Child poverty, Ann Coulter and a bit of truth

I hate to even mention Ann Coulter, but the fiasco surrounding her visit to Ottawa U is so embarrassing. U of O, or as a friend of mine calls it, "the university of zero", did not do itself proud banning Ms. Coulter -- whatever her views. Rhetoric aside, she should have been allowed to address the slobbering mob. How pathetic that small-minded, parochial students with an agenda and the vice-president (another paranoid parochial, one presumes) prevented it. Yes, she is controversial and I have not really kept up with what she has to say....except.....

I do agree with her views on single mothers. Strap me down and gag me when I attend a charity gathering where someone is extolling the virtues of single mothers and asking us to give money, while at the same time railing against child poverty. Is the connection between the two underworlds not obvious? And I am not talking about divorced women who call themselves "single moms", while cashing big cheques written by disenfranchised fathers kicked to the curb and relegated to life with their noses pressed against the glass watching the lives of their offspring float by. No, Ann Coulter is referring to the teenagers who get pregnant -- either through ignorance or by design -- because they have no life. More often than not, these girls condemn their babies to a life of poverty. I see it everyday. Children raising children. What hope do these innocent babies have?

The product of an unmarried teenaged mother myself, I am very grateful she gave me up for adoption so both she and I could get on with our lives. When I met my birth family, I was overjoyed to finally know my background. But the gratitude I felt for her giving me up far outweighed any thoughts I might have had about staying with her. That would have been disasterous for both of us. She thought of me, not herself. She did the right thing. She wanted more for me than she could ever have given. She came from a family "on relief". Her mother worked at the brewers' retail part-time and ran a boarding house. Her father had died. She had three younger siblings. She had to cope. She had to work. She had to pretend nothing had happened. I am in awe of what she did, of how she rose selflessly and bravely to the occasion. I was adopted at birth by wonderful people who gave me the very best upbringing. I had a large extended family, a first-class education, gifts unmentionable. Had my mother kept me, I probably would have ended up working in the Du Pont factory in Maitland. Many of my birth family spent their working lives there. Ironically, I worked for a time for Du Pont in Toronto and realized I had met my birth uncle, who worked in a senior position in Maitland. He even remembered me. Wow, what a random world!

I worked with a man whose 16-year-old daughter had become pregnant by her 17-year-old boyfriend. Everyone was thrilled! Gramps was busy rennovating the basement so the kids could have some privacy. Hello! Wasn't "privacy in the basement" the reason she got pregnant?!?! Well, the teens got married, the baby was born and presto-chango, the marriage "went for a burton". The baby is now being shuffled back and forth and raised by a motely and disgruntled crew of father/mother/grandmother/grandfather/grandfather/grandmother. And everyone hates everyone.

Teenaged mothers keeping their children is one root cause of child poverty. Make no mistake. Although I give regularly to homes for unwed mothers, I am conflicted. I give in the hope the children will benefit, but I have my doubts. The teenagers I meet there all plan to keep their babies. These girls are selfish and deluded about their futures and that of their babies. And why wouldn't they be? Sixteen or so , they still dream of the graduation prom and sparkles in their hair. It's all so cute, what with baby clothes and a new (read "subsidized") apartment to go to. I came from such a home, but my mother walked away and went back to her life. In so doing, she gave me the gift of beginning mine.

Today's pregnant teen drops out of school and we all know the rest of the sad story by heart. When the government stands up and says, "we have to stamp out child poverty", it is a sham. The elephant in the room remains. As long as self-centred teenagers keep their children and many become wards of the province, the cycle continues. The government can't stamp out child poverty unless society decides that single teenaged mothers are not to be exalted. They need to be given the support required to give their children up for adoption. That is my opinion -- the opinion of a very grateful beneficiary of the system.

So, that is one thing I agree with Ann Coulter about.

Marriage as an Act of Will

I'd like to take credit for the line, "marriage is an act of will", but I actually heard it in a movie we watched the other day. As soon as it was delivered, my husband and I swung around and looked at each other, savouring a parallel moment of epiphany. How very true. It is actually a mutual act of will because unless both parties will it against all odds, it will not survive the crap life throws at every couple. Driving up Carling Avenue a couple of years ago, following yet another domestic disaster, Brian looked at me and said, "If you could only separate the crap from the crap." I nearly fell out of the car in paroxysms of laughter. He seems to deliver all the best lines. Facing some left-curve challenge or other a while back he said, "Life is filled with small victories and mediocre defeats." Damn, I wish I'd said that. My reaction to the latest "crap" is usually some very creative and imaginative expletive like, "Oh @%&*!" Pretty grim for someone who considers herself a creative writer.

This quick-witted husband of mine has delivered other pithy sayings at the perfect moment, such as the time he told an enthusiastic critic to "get in the race, or hand me a water bottle". Another one was aimed at a boss who sneered at him for coming second in the Rhodes Scholarship. Well, at least I was in the race", he countered. Yet another boss, parsimonious with praise, informed Brian that he had better watch his step because..."I'm a trained killer." "Really? Well, I'm a born killer." And being the offspring of generations of army brass, railway police and merchant navy men, he is right. His career was actually temporarily damaged a number of years ago when another superior pestered him to play squash. As a junior Davis Cup tennis player, Brian kept putting the man off, rightly fearing that creaming him could produce consequences that might ooze into the workplace. The match eventually came and went, with predictable results. Why he had to add, "We should play tennis next time, Paul, that's really my game," I have no idea? But I digress.

I am beginning to use another word a lot........"tiresome". Says a lot about my own state of mind, sadly. I am hoping it's the end-of-winter blahs that are fashioning me into a crashing bore myself. I had a lunch date this week with an old colleague (he's not 'old', younger than I, but since I have retired everyone is an 'old' colleague). Anyway, we used to travel together so frequently that we began to behave like an old married couple. Happily, we have kept in touch -- out of pity on his part I am sure. But as I sat there, boring him to death with talk about my boring life, I began to bore myself to death listening to me boring him. I mean, how many ways can you describe swimming, cooking and the latest run-ins with harridans, hags and trolls in the laundry room. I used to advise ministers of the Crown -- I even met The Queen -- and now I am faced with decisions of the magnitude of colours or whites. The "hating makeup" hobby horse was again trotted out and ridden hard. I actually told him he should consider himself lucky I rated him important enough to put it on. Afterall, I bragged, only last Friday I had refused to go to a reception at the Tanzanian High Commission because I could not face the war paint exercise -- particularly because the "same, old crowd" I knew would be there was just not worth ten bucks of Estee Lauder.

But my friend is a very well-brought-up and polite gentleman. He toughed it out for almost an hour, poor guy, before he muttered something about having to leave to do laundry. I exaggerate, but not by much. Imagine getting to the point in your life where you're trumped by an afternoon with 20-Mule-Team Borax. He is a life-long bachelor, which may explain why he puts up with me. He has no idea how a middle-aged woman should act. Last summer I was invited to an office event..."so we can get poor Nancy out of her pyjamas"...is how one 'old' colleague put it. Man, that motivated me and I plastered on the paint and swept into the bar in style!

The one delicious saving grace that evening was that my old boss was there -- she of the perfect hair (dyed a 100 times too often), the starved skeletal form (screaming for a cheese burger) and the nails bitten to the quick (confirming the stress she bore struggling to look 30 years younger). Boy, those nails really used to throw me in meetings. I remember being unable to concentrate on a word out of her pursed lips because all I could do was stare at those painful fingernails and feel sorry for the little critters, struggling their hardest to grow, only to be knawed off every time they gained a millimetre by her vicious teeth. Much as I fought it, they often triggered a stiffled gag reflex, which I tried to hide behind a fake cough. Her nibs could have been blathering on about the government being about to fall, or the minister's latest fiasco, for all I knew. My focus was trained on her sad, raw, stubby fingernails.

But back to marriage and will. When I look at my long-suffering spouse and my long-suffering self the phrase "mexican standoff" also comes to mind. This morning he did battle in the trenches of the local grocery store -- a facinating chore I usually handle. Apparently, it gave him a new appreciation of my life fighting in the aisles among the great unwashed. Since I have retired, the domestic gender chore split is zero to everything. Guess who does the "everything"? My own fault again because I don't like the way he does domestic. Too much work for me re-doing it all. The standoff continues.

Breakfast with the Ladies, cocktails on the Hill

Yesterday was a day of complete opposites. Started with the Women's Day Breakfast and ended with a reception on Parliament Hill, thrown by the men-who-rule-the-world: our male parliamentarians. Let's start with the breakfast, hosted by a local wag who is also a member of city council. Not one of my favourite people, although I don't even know her. Must be her unfortunate nasal twang that always irritates the heck out of me when she appears on TV complaining about something (yes, I know it is her job to complain if she wants to get re-elected). I went with my Ottawa Valley pal, so we kind'a skirted around the edges, listening to speeches about how great we were, how far we'd come, but how far we still had to go. Don't some people just love to ask dumb questions!

The speaker was impressive, after the hostess sat down. She was a young woman who had skiied to both the north and south poles and done a bunch of other hideously impossible things -- like survive for eight hours after falling into a crevasse. For a while I thought I'd wandered into a mental health rally by mistake, as she described her ordeals. Why? was the question I kept asking myself. She'd climbed Everest and K-2 and on and on it went. I felt like such a slob, as I siddled up to the buffet and filled my plate while she described living on dried potatoes and cookies. Again the dumb questions followed. "What did you think about when you were skiing?" How about living through it! If you want to read someone who usually has it dead on about women's issues, google Naomi Lakritz of the Calgary Herald.

That evening was the Commonwealth Day reception on the Hill, hosted as I mentioned by the men-who-rule-the world. The receiving line consisted of the speakers of both the House of Commons and the Senate. Adorably, they were sporting white string tied around their index fingers. This, I learned, was for Women's Day, presumably so they wouldn't forget. The reception was first-class, as usual, and filled with various MPs and Senators, the greats and the near-greats. I had one memorable conversation with a female MP who thought the reception was for Women's Day. I had to correct her. Some people rely far too heavily on their own impressions of themselves. She fit this category. What galled me was that as usual there were precious few High Commissioners in attendance. There are 54 countries in the Commonwealth, representing more than two billion people, and I think I counted maybe four High Commissioners milling in the throng. The rest of us were meaningless hangers-on. It really was a disgrace. Wrote a letter to the editor about it today, but I think I was too over-the-top; probably won't get published.

Well, that's it for now. Next I plan a piece about marriage being an act of will.

The Sisterhood is about to gather

When I talk about "The Sisterhood", I mean the women's lib movement because that's what it really is -- women gathering with women, talking about injustices done to women, women often moaning about what men have done to them, how their husbands were ogres, their male bosses tyrants....and on and on. By the way, some of the most successful tyrants I have ever worked for have been women. But enough about envy in the workplace. I know the "movement" has wrought considerable good, but when I want to reflect on what's gone right and wrong in my life, I just look in the mirror. That's where it's all happening, ladies; right in that mug staring back at me. So it is with considerable excited antipation that I look forward to an International Women's Day breakfast to which I have been invited. Yes, I plan to go -- if only to do important research for an upcoming blog. I have not been directly invited, rather I have been invited by an invitee who can't face going alone. Kind'a ironic because haven't we all had ultimately to go it alone as women? And this friend is definitely a success story, but as a authentic Ottawa Valley girl, no surprise there. The Valley is filled with tough, no nonsense women raised by tough, no nonsense mothers. Try and get B.S. by her and you will be tripped up, but Oh So Elegantly!

One question always stymies me: why only a day for women, when we have month for black history and a week for aboriginal awareness? Ah well, this will be just one of the questions I will pose at the breakfast. The responses should be edifying!

More later.............Just back from swimming and an encounter with an elderly gentleman who waited, holding the door for me, as I caught up with him. "After you," he gallantly offered. I
replied, "with compliments to your mother, thank you." He beamed, "not many of us left." I added, "I know and we women can thank ourselves for that sad state of affairs."

Well, off to meet for lunch a kind, loyal, romantic, gentle, deferential, brave and decidedly alpha male -- my hubby, Brian.