Letters to Connor Archives -

In response to Jian Ghomeshi

November 6, 2014 by Farewell Stranger ·

This letter was written by my husband and he has agreed to let me share it here. I hope it inspires you as much as it inspires me.

Connor,

You’re six years old. You’re in grade one. You’re sitting at the breakfast table eating Nutella on toast. You’re fidgety because you want to play with your Lego before you go to school and I’m making you finish your breakfast and get dressed before you do.

I’m reading a news article about a man named Jian Ghomeshi, a radio host that I admired and who we’ve listened to together in the car. He has been accused of violently assaulting women he dates. The article says that many of the women he assaulted didn’t speak up for fear that they wouldn’t be believed or that they would be blamed or that their careers or personal lives would be ruined. The article goes on to say that people acquainted with him may have known how he treated women and that one woman who did complain was largely ignored.

I can’t help but think of you.

Like every parent I’ve wondered about your future and what kind of person you will turn out to be. Will you be academic? Artistic? Athletic? What kind of friends will you make? Will you be happy?

Like every parent, I’ve thought about my role helping you become the person you are to be. I’ve thought about what I’d tell you about doing your best, about standing up to peer pressure, and about taking responsibility for your actions.

And, as the parent of two boys, I’ve thought about what I’d talk to you about before you started dating.

One of the first girls I dated had been raped by a past boyfriend. She went to court and wasn’t able to prove that he did anything they hadn’t consented to, so he wasn’t punished. At the time, she lived in a small town and the gossip forced her family to move away. Before her, I don’t think I was really that aware of rape or consent. I’m sure that I’d had the “no means no” conversation in health class but until her it didn’t really mean that much to me.

After university I worked for a year at a women’s sexual assault centre. It was a place where women who’d been assaulted could receive support and counselling. I was the first male who’d ever worked there and I worked on a project that taught teenagers that “no means no” wasn’t enough; that consent isn’t just about stopping when someone says no, but it’s about discussing your boundaries beforehand.

These experiences have been foremost in my mind as I’ve considered what you and I might talk about regarding dating and sex. I know that I want you to treat girls with respect. That, no matter what, she feels safe in your company and that whatever behaviour you engage in is something you both want.

And for the longest time that, plus a healthy dose of biological information, seemed to be good enough. But not anymore. I see now that it’s not enough to hope you don’t grow up to be a rapist. My vision for your future needs to be bigger. I want you to grow up to be a boy who stands up when someone makes a demeaning comment about a girl. I want you to be a man who speaks up when you see sexual harassment at work. I want you to be an example of how men are supposed to treat women. That you become part of the solution to violence against women and not sit silently by and be part of the problem.

Love,

Dad

Filed Under: Better world, Letters to Connor · Tagged With: my wish for you

Now We Are Six

June 13, 2014 by Farewell Stranger ·

Dear Connor,

Last night after dinner we put together the loot bags for your birthday party. They’re Star Wars themed, like your invitations, and your dad had selected a bunch of things along that theme that six-year-olds might like. As we put them together, you helped sometimes, and ran around sometimes, playing with the various extra bits, pretending you had a light sabre, and it struck me once again, in that moment, that you are six. You know things about Star Wars and light sabres and you are six.

For the last couple of months as we led up to your sixth birthday, my chest has been tight thinking about it. I don’t know why. There isn’t anything particularly noteworthy about turning six; at least not that I can think of. You might notice that this year, unlike other years, I have titled this letter, “Now WE are six.” For some reason this birthday, unlike other years, feels more like it’s about us and not just about you.

I have thought about this a lot, trying to figure out why. The closest I can come is that it has something to do with the stage Ethan has reached. At 18 months (and then 19, and then 20) it became clearer and clearer to me how different he is from how you were at that age. And in so realizing, it became clearer and clearer just how hard those first few years of parenthood were when you were a baby.

My darling boy, I love you so much, but a lot of things about being your mom in those first few years just sucked. I look back on those things now and I wonder how we got through it. Sometimes I think maybe I didn’t actually get through it intact, but maybe this is just how things are and were meant to be. Maybe some of these things would have come about anyway.

You are an entirely different person now. Well, maybe not entirely. You are still full of life and energy, but you have evolved into a person who has two speeds: high speed and off. You are either moving through life at mach speed or completely still, focused on Lego, or a movie, or fast asleep. For the last couple of mornings I’ve had to come and wake you up so you could be at school on time, something I don’t actually recall ever having to do in the last six years. You were curled up in your sleeping bag on your camping cot (which you’ve insisted on sleeping in since returning from camping last weekend) and you didn’t even move when Ethan and I came into the room. And then I left the room for a moment to tell your dad that you were still totally passed out—because it really was that remarkable—and Ethan jiggled you enough to wake you up and the next thing I knew you were out of bed. You went from completely OFF to completely ON.

Recently, I have become better at catching you in, or encouraging you into, quieter moments. I have worked on regulating my own settings so that your high-speed setting doesn’t inevitably push me straight into overdrive. Our relationship is better now than it was. Better now, I think, than ever. I can see more clearly what you need, and you can express your needs more clearly to me, and we aren’t always jockeying to each have our own needs met RIGHT NOW.

I have struggled recently with the things your birth brought into my life – things I didn’t ask for and didn’t expect. But I struggle less with you, and as a result you struggle less with me. We have found a balance, like the point of a spinning top that stays in control, en pointe, and fully supported by the forces around it. It took us a few years of working to build the strength and structure to appear to dance more lightly, but we got here. And as I look in the mirror I see us dancing a choreographed dance that we perform mostly in unison, spending less time treading on each other’s toes.

I like this dance, my darling boy.

Now we are partners.

Now we are six.

I will love you always and forever,

Mama xx

Filed Under: Letters to Connor · Tagged With: depression, family, gratitude

Now You Are Five

June 13, 2013 by Farewell Stranger ·

Dear Connor,

Today you turn five.

I’ve been looking at pictures of you from this time last year, and from six months before that, in which you were a little boy.

It seems such a short time ago that you were so little and now, quite suddenly, you are not.

I think I feel this about you—that you are no longer little—because I’m comparing you and your baby brother – you to him, him to you. He has brought Small back into our lives while at the same time you have charged ahead to Big. You didn’t ask whether you could plant yourself firmly in this next phase, you just did. I don’t think I even saw it coming.

There are times you let some of your former Small peek through, like when you come out of the bath and you throw off your hooded towel and your hair is wet and spiky. Or when I wake up in the morning and realize you have come in early-early without me noticing and you are curled up next to your dad, fast asleep. In those moments you are Small.

But mostly you are Big.

You eat more than I ever could have imagined an almost-five-year-old could eat. “Can you get me something to eat?” is a question I hear many, many times a day. You are growing. And you are Tall and you are Long Legs and you are Independent.

You are so big that I almost can’t remember what it was like when you were a baby. And yet you are still the same character who burst onto the stage of our lives five years ago.

“How does our voice come?” you recently asked me. We’ve reached the stage where I have to start looking things up to explain them to you properly. You want the details – the hows and the whys and the what-ifs.

You have rituals. At the end of each day, without fail, you say, “Let’s talk about our day,” and “What shall we do tomorrow?”

You are curious and busy and stubborn and loud. You have to be reminded—often—to use your inside voice and your listening ears, to put your shoes on so we can get out the door, to not jump on your brother. Often, these requests have no effect on you whatsoever.

We are still push-pull, you and I. We are the same in temperament and different in our desires, requiring a not-always-achieved balance of your Loud versus my Quiet, your Bounce versus my Still. I don’t always get it right, yet after five years I have mostly figured out when to push forward and when to pull back.

Sometimes you slow right down and set everything else aside—the noise and the toys and the games and the shows—and you get quiet. You ask to hold your baby brother. You feed him. You sing him a song when he cries.

I watch you brothering him and I see your heart shine though. It is Big, just like you are. And it makes my heart big too.

I will love you always and forever,

Mama xx

Filed Under: Letters to Connor · Tagged With: family, gratitude, my wish for you

Now You Are Four

June 13, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

Dear Connor,

Today you turn four.

You came into our room at 5:00 this morning asking for a cuddle. Normally when it’s that early we try to get you back into your own bed, but I wanted a cuddle too so I let you stay. You fell asleep promptly, your warm little self pressed against me, and slept until 8.

The first thing you did upon waking up was run around the other side of the bed to hug your dad and thank him for your birthday cake. You knew he was making one because you had helped him bake it and, while you had no idea what it turned out like or just how cool a cake it was, that one action says so much about the boy you are becoming.

The cake and your appreciation for it

Every day you do something like that and I am reminded again of how much love a mother can have for her child. I was consumed by that today – just full of awe about how much you’ve changed my world. I understand now why my mother always reminisces on our birthdays about how and when we are born. It’s my birthday, I remember thinking. Why is it such a big deal to you?

But it is a big deal because it’s life changing for a mother, in even more profound ways than for the child I think.

In the last couple of days I’ve spent so much time thinking about when you were born. How we tried the day before to get the OB to turn you around, but how you stayed stubbornly breech. How we left the hospital knowing we were coming back very early the next morning to bring you into the world. How I called my mom and we went out for dinner and ate huge bowls of pasta because I hadn’t eaten all day while we’d been waiting to see if the external version was going to go ahead. I remember my mom sitting at that table with us. I remember how she looked at us and how she was excited knowing she would meet her first grandchild the next day. What I didn’t know at the time was just how much she knew about what was about to happen to us and how little I did.

Because, truly, I had no idea.

One of your first snow days

Since that day, so much seems to have blurred together as I try to navigate my way through a world that includes you. How you have taken lately to letting out high-pitched shrieks that threaten to deafen the lot of us. How you use the couch as a tumbling mat despite us asking you repeatedly not to. How often you tell either your dad or I that you “didn’t listen” today (which, by the way, we’re well aware of). How you want to do everything yourself whether it’s appropriate or not and how you can have the granddaddy of all meltdowns if we say no. How, after four years, you still don’t reliably sleep through the night.

Those are the little things about life with you that become big things, and sometimes those big little things overshadow the other stuff. And then you spontaneously say or do something that reminds me of just how big a heart you have and what an incredible soul you really are, and I am again filled with gratitude.

You’re missing your friends from home lately and my heart breaks at the thought that we’ve moved you away from these small people you’ve known all your life and who have helped shape the person you are. You miss Grandma and Grandpa, and while I hate that too I feel blessed that you have in my parents the grandparents I would have wished for you.

Lounging with Grandma

I worry that you’re bored and that we should be doing more to stimulate you. I want to encourage you to do the things you love to do, like painting, playing with Lego, and cooking and baking, because in those moments I see how your mind works and how the world becomes meaningful to you and full of potential. And yet I feel stuck a little bit, trapped between your smartness and short attention span and my overwhelming lack of energy right now.

Your bacon moustache

But I know this period in our life is short, and getting shorter by the day. In the fall you’ll have a new little brother – “my baby” you call him, and you’re so excited to meet him (even though you still sometimes think he’s a girl). This baby has always been “your” baby and in those words I see the big brother you’re going to be. Some days I wish we’d had another child sooner so you’d have a playmate like some of your friends do, but that’s not how it worked out. And maybe that’s for the best. You’ve had four years as the centre of our lives and you’re more than ready to take on your new role.

But for the next few months you’re still my baby, and I imagine — little brother or not — that is what you will always be.

I will love you always and forever,

Mama xx

Filed Under: Happy things, Letters to Connor, Motherhood, Pregnancy · Tagged With: family, gratitude, moments, my wish for you, sleep

Becoming Real

January 2, 2012 by Farewell Stranger ·

There was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen.

A few years ago I was really splendid. I was fat and bunchy too, and my hair shone. But then something changed.

For a long time he lived in the toy cupboard or on the nursery floor, and no one thought very much about him. He was naturally shy, and being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him…Between them all the poor little Rabbit was made to feel himself very insignificant and commonplace, and the only person who was kind to him at all was the Skin Horse.

When your shine disappears and your sateen starts to wear, it’s easy to feel insignificant. All the things I had been on the outside seemed to be gone, and all that was left was the threadbare version of me.

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

All mothers experience this to some degree, I think. The initial boast-and-swagger clouds what is real and we stumble. We look in the mirror one day and realize the splendid version of ourselves is gone. For some, the nursery magic reveals that the mother version of ourselves in its place is actually the Real version but, for others, we think think we’ve lost ourselves and are simply gone.

I thought I wasn’t Real because I wasn’t made that way. I thought I wasn’t made to be a mother and in becoming one had lost who I truly am.

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

But I didn’t have the wisdom of the Skin Horse. I wasn’t old and wise and experienced and I couldn’t see that I could, in fact, become Real.

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

Becoming Real did hurt. Sometimes a little bit and sometimes a lot. Most of the time I did mind, but I wasn’t Real yet.

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

Over the last 3 1/2 years I have become Real, bit by bit.

I didn’t actually know it though. I thought I was unlike other mothers, the same way the Velveteen Rabbit was afraid of what the rabbits in the forest would think of him, not realizing he was in fact Real, and had hind legs just like they did.

There are still people who don’t understand, I think. Those who don’t understand why I felt as though I weren’t good enough, and those who don’t understand why I share all this here.

But the nursery magic Fairy in The Velveteen Rabbit tells the Rabbit what it is to be Real, and the reason he is Real is the same reason I am.