Category Archives: Deep Thoughts

Owlet Update

I’ve been buried in galley proofs for the bird book, so that plus the having people around when I usually have the house to myself means I’m behind on journaling.

I had another prenatal last Wednesday. My OB approved and signed my birth plan, and is thrilled with it all. I was thrilled myself when we did the hospital tour a couple of weeks ago and found that I could throw out half of my rough draft birth plan because my hospital does all the stuff I want them to do as a matter of course. I asked about when she wanted me to go into the hospital when labour began, and she said that (a) since I had a relatively quick birth last time because of the premature thing, and that second deliveries tend to be quicker, that it might average out to around the same; so since I tested positive as a carrier for strep B (like 25% of the population!) and need antibiotics 4 hours before delivery at the very least to avoid infecting the baby, I should go in when contractions start, just to be sure. She was mildly concerned to hear about a bit of fluid loss I’d had the day before, was glad to hear it stopped and nothing had happened since, and said sternly that if it happened again I was to go right to hospital, because if the waters break after 34 weeks without contractions they have to evaluate and likely induce.

The only not as good thing this time round was that she had gone through all my tests and ultrasounds reports from the past 8 months, collated them (I have files going in two different places, so this doesn’t happen as often as it probably should), averaged them out… and has revised my due date again, which means I am now technically not at 36 weeks until this coming Monday. (36 weeks is the magic number at which I will be allowed to deliver at my hospital instead of being transferred to the neonatal one like last time.) And because the clinic now thought I was having a 35-week appointment instead of a 36-week one, they scheduled my next appointment for two weeks later, not one, which freaked me out mildly because I was sure I’d be having the baby by mid-July. But no; the next prenatal is scheduled for two weeks, at which point my OB will do a check for dilation/effacement, and then it’s an appointment every week till the baby is born.

Here’s the thing. Having been primed by every doctor I’ve ever spoken to over the past six years to expect a second premature birth, I’m hitting the time where I thought I’d either (a) have a baby already, or (b) be having the baby right nowish. So I’ve got this weird dual emotional thing happening. On one hand, I’m thankful that everything is going right and my progesterone/reduced activity/bed rest treatment are obviously working, since we’re a month beyond when the boy was born. On the other hand, I feel somehow as if I’m right at or already past my expected birthing date, so things feel late. I’m depressed and frustrated as a result, and also feeling guilty, because I should be thankful that this baby is going full-term, right? And everyone in my online July birthing group is having babies, which is wonderful, and I love running to the computer every morning to see who’s a new mum. But I’m a little sad, too, because I’m not one of them yet, and I’d been thoroughly set up to expect that I would be.

I’m so messed up.

Back to good news: My application to donate cord blood to the public blood bank for use in stem cell registry was approved. I was concerned, because my application got caught in the mail strike, but they called me two days before my 36-week mark (or what used to be), which is their deadline for application.

Prep-wise, things are going well in general:

    – Cloth diapers: Check. I love Kijiji; I scored a dozen bumGenius AIO organic diapers for $90, and then 38 (!) Mère Hélène prefold cloth diapers (a local make that has great reviews) plus a bunch of liners, bags, and accessories for just over $100. Both these are all-sizes, so we’re covered for the entire diapering era. The Mère Hélène came with pull-up nylon covers but I hate them, so I’ll be scouting for a few different Velcro-tab covers. (There’s nothing like paying a total of $200 for 50 diapers plus liners/accessories instead of the $2500 to $3000 we’d be paying for disposables. We live in the land of cheap Hydro, and you do at least an extra two loads of laundry a week with a baby anyway. And I don’t want to think about how long it takes a disposable diaper to decompose in a landfill. It’s funny how many people say we’re setting ourselves up for a lot of work; everyone forgets we did it for the boy when he hit the medium/large size, unless he was with a caregiver or babysitter, at which time we provided disposables for convenience. As for the time and energy used in taking care of them… whether we’re putting the time and energy into working to be paid to make money to buy disposables, or putting that time and energy into washing cloth, it comes from somewhere, and we’d rather do it this way.)

    – All the 0-3 mos baby stuff washed, clothes and linen: Check. (Also, all the baby clothes in storage/given to us sorted by age and washed, boxed, and put into the newly sorted/cleared out storage room downstairs. This was huge.)

    – Storage for the baby’s stuff: Check. Courtesy of the local grandparents, the boy now has a new dresser! We have moved the old changing table/bureau into the hall and now the Owlet’s clothes and diapers have somewhere to go, thank goodness. I was going crazy with bags and boxes in the hallway downstairs.

    – Baby bed set up in our bedroom: Check.

    – Car seat: Check.

    – Hospital bags (Mum’s, baby’s, and HRH’s) mostly packed except for last-minute stuff: Check.

    – New cell phone set up: Check. (Yes, the secondhand iPhone I’ve been using as a heavier, more expensive Touch is now a fully operational phone, huzzah!)

    – Current score in the attic: One staircase, one floor, three fully framed walls, one framed closet, one framed windowseat, one new window!

Goodness, we may be ready for this baby. So of course, she will not come for another four weeks now that she’s been apprised of her revised due date.

The State Of The Boy

My son woke me up at 5:45 this morning to tell me that his second very loose baby tooth had fallen out during the night. Apparently he woke up, felt it was missing, and immediately looked under his pillow for his coin. I think our wake-up had more to do with the fact that he couldn’t find his tooth and didn’t have financial proof that the Tooth Fairy had taken it than excitement about the tooth falling out. (He found the tooth in his sheets later.)

Although since we were awake I switched the TV on at 6:00 and we watched the royal wedding, which I hadn’t seriously planned to do. I listened to him make interested comments about the male guests’ hairlines (?), all the shiny medals on the uniforms (he was most impressed by the Duke of Edinburgh, although he kept calling him the king and couldn’t understand why he wasn’t the king if he was married to the queen; we missed a lot of the ceremony trying to explain this, as well as the concept of the Commonwealth and how the queen was technically our queen as well, even though Canada is an independent nation), the abbey layout, and the ceremony itself (this was, I believe, this first Christian ceremony he’s ever observed, so there were lots of questions about why they were saying certain things and who was who and what they were each doing, and so forth). He was very pleased that the prince was called William. “It’s a very special day,” he said. “I lost a tooth, and they’re getting married!” Then I got to remind him that we could watch the Endeavour launching this afternoon when he gets home from school, and I thought he was going to burst.

He’s such a cheerful kid. He drives me to distraction sometimes, but on the whole I’m horrendously proud of him, and what’s more, I like him as a person. There’s a world of difference between loving your child and liking him. I like how he thinks, how he experiments, how he talks, and how he laughs. He’s an interesting, likeable person.

He is genuinely excited about the baby, makes suggestions about things to buy for her or plans for things to do with her, and hugs her a lot. In fact, there have been several times lately where he has thrown his arms around my waist and I put my arms around him to hug him back, and he has said, “No, Mama, I’m not hugging you, I’m hugging the baby.” A couple of weeks ago I said that the baby’s hearing was getting so good that she could hear us talking now. “Really?” he said, then leaned over close to my abdomen and said, “Hello in there!” I thought HRH was going to choke on his laughter in the kitchen. The six-year gap between them initially concerned me a bit, but I think he’s really at a wonderful age to help take care of her, and also to understand that we’re going to be a bit preoccupied this summer and fall. Understand does not equate like, of course. And I recognise that the reality of a new baby may be different from whatever it is that he’s envisioning at the moment. But overall, the general consensus is that he’s going to make a terrific big brother.

He turns six in six weeks. All the long-sleeve t-shirts we bought him at the beginning of the school year are now two inches too short for his arms. In order to get pants that are long enough for his legs we have to use styles that have the adjustable buttoned elastic at the waists and cinch them as tightly as we can. His weight doesn’t seem to to have budged; he’s just stretched all over instead. I know his shoe size increased by one this winter. I think he’s hazily planning three birthday parties: one for family, one for school friends, and one for his grown-up friends. His actual birthday weekend will consist of the family party, and then the next day is his very first recital. We didn’t think he’d be doing a solo, just playing in the ensemble pieces, but our teacher is considering having him play his most recent exercise, and I think he’s quite excited about it. (He reserves the right to change his mind, though, which I am also fine with. I’m the one who lays out the programme, after all.)

I stopped by the luthier to renew the rental for his cello for another two months, which will take us a couple of weeks past the recital. I am, I have to say, very proud of how conscientious he is about sitting down at 7:30 each morning to run through at least three exercises, and how much he generally looks forward to it. I’ve noticed that it takes him about two weeks to process a new exercise: the first week he’ll refuse to do it each day, then the next week he’ll try it the first day, attempt to propose an alternative arrangement or adjustment it on the second, then settle in to do it properly the last few days. We’re working on stopping the D string with fingers now, which is huge, and his resistance has been more stubborn than usual for this exercise because it doesn’t make a nice sound yet. Stopping the strings is hard: it takes a lot of focused finger strength without clamping the neck between thumb and fingers, which is especially hard for young fingers, and when you try to combine it with pizzicato or bow movement things fall apart very easily. I have the deepest respect for Suzuki parents who don’t play an instrument, because practice sessions with the child are very involved with lots of supervision. I have no idea how I’d be handling it if I didn’t play the cello already. A while ago my online friend and fellow cellist Michael Tuchman said that if you’re discouraged about your progress, try showing a beginner how to make a simple sound with your instrument and you’ll see how much you’ve already internalized about the minute adjustments and balances required to play. When I have my cello out with the boy, I remember how hard it was to keep all my teacher’s instructions in mind at the beginning, how I couldn’t coordinate the bow and my left hand at the same time (I played pizzicato for at least three months before learning how to use the bow), and now I can do all sorts of things. I see this in orchestra, too, as we play orchestral pieces I played in the earlier years: I now fly through pieces that had me totally stumped at the beginning. (Strauss’ Kaiser Waltz is one of these; it was such a headache because it was so high when I first played it, but I sight-read it without much trouble at all the other week.) It’s hard to communicate that to a child who’s encountering hard basics, though.

My dad asked me a few questions about the Suzuki method while we were visiting last weekend, and I didn’t quite get the drift of what he was aiming at until I’d slept on it for a few days. The Suzuki method isn’t designed to produce professional musicians; it’s designed to introduce music into daily vocabulary, to communicate the basics of music theory and technique, and instill a love for making it in people. There’s the common misconception that Suzuki kids don’t learn how to read music but just reproduce what they hear on recordings, which is entirely untrue (otherwise there wouldn’t be Suzuki music books, now, would there?). The Suzuki method urges listening to music of all kinds, making it a part of daily experience. It also teaches methods of application and focus, which are kind of the same reasons why a lot of employers write up job listings and ask for people with a degree of some kind, any kind: they want to know that you’ve learned how to schedule and concentrate and apply yourself in a structured environment. Music lessons of any sort teach that kind of discipline, and I think we’re already seeing the benefits of the few months he’s had of lessons in the boy’s approach to things in general. In the same way that registering your kid for community soccer doesn’t mean he’s training for a pro career but is great experience anyway, the Suzuki method gives a child the chance to explore a whole bunch of stuff, including cooperation and learning to follow instruction and how to work on specific techniques to accomplish certain goals, all with the bonus of fostering a love for music. Applied to adults, it’s a different but not-unrelated kettle of fish. There’s a reason why the method is also described as a teaching philosophy: there’s the noted absence of negative feedback, with support for what you did right instead, then looking for a way to improve what can be improved. I beat myself up enough about getting things wrong; I don’t need a teacher to add to that. What I need is a positive, constructive environment that points out what I did right, and that’s one of the tenets of the Suzuki philosophy. The reading I’ve done on the method reminds me that as a parent, pointing out the negative things often isn’t as constructive as reinforcing the positive things and then reframing what needs improvement. Is it more work? Yes. Is it more beneficial in the long run? I certainly think so. I also find the theory that children can learn music by being exposed to it the same way the learn language fascinating, which was one of Suzuki’s original concepts when designing the method.

When I get my delivery cheque for the bird book, one of the things we will do is find him a secondhand cello, because that will be cheaper than continuing to rent. He is quite excited by this idea, too, and said, “Thank you, Mama,” when I mentioned it to him the other day. Have I mentioned that I like this kid? I think we’re doing okay with him. I suspect that any parent who has managed to produce a kid who requests broccoli on a regular basis has a reason to pat themselves on the back.

ETA: Drat, the Endeavour has been delayed 48 hrs over failed heater somethings. Boo.

Numb

It’s not a good place to be less than a week before deadline.

If this was a numbness born of overwork or a really good run, it would be different. But it isn’t. Instead, I find myself having difficulty maintaining a level of enthusiasm for a project that has been slowly morphing away from my original vision to something very much less than what it ought to have been, mostly in the last month. Production realities concerning rights and availabilities have dictated the changes and cuts, and there’s no way around them within the book’s design and instruction. We’ve proposed alternatives, but they’re not happening.

I feel like I’m marking time, and this is somewhere I never wanted to be. I like to be proud of my work; I like to be excited about it. I’m sure that by the time this book’s proofs come back to me I will have come to terms with its new format and be fine with it, but I need to be at that point now in order to keep giving it my all. But since the latest round of cuts arrived just before I left on holiday I only got to apply them today, and it had a pretty depressing impact on my productivity. I had to handle rewrites concerning the book’s outline, purpose, and mandate in the introduction and first half, and it was disheartening.

I just want it done so it can be someone else’s problem for a while (not that I want my wonderful, wonderful editor to have to handle even more problems surrounding this project, as she’s already juggled lots of them and rescued some of what was slated to be cut — and this is the two weeks leading up to her wedding!). The irony is that in order to get it done I have to be motivated, and I’m having difficulty mustering the energy for that at this level of work-related depression.

I do want to stress that just because this book isn’t going to be what I had planned for it to be, it’s not going to be a poor quality product. It’s going to be something different, that’s all, and I will know it’s different, and that’s what makes me sad. In theatre and creative writing we talk about the audience/reader not seeing the gaffer or masking tape holding everything together, and this is a similar situation. I will always know what it could have been, and therefore what it is not. It is going to be a beautiful book, I do know that; the interior and exterior art are spectacular.

Oh, birds. I love you so much. My file of deleted material is bulging with wonderful stuff. I’m holding onto it in the hopes that we can publish an expanded edition some day, or insert the bonus material in the e-book version. But I’m also not holding my breath.

In Which She Thinks About Pregnancy Stuff

There are some thoughts I need to write out about this, because I’m trying to work out how I feel.

A couple of people have asked if we announced the pregnancy when we did because we couldn’t hide it any longer. This amuses me. People, I have been wearing maternity clothes since Christmas. That’s three months earlier than last time. I am built like a stick; my body shape starting changing pretty early this time round. Granted, my winter sweaters are loose and bulky, but I didn’t go out of my way to swath myself in disguises or anything, and I went out threeish times a week to mingle with the masses, so I wasn’t holing up at home to avoid being noticed. No, we announced it when we did because we finally had good news from the doctors about the health of the baby. (It occurs to me that people aren’t noticing as much as they might because of my initial body shape: I have a very short waist, so I’m basically ribcage/baby right now, and that’s not as noticeable as it might be if there were another four inches of space between the two.)

Long-time readers will remember that we didn’t publicly announce our first pregnancy at all via the Internet; we told people in person as we met them. This resulted in some people being told that we had a baby before they knew I was pregnant, thanks to the boy arriving two months early. But one of the reasons I didn’t share the news last time was because I didn’t want to be treated any differently. I was curious to see if our approach to sharing the news this time would support my previous suspicion. Sure enough, now that they know, there are people automatically assuming that I am differently-abled in some way because I’m pregnant. I am the same person the world has been dealing with for the past five months. Nothing has changed. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a bit slower getting in and out of chairs, cars, and bed, but that’s about it.

I find this fascinating, as well as exasperating. I can explain fibro till the cows come home, and although people say they think they get it, it’s a hazy, vague understanding. But tell someone I’m pregnant, and they jump to the assumption that I must be exhausted, my back must ache, I must feel sick all the time, and so forth. That’s how I feel the majority of the time thanks to fibro. Pregnancy was and is a breeze for me, possibly because I’m used to this sort of thing. (In fact, I feel better fibro-wise now that I’m pregnant. Go figure. This is not a serious option for long-term fibro treatment, though, people; we’re stopping here at two kids!)

I guess what it comes down to is familiarity. Everyone knows someone who is/has been pregnant, so they have some level of direct experience with it. Millions of women do this; we have a cultural perception of pregnancy and what it does to someone. Fibro? Not so much. There’s a reason why a lot of FM/CFS sufferers default to an explanation such as “It’s like I have the flu all the time”: it’s a common experience people can draw on to get some idea of what you must be going through. That cultural perception of pregnancy isn’t universally applicable, though, and that’s what drives me crazy. The experience is not one size fits all; everyone’s pregnancy is different, affects them differently, and impacts them differently. I appreciate the fact that people are upping their solicitousness and concern, but it kind of frustrates me that I’m being placed in a box marked “Pregnant” along with the general assumptions that rattle around inside it. We all pigeonhole people and situations, myself included — it’s human nature, and it helps us deal with things efficiently — but as often as I can, I try to evaluate every new situation and individual, and not default to assumptions. It just feels weird to have people dismiss fibro because they don’t have experience with it, and overemphasize pregnancy for me.

Okay, enough of that. Here’s something wacky.

Last fall I figured it was about time to get my eyes checked again. It has been about five years since my prescription changed, twoish since I started wearing my glasses full-time, so I was due. As usual, I procrastinated, so I got pregnant before I went in for a checkup. And then it was Christmas, and there was travelling and other family health issues, and it fell off my to-do list. My eyes started acting up in about January, and I remembered that I really ought to make that appointment with the optometrist.

And then I paused. What if it wasn’t my vision alone? What if it was the pregnancy? It isn’t unheard of for women to report major vision changes during pregnancy; there are people whose eyes have significantly improved or worsened permanently due to it.

I didn’t notice any sort of change in my first pregnancy. This one, though; whoa. I can now get away with not wearing my glasses at all most of the time. In fact, I have to take them off while driving a lot, because they make my distance viewing slightly blurrier. Reading from a book is mostly fine, depending on how tired I am, and ditto for the computer screen: I can go glasses-free earlier in the day, but as the day goes on and my eyes get tired, I have to put the glasses on again. The main problem I have discovered is that I have developed the habit of taking a pair of glasses off and putting them down if they’ve started straining my eyes, and then I can’t remember where I put them when I need them again hours later.

So in the end I think I’m glad I didn’t get that optometrist appointment before the pregnancy happened, because if I’d spent all that money on a new prescription that was just going to change anyway, possibly permanently, I would be pretty cranky. (No, HRH’s health insurance doesn’t cover eyes. Or dental, despite the atrocious amount of money he pays for it.) I’ll make an appointment for this coming fall instead.

Thoughts on the Return of the Light

I’m at a bit of a loss. In the past couple of days we’ve been hit by news about friends whose health has taken a turn for the worse, whose health issues have created emergencies that require hospitalization and bedside watches, or whose treatments have come to an end and they’ve chosen to return home to live the rest of their days in a place they love. Statistically speaking, I know bad things happen to people all year round. It just seems extra unfair when they happen at Christmas.

At the Winter Solstice we’re told to look toward the sun, to embrace its return, to cheer the vanishing dark. It’s hard to do that this year. I can turn it around and use the returning, strengthening light as a symbol of health returning — and indeed, I intend to use this symbolism for certain of the issues family and friends are facing right now — but for many people, it can’t be done. The best I can do is gather the rays of the sun and twine them gently around the vines that are my friends and acquaintances whose health cannot improve, to give them warmth and peace as they move westward. I can offer those rays to their families and closer friends, to use for strength and courage as they work through the challenge of supporting a loved one facing the end of one cycle of life.

I’m not feeling particularly Christmassy today. It’s probably not a bad thing our Yule celebration was cancelled as a result of some of this news.

However, when one has a five-year-old on board, one cannot retreat entirely from the Christmas season and magic. His joy and excitement are doing a lot to keep us on an even keel. This morning, when I was returning from what ought to be the last pre-Christmas grocery run, I remembered that the boy used to call the season “Kissmas” when he was just learning to talk, and it made me smile. Kissmas, indeed. Love your families and your friends, gentle readers. Tell them you love them not just at festive gatherings like those of the season, but every day. It ought to be Kissmas all the time in our lives.

Major Milestone; Or, Reading Achievement Unlocked

Since the beginning of kindergarten, the boy has been enthusiastically experimenting with letter sounds and word recognition (especially repeated words within a large block of text, my favourite of which has been ‘gizzard’). Yesterday, however, he accomplished something huge, something that was the key to so much more.

He read an entire book to me.

He had two ped days at the end of last week, and woke up with a dreadful cold on Thursday. He was home with me on Thursday, spent Friday with his local grandma while HRH got the brakes changed on the car (all four, ouch ouch ouch), and had the weekend at home as usual (a lovely afternoon and dinner were had with HRH’s parents on Saturday, supplemented by the joy that Highway 30 is now 90% open between here and there, cutting our travel time by about twenty minutes!). Then despite all my efforts and prayers to the contrary, I had to keep him home from school yesterday because the cold just wasn’t fading quickly enough. His poor nose is a mess of chapped and cracked skin because we’ve been blowing it so often. Vaseline and Glysomed lotion are our friends. Anyway, I managed to get him to nap on Thursday, Saturday, and yesterday (possibly Sunday as well, but it’s such a blur I really don’t remember), although it was a battle each time. He kept insisting that he wasn’t tired; I pointed out over and over that more rest meant getting better faster. I resorted to easing into it step by step. He’d protest; I’d suggest snuggling and reading; then we’d turn out the light and snuggle and chat; then the chatting would get quieter until we were just snuggling; then the boy would pass out and I’d slip away. Each time he woke up with smiles and hugs and admitted to feeling better.

Yesterday he still wasn’t going to nap without a fight, despite yawning. “That’s my morning [meaning wake-up] yawn, not my tired yawn!” I was told indignantly. “Choose a book and we’ll read,” I said, and gave him a time limit within which to do it. When I got back, he was sitting on his bed waiting for me. “Mama, I’m going to read to you,” he said. “All right,” I agreed, and pulled the cover up over us, expecting him to do the first sentence then hand the book to me to finish as usual.

And he opened Lego City Adventures: All Aboard!, a level 1 reader, and he read the whole thing to me from cover to cover. I helped him with a word or two, but otherwise he sounded out the words he didn’t know on his own.

When he got to the end (even reading the advertisement in the back for other books in the series) he looked at me and said, “Mama, when I read you a book, can you not cry?”

How could I not? I was so proud of him, and so overcome by the thought of the freedom that now lies open to him. He can sound things out; he can learn anything, anywhere. With concentration he can read cereal boxes, street signs, books, flyers, magazines, letters. There is so much he now has the ability to do. And it’s that “so much” that overwhelms me. He’s been teetering on the edge, and now swoosh, here he goes into an entire universe of information and communication. It won’t be easy; he’ll get frustrated, and he already has, because blocks of letters in English aren’t pronounced consistently and his ear for discerning slight differences hasn’t fully developed yet (as demonstrated by his insistence that train starts with a ch sound, not helped by a picture of a train under the words “choo-choo” in more than one book). But it’s going to be a wild and wonderful ride.

It’s been a tough five days here. He’s been sorry for himself because he’s sick, I’ve been trying to fit work in while he’s home which never works, and we’ve been butting heads and rubbing one another the wrong way. We’ve had good times, too, of course, staying in jammies till noon, building train layouts and watching Sesame Street and Sid the Science Kid together (thanks be to all the gods for having PBS again!), making lunch together, and ‘working’ in my office together (he never stops drawing, it’s astonishing). I was very close to breaking yesterday when I was given the gift of my son reading a book from start to finish. No deciding he’s too tired and pushing the book at me to do it instead; no getting angry and slamming it shut; just a simple, focused recounting of the story. It was beautiful, and made up for a lot of the frustration we’d been experiencing together.

And then last night I lifted the calendar page to write something in December, and saw that he has YET ANOTHER PED DAY this coming Friday. That nearly broke me again, because Ceri and I had scheduled a trip to the yarn store to knit together that day (or rather, Ceri shall knit, and I shall spin or something) and I was kind of looking forward to a day off without him. But he can come with us, because he loves the yarn store, and I have promised to pack him a lunch. And there are the toys he usually plays with there, plus we’ll pack our usual going-out bag of his own toys and books, and I would not be at all surprised if Ceri, Ada, Molly Ann and whoever else may happen to be there are treated to a live reading of all 189 words in Lego City Adventures: All Aboard!. We happen to be going to the bookstore before the yarn store, and I suspect I will be buying him a new Lego City reader as a reward for reading the first one all on his own. Because the best thing to do when you finish one book is start a new one, of course.

Lest We Forget

War’s not the answer most of the time; it’s often an excuse that veils another agenda. But that’s not going to stop me from honouring the men and women whose job it is, or who volunteer, to go out and risk their lives in confrontations beyond what most of us can envision. It’s their commitment and courage I honour on Remembrance Day. I honour our peacekeepers, too, the people who go to other countries to help rebuild after times of turmoil. And support staff — doctors, drivers, cooks, all those people who are necessary to the machine of war and who rarely get recognition for being in danger as well. And those left at home, who carry the double burden of hope and dread for their loved ones.

There has to be a better way. But even when someone figures it out, I’ll keep on saying thank you to all those individuals who gave lives, limbs, time, and innocence to the wars. I honour and respect their personal decisions, even if I disagree with the governmental decisions that created the need for them.