Author: Sheila Quirke

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Ten Years

Last week marked the ten year anniversary of our daughter’s cancer diagnosis.  Ten years is a long time.  And yet, somehow, I can transport myself to Donna’s bedside at the hospital the morning we got the diagnosis, as if it were only a few days ago.  The fear and dread and helplessness and growing pit in my stomach, knowing and feeling that something was not right.

With Donna’s diagnosis, my life became divisible by before and after. “Before,” I was a young, happy mama, naive, busy, focused on my life as mother, balancing a changing career (I had gotten a promotion just a few weeks earlier), with raising our girl.  I had one hell of a great life, when I think about it.  I worked three days a week, then home for four.  My Dad always said I was away from Donna just enough to truly appreciate her when I was home.  Wise man.

Donna and I at the IU bowling alley. We only went a few times, but Lordy, that girl loved to bowl. She had so much fun watching the heavy ball roll, roll, roll, and, hopefully, hit a few pins. It made her so happy.
Donna and I at the IU bowling alley. We only went a few times, but Lordy, that girl loved to bowl. She had so much fun watching the heavy ball roll, roll, roll, and, hopefully, hit a few pins. It made her so happy.

The “after” part of my life feels so much more complicated.  I feel old, sad, tired, unmoored, cynical more often than I care to admit. The career I was so committed to and identified with for twelve years is a thing in my past.  I think of myself as a social worker, still, and the values that drew me to social work are as present today as they ever were, but I haven’t truly worked in the field for a decade.  These days, I say I am a writer, but am I really?

And I am the mom to two boys!  How in the Sam Hill did that happen?  I was the mother of a daughter.  I should be navigating a life of tween drama and mean girl nonsense.  Instead, I am scrubbing pee out of grout on the regular.  There is simply a disconnect between the life I have and the life I had.

And then, of course, there is the guilt.  Guilt is a heavy burden.  Gratefully, I don’t feel guilt about Donna.  That beautiful girl received the best of care and was treated by a team of professionals that did their best to give her the life we all hoped for.

My guilt stems from other things related to Donna’s cancer.  The thank yous I never wrote, the frustration I feel with her brothers when they misbehave, the very real fact that there are children I still get to raise.  Most days I feel I am doing it wrong, “it” being life. Because I know, truly and deeply, just how precious life is, there is a sense that I should be doing it better.  Eating better, working harder, planning more fully, not wasting a single second. Sigh.

Milestones make me reflective, and this one is no different.  I am choosing to wallow in it, if only just a bit.  The actual anniversary was last Thursday.  I went to the grocery store, cleaned the house, folded laundry.  More than once, I felt hot tears in my eyes because I know that the ability to do simple tasks like shopping and cleaning and folding were things I was not able to do easily while we were caring for our girl.  The ordinariness of all of it made me feel mournful.

Ten years ago I gained a wisdom and perspective I would not wish on anybody.  Those things don’t go away or erode with time.  They inform all of my days, whether I want them to or not.  I am so chock full of wisdom and perspective that I am fairly certain that is what I sweat out in the dog days of summer.

At the heart of all of this is Donna.  Still gone.  Still buried.  She dances through my thoughts every day.  The beautiful girl with her big blue knowing eyes.  Time is a funny concept.  Ten years ago Donna was diagnosed. That is more than two of her lifetimes.  It feels like never and it feels like fifteen minutes.  Fuck cancer.

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Trump Apartment, Home of Russian Oligarch, or Versailles?

It’s been a long winter, has it not?  The older I get, the more I realize that balancing the challenges of life with laughter and humor is the way to go. And, in that spirit, I present to you a wee little challenge:  Can you tell the difference between the $100 million dollar home of Donald Trump in New York City from interior rooms at the Palace of Versailles, home of France’s King Louis XIV, or modern homes of Russian oligarchs around the globe? It’s harder than you think, what with all that dripping gold . . .

 

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The Viral BBC Dad Video: Does It Matter If She Is the Mom or the Nanny? Yes, It Does

If you’ve spent any time at all on the Internet today, you’ve probably seen the man being interviewed on BBC about important matters related to the geopolitics of South and North Korea before his two kids bust in, making them all an instant meme, gif, and viral sensation.  His name is Robert E. Kelly and he is an American Ph.D. who is a political science professor at Pusan National University.  In the off case  you live under a rock, here it is:

This.  Is.  Glorious.  Seriously.  Everything about these 55 seconds are comedic perfection — the young girls banana yellow sweater, her unselfconscious dancing, the curious wheeling baby, the books tossing on the floor, the father’s grimace and tightening lips as he is powerless to stop what is unfolding on live television, his repeated apologies, his brain visibly churning, willing his children to just go away, for all that is good and holy in the world, just go away.

And then she appears, in a frenetic blur of sliding socks on hardwood flooring, the woman who takes care of business.  In a flash, this gal grabs two children by the arms, pulling them out of the room, out of the camera’s eye, their wails and resistance be damned.  Then, when you think the moment has passed, she leaps back into view, reaching with everything she’s got, to close the door, thrusting herself forward on her knees.  The same door dad should have probably thought to close before he switched on his Skype.

Who is she?  The nanny?  A babysitter?  His wife?

Yep, turns out, the gal is wife and mom, not the nanny, not the hired help, not someone who can be fired for her momentary lapse in attention that led to this Internet gold.

What’s interesting to me, in watching the commentary unfold over the course of the day today, are the numerous and quick assumptions that the woman must be the nanny.  We saw this false assumption play out all over the media — everyplace from Time magazine to friends’ comments on Facebook.  There seems to be an innate intellectual obstacle from pairing the white man and the Asian woman as co-parents.  A reflexive disconnect, if you will.

Many might think the mistake a harmless one, but not my friend Marie.  “That shit happens to me all the time,” she told me today. Marie, you see, is mother to an infant son, and, like the gal in the video, often mistaken as her son’s nanny instead of his mother.  I have read her Facebook status updates cataloging these type of incidents throughout her son’s first year of life.  They are brutal.

Marie is Native American and her son is fair skinned with bright blue eyes.  Her long dark hair, beautiful brown eyes, and light brown complexion don’t, somehow, make sense to folks when they see her with her whiter than white baby.  They assume she is the nanny and tell her so, with alarming frequency.

I thought of Marie instantly this morning after first seeing folks labeling the woman in the video as a nanny, then seeing it confirmed that she was, in fact, the mom.  Did Marie, too, see this unfold?  What were her thoughts?  “I think it’s strange that in this day and age people are still subconsciously not accepting of interracial marriage. They immediately think it must be an employee and not a wife.  I want to punch them in the face.”  Mind you, Marie followed up that last statement with four laugh-crying emojis.

“I mean, I don’t really want to punch them. But it stings. I try to brush it off. People will usually start by complimenting my baby who is obviously absolutely precious and well-behaved and basically perfect. And then they will almost feel sorry for him. Like this poor child is being left with the nanny.”  Marie has heard, “I think it’s amazing that you are working on a Sunday!,” from well intentioned folks more times than she would care to count.

So how is one to react to that?  Marie is still figuring that out, “I never want to make people feel weird, but it’s awkward to correct them, so sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t.”

What is clear to me, watching Marie’s stories unfold on Facebook over the past year on top of the litany of comments about today’s video hero being a nanny instead of a mom, is that whether people realize it or not, we, as a culture, are not as evolved as we might think we are.  And, for those personally involved, for those moms and dads who folks assume are paid employees, it can hurt.