Bra Shopping and Boy Trolling

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I don't know how it happened but somehow I found myself agreeing to take my teenaged daughter and her same-aged cousin shopping.

Bra shopping.

Ya.

If that wasn't bad enough, I promised I'd take them to the largest shopping mall in North America, currently the 12th biggest mall in the world. (According to Wikipedia. And we all know Wiki never lies.)

Because bra shopping in the mecca of North American consumerist excess is the funnest idea EVER!

Add in two teenaged girls, my bad back, and all the punk arsed boys making goo-goo eyes at my gals and today is shaping up to be a fantastic day.


Her version of Blue Steel.


The good news is, when I tear my hair out in frustration with the girls (and you know I will) there will be places I can go to immediately buy new hair. That's the charm of West Edmonton Mall. I can buy fresh sushi from the fish market in China Town and walk across the mall to find new hair. Synthetic, horse and human!

Hair for everyone! Baldness is not an option. Unless of course you want it to be.

I don't really have a point to this post. I'm just trying to work through the horrifying realization that my niece is going to be here any minute, I'm still sitting here in my bathrobe, and I can't get past the memory of what I did at the Big Mall of Consumerism when I was 16 years old.

I trolled for boys.

Since 16 year old girls (and almost 16 year old girls) haven't changed much in the 20 years since I was that age this basically means I am taking to hormonal moody teen girls to buy bras in between sessions of boy trolling.

Do I acknowledge that I know they're trolling for hot dudes? Or do I turn a blind eye?

I am completely over-thinking this entire adventure which only proves one thing: I've officially hit middle age and I've morphed into a dork.

Whatever.

As the girls troll for dudes I'll rock my inner dork while looking for chastity belts amongst the bras. Because I may be a dork but I'm dork accompanying two hormonal teen girls trolling for boys.

This dork ain't stupid.

Double Dork Power 


Hunny Bunny

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I don't have any baby pictures of my youngest son, Jumby. When we adopted him, he was five and we were promised an album filled with pictures of his past.

We got a piece of cardboard with five photocopies of pictures taped to it. Not quite the album we were hoping for.

Five years plus five sets of parents equaled five photos.

Most days I never dwell on the fact I missed those years, all of those days, those moments with my son. Most of the time I never worry about the memories lost to us, to Jumby. Instead of focusing on what was lost I choose to create new snapshots of memories, preserved both in pictures and with the intangible threads of our love for him.

I may have been his fifth mother, but luckily for me, I get to be his final mom.

Jumby is MY son. There is no photographic evidence to argue differently.

But sometimes, in those small moments, usually in the silence of the night, or the quiet moments when the rain pit pats against our roof, I look at him and I wonder.

Where is your past?

What did you look like when you were born at 24 weeks, weighing one pound, four ounces? A micro preemie, addicted to crack.

Did anyone capture your first smile?

Does any of this exist? Or was all evidence of your life erased in an effort to wipe clean any traces of guilt or regret?

I worry about my older children's futures, hoping they will be bright and shiny and filled with amazing greatness. But with Jumby, I worry about his next breath. His next ounce. The next virus. I worry about his life. Because everything else is a luxury Jumby is rarely afforded.

It's all pared down to survival with Jumby.

That was the gift his original family gave him when they robbed him of his future.

But last night while my son's wheezing rasps filled the quiet spaces in my night, curiosity took over. I was feeling particularly charitable, grateful for every diaper I get to change of his, every doctor appointment I am required to make for him, every snuggle the boy has gifted me with.

So I looked.

I looked at her profile, right there where it's been waiting for me to look, for all of these years. Inviting me, mocking me, goading me. Last night I couldn't ignore her any longer.

And there she was. With a new life. With her new son. Her healthy son. I saw her smiles and his, her pride in his growth. His life documented on a web site, open to any prying eye that cared to look.

With every photo she posted of her new child, I wonder, does it help erase the memory of her lost son?

I've struggled for years, since Jumby arrived in our lives, with my feelings towards her. She was young and so so stupid. But she wasn't evil. For all her faults I am thankful to her for the life she created, for the boy I call mine.

Without her, there would be no him.

I wonder if there would even be a me.

I remained straddled on my fence, vacillating between forgiveness and pity when I saw it.

Five pictures of my son. On her mother's page.

She called him her grandson. Her Hunny Bunny.

And there it was.

Rage.

FURY.

A lump of anger so bitter and vile it refused to be swallowed.

Where were you for your Hunny Bunny when he needed you? Did you look the other way? Did you make excuses for their behaviour? How do you look at your grown daughter with her new son and forget the tubes and scars and broken body of her old one? The one she never protected?

Fury swallowed me, filling me with its poison. I was suffocating under the weight of hate. So I closed my computer and wandered to where the sounds of a broken boy wheezing his way through the night filled the air. I put my hand on his chest and felt it vibrate; I checked his diaper.

I saw the shadows of his abusers in the soft curves of my son's face. He has their colouring. There is no trace of me on my boy's face. For one single second I questioned my claim as his mother.

And then he twitched and felt my hand on his back. He smiled that smile he saves only for me as he changed positions and then fell back asleep, his rasp filling the air once more.

He doesn't belong to them. No matter what his face may look like. Their Hunny Bunny no longer exists. Hunny Bunny is merely five photos on a Facebook page.

Jumby exists where Hunny Bunny ended. I will never stop grieving for what Hunny Bunny lost, the price my Jumby had to pay for someone else's choices. I can't imagine a day when it never shreds my heart to know what he endured at the hands of another.

But I'll never stop being grateful to her, to them, for my son, just as I'll never stop pitying them for not knowing the depth of their loss.

I'm missing my son's past, forced to scrape together bits of it confined in boxes of court transcripts and medical records, piecing together the jigsaw puzzle of his past while gazing at five precious pictures. I've his entire life to decipher my son and create new memories. I've got so much more than five photos.

But their Hunny Bunny? He's forever lost to them. He's simply five photos on a Facebook page and the unspoken secret of a broken and lost boy.

He's their past. He's my future.

Five years, five photos, five parents.

It all ends with us.


The Story of Us.


 

Some Children's Mothers: My BlogHer 12 Takeaway

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Everyone goes to a blog conference for different reasons. Some people go to blog conferences to meet new people, hug old friends, make new connections. Some people go to learn a thing or two, others go to drink and blow unicorns. I try not to judge. I've been there, done that.

This was the BlogHer where I was going to aim higher.

How I managed to sink so low is a bit of a mystery.

I mean I went to BlogHer as an invited speaker. The incomparable and awesome Mary Mac invited me to be on her and Stef's Room Of Your Own panel session, "Mom Stop Blogging About Me." (Or as I preferred, How To Effectively Scar Your Children For Life.)


My coolest swag, courtesy of the Animated Woman


Besides being a part of what may have been the most entertaining panel session I've ever participated on (thanks ladies) I was also asked to speak on a session for BlogHer's inaugural HealthMinder day. I was a little star struck with my fellow panelists Kristina Chew and Carol Greenburg but I like to think I didn't make a complete arse of myself.


Partial arse, however, is always a given.


In keeping with what is has now become a BlogHer tradition, I found myself filling in on a panel when a speaker failed to show up at the last minute. Except instead of speaking I found myself belly dancing on stage. In front of actual people. With a pulse. And camera phones.



I'm not really sure what I was supposed to be doing, but I shook my booty for Julia Roberts and Susan Senator like my life depended on it.  And I enjoyed it.


When I walked out of that session I thought, well, that was awesomely awkward, but it's all cake from now on. The belly dancing would be the moment I'd document as my most embarrassing at the conference, and oh, what a giggle it will be.


I only wished.


No, the most embarrassing moment happened when I basically accused an old friend that she's sleeping with her son.


Ya.


Because I am uber classy like that.


My only excuse is that I was tired stupid. But for the record, when the lovely and slightly Dorian Grey-ish Georgia waves at you and says, "I want to introduce you to my son," while gesturing to a hot young thing in a suit, the CORRECT response would be, "I am pleased to meet you, Bossy's son. You're mother is a lovely lady and an old friend."


The incorrect response is to leer at the young man like he's a piece of meat, while waggling your eyebrows at his MOTHER and say, "Your son. Sure. WINK WINK."


"I don't really like that laugh Tanis," she replied. AS A PROPER MOTHER WOULD DO.


"Ya, I don't blame you, PURRRRRR, you dog you, RAWR, Georgia." I was about to high five her and congratulate her for getting her groove on Stella style when suddenly the hunky boy toy dropped the chair he was carrying and stuck his hand out to introduce himself to me and said, "Hi! You know my mom?"


For one single solitary second I hoped he was just playing along, in on my joke. But then I realized, nope, jokes on me! You know those moments you wish the ground would open up and swallow you whole? I was wishing HARD for that to happen.


What made it even worse was my complete inability to refrain from purring whenever her son was around. Even after I embarrassed myself. I had no shame. No FILTER. And I wasn't even DRINKING.


Some mother's children should never be allowed near me. Bossy's son clearly falls into this category.


My deep and heartfelt apologies to the ENTIRE BOSSY FAMILY AND oh my god I swear I'm going to duct tape my mouth shut forever and walk around wearing blinders, staring only at my feet until the end of time.


I went to New York and turned into a dirty old woman. Lord have mercy.


Fate gave me a chance to redeem myself later that night when I crossed paths with Lisa Stone's 16-year-old son.


No, I did not hit on him. Sheesh. (But at this point, I don't blame you for asking.) (Sob.)


No, what I did do was sell my daughter to him in exchange for a goat and drink ticket. And after some twitter negotiation, the deal was sealed. We even worked out our future grandchildren's names.




My daughter's reaction, upon hearing her new fate? 


Momma say what?


Of course, she changed her tune quick enough when I showed her a picture of her betrothed. Clearly this apple didn't fall far from my tree. Remind me to keep her away from her friend's sons when she is an adult.


So. The take away points of my trip weren't the swag I collected, the new friends I made, the hugs I traded or the knowledge I gained. Nope. My souvenirs will be mortifying myself with one mother and then trying to purchase another's son.


Like I said. We all attend blog conferences for different reasons.