Brace Update 1: Treatment Salon

Her arms and thighs are bruised from Humatrope injections

Treatment Salon is open July, June, Thursday, all kinds of days, and September. Can I give you the treatment?

I hadn't intended on receiving a treatment. I had only wanted to ensure her hair was properly washed; she is only 8, and she has a lot of hair.

The Treatment begins with a back wash, using a sizable slice of gorgeously smelly soap - given to her by three enraptured sales clerks at a recent visit to Lush. We had gone there to purchase gifts for friends in Tokyo.

It wasn't busy, and they were following her as she transversed the store, soberly smelling every sample, and occasionally offering brief, decisive comments: Good! So-so (with horizontal wobble of the hand). Woohoo; that's bad! The staff weighed in on favourite scents and products. One gave her an arm massage: she was pleased. The second attempted to impress her with a suds-making demonstration: she was gracious. The third indulgently endured a lengthy series of semi-personal questions: Do you have a dog? Do you have a fish? Do you have a mother? Do you have a sister? Is she nice? Does she work here?

To give her the soap was a unanimous decision. She sniffed it deeply, thanked them, and we left. Within steps she spied the next befriending opportunity, and was off: Hi-can-I-pat-your-dog?

I float in the background of these conversations, enjoying her pure gregariousness - devoid of artifice, or any agenda other than to connect with dogs and people, and to smell things. She loves to smell things. She confirms things by their smell: flowers in the neighbourhood; product in the hair; food in the store. She sniffs the cutting board: Watch the knife! She sniffs the pan: Get your face away from the stove! She regularly sniffs me, sidling up as though to hug me, but never quite; just holding her nose very, very close. Complete stillness; only the scent exists. She is truly in the moment... until I shatter that moment with an uninvited hug.

Her hugs! I just don't get enough! Short, squeezy ones, our whole bodies squashed deliciously together - her crazy hair in my face.  Or slow, drapey ones, after dinner, on my chair, her cheek on mine, eyes closed. I sigh her name. She sighs back. Her hugs are blissful - and rare.

Not symmetrical - the brace over-corrects the curve,
pushing it back the opposite direction

For me, this has been the biggest impact of her wearing the scoliosis brace. Her hugs – when they come - are no longer huggy; they are rigid and bumpy and hard. Snuggling and wrestling with her can cause bruising! I look forward to the one hour each day we remove her brace, hoping for the opportunity for an un-armoured hug. When part-way through her shampoo she offered me the Treatment, of course I stepped into her salon! And she was sharing her special soap - this would be Treatment, indeed.

The substantial lathering is followed by a delicate scrub with an abrasive, pink cloth. Next: scratching fingers - soft and quick and just enough on the raspy side of ticklish to be delightful. This has the added bonus of softening the filth under her fingernails, an on-going issue for a girl who loves worms, making potions from garden plants, water and soil, and wearing polish on long nails.

Rinse, dry off, clean nails, put on special undershirt and brace, have injection, brush teeth. We retire to her bed, where treatment continues with a skiff of coconut oil, and ends, eyes closed, smiling, with us tangled together like two sleeping cats in a basket.

I extricate myself carefully, her undershirt-clad chest slowly falling, then rising to the confines of the body jacket: greenish-gray, 101-Dalmatian-printed, Velcro-secured. From a distance it looks like a slightly wonky, calico-print corset, stretching from pits to tailbone, trussed up in front. It wouldn't look out of place with a can-can skirt. It's even kind of cute. She thinks so, too.

I am delighted and relieved that, after the initial weeks of sore, itchy, red, dry skin, uncomfortable tightness, worrying that classmates might tease, and sadness, she has taken to wearing the brace just fine. Better than fine: one recent bedtime, all three special, seamless undershirts being still in the dryer, she became very upset at the suggestion she sleep without it: Don't you know that my back is growing at night, and I have to wear it every night? Every single night! She's committed, with all her might.

I kiss her eyes and cheeks, stare at her dignified, sleeping face and plan a Treatment Salon of my own: it will start with a trip to someplace full of wonderfully-scented samples for her to sniff, and end, I hope, with a jumble of legs and arms and a happy, slumbering, extraordinary girl. This time she gets the treatment.

Garden 4: Maryjane

A little smoothie, then a swing

Tonight, in the garden, watering with my new, awesome nozzle; my daughter swinging on her rusting, hand-me-down swing set: Mummy, did I come out of your belly, or your vagina?

Funny thing: though we have always referred to my son's privates by their proper name (never Doodie, Peter, Long-John Tiddlywacker nor Wee Willie Winkie), inexplicably, my husband and I have taken to calling our daughter's bits by the name my mother, her mother, my sister, my aunts and all my female cousins on my mother's side know it: Maryjane. Accent on the 1st syllable.

Don't worry: I'm not going to tell you I grew up thinking it was actually called a Maryjane; I was well aware the real name sounds a lot like a city in Saskatchewan. But I thought everybody else knew what a Maryjane was, too.

It baffled me: who, I used to wonder, would name their child Maryjane? And the shoes! Tee hee hee!

When I was 30-something I finally figured it out: they didn't laugh because they didn't know! All that time I'd been talking about my Maryjane, and folks had no clue...! That explained a lot.

What happened was, my sister and I were having a rare visit on a mall bench, when past us walked a young woman, midriff bared, wearing low-riding sweatpants imprinted across the backside with "Bum". You've see the ones.

"Should write "Maryjane" on the front," I snorted. To which my sister burst out, "Did you know no-one else calls it a "Maryjane?!!"

"What?!!!"

My world changed, forever separating events into one of two time periods: pre or post Maryjane. I commenced calling it what, these days, you're supposed to: the one that rhymes with Regina.

It was my husband who first transgressed, six years later, shortly after our daughter came home from hospital, at one month of age; he was changing her diaper and the word just came out. A look was exchanged, and the family tradition resumed - at least in private.

I don't feel so bad about it, now that she's proven she knows what it's really called. We don't seem to have done her a disservice, just as we don't seem to have done our son any huge favour by using only the medical term: he has, without our help, come up with a whole list of alternative names for his penis.

It's just another family word: we watch TV in the limner, eat peentybut cuuties, ask for our scot-bwot with a wat-cwot and make sure we wash our Maryjane. Silly words that only our family would use, that connect the generations together with a common, if not silly, bond.

Final note: in the BC mining village in which I grew up, there was a family with two kids, named - get this - Maryjane and Peter! My sister and I wondered what was wrong with their parents!

Garden 14:  Harvest
Garden 13: Abandoned Stuff, Things of Beauty
Garden 12: Death and Potential
Garden 11: Japanese Maple Tree and Sedum (?)
Garden 10: Foxglove and Weed Digger
Garden 9: Veggies and Sweet Pea 
Garden 8: Gnomes and Slugs
Garden 7: The Lady Next Door
Garden 6: Euphorbia and Rusted, Metal Things
Garden 5: Cement Bench and Wallflower
Garden 3: Family Portrait
Garden 2: The Neighbours'
Garden 1: Lilac Bush and Abandoned Cans

Garden 3: Family Portrait

Not about the garden, but it takes place there.

Lego homage to my son's favourite dubstep artist, Sonny John Moore, AKA Skrillex

The one thing I ever stole in my life (on purpose) was a 2X4 piece of yellow Lego. I took it from the house of a friend, hidden in my sock. It hurt my ankle a little, and rubbed my conscience a little more, but replacing it seemed impossibly risky. And then we moved.

It's love

There's not much you can do with one piece of Lego, regardless of the size or colour. My parents would surely have been more than happy to provide me with some, had they known, but I didn't ask, and they didn't guess. That lone block travelled with us from house to house and town to town to town to city, useless as only one piece of Lego can be. It ended up in a box of donations. I wish I had kept it just a few years longer; I would have given it to my son. Many of his sweetest gifts to me have been made of Lego.

Which brings me to vacuum cleaner bags. I admit it: I sift them when they're full. It's the Lego! I know it's in there, and I can't bear to throw it out! Classic Lego, or Lego Friends - all over the world, where there's a vacuum cleaner and imagination, there's Lego.

Can my house be that filthy?

It's not a job I look forward to - the puffed up, surprisingly weighty bag might sit on the back porch for months before I get to it - but nary a sift occurs that I'm not glad I did it. 

Three days ago, during a session of "To the End of the Yard and Back" (an after-dinner exercise in which my family and I attempt to get from the kitchen, to the alley and back to the house, while engaging in appropriate social interaction), I deftly orchestrated the first family sift. I have been steadily working to hand over to them the jobs my family is capable of doing for themselves. Rescuing aspirated Lego was next on the list. 

I expected mass disgust and outright refusal, but it went surprisingly well. Sitting in the grass, I showed them how to slash a big X in the bag with the kitchen scissors (NOT! my sewing shears!), revealing the contents: a detailed, if dirty, portrait of our family. 

Life is a vacuum bag of debris; you never know what you're gonna find

Aside from 7 pieces of assorted Lego (both kinds), we found: a Polly Pocket purse; a purple hair elastic - the good kind; a dime; three types of pins; a tiny screw lost while modifying a Nerf gun; a tube of whipped eggnog Lipsmacker (No! Wash it first!); broken glass; popcorn kernels; bread clips; unidentified, random plastic toy parts; several lavender syringe needle caps, alcohol swabs, and needle safety tabs; thread. Whoo! Bits of paper from my daughter practising how to hold a pair of scissors. Lots and lots of hair. (Trying not to breathe.) What is that...? The peeled-off backing from numerous stickers, a plastic sock staple, some tape, some Solvy scraps, cardboard bits, two Kleenexes, ew. Uh... more thread, more Solvy, more popcorn. And we've got pencil sharpenings, feathers from the duvet up in our bedroom (need to mend that)... There's a sequin, more Solvy, more feathers, another needle security tab. A Dubble Bubble wrapper - one of dozens brought home by my son from Cogmed. A pill bug carcass - my daughter likes bugs. Vector - we all like Vector. More needle tabby thingies, more bread clips. Oh: another nice hair elastic! A Q-Tip - gross. OK! Enough! Gross...

When it was finished, my son thanked me for the tutorial.

Garden 14:  Harvest
Garden 13: Abandoned Stuff, Things of Beauty
Garden 12: Death and Potential
Garden 11: Japanese Maple Tree and Sedum (?)
Garden 10: Foxglove and Weed Digger
Garden 9: Veggies and Sweet Pea 
Garden 8: Gnomes and Slugs
Garden 7: The Lady Next Door
Garden 6: Euphorbia and Rusted, Metal Things
Garden 5: Cement Bench and Wallflower
Garden 4: Maryjane
Garden 2: The Neighbours'
Garden 1: Lilac Bush and Abandoned Cans