Category: Uncategorized Page 1 of 6

This week, three things happened:

1. We celebrated the end of the inaugural season of the Legendary Rhinos Adaptive Soccer team, which I started along with Katie Jameson. 
2. My Chaos Garden grew some accidental kale, and a curse.
3. I accidentally taught a poem involving dildos to my Entrepreneurial Leadership class. 

After a year of change, Dottie and I had the chance to grow a garden. Over the winter, I stared at our little garden box and imagined neat rows of carrots, peas growing up along stakes, fat pumpkins for Halloween. Dottie would learn about plants and our connection to the earth, and we would smilingly harvest our bounty together.

After a hard week in March, I decided it was planting day. I tried to show Dottie how to poke a hole in the earth, put in the seed, cover it up, water it. Somehow, however, our enthusiasm got the best of us. Seeds everywhere. For awhile, nothing grew.

And who could blame it? I watered it inconsistently. I know nothing about gardening. I forgot to stake the peas. (A missed stake mistake). But soon, our little garden box was lush with plants we couldn’t name. 

A purple flower appeared, so I Googled “purple flower” and found out that it’s an invasive weed called Paterson’s Curse. Some green leaves with purple stems appeared, so I asked people on Twitter and found out that it was red Russian Kale, which was remarkable because we did not plant red Russian Kale. I Googled “Red Russian Kale recipes.” I tasted the kale leaves —  bitter — and then Googled “are there any poisonous plants that look like red Russian Kale.” So, a bunch of unintentional kale and a curse. That felt about right.

I turned the kale into a chorizo, sweet potato and kale stew, feeling as hearty as my grandmother, whose garden was a marvel. As the stew emerged from the Instant Pot, I tried to impress upon Dottie the importance of the moment.

“This is food we grew with our own hands,” I intoned, leaving out the part where we did not actually plant kale. 

She elected to dine on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. 

The Chaos Garden has no linear lines, but things have grown all the same. Not on the timeline we planned, sometimes not what we expected to grow: but in all directions, growth is happening. It doesn’t look like someone else’s growth, but what a beautiful surprise to come outside in the morning and see a bright red poppy growing or a bunch of pea pods hiding in the undergrowth.

***

This April, Katie Jameson and I created an adaptive soccer league in two weeks. Marpole Soccer Club said yes to inclusion and hopped right in. It was remarkable: people said yes and kept saying yes. Marpole Soccer Club provided the practice space, equipment, jerseys, insurance, registration. We found the kids and volunteers. It grew like a live thing. 

I have so much to say about our club. About all the people who made it happen: who said yes, when they could have said no, when there were so many reasons to say no. I kept expecting things to go wrong, but they didn’t. What if no one signed up? They did. What if no one came to the first practice? They did. What if no volunteers showed up? They did. What if kids didn’t stick around? They did. 

Without a business plan or a proposal or a timeline or a Gantt chart, this program grew from the everyday magic of people showing up.

Our soccer doesn’t look like someone else’s soccer. Katie Jameson has written beautifully about how sometimes soccer is kicking a ball and sometimes it’s twirling in a field and sometimes it’s the joy of running a feather under your chin in the sensory tent.

We end the day with a parachute and bubbles. We kick the soccer ball at cartoon villains our volunteers taped to the side of a cardboard box. We sit in the grass and play with pebbles. We jump on balance stones, pretending it is lava. Someone donated a dinosaur costume. Kids spend a few practices on the sidelines, then slowly move towards the group, and it’s beautiful to see them migrate. We learn together and adapt and try again. But within that wildness, I also have a plan. In fact, I make a visual schedule of each practice plan, which some athletes appreciate and others don’t need.

I could say so much about this program. But I’m thinking about all the unexpected blooming I saw over the eight weeks of the program. Children with developmental disabilities deserve a place where they can participate in ways that feel meaningful to them. They deserve to be in the sunshine, twirling, with a volunteer who cares for them, alongside other children who are chasing a ball or popping a bubble. They deserve community where the price of admission isn’t “behaving.”  When things feel so hopeless right now politically, how beautiful to be able to grow one small program that feels hopeful.

***

This semester, I’m teaching a bunch of new classes. I appreciate the hard work of my colleagues, who have generously given me their excellent teaching materials. One of the classes involves helping students develop their identities as entrepreneurs.

Starting an adaptive soccer program is a type of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs identify a problem, come up with a solution and, in doing so, create financial or social benefit. It felt strange to be talking about business canvas models and Gantt charts (very important things!) when my own entrepreneurship involved basically being like “hey, uh, want to start an adaptive program? Okay cool.”

When I teach, I try to hold that tension: the need to plan versus the fact that so many of the things I’ve built happened in ways I couldn’t have planned for.

But then I think about all of the knowledge and skills that I needed to acquire to be able to start a program without a blueprint. I’ve coached wheelchair basketball off and on since I was 16. I’ve played wheelchair basketball at an international level. I worked in sport administration doing marketing, PR and communications. I’ve taught a bunch of different higher-education courses. I’ve parented for nearly 5 years. And I’ve done it all in an unwieldy disabled body and neurodivergent mind. My experience allowed me to freestyle. If I’d tried to start this program when I was 20, it would have been a disaster. 

And I think about how much help I needed. This program wouldn’t have existed with Katie Jameson’s grit, her passion, her marketing skills, her photography, her beliefs about inclusion, the beautiful way she parents her kids. It wouldn’t have existed without Courtney and Allison’s soccer program knowledge, enthusiasm and grant-writing capacity, or the organizational capacity that Marpole Soccer Club brought. It wouldn’t have existed without the skills of the volunteers, and the volunteer coaches, and the parents and the athletes themselves. It wouldn’t exist without my mom, who not only attended practices but also routinely just does my laundry or picks up my kid from daycare when I have a doctor’s appointment. 

The idea that entrepreneurs are lone geniuses is the thing that leads us to tech bros accidentally inventing taxes while draining resources from marginalized communities. 

So, in this class, I’ve tried to balance helping students plan with giving students the opportunity to play, iterate and dabble without the expectation of a finished product or “value added.” I’ve tried to help them think about using their gifts to make their communities better. For example, the students just wrote Surrey Neighbourhood Improvement Grants to practice identifying a problem and coming up with a solution that involves the community. We hope to submit some, and bring their projects to life as a final exam. 

 Which leads me to today. Last week, we watched the Kirby Ferguson documentary “Everything is a Remix.” Today, we started by practicing the “building blocks of creativity:” copying, combining and transforming. 

I brought a bunch of different poems to class. I put students into groups, and each was given a different poem. First, students copied the lines of their poem on to strips of paper. Then, they combined the lines of their poems to create a new poem. Lastly, they took their favourite line and used it to create something new. 

The students did beautifully. They wrote gorgeous poems. They bloomed in unexpected ways. However, a few giggles from the back of the room reminded me that the Kim Addonizio poem I’d brought contains references to dildos. Obviously, these students are adults and can handle a few references to sex toys, and the poem isn’t explicit, but I imagined some other business instructor asking their student, “What are you doing in Arley’s ENTR 1100 class?” Oh, you know, learning about innovation by remixing this poem about dildos and tampons. The usual.”

And that reminded me of how hard I tried to be a business-y business teacher at the beginning of my career, rather than the teacher who accidentally assigns dildo poems. And it reminded me that this course was built off the amazing work of my colleague John Grant, who designed it with such thoughtfulness and care, so I could build upon it in my own weird ways.

Planning is important. Organizing is important. And I am working on my planning and organizing skills. But I am, at heart, a bit of an agent of chaos, and I think I do a disservice to my students if I try to force myself into a Business Teacher mold. It takes an entire school to grow a business student, and they will get a wide range of wonderful instructors with different approaches. My approach just happens to involve mildly risque poetry: an approach I’ve developed through my years as a wheelchair basketball coach, novelist, teacher, communications manager, athlete etc. 

And, as usual, I’m thinking about inclusion. It’s hard to scale up inclusion, because so much of it happens in every-day moments: the hard work of building relationships, of reaching out when things aren’t quite working to figure out how to do it better, of that special mix of personalities and access needs that somehow grow into a community.

However, part of growing is recognizing the need to move through different phases. Love created our soccer team. But love needs support to turn into something permanent. People leave, they burn out, they grow in different directions. So now, it’s time for planning. 

Our next goal for the club is to build more organizational capacity. We need paid coaches and more support for volunteers. We need a donations plan. We need structure, so that we can engage in joyful play.

It will be a balance, I think, between ensuring the program’s sustainability and allowing for that organic wildness. I think it starts with respect. We respect our athletes enough to place them at the center: to ask them, to design with them in mind. We respect that one person alone can’t plan. We respect that each athlete in our program has gifts and abilities and talents, and we need everyone’s help to find the best way to help them bloom.

This week, I started an adaptive soccer program along with Katie Jameson (whose reflections here are an important read and echo a lot of my own thoughts). Do I have time to start an adaptive soccer program? No. Do I know a lot about soccer? Also no. Am I able to kick a soccer ball? Not really. But do I at least have a deep, hidden passion for sports administration and unpaid meetings? I’ll let you answer that one.

But I do have a kid who I signed up for a parent-run adaptive soccer program. And I did spend weeks watching videos about soccer with this kid, and buying her a soccer ball, until she got excited about being on a team. And then I opened up Facebook one day to see that the adaptive program that I’d signed her up for had been cancelled.

And just as I was figuring out what happened, I looked over at my little girl, who was kicking a soccer ball in my hallway, proudly telling me that she was “on a team.” And I simply was not going to say, “Actually, no you’re not.” Especially not after this year, after everything.

I will save you the details. The emails. The Facebook posts. The meetings. I have worked in parasport, which means that I know amazing people like Nadine Barbisan, who connected me with some other parents who have started their own adaptive soccer programs. The point is, I have a particular set of skills, mostly that I have worked in parasport enough to watch other people organize teams, that I benefitted from playing parasport, that I have learned about disability justice from other crips, and that I have the ability to be very annoying and go into situations like a bull in a china shop.

But the point is that yesterday, a wonderful thing happened. Katie and I had a meeting with Courtney from the Marpole Soccer Club and she said yes. She said, “Let’s make this happen!” And while we’re still hammering out the final details, it looks like it’s going to happen: an adaptive soccer program for kids with developmental disabilities. It is so beautiful when someone doesn’t say “but we need to study the issue and consult our stakeholders and look into it and get back you” but “yes! Sure! I don’t know how, but we’ll make it happen!”

So much of inclusion is just that: saying yes. Saying “let’s make it happen.” Saying “I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m going to start.” That applies from everything from teaching in higher ed to organizing soccer for four-year-olds. I am so happy and thrilled that Marpole Soccer Club chose to say yes, even when the details are still being worked out. And hopefully, this will be a model for other clubs to say yes.

But it’s interesting, isn’t it? That the only adaptive programs seem to be parent-run. Parents of non-disabled kids sign their kids up for soccer programs, and those programs are run by governing bodies who take care of the registration, the liability insurance, the paperwork, the uniforms. Access to sport isn’t easy at the best of times, especially in terms of cost. Lots of parents of non-disabled kids end up hovering at their computers at exactly 7 am on some random day, refreshing their pages at just the right moment to score a coveted spot in a soccer or baseball or swimming program, as if it was Coachella not little league.

Access to sports could be easier for everyone, especially during Covid. But why are the only adaptive soccer programs parent-run? I would assume it’s because most sports teams will say they “welcome” disabled, neurodivergent and chronically ill kids…which they mean that they will allow them to register. But being on a team that has made no efforts to understand the needs of a disabled child or change how the practices are run or seek out expertise from those with lived experience or change anything at all is not inclusion. It’s participation. It’s wearing a uniform without really being on a team. It’s the very same as how I was “included” in gym class when I was a kid in a wheelchair in elementary school because I was the scorekeeper or the “referee.” I was there! I was included!

That’s not inclusion. That’s tolerating someone’s presence. That’s what leads to all those feel-good, inspiration porn, viral videos where a basketball player with Down Syndrome or autism gets subbed into the game for a few minutes, long after the result has been decided, and scores a basket. A neurodivergent player getting to play for 2 minutes without impacting the final result of the game isn’t inclusion. It isn’t a cause for celebration. That player, sitting at the end of the bench for the entire season, playing a few minutes here and there, hasn’t been able to fully use their skills and abilities. They’re a prop. A life lesson for non-disabled people. A meme.

I disgress. I don’t know if there’s Universal Design for Coaching, the way there is Universal Design for Learning. If clubs want to take a look at their programs from the ground up and design them in a way that support a greater range of participants, that’s great. But until that happens, there will be kids for whom a traditional soccer practice isn’t going to work. And those kids deserve amazing sport experiences. They deserve to be in community with those who share their neurotype, to move their bodies in ways that feel good, to challenge themselves to do hard things, to be part of programs that honour their ways of knowing and being in the world.

All kids deserve that. And parents of disabled kids, many of whom are disabled themselves, deserve to be able to access those programs without starting their own. Of course parent-run adaptive soccer teams fold. Of course they do! It is no fault of the parents. If parents were the best people to run sports organizations, then sports organizations wouldn’t exist. Even the best, most amazing parents are going to get burnt out, especially if they’re battling ableism from all sides in other aspects of their lives. Their kid will lose interest, or grow up. Or they’ll move. Or they’ll get resentful and tired and just want to spend the weekend on the couch and not have one more meeting. Of course, of course, of course. Adaptive programs require consistency. They require extra work in recruiting and retention. They require thought and care and flexibility and experience. There’s a reason you can get a degree in sport admin! And so adaptive programs need systemic change: actual inclusion.

My kid doesn’t know that her soccer program was cancelled. All she knows is she’s going to be on a team. Maybe she’ll spend that time putting rocks down a drain or standing in a mud puddle. Maybe she’ll spend it running and playing. Maybe she’ll develop a love of soccer. Maybe she’ll refuse to go. Maybe she’ll make a friend. Maybe she won’t. That is not the point. The point is that she gets to try. She deserves to try. All kids deserve the chance to try.

So if you live near Vancouver, and you have a kid who wants to try adaptive soccer, contact hello@katiejameson and let’s try together. I can’t wait to see what happens.

I was thrilled to be asked to do a keynote at the Studio20 conference. The team at BCCampus imagined an innovative, fun, energizing event and were really accommodating with making some of the ideas I had come to life.

Day 3 is about engaging learners online. Since we were talking about giving learners meaningful choice, I decided to do a Choose Your Own Adventure style keynote using a combination of H5P’s ‘branching scenario’ and ‘course presentation.’ This is the asynchronous version, which was recorded and which also has a transcript for those who don’t want to listen to my voice for 30 minutes. That way, conference attendees can go through and select different choices.

Anyhow, this keynote allowed me to bring together everything from Murderball to disability justice to student choice to UDL to the Paralympics to open pedagogy. It’s licensed CC-BY so others can remix it. Enjoy!

In 2009, I had a hip replacement and lost the ability to walk.

In 2015, I did two half marathons.

This sounds like the beginning of an inspirational tale, but it’s really not. Doing a half marathon when you have avascular necrosis, are on your second hip replacement and don’t have a gluteus medius on your left side is a bad idea. I messed up my knee and my back, and within a year was unable to work out altogether.

Today, I have trouble bending down to pick up my daughter, and I struggle to walk for more than a few minutes. I’m back to using a forearm crutch. Is this all because of the half marathon? No. But a lot of it is due to my desire to push my body to the point of breaking. Sometimes, the impulse leads to good things: novels and grad school diplomas and Paralympic medals. Rarely, however, has it ever been good for me.

I love exercise. I can do very little exercise. I’m not very good at holding these two contradictions at once. Historically, the minute my back has felt even a little better, I’ve jumped right into some workout program with a name like “the 30 day Shed n’ Shred!” (The only thing I shredded is the last bits of my gluteus medius). I’ll say things like, “Wow, I am really loving this Body Bootcamp Extreme Plus! Did I mention that I can’t feel the side of my right foot? And that the side of my kneecap is swollen so it looks like I have two kneecaps, kind of like a bum, but on my knee! Bad luck, I guess. Total coincidence.”

For years, I’ve done no exercise, because I need the function to take care of my daughter. In August, however, I started getting trigger point injections every few weeks. They don’t help with the disc stuff, but they’ve taken the muscle spasming down enough that I can start moving my body a little more comfortably.

Last month, I randomly signed up for the Be.Come Project, which offers body-neutral workout videos. I thought they might help me build some more core strength, which might help my back pain. They’re gentle enough that I’ve been able do them, though I’ve needed modifications. Honestly, workout videos get a bad rap. They’re the most accessible form of exercise for me. I’ve tried to attend group fitness classes in the past before Covid, but the instructor inevitably says something like, “You need to stop buckling your knee in during that lunge” and then I have to give the Coles Notes version about why I would love to do that, but I do not have a gluteus medius and so literally can’t, and then the instructor usually cheerfully tells me that it’s important to try/stay positive and I have to explain — while music blares and the other participants stare at me — that I physically do not have the muscle required to do the thing, no matter how positive I am. With workout videos, I can flail around at home and only my cat can judge me.

But the important thing is that I was able to stick to doing just 3 workouts a week. Not 5. Not 7. Just 3. Just 30 minutes per session. At the end of every session, I stretch to “This Year” by the Mountain Goats.

After a month, I look exact the same. I’m proud of that sameness. I’m proud that I didn’t go too far, that my primary motivation wasn’t to punish myself or overcome myself. My body has demonstrated time and time again that it won’t be shedded/shredded/sculpted/bootcamped/fatblasted. As I’ve learned more about fat liberation, I’ve stopped seeing thinness as a desirable goal.

I still miss sports. I really do. I miss working out with other people. But it feels good right now to focus on gentleness, on endorphins, on stopping when it hurts in the wrong way, on drinking a cool glass of water after a just-long-enough workout as The Mountain Goats remind me that I’m going to make it through this year if it kills me.

The pandemic has been going on for six months, and it’s strange how far away pre-pandemic life feels. It’s seems almost incomprehensible that I ever took an airplane, went on a business trip, stayed in a hotel. I don’t travel much now that I teach full-time, but when I worked in marketing/communications, I used to travel fairly regularly. I always hated it, since travel flares up a lot of my pain issues.

Lately, however, I’ve found myself trying to remember the small details of what those moments were like. So, since I wanted to teach myself H5P’s branching scenarios, I decided to create a very boring Choose Your Own Adventure. This Choose Your Own Adventure just recreates a business trip: something that would have been unremarkable and even annoying a few years ago, but now seems like a wild, exotic vacation. I found it very soothing to remember these details and to create something where you could spend 10 or 15 minutes wandering around an airport. It reminded me of when, as a teenager, I used to create elaborate text-based role-playing games.

Anyhow, this might only be soothing to me, but I figured I’d share it in case anyone wanted to pretend to be on a pre-pandemic business trip. I don’t think we should return to this life: so much of it was wasteful. But these days, when doing normal things feels like visiting Jurassic Park, I had fun making this.

It’s the end of the semester, and my plans of blogging each week got lost in a flurry of parenting and grading and lesson planning and committees and conferences and webinars and extra projects and why did I say yes to that and how did I think I had time for that and too much iced coffee. So it goes.

But this is pandemic pedagogy, and it’s important to at least try to extend grace to myself. The semester is never perfect, and it’s certainly not perfect in a pandemic. (And, as Michelle Nahanee recently said in a webinar about decolonization, “perfectionism is a tool of colonialism.”) At the end on the semester, there will be loose ends, unanswered emails, threads I forgot to pick back up. I don’t expect perfection from my students so I shouldn’t expect it from myself. I try to teach writing by focusing on the process. I want students to take risks, and fail, and try something new. I try to model failure myself: process-based teaching.

At the beginning of the semester, our class made a charter where we laid out 5 things I would agree to do and 5 things the students would agree to do. As one of my 5 things, I agreed to throw a class party. I gave students input and they decided a) that we should have a talent show and b) that I should sing and rap at said talent show.

Am I a good singer? No. Can I keep a beat? Also no. Can I at least stay in key? Again, no.

In fact, when I try to sing my toddler says, “No. Mommy doesn’t sing that. Google sings that.” Then, she tries to get the Google Home to sing the song. (Another sign I need to get rid of that Google Home).

But, here is a good opportunity to model failure and vulnerability and risk-taking. Also, as a child I dreamed of becoming the next Weird Al, so I was glad for the chance to write a song parody. I decided to pick something that was both relatively easy to sing and also had both singing and rapping: “You’re Welcome” from Moana. (Can you tell I have a toddler?)

My composition process took several weeks:

• I wrote the lyrics. That was relatively easy, and I awarded myself bonus points for rhyming ‘authentic’ with ‘pandemic.’
• I tried to record myself singing over a karaoke track I found, but my voice was quiet and the song was loud. Fail.
• I reached out to Dr. Gordon Cobb, who’s a genius in all things audio. Like any good educator, he expressed enthusiasm for my project and gave me a small, feasible task to do, which was to record the project in GarageBand. Lesson: don’t be afraid to ask for help.
• I refreshed myself on GarageBand and tried to sing to the karaoke track, but I couldn’t keep the timing without the lyrics appearing on the screen in the karaoke track. Lesson: sometimes you need a model to work from.
• After several failed attempts, I decided that I would just have to sing it live. That meant more practice. Lesson: when your plan goes awry, make a new plan.
• My husband helped me edit the audio files and even added a much-needed dash of autotune. Lesson: revision is important, as is asking for help.

So, at the end of the day, I have a recording of myself singing my business communication parody of “You’re Welcome.” Does it sound great and polished? No. Do I cringe to listen to it? Yeah, kind of. But I’ve never done something like this before, and it was fun to step outside of my comfort zone.

So here, for all to see, is my business communication parody of “You’re Welcome.” The lyrics are below, in case you want to sing along.

You’re Writing
(To the tune of You’re Welcome from Moana)

Ok, ok, I see what’s happening here

You’re doing workplace writing and it’s strange

You don’t even know where to start

It’s uncomfortable

Well a lot can happen with a little change

Open your laptop. Let’s begin

to think of writing situations we’ve been in

We don’t have to learn it all at once

Let’s start by thinking of our audience

What can I say except you’re writing

Emails, memos, reports

Hey it’s okay, it’s okay

You’re writing

Just use plain language to keep it short

Hey!

What has 4 steps and helps us assess

If we can trust a source? – yes

The SIFT test

When you learn someone

How can you give the credit right?

Just make sure you cite!

Oh, there are so many great ways

When writing

To quote your source or paraphrase

No one learns it all alone

When writing

Our influences help us grow!

So what can I say except you’re writing

Choosing words to fit your tone

A little bit every day, 

you’re writing

We don’t have to do it alone

You’re writing

You’re writing

Well, come to think of it

Class, honestly do not go on and on

Keep it concise or your reader will start to yawn

Your charts, your graphs, your visuals

Use some alt text just to make them accessible

I started a blog

Did a few tries

Tried it again

Cause it’s good to revise

What’s the lesson?
What is the takeaway?

Don’t start to fret if your writing’s in disarray

Cause these headings I put in my draft

Are just one way to work through my craft

Look at you’re progress

You’re making it happen

Take a step back and you might start a’clapping

Hey, hey, hey, hey

Well, anyway let me say you’re writing

Even though the semester’s done

You’re meeting your goals, your plans

You’re writing

Cause you’ve worked hard and hopefully had fun

Hey everyday just say you’re writing

In a way that feels authentic

You’re doing amazing work, you’re writing

Even though we’re in a global pandemic

You’re writing

You’re writing

And thank you!

Dear Dottie,

Today, you and I went to the Mamas March for Black and Indigenous Lives protest and storytime teach-in. The night before, we made signs and you decorated them with crayons. One said “Black and Indigenous Lives Matter” and another said “Justice for Regis Korchinski-Paquet and Chantel Moore.” We talked about protests, and anti-Black racism, and why we were marching.

Today, we went to the rose garden in Queens Park: you in the toddler carrier, me walking with my forearm crutch. You holding both signs: one in each fist. Me, doing the best I could to keep up with the other protestors.

My love, one of the hardest parts of having chronic pain is when I have to deny you an experience. We stopped going to swimming lessons because I couldn’t bend enough to safely do the exercises. We stopped going to Baby Time because I couldn’t sit on the floor. You don’t understand this now, but one day you’ll notice that I can’t move as fast as the other mamas. I wish so much that I could do things like teach you how to ice skate, or take dance lessons with you. I wish I could give you an underduck on the swings.

I can’t walk for very long, especially not when I’m babywearing. But it’s important to me that you see protests in action. I want you to know both that Canada is racist and colonialist, and that you can do something about it. And I want you to listen to people who have experienced oppression, and do what you can to fight back against oppressive systems.

Throughout my life, I have wanted to be more of an activist than I am. My body is not built for direct action. I am too much of a people-pleaser. It’s only been in the past few years that I’ve been more comfortable calling out racism. And while I know that political action looks a lot of different ways, and while I know that I can donate and post and have discussions and all of that counts, I wanted you to feel what happens when people move together singing and chanting and cheering. I wanted you to feel a part of a movement, even if you’re too little to know what a movement is.

So, we moved together with a crowd of 50 or 60 people. “Momma’s stick is tapping,” you said. “That’s a tapping sound.” We left the park and marched towards Moody Park. I wore a mask, as did most of the grownups. Everyone carried signs. The crowd shouted, “No justice, no peace,” and you did the ‘No peace’ part. You held up the signs. “I’m a big helper,” you said.

As we walked, the sun came out, and you snuggled against my chest. When you were a baby, I wore you all the time, and it’s your favourite place to be. When you’re upset, you run to the closet and bring me the carrier. I don’t wear you very often, because of my back pain: one more thing my pain has taken from us.

But I wore you, and we walked, and we chanted, and despite the honking and the chanting, you fell asleep against my chest with your signs clutched in your fists. When you let them go, a punk couple dressed in black picked them up, because I couldn’t bend. You’d wake up, disoriented, and want the sign back. Then, you’d fall asleep and drop it again, lulled by the cadence of my crutch and the sway of my limp, and someone would pick them up for us.

When we got the park, you woke up and wanted to run around. We listened to a few stories, and I read part of “When We Were Alone,” before you ran off and I had to chase you. Then, Nana came with my car and picked us up, so I wouldn’t have to walk back.

Dottie, you are sensitive and strong-willed. I love that about you. You were born with fierce opinions. You know exactly what you want. And I want you to use these qualities for good. It will take more than one march to orient you towards anti-racism and justice. But this moment is a good time to promise you that I will have tough conversations with you, that I will fill our house with books and movies that don’t center people who look like you. I will call out racism when I see it, and work on my own learning and unlearning. My sweet goose, I will love you however you are, but I do hope that you grow up to be more radical than I am.

I’ve been thinking a lot about discomfort. One of my mottos is “I am comfortable with being uncomfortable.” As someone with chronic pain, I am used to physical discomfort. But I am trying to get used to emotional discomfort: to sit with uncomfortable feelings and not get defensive, to acknowledge when I’ve caused harm. I hope that you will develop a positive relationship to your own discomfort. I don’t have good answers for you. I’ve both paid a price for ignoring my own discomfort and powering through, and for centring my own discomfort to the cost of others.

I also hope that growing up with a disabled mom will show you the importance of community. Another mom at the park will give you an underduck on the swings. Someone else will pick up the signs you dropped. And I hope that you will learn that true community needs to include reciprocity. People help us. We help people. From each according to their ability; to each according to their need, as Marx said. I hope you will learn to look around and ask yourself who gets help, who’s left out, whose discomfort is centred at whose expense?

Right now, you’re sleeping in your new big girl bed. You are not a fan. You’ve already been up once crying, wanting your crib back. But you’re growing up, and sometimes transitions are hard. Change is hard. You may never sleep on my chest in your carrier again. But you’re sleeping now, settled. I hope you dream of people shouting ‘no justice, no peace’ and ‘Black Lives Matter’ and the cadence of my crutches tapping. I hope you are proud of the work you did today, my big helper. We have so much more work to do.

Love,

Mom

How’s it going? We are in a session. It is Friday! yay!

The semester has started and my day goes like this:

• Work
• Parent
• Work while parenting
• Parent while working
• Work and parent badly
• Brief break to play Boggle
• Back to work
• Stare into space
• More working
• Fall asleep to baking show.

But sometimes, I get a little slice of daylight. Yesterday, I took my toddler to New Brighton Beach. I’d been busy all day with grocery shopping, then weekly (optional) synchronous sessions, and the toddler and I needed a little time together. I asked her what she wanted to do and she said, “Drive in the car and see some ducks and go to the beach.” You got it, kid.

So, we went to New Brighton Beach. Only two other people were wearing masks, but I wore my jellyfish mask, which delighted my daughter. She kept asking me to pick her up, then patting my face and saying, “One jellyfish. Another jellyfish. Oh, it’s another jellyfish.” Then she’d try to kiss me, which kind of defeats the purpose of a mask but was endearing nonetheless.

We immediately saw little ducklings, and then we threw rocks in the ocean, and ran up hills and learned about barnacles. Soon, she was tired, so she asked to be carried in our toddler carrier. So we walked around for a bit and had some sleepy snuggles.

On our way to the car, we passed two East Van Hipster girls, and one of them loudly said, “It’s so performative to wear a mask outside when your kid isn’t even wearing one.”

We’ve been in our own little bubble, literally, for months. And so it’s weird to have our bubble popped in those moments, when I remember that other people are watching us, making judgements about our decisions. Yes, the toddler wasn’t wearing her mask. Even wearing pants requires some negotiation. And yes, I was one of only a few people wearing masks outside. So many different opinions, different priorities, different values. So much tension running high.

But it felt good to be outside. As the semester gets busier, I’ll have to remember to save room for little adventures like this.