Sugar Baby

They say the only certain things in life are death and taxes. I'm not quite sure who 'They' is, but it sounds official enough to be true.

Which is what my husband and I were discussing over our morning coffee as he went through our finances, prepping for the upcoming tax season and I sat beside him reading Facebook status updates and TMZ posts.

(This basically sums up our relationship. He is serious and gets things done while I like shiny things and am easily distracted by links on the internet. Like a raven with fingers and free wifi.)

As he talked mumbo jumbo about financial net worth, alternative investments, options and charitable donations, I tried to show him how my hair really does look like Justin Bieber's.

Apparently his desire to pay for his children's post secondary university trumps my desire to not look like an asexual, high pitched male pop diva.

Go figure.

Don't get me wrong. It's not that I'm not concerned about how much university is going to cost us. It's been on my mind since I discovered I was pregnant with my second kid only four months after giving birth to my first. It's like we were determined to bankrupt our future selves as we happily procreated premaritally.

But we've spent the last 16 plus years struggling to make ends meet and well, somehow, more or less, we've always managed to find a way. Some times we were poorer than other times and sometimes we were a chin whisker away from destitute but we never starved. I would rather put my rose coloured glasses on and assume the same will hold true when both Fric and Frac look to us for tuition help.

My husband dislikes my rose coloured glasses. Literally as well as figuratively.

So Boo continued to plan and fret and I continued to ignore and evade and harmony was brought to the marital land once more.

Until our daughter walked in the room.

"Hey. What are you guys doing?" she innocently asked.

"I'm trying to figure out a way to put food in your mom's belly while sending you to medical school," Boo replied without looking up from his sheath of papers.

"And I'm trying to figure out a way to meet Gerard Butler. I hear he's kind of a dirty dawg but that accent of his gets me every time."

Fric blinked a few times and then (wisely) chose to ignore me and focused on her father. From there they launched into a strategy session involving scholarships, part time jobs and investments, while I followed one Internet rabbit hole after another, clicking link after link.

Eventually, like Alice and her rabbit hole, I landed somewhere fascinating.

"Hey look at this! I found a way for Fric and Frac to pay for their educations and it won't cost us a dime Boo!"

Boo looked at me suspiciously, (apparently he knows how my mind works,) but my sweet child eagerly asked what I found.

"A sugar daddy site! You just agree to be their sugar baby and they'll pay for everything!"

It was right about then that my husband started choking on his coffee.

"Um, that's called prostitution Tanis."

"Well sure, if you want to be all dirty about it. But the site says it's legal and above board and no sex is involved. It's for real romance. Between a sugar daddy and his sugar baby," I responded tartly, indignant that my husband would even suggest I'd pimp out my kid to avoid tuition costs.

Meanwhile, Fric was reading the fine print.

"Or you know Tanis, she could just get a JOB."

"Sure. Because that's fun. Anything involving sugar sounds fun." I demonstrated by jumping up and singing Def Leppard's Pour Some Sugar on Me while playing my air guitar.

"Not cute, Tanis," he said when I was done.

"A little cute," I replied while holding my fingers an inch apart. He cracked a smile.

And that's why we are still married.

"I think I'd feel a little more comfortable with a little less sugar when it comes to how my kids will pay for their university costs," he sighed.

"Fine. Be the voice of reason," I muttered as I flopped back down to close the browser page.

"Wait Mom, did you bookmark that site?" Fric asked.

"Um no. Why?"

"Well it could come in handy. You know, in the future."

Her dad groaned.

Fric looked at him and smiled. "Don't worry Dad. I'm just thinking ahead. I've got some time. We'll talk about it in two years."

He couldn't quite tell if she was teasing him or not.

"Besides, it could very well be this or twirling the pole, you know," she tossed out nonchalantly as she walked out of the room, leaving me alone with her father.

He just glowered at me.

The apple off of my tree.

"What? YOU were the one who left me alone to raise YOUR babies. You didn't think I'd rub off just a little?"

I couldn't quite make out what he was muttering under his breath but instinct tells me it wasn't very nice.

Some people's children, I tell you.

Test Anxiety

I never enjoyed high school. Not really. I liked the extracurricular activities, like flirting with boys who never really understood I was flirting with them, skipping classes to go to the convenient store three blocks away with my friends and walking endlessly around the school hallways at lunch time.

You know, typical high school stuff.

I kind of liked the clubs and the teams too.

But any joy I found in high school was overshadowed by one thing. Anxiety. Specifically, test anxiety. I didn't mind homework. I didn't mind studying and I all but geeked out over the prospect of writing any type of essay.

But writing an examination of any sort? Scared the bejeepers out of me. It's not like I didn't do well at exams either, because I usually did. Except for that one science test in grade 8 that I totally flunked. And maybe every math test in grade twelve. But every other exam I ever took? A's all the way, baby. I just loathed taking tests.

I was an honors geek until I decided it wasn't worth the effort and then I sort of quit going to school all together except to show up for the exams I so dreaded. If my parents noticed, they never said anything, mostly because I always managed to pull off decent grades on the tests I so feared.



The day I wrote my last high school test I practically did cartwheels out of the school. One of my happiest moments ever. I could literally feel the anxiety slough off of me as I walked away from that school for the last time.

It never occurred to me that I'd have to write exams in post secondary school. I never was the brightest kid in the school. But by the time I finally made it to college, I had two kids and a husband and I was too busy with real world problems like how to pay for both a babysitter and an electric bill when I only had the funds for one, to even worry about how I would do on any exams.

Adulthood kicked all my test anxiety to the curb.

Or so I thought.

It turns out my daughter, the junior, and my son, the sophomore, have managed to do something I never dreamt possible. They've dragged me back to high school hell.

It's semester end and with that comes studying and finals and all the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth that accompanies it. From me. Not them. Neither of my children seem overly worried about taking their tests while I'm sitting here, twitching and having a panic attack on their behalf.

You must be thinking I am too heavily invested in their futures and in desperate need of a life outside parenting my brood, or something.

For the record, you would be right.

I can't help it. I have a deep seated fear my children will live in our garage for the rest of their days, unemployed and eating Cheetos, asking me why I never folded their laundry before it wrinkled in the dryer, as they clip their toenails and ask what I'm making them for dinner.  And it is all because they got a crappy mark in Physics or English.

Ya.

All these years of avoiding helicoptering and suddenly I'm a roaring Tiger Mom who demands they study for hours on end in exchange for a glass of water and basic bathroom privileges.

I'm cracking the academic whip and my kids are plotting to choke me with it.

I'm fine with that really, as long as they do well on their exams first.

High school. Who knew it would be harder and more stressful the second time around when you have to trust your kids to do it for you?

 

Imprints

There are single seconds of my life that are forever imprinted on my heart. The moment my children were born. The instant I realized I had fallen in love with Boo. The last time I kissed my son goodnight before he died. The morning when I saw my new son for the very first time.

There are other moments of course, that have played a pivotal moment in my life. Some I have written about, memorialized, but most others I have just held close to my heart, savouring their memory for my eternity, grateful to understand it is these slivers of time that shape who I am and the person I will become.

Most of these moments, life shapers and game changers or whatever you want to call them, have occurred without fanfare or recording. The only evidence they've occurred tend to be the smile or grimace that marks one's face as they remember those shards of life. It is rare that one actually has a camera in hand to mark that exact moment in time where something in your life shifts.



I had a camera in my hand on Sunday moment as well as a freshly bathed boy and a fairly new puppy on my bed.

The two of them had been refusing to meet beyond the obligatory sniff from either one. They regarded each other with wariness; both scared of the other's sudden movements.

My heart was heavy from all the hope I had hoped and all the disappointment I had absorbed. Life was just never going to be easy for my son, my Jumby, no matter how hard I hoped otherwise, no matter how many puppies I offered him.

It was enough to just break me and for an instant, it did. So I just let it all go. I let go of the hope and the unspoken disappointments of life.  I just watched. And I breathed.

And suddenly it shifted.

Jumby found his dog. A dog found his boy.

They've been together ever since. Jumby rubbing his clenched fists against Abbott's fur, jerking his limbs against Abbott in an effort to get closer to the dog, with Abbott gently licking Jumby, stretching out to grant the boy more access.

It was a quiet moment in my life. A blurry one, really, from all the tears that kept leaking out the corner of my eyes. But it was a moment that resonated loudly in my heart.

There are very few moments of normal that my son is afforded. His normal is strange to most people. But here, with the love of a dog, my son gets to experience something so many people take for granted.

Acceptance.

Friendship.

It's so simple and so pure my heart cracks from the joy of it all. There is so much I will never be able to give my son. So much he will never be able to experience.

But as I watch the two of them together, folded into one another, silently taking in the other's company, I know the love of a dog is not going to be one of those things. Not thanks to Abbott.

I got to witness a rare moment of normalcy for my son.

It's a moment I'm never going to ever forget. It's imprinted on my heart, forever.