it may be too early to know for sure, but it looks like as though my shiny macintosh has given up the ghost. i bought it just over a year ago and i am now thanking my common sense husband for suggesting the extended care plan. it would have been a bitch to have the thing kick it less than a month out of warranty. other than the minor inconvenience of not getting to use something shiny, it isn't much of a big deal. i still have my old laptop, and we backup our computers daily to an external hard drive. having a computer geek for a husband has it's benefits, heck he is out there trying to fix it right now, you never know, maybe it is time for another christmas miracle?


what i really wanted to talk about though was potty training. i know that there are a few moms that read the blog with kids around the same age as cohen, so tell me...are you thinking about? finished? working on it? thinking about thinking about it?

back in january when silvija was here we were working on it. i knew it was too soon for him to really understand the concept, and he was nowhere near communicative enough to tell us he had to go, but we thought we would just get him used to the idea of a potty. he started sitting on it everyday, often with fantastic results (if you call that kind of thing fantastic), but then silvija went home, and ada was born, and slowly potty training fell by the wayside. i did buy this book, and i even started reading it (although i forget what i read now), but instinctually i felt that he wasn't ready to actually make a go of it.

i never did write about it here, but in april, shortly after ada was born, cohen came down with a strange illness, so strange that my doctor couldn't diagnose him and sent us to a pediatrician. he didn't know what it was either and sent us to the hospital for a bunch of tests. i mention it now because one of the tests was a urine sample. the lab technician handed me a cup in a very nonchalant manor and pointed to the bathroom, i paused before asking her what it was for? she then told me that she needed the urine, from cohen, in a cup, on command?? when i explained that such a thing was not possible she looked at me with scorn and judgement. i was dumbfounded, so much so that i felt i needed to explain that he was not even two yet. she didn't seem to see that as a barrier. finally she sighed and handed me a urine bag to take home in hopes of getting a collection. i couldn't help but think, seriously? less than two? i understand that some kids are trained by then (although i highly doubt they are trained to go on command in a strange bathroom at the hospital right after having a bunch of blood drawn), but surely it is more the exception than the norm?

it was about a month ago that i finally revisited the idea. he says potty, pee, and poo now, and i know he understands when he is going, plus, his diaper is usually dry when he wakes up, all good signs right? what i didn't take into account is the mentality of a two year old.

i met a woman at the park one day whose 18 month old was almost trained. i asked her what her secret was and she said that since the weather had gotten nice,she simply allowed her daughter to be naked all the time and she just figured it out. sounds easy, i thought, let's get on that. yeah right. thank goodness i bought the giant package of paper towels on our last visit to costco. i can see now that i should have asked more questions. questions like, did you make her sit on a potty a bunch of times as well? how many? were there rewards? cause the thing is, cohen thinks it's great to be naked, and he knows when he is going to go because he hides or goes into another room, he'll even come out after and say "uh oh!" and take me to show me where he went, but transferring this information to a vessel is tricky. initially we had a stand alone potty that we were using, but i started to sense his interest in the big potty, so we got him his own seat. he sits on it now and i sit with him. mostly he reads marko's train magazine and shouts "all aboard, choo choo!", or "engine!", or "caboose", and then tries to unravel the entire roll of toilet paper and shove it in the toilet. he very rarely actually goes to the bathroom, and even when he does i swear he is disappointed that he couldn't hold it longer. what he does do is flush the toilet shoved full of paper, wave at the bowl while shouting "bye bye!" and then proceed to another room where he immediately pees on the floor. this is how it happens everytime. i am pretty sure it isn't a coincidence.

laisa told me about the m&m's (or was it smarties) as a treat, and so i tried that. the method was one for sitting, two for a pee, and three for a poo. apparently it works like a charm for others. cohen figured it out right away though, sit for a bit and get an m&m, get up and then come sit back down and expect another m&m, no m&m? throw hissy fit. hissy fit means no relaxing, which means no actual productive potty usage, and no belief that when he sits he gets an m&m. plus i am not really sure about the whole chocolate as bribery thing, i mean i have to save something for when he gets older and i really need it, no?

so we will continue sitting, and i will continue to buy gigantic bags of paper towel and toilet paper, and one day it will hopefully all come together. the one thing i know for sure is that i don't want to push it, if he isn't ready, he isn't ready. still, if you have any advice, or have been given advice you plan to use, i am all ears.