A Child Never Held

We have been blessed with two amazing children.  Our son now twenty, we adopted and he came to us when he was three days old.  Our daughter we gave birth to four and a half years later, she will be sixteen this year.  We couldn’t be happier with how things have worked out for us and our children.

It wasn’t an easy road for our family.  There were many years of disappointment and heartbreak, endless tests and surgeries and doctors appointments.  Days in a fog, sleepless nights and our days and nights were accompanied by frustration and tears.  Eight years of creating charts, tracking temperatures, and negative test after negative test.

There is a connection, an image in your mind, a dream of a future that you have with a child you are trying to conceive.  There are tiny foot prints on your heart and soul of a child that you will never see, that you will never hold, that you will never hear.

We would walk the malls, always aware of every neglected child even if for a moment.   We would look to each other knowing we asked the same question “ How could they take their gift for granted?” .

How often do you notice a pregnant woman walking on the street, in the mall, at work, when you are waiting month to month for a positive result you notice every single one of them.

The silent pain and expected acceptance of others joy with their new additions was heart breaking.  Being invited to baby showers, or worse, asked to help organize, would bring on tears and a pain in the heart you were sure would never heal.   You don’t understand why no one sees your pain but you don’t feel like it’s something you can talk about.   Making kids isn’t a real problem, who can’t make a kid?

“ When are you starting your family?” “ Don’t you want to have kids” “ What are you waiting for?” “ Maybe you should try...”  How those questions cut so deep. They only wanted to know, to help, they had no idea how much those questions hurt.

There is a fifteen percent chance of conceiving a child for a normal healthy couple.  How hard can it be, any idiot can make a kid, kids are having kids.

Why can’t we do this?

There were support groups, but joining and participating was accepting and giving up on your dream.  They say ”there is always a chance”, ”it happened to a friend“, ”I heard of someone that when then stopped trying“.  You try to explain, you know the numbers, you know how often it doesn’t happen, eighty five percent of of the time it doesn’t happen.

We made the decision that we could be a family as a couple without kids.  We could focus on our house and travel.  We could buy a new car every other year.  Even the empty dreaming could never really convince us that a life as a couple without children would be as fulfilling as a family with kids.

We have been blessed with two amazing children.  Our son now twenty, we adopted and he came to us when he was three days old.  Our daughter we gave birth to four and a half years later, she will be sixteen this year.  We couldn’t be happier with how things have worked out for us and our children.

Life became busy and full with our family, those days of struggling with infertility, the unknown and disappointment seems so far away now.  There are moments when we reflect on those days and we are so grateful for the two wonderful gifts we have received.

There was a child in our hearts, in our dreams, who was never born, who was never held, who never had a chance at a future, who never received a name.
There is a child that was loved only in our thoughts,  that will never be forgotten, our child.

Labels

Politically Correct

Acknowledging and labeling our identity is a hot topic today.
Somehow we need to know what sex or absence of sex we are, and who we have or don’t have sex with, to identify who we are.
It has become our responsibility to know how others identify themselves before greeting them so as not to offend them by using the wrong terminology.
We all carry many labels, which ones identify who we are?
When I was born in 1962, I came with 10 fingers, 10 toes and one penis so they said I was a boy.
They gave me a name, they called me Blair.
A day old and already I had two labels.
I was born in Canada, so I’m Canadian.
My dad’s father is originally from Scotland.  Now, a Scot too.
My mother’s dad is from Italy, so let’s add Italian.
Her mother is of canadian aboriginal heritage.  Add Metis in the mix.
My parents divorced, Broken Home.
To young to understand grownup problems and not knowing how to deal with them, I left home, Run Away.
Both parents remarried, Son and Step Son.
I have four brothers, two are steps, Brother and Step Brother.
I lost a parent to suicide, Suicide Loss Survivor.
Growing up, I managed to get into some trouble at times, back then I was a Punk.
In my early teens I had a severe acne problem, I was Pickle Face and I was told I was Gay because I had acne.
I hurt my friend Mark, felt bad about that, his mom said I was Dangerous.
I liked to fight to win, before I figured out I didn’t like to hurt anyone, Scrapper.
I enjoyed alcohol a lot, alcoholic maybe, Addictive Personality most likely.
Clean for over thirty years, I LIKE that label.
Smoked a pack and half a day, now Non Smoker.

I have a knee that is failing, Physically Disabled.
I have nerve damage to my left hand, both legs and right side of my face, we call this Peripheral Neuropathy, fancy label.
I was electrocuted and injured my brain, in the emergency I was told I was Lucky.
The brain injury is called Traumatic Brain Injury, big label.
With the brain injury I also have vision loss, Vision Impairment.
I deal with depression, Mental Illness.
I have had girlfriends and have been married to a woman for 31 years with no desires towards anything else, makes me Heterosexual I guess.
We adopted our first child so I’m an Adoptive Parent.
We attended a support group for couples having trouble conceiving children. We were greeted as Fertility Challenged.
We gave birth to a daughter after twelve years.  Sixteen years later there have been no more children for us so I guess we are Fertility Challenged again.
I have two children and a wife, so I’m a Father and Husband.
I have one child with autism, parent of Dependent With Disability.
I have one nerotypical child, makes me a Parent of two. Labels for our kids too.
I have always been over weight, makes me Fat.
When I finished growing I reached six foot one and half, I’m Big Guy.
Now I’m an Adult and a Man.
I’m only one person with a lot of labels.
Do we really need to know who we have sex with, or what body parts we have or don’t have before we greet each other, so we don’t offend with the wrong greeting?
Should we wear tags stating how we wish to be greeted so that it doesn’t make us feel uncomfortable using the wrong term?
Even this Big Guy doesn’t have enough room on his fat chest for all his labels.
They called me Blair.

Trailer Park Kids

Trailer Park Kids

As a family we moved a lot, in fact we lived in six small towns before I was ten.  We then moved to the big city of Winnipeg and even being there didn’t allow us to grow roots that took.  We lived in four more homes in different neighbourhoods from grade four to seven.  That’s when we found ourselves living in a mobile home trailer park.

This wasn’t one of those trailer parks you see in the movies that are raided by the police, ending in gun fire and some junkie being hauled away in a body bag.  This one had young families, retired folks, and lots of kids. Even though the trailer park was located in the city, it was isolated, bus service was limited, and the nearest store was about a twenty minute walk.  We had to take a bus to school.  Over time the city developed around the trailer park, but for those years in the late 70’s into the 80’s we were our own community.

We had an outdoor pool, it was small, but it was a nice place to cool off in the hot summer. There was always kids and young families hanging around the pool.

The tennis courts weren’t used for tennis much, we used them for skateboarding and biking and a version of Rollerball that should have sent most of us to the hospital. Some would bike around the courts while others would kick out their boards into the wheels of the bikes. Should have been hospital bound.

Out front we had a couple of baseball fields.  After school or on the weekends it was never too hard to find enough kids to get a game started of touch football, pop up 500, or a baseball game.  You could get a group together for a night of board games that sometimes turned into a weekend marathon and someone would have to sacrifice their dining room for a couple of days.

One side of the park had a number of gardens that were a personal challenge for our ninja skills.  Once the sun went down, we would dress up in our darkest clothes and head out for some garden raiding.

Behind the park was a wooded area and an area that was used for dumping soil which made great biking trails.  This was a great area to explore and target practice for pellet guns.

There was also a meeting hall where we held teen dances.

This was where we learned to drive and how to hood surf, sometimes we did find our way to the hospital.

For a lot of us, our first jobs were found there, babysitting for one of the neighbors.

We made new friends, we made life long friends and we buried friends too soon.

This was the place where many of us found our first love and for some, our last love.

We would walk around the park in our groups or riding our bike or sitting around one of the hilled green spaces discussing life.

We hung out until the lights came on and then gathered at the playground before heading home.

You could walk the streets at night without fear.

This was where a group of kids came together and found a connection through sports, games and friendships.  We shared first experiences together, heartaches and good times.  There was no internet, no cell phones, no game consoles.  What we had was our friends.

To this day when I run into someone in the mall or online from that time, the trailer park comes up in the conversation and it is always animated, jumping from story to story sometimes barely finishing one story before starting another.

This was a time and place that had connected so many, even though many of us have moved across the world now, this time and place will be ours that we will always share.