birth-days

It is July 19th, which means it is precisely ELEVEN days until my birthday. I am turning 31. So, just imagine, 31 years and 11 days ago, my Mum was broiling away in the mid-summer Calgary heat and puttering around with an unweildy tummy. Mum tells me that she went to the hospital not with a birthing ball, not with a pair of slippers, not with a robe, not with snacks or any other semi-practical accoutrements, but instead took a sack of books with her when she went to deliver.

Yup, and doesn't that pretty much sum up the Niedzwiecki approach to life? 'Oh, yes, I'm going to be going through excruitiating pain for a day and then I'll be tending to a squalling runt of a baby, but do you think that seven books will be enough to get me through, or should I drop by the library and pick up a couple extras just in case?'. I remember going to stay at a fancy hotel with Phet one time and he was a tad offended that I'd brought a 700-page novel with me. C'mon, man, I have to have something to do when you go shower. When Bob was here recently and was looking though a few of our books, I mentioned how carefully I have to monitor my book intake or else - like a deadbeat crack head mom - I go through several days without speaking to, feeding, or bathing my son. He just laughed and was like, 'Yeah, Emma is exactly the same.' And it's true. As a family we are pretty good about moderation in most things other than book ingestion. [As a side note, I meant to say that Bob was a superior guest in all ways. He's cool to talk to, asks interesting questions, listens attentively, paid lots of attention to Ji, and best of all when he headed off to Burma he left us a pair of gift certificates for the fancy local massage parlour. For the record: well done, Bob!]

But back to Mum. Since I gave birth myself, I have really been leaning towards the idea that on the day of the kid's birthday it is the mother who should receive the congratulations and the gifts. All the kid had to do was get born, and the little buggers don't even remember that. Meanwhile, the Mum has her hip bones permanently shifted, her skin stretched, her boobs blown waaaay out of proportion, and that's just before the thrill of the pain of the birth-day. Aaaand that's just the very begining. I'm only three and a half years into this experience and I've only got one offspring, but let me tell you mothers deserve a whole week of birth-day festivities organized in celebration of their efforts.

And, ok, the Dads also deserve some recognition too. My Dad and Phet for sure, and the other Dads in our families, and you too super Turner. Although I daresay there are some out there who ought to get a Suck It Up lesson rather than a beer on Father's Day: I was talking to a colleague today who works full time as a teacher, who has a two-year old, and whose husband has changed her son's diapers only once. And he does not wake up with her son in the night because then he 'can't get back to sleep'. Ai ai ai. She should get a whole month of birth-day treats.

But back to my Mum. In addition to giving birth to me, nursing me, waking up with me, teaching me basically everything in the book and then some, helping me to become a responsible and generally nice person even though she had to live with me during my mean and stupid teenage years, and having always been there to listen to me blather away, and despite finding the way I always want to turn down the radio or turn off the air con exceedingly annoying, she has also done the same thing for my brother and sister. She deserves three times the usual birth-day party alloted to mothers of singleton offspring.

I want to take the time to thank my Mum for the things she's done for me since I turned 30 last year, which include but are not limited to: hosting my 30th birthday party at her house (not that the location was much of a surprise since she was also letting me live at her house with my 2 year old son, ha ha and she thought that after high school I'd be long gone! Fooled her, huh?); driving me to my driving test; letting me be on her car insurance even though I'm THIRTY years old; driving me all around the Bruce Penninsula to look at houses for sale; helping me deal with a real estate agent who made us both LIVID with ANGER; get this one, cause it's a doozy: helping me buy a house when I was not even in Canada (I say that's even better than the time she organized my wedding when I was in Laos, heh heh); helping move all of Phet's and my stuff up to our new house and providing much-needed tequila shots to Dad and Em when the going got tough; arranging for all of the following services for our new house: cleaning, fridge and stove delivery, telephone installation, snow ploughing, drain-fixing, electrical-malfunction-problem solving, installation of new soffits and fascia, installation of new windows, sewage-pumping, and grass-cutting (note that while we pay most of the bills, it's Mum who manages the cheque book and makes sure all the service providers are paid in a timely, non-bouncing-cheque fashion); sending us massive gift packages on Ji's birthday and at christmas (said packages which included delivery of KFC and pizza to our apartment in Malaysia); arranging to fly off at a moment's notice to meet Ji and I in Calgary; talking to me and Ji on an almost-daily basis (thank you, Skype); and finally arranging basically all of her much-needed vacation time to either go and work at my new house or to come and see me.

What has she gotten in return? Well, uh, aside from my undying love and gratitude, she got a nifty treat the other week while tooling around up north taking care of my house. Nothing like a near-death experience involving your car and a deer to make you think 'gee I'm glad I spend so much time up here in the countryside where there are bears and blackflies and too many men with power tools disturbing the backwoods silence.' Ah well, the deer is probably nursing its bruises and cursing the wayward fawn it was springing across the road to assist.

To conclude: Mum, thanks, thanks, thanks! I am so lucky to have you as my Mum and I can't wait to see you in just 13 days. Be prepared for gifts! [Toronto-19-July-2005]