The Little Paper

So, we’re sitting upstairs at a café across from Trinity Bellwoods, enjoying a latté (me) and a chocolate ice cream (the pip), when Piper says, “You know, it’s a lot like Balzac’s here, Mom. The one near Dad’s, not the other one.” And I nod and smile and then I realize, Holy Cow, I’ve so got a city kid. I mean I knew this, I’d had an aha! moment with her older sister several years before when she asked me what a driveway was, but still... this is a five year old who can seamlessly slip from “I’m a fairy puppy, a blue one.” to knowing the exact change for the streetcar; a girl who’s equally at home dancing at The Gladstone as she is navigating the woods in High Park.

I am slowly accepting the fact that I am one opinionated little mother. This will come as no surprise to my friends and family. Even less of one to the women I work with. But for me, it’s been a slow enlightening. And one I’m just learning to embrace. As much as parenthood opens us up to spontaneity and to the fundamental unpredictability of the universe, it also tends to clarify and firm up our beliefs. So in honour of this Mothers’ Day, here’s my shortlist...

WE ARE URBAN PARENTS. City people. Our children are city kids. And, for many of us, our notions of neighbourhood and community changed forever with the birth of our first child.

This March has 17 school-free days out of 31 so, depending on your travel plans, the weather, your religious and cultural affiliations, the inlaws and your level of organizational aplomb, the next four weeks ought to be somewhere between a relaxing opportunity to connect with your family and a rollercoaster ride of marathon-like duration and intensity. I’ll likely find myself on the white knuckle thrill ride side, starting offstrong with seven a.m. Parks and Rec registrations, making an overconfidentascent into March Break, getting a little shaky mid-monthwhile transforming camp crafts into marginally appropriate St Patrick’s Day decorations, frantically recycling it all into a kind of avant garde Easter egg decoupage around midnight on Good Friday and finally coming to a shuddering halt on the couch with a bag of purloined jelly beans and a large martini on the 31st.