Family Life

Blog posts about parenting and family life

Self-care in the midst of chaos: is it even possible?

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** This week’s podcast on self-care and was inspired by this blog post, originally published on Vie de Cirque in 2015. **

As a mother of many, I am often asked about self-care and finding time for oneself in the midst of chaos. Where can a mother find peace when the things that bring her joy — like hobbies and travels — are incompatible with parenting a tribe?

The question of “me-time” is one that is close to my heart because everyone wants to know. In an article for the Ottawa Citizen published in January 2014, I answered that I had to find “me-time” in the midst of chaos. It’s true but simplistic. The ability to find inner peace when your life is a pinball machine is a work in progress. I often feel like I am hanging to sanity by the tip of my fingers. So how do I go about finding my place in a household where my work is forever answering everybody’s pressing demands but mine?

To explain my understanding of self-care, I must go back a few years. I got pregnant with my oldest child when I was 21, unmarried and in Law School. My boyfriend (now husband) was a junior officer in the Armed Forces. He was deployed overseas and we didn’t move-in together until shortly before our first child was born. Our second child was born 14 months later. People around us quietly believed that our hasty marriage was doomed from the start. My husband deployed overseas again and our third child was conceived upon his return. I finished my law degree while expecting her. My husband’s traveling schedule and the demands of providing for a growing family were such that we decided that he would work while I stayed home with the children. I decided not to write the Bar exams at that time: the cost of putting 3 children in daycare while I pursued my studies for an intense year of studies, work placements and exams.

After our third child was born, we decided that our family was complete. I always dreamed of having 5 children, as had my husband, but I was hanging to sanity by the tip of my fingers. That’s when our fourth child was conceived and born. When I think back on that period of my life, I hear the song from Emmylou Harris Red Dirt Girl:

Nobody knows when she started her skid, she was only 27 and she had 5 kids

I was severely struggling with my imposed vocation as a stay-at-home mother of four young children. I had studied to become a lawyer, a challenging course of studies where I had excelled. Now I was a full-time mother in full downfall from my pedestal. My peers were starting to advance in their careers, moving into cute houses in trendy neighbourhoods. I was moving out of a world of visibility and rewards and into a world of invisibility feeling like a failure. People my age had no children, my friends with children had 10 years on me and had chosen to stay home. I was dreaming of living in a trendy neighbourhood with matching furniture as opposed to my perfectly adequate little semi-detached house with a mismatch of hand-me-down pieces.

I was neither very good or very happy in my vocation. I was trapped in a spiral of self-loathing, grasping at anything that made me feel better, regardless of whether it was good, healthy or moral.  I believed that my unhappiness was the result of forgetting myself for too long. Of neglecting my goals and ambitions in the pursuit of an ideal that wasn’t mine. But the more “me time” I took the deeper I sank.

It took a ride to rock bottom before I understood that my family and I were in this together. That focusing on me at the exclusion of my family was robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Mothers: there is no amount of stuff, credit, spa treatments and girls nights out that can buy you happiness in your marriage and family. So often I read desperate pleas from mothers who cannot find peace and happiness in their own family and there is always someone to suggest more “me time”. A night away, a day at the spa, a week in a resort, working outside the home. Don’t get me wrong: I love a pedicure as much as the next girl. But your happiness and your physical and mental health cannot hinge on an expensive getaway. Or even a cheap one. What I learned from my stay in the trenches of unhappiness is that you can’t outrun yourself. Indulging in temporary make-beliefs only makes the return to reality colder and darker.

Addressing underlying causes of unhappiness can be difficult. Children are too young to understand that they need to give mommy some space. Your life partner should be the one caring for you. If you don’t have a supportive partner, maintaining your sense of balance in family life will fall on your shoulders and you will have to build fences around the non-negotiables of your life. Fences and families don’t mix. If your life partner — husband, boyfriend, mother — is not looking after your needs, you need to fix your relationship. A happy marriage is the most important self-care you can give yourself, not to mention the very thing your children need the most to be happy and secure as they grow.

After I had my 4th child and disappeared in the fog of depression, my husband and I came to the conclusion that I was simply not cut out to be a homemaker. I still believed that having a stay-at-home parent was best for children but I simply couldn’t be that parent. I headed back to school to pursue graduate studies in law. But even though I excelled in my academic studies, the belief that I wasn’t cut out to care for my children was haunting me.

I found work as a political attaché and juggled family life and paid employment for the following 4 years. I learned that nothing was going to be easy. I could work to make our family-work balance manageable or I could work to become the mother I always wanted to be. I chose the later. Nowadays, I am a homeschooling stay-at-home mother. I have the large family I never dared to dream I would have.

Self-care starts with physical and mental health. I try to eat well, not too much, and exercise. I get regular medical check-ups to make sure that any physical or mental struggles are properly identified and treated. I make room for spiritual practices like prayer and a sacramental life. I see a friendly spiritual director and I receive the Sacrament of reconciliation once or twice a month. But where I draw the line for myself is the type of self-care that takes away from my family, whether it is by causing financial strain or emotional absenteeism. If you need to spend money you don’t have, or if you need to completely check-out of your role as mother to feel alive and whole, you need to address the underlying causes of your feelings. Going out with friends, sharing a meal, being pampered or getting relief from your daily occupations are some of life’s greatest pleasures. You should seek these opportunities for the joy they bring you, not as a matter of survival.

My husband and I have turned the self-care equation around. Instead of seeing me as the result of the equation, we’ve made our common vision of family life the result of the equation. Self-care happens in the context of the vision of family life we want to achieve: a happy, united, and well adjusted Catholic, large, homeschooling, family, living in the country. The pursuit of my dreams and ambitions are part of the equation yielding that result. Being physically and mentally fit, growing in faith and fortitude, laughing, looking pretty, feeling like I can leave for a weekend without societal collapse and starvation, are all part of the equation. My husband and children benefit from the result and therefore are part of ensuring that I get enough and adequate self-care. Knowing that they have my well-being in mind frees me from having to worry and pursue my well-being selfishly, like a desert wanderer searches for water. I am no longer afraid of disappearing behind my children because we are a team, not a competition.

Caring for a family of 11 is still hard on a good day and there is precious little time for self-care in the traditional sense. I have to rely on a “broken windows approach” to keeping my essential space in a large family: I don’t share my morning coffee and I am almost obsessive about using the bathroom by myself. I find great joy in having coffee with an old friend, seeing my siblings and my parents, and enjoying a few seconds of quiet in a tidy house  (not between 1 and 2 am). There is always someone in my personal space and I have worked hard, emotionally and spiritually, to learn to love it.

Finally feeling good at what I do: that’s better than all the pedicures in the world.

 

 

Life as a river

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I was going to start this blog post with some poetic musing about life being a winding road and how we don’t always end up where we thought we would. But even winding roads lead somewhere: a ditch, a dead-end, another road, a pretty little cabin in the woods. Life is a series of decisions which have ramifications, consequences, and more decision points. Days grow into weeks, weeks into months, months into years and suddenly you are 43 wondering where the heck it is you’re going. Sorry, am I talking to myself again?

My husband and I have changing our minds and correcting course down to an art form. Blessed are the flexible for they shall not break. In our 20 years of marriage, we’ve owned more cars than we can remember, we moved 10 times within the Ottawa area, bought big houses, sold big houses, bought little houses, sold little houses, rented houses, gutted main floors, finished basements and built from scratch. I have been a student-mom, a stay-at-home mom, a homeschooler, a failed homeschooler, a graduate-student mom, a full-time working mom, a part-time working mom. My husband has worked full-time, part-time, homeschooled when I could not, supported my pipe dreams and ambitions. He has started companies, joined companies, left companies, owned companies, sold companies. In the middle of all this, we had 9 children and lost two to miscarriage. We have lifestyle ADHD I think.

While I envy people who relentlessly pursue one thing, I am pleased by our ability to roll with the punches. We relentlessly pursue the stability of our family, no matter the personal cost. We may not have taken our respective careers in measurably successful paths — unless paying bills counts, which it should — but we know why. When my daughter asked me why I had not pursued a musical, legal or political career, despite my affinities for all three, I told her that I chose my family at every fork in the road. These are not career paths with stable incomes, regular hours and holidays. Each involves a good amount of damning the torpedoes. Maybe life’s road is not so winding after all, it’s more like a river, digging its bed by force of repeated decisions. We follow a road to where it leads us but the river digs its own bed, just like we make our lives to our image.

Last week, my husband and I met with the principal of the nearest French elementary school. See, we’re sending the children back to school after Christmas. With our two teenage daughters starting high school last September, this marks the end of our homeschooling journey. You can learn more about our discernment process by listening to my first podcast on discerning homeschooling.

Un-mixing the mixed feeling is a new journey of discovery and reinvention. In my life, I have accomplished things that required effort, things that required self-discipline, things that required commitment, physically demanding things, emotionally demanding things, everything demanding things. I’ve poured myself out and filled myself up all over again. I’ve stumbled, fell, dusted myself up and picked myself up. I never thought I was cut out for homeschooling but I thought I could channel all my brainpower and energy into this one thing and give it some forward momentum. The kind of energy and brain power I used to power a Master’s degree in Law with a breastfeeding infant, my fifth child, in Montreal, while we lived in Ottawa.

In 2016, I taught myself to knit, play the guitar and the piano, use Adobe InDesign and a few other things. But like my Master’s degree, those are things I can control, only limited by the capacity of my brain and the speed of my fingers. I felt called to homeschool and I thought that I could develop that skill just like music or design. As it turns out, I couldn’t. As it turns out, loving your children is not always enough. As it turns out, things are not as simple as they seem. Homeschooling involves other humans and you can’t switch them on and off.

I have wracked my brain wondering why God would call me to something I was so woefully unable to provide. Why give me talents that are of no use to a mother of many, that stay bottled-up inside, stuck in my throat? Why give me a writing talent I don’t have time to use? Why give me a musical talent I can’t develop? Why give me 9 children and talents that involve quiet introspection? Why wasn’t I equipped with what I needed to answer this call? I don’t know. Either God made a mistake (unlikely) or I’m not humble enough to see the wisdom in the plan (very likely). Or maybe the call was to greater humility, masquerading as a call to homeschool. Maybe homeschooling was the light post I was supposed to walk into.

So my life flows on like a river, part water, part banks, unsure if I am the constraints or the current. At times spectator and actor, it lives me as much as I live it.

2016: The Soundtrack

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One of my favourite non-family-related holiday traditions is the browsing of “Best albums of the year” articles, blog posts and podcasts. Back in the days, my holiday music-buying lived and died according to what former broadcaster and pariah Gian Gomeshi offered as his top 20 albums of any given year. Since Gomeshi’s fall from grace, I have not found a compilation that was as consistently up my aisle as his. Oh well.

Now a normal music compilation would give you a list of “Best Albums Released in Given Year” but this is not how my world goes round. I’m a binge-everything. Binge-writer, binge-eater, binge-Netflixer, binge-music-listener. When I love an album, I love it until I break the machine. As a teenager, I warped cassette tapes. I don’t listen to music when it’s released, I listen to music when I want to. As a result, this is a compilation of the best bands and albums I discovered in 2016. I came late to the party on some of them but that should be no reason to neglect them. Happy listening!

1. Half Moon Run. Originally from Montreal, now mostly touring, the band kicked-off their latest tour in Ottawa this December. I went to their show with my oldest daughter, who was a fan back in the days when they drew a crowd of 15 at Ottawa’s Bluesfest. Now critically acclaimed and playing to sold-out mid-sized venues, the time to catch them up-close and personal is surely running out. Music style: alt-pop, Indie rock, rich melodies, vocal harmonies and acoustic arrangements.

On the playlist:
Consider Yourself
Full Circle

2. Scroobius Pip. I discovered this rapper/Hip hop/spoken word artist through my favourite podcast Sodajerker on Songwriting. As a writer, his work was a revelation to me. It inspired me to start writing my own poetry. My gateway song was The beat that my heart skipped but if you can take a bit of sound distortion, do listen to Magician’s Assistant: It’s brilliantly written, raw and hits you like a gut punch. Music style: Slam poetry, hip hop, spoken word, rap, electronic.

On the playlist:
The beat that my heart skipped
The Struggle
Magician’s Assistant

3. The Lumineers. Another discovery through Sodajerker’s interviews. I already knew Ho Hey (because who doesn’t?) but I recently discovered their second album, Cleopatra. The Lumineers are taking the old quip about 3 chords and the truth to it’s most beautiful expression. Their arrangements are creatively minimalist, in the way that only genius musical minds can muster. They don’t rely on instrumentation and over-production to round-out their songs, relying instead on rock-solid melodies, hooks, and riffs on the piano and guitar. Their songs tell stories that are made even more poignant by Wesley Schultz’s haunting voice. You can get a better look at the stories told in Cleopatra by watching the videos. In each video, the characters of the different stories cross paths and impact each other’s lives in direct and indirect ways. Music style: Acoustic, Americana, folk.

On the playlist:
Cleopatra
In the light
Ho Hey

4. Hamilton. Not having lived completely under a rock, I had heard about the musical Hamilton. I knew it was a phenomenon. I knew that tickets on Broadway were sold out until the cows came home, yadda, yadda, and my friends who loved Hamilton wouldn’t shut up about it already. Still, I was not inspired to listen to it until my 14 year-old daughter bought it on iTunes and it found its way on my phone through a sync accident. Hamilton is the Pulitzer-prize winning, viral, hip hop musical about one of the Founding Fathers. It doesn’t matter how you feel about viral phenomenons, musicals, hip hop or Founding Fathers, Hamilton is the kind of opus that will entertain, educate and punch you in the gut regardless of taste. The songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda are lyrical genius, the main characters of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton capture the human struggle between right and wrong, rationality and emotionality, with accuracy and style. The two Hamilton albums are the musical by the original broadway cast (including composer Lin-Manuel Miranda in the title role) and The Hamilton Mixtape in which various artists offer their takes on the songs and themes of the musical. Music style: hip-hop, rap, musical.

On the playlist:
Aaron Burr, Sir (From the Broadway Cast)
Wait for it (From the Broadway Cast)
The Battle of Yorktown (From the Broadway Cast)
Immigrants (From the Mixtape)
I wrote my way out (From the Mixtape)
Valley Forge (Demo) (From the Mixtape)

5. Sweet Crude. This Indie pop-rock band seeks to revive the traditional sounds of French Louisiana. This is my most recent discovery and I haven’t listened to their work quite enough (yet) to distil it but it’s coming. Their music is dazzling and engaging, it’s like an old-fashioned kitchen party except that everyone can play and sing. Strongly recommended. Music style: acoustic, Indie pop-rock, folk, Americana.

On the playlist:
Parlez-nous à boire
Mon esprit

6. The Nashville soundtracks. Nashville is a TV series about the lives of a cast of music-industry types set in the city of Nashville, Tennessee. The characters include country music stars at the top of the heap (Rayna, Juliette), nobodys on their way to stardom (Scarlett, Will), nobodys looking for a break (Gunnar, Layla), the supporting cast of band members, songwriters, managers and producers (Avery, Deacon) and other hangers-on. It ran for 4 seasons on ABC before being canceled and picked-up by CMT when the fans raised enough of a ruckus to bring the show back. The fifth season kicks-off this week with a one-hour sneak-peak at the two-hour premiere scheduled for January 5th. But enough about the TV, the real main character of the show is THE MUSIC. With each season, a full-length EP is released plus single tracks for a total of (at least) 20 songs per season. And what songs! The show creator, Callie Khouri, is married to mega-producer T-Bone Burnett. The music is written for the show by an all-star buffet of Nashville’s best and brightest songwriters and was produced by Burnett first and then by Buddy Miller. The actors are doing their own singing and the music is curated to advance storylines, develop character arches and narrative exposition. Music style: Country, blues-rock, folk, Americana, acoustic, alt-country, country-pop.
It was too hard to pick the best tracks of the 150-or-so songs for the playlist so I went with my favourite combos of characters to songwriters:

On the playlist:
If I didn’t know better (co-written by John Paul White, performed by “Scarlett and Gunnar”)
No one will ever love you (co-written by John Paul White, performed by “Rayna and Deacon”)
Undermine (co-written by Kacey Musgraves, performed by “Juliette and Deacon”)
Changing Grounds (written by Gillian Welch, performed by “Rayna”)
When the right one comes along (co-written by Justin Davis, Sarah Zimmerman and Gloria Middleman, performed by “Scarlett and Gunnar”)
A life that’s good (co-written by Ashley Monroe and Sarah Siskind, performed by “Deacon”)
Lately (co-written by Ashley Monroe and Sarah Siskind, performed by “Scarlett and Gunnar”)
Heart on Fire (co-written by Kate York and Sarah Siskind, performed by “Maddie and Daphne”)
Boomtown (co-written by Maren Morris, performed by “Juliette and Luke”)
I will never let you know (co-written by Kate York, performed by “Scarlett and Gunnar”)

7. John Hiatt. I discovered John Hiatt through the Nashville soundtrack when his hit Have a little faith in me was covered by Maisy Stella and Will Chase. The album Bring the family was his first release following his sobriety. He started recording Have a little faith in me in studio with a heavy arrangement but the session was plagued by setbacks and delays. The next day, he learned of the suicide of his ex-wife and recorded the pared down acoustic version he his most widely known for. The rest is history. This album is no one-hit wonder however: every track is a hit. Music style: Folk, country, blues-rock, Americana.
On the playlist:
Have a little faith in me
Memphis in the meantime

8. Miranda Lambert. Yes. Miranda Lambert. I don’t care how you feel about over-produced blond country singers, this girl is the real deal. For sure, some of her songs are cut for commercial radio success but her early albums were critically acclaimed as well. Pick any of her albums and you will find that most of her songs swing country-country rather than pop-country. I’m partial to Platinum as her best album although Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is not far behind. Music style: Country, alt-country, country pop, bluegrass.

Once again, it was hard to pick my favourite songs so I went with my favourite songwriters instead:

On the playlist:
Little Red Wagon (written by Audra Mae)
Dry Town (written by Gillian Welch)
All that’s left (written by Tom and Dixie Hall)
Gravity’s a b**ch (written by Miranda Lambert and Scott Wray)

In 2017, I’m looking forward to dig into the work of Gillian Welch. Her songwriting hits all my buttons. Otherwise, I will just float where the music leads.

What were your favorite finds of 2016? Feel free to link your Spotify Playlists in the comments and let’s chat tunes!

On being fearless

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Today marks the launch of my long-awaited website Fearless Family Life.The vagaries of life in a large family tend to stretch every possible timeline beyond recognition but I also suffered from an uncomfortable want of knowing where to take this train.

Over the last year, I have had countless opportunities to reflect on the direction I wanted to move in. At first, I did what most business-minded writers would do and looked at popular parenting blogs. Parenting seems to be as divided as politics, from the more liberal “it’s ok to suck, you have it so hard” to the more conservative “parenting is a war to be won”. In between lies the world of listicles: 10 reasons why your toddler is a jerk and Why good moms start drinking before 9. As an educated woman with both a love for my children and a struggle to be the best person I can be, I found these messages confusing and wholly uninspiring.

The truth is that parenting is hard but we are all stronger than we think. Whether we started our journey from a position of strength or a position of weakness, whatever our challenges are, we can always push ourselves a little farther. Strength builds in increments: fearless family life is about taking the next step on our parenting journey, from wherever we currently are.

In family life, our fears are too often born of our own judgment. We love to read about overcoming mommy-guilt but women are crumbling under the weight of their own expectations. Being fearless is refusing to be guided by our fear of inadequacy. It’s about challenging ourselves without judgment.

Fearless Family Life is my gift of encouragement to you. It’s here to tell you that you can do this. It’s here to share the most important lesson I learned in 20 years of family life: that you love your children better than anyone. Fearless Family Life is about allowing yourself to be guided by love rather than fear, by hope rather than shame. It’s about stepping into the world of possibilities and looking up to where you are going instead of down and around on everyone else’s journey.

Imagine that you and your family are in a boat. You can work together to get somewhere or you can work against each other and sink. Whatever you decide, you’re in this together.

Peppers

In the pantry, a jar sits on a shelve, lonely and unused. Its bright red colour livens the mess of spices and aromatics standing at attention in a practical array. Bird’s Eye chili peppers, dried to a dusty crisp, artifacts of a summer’s past.

We had planned a large garden, tilled long and narrow mounds on which we planted gourds, lettuces and root vegetables, our knowledge of gardening inversely proportional to our enthusiasm. Seeds of hot peppers thrown on the edge of a row of romaine lettuce testified  to our inexperience. They should have been sprouted indoors while the deep brown earth laid dormant under a crust of snow and ice.

Shortly after laying our cornucopia underground, we had seen our own little buds sprouting deep inside the warm comfort of the womb. Twins. Bed rest. Our garden was left to fend for itself as we fought the forces of chaos on the home front. Within a few weeks in July weeds choked everything but the sturdiest squashes, potatoes, and zucchinis. “No wonder that’s what the pioneers ate,” I thought as I laid hatching. The spring rains gorged the edible plants as well as the weeds, the summer sun ripened them. The children picked what could be salvaged and eaten raw and the twin buds rested and grew. Summer lingered into September, then exceptionally into October and the weeds got more luscious. The twin buds matured and bloomed and I was released to the garden just in time to harvest a late crop of red hot chili peppers before fall threw its blanket of frost, smothering weeds and herbs alike. I strung the peppers on a thread with a sewing needle and hung them to dry in a south-facing window, letting the summer rain evaporate from the taunt red flesh.

Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer, the sequence of a year. The peppers adorned our window for a year, long dried but too hot to complement our family’s dishes. Some were rehydrated with boiling water, cooked with oil and garlic and made into chili garlic sauce following Margaret’s authentic Malaysian recipe. We used it by the drop, careful not to breathe deeply while the jar was open.

The house and the garden wrapped their weight around our necks like a boat anchor, dragging our family into a wake of debt and fear. When  we decided to sell our house to pay off all our debts the peppers were duly packed into a glass jar, wrapped in packing paper, and moved to our new landing, a relic of the dreams we left behind as we looked up and ahead. The peppers remained untouched as we welcomed our ninth child and moved again when we made our home in the highlands.

Here they live, a vibrant reminder of a summer past when we learned the wisdom of letting things grow as they must.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Netflix and Chills: Gran Hotel

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Today I am reclaiming the concept of Netflix & Chill because someone has to and because there has to be a voice for people watching a period drama while knitting. Edgy. In Canada good TV shows are few and far between. Regional licensing *yawn* agreements — or lack thereof — mean that the Netflix Canada catalogue accounts for about half of what is available in the U.S. I don’t fancy myself a TV critic, even less a TV writer, but I do fancy myself demanding when it comes to how I waste my time. As such, I decided to share with you my favorite series and movies from the very limited selection available on Netflix Canada, starting with my latest infatuation  obsession, Gran Hotel. (The trailer below is in Spanish only but the Netflix offering has subtitles.)

After Downton Abbey was wrapped-up with a bow and a cherry on top — I like my endings happy and this beautiful series was tied-up with the same flawless class that characterized all 6 seasons – I found myself suffering from a severe case of hangover, which may have been due to my unapologetic crush on everything Matthew Goode . I started scouring Netflix for something, anything, to scratch that itch. Netflix kept suggesting “Grand Hotel” but from the cover pictures I could see that the production — including the costumes, writing and verisimilitude — would not be as tightly spun as my beloved Downton. Well, was I ever right in a wrong way!

 

Cast as the “Spanish Downton Abbey” Gran Hotel — titled “Grand Hotel” on Netflix — is set with the same “upstairs-downstairs” dynamics as Downton Abbey, and that’s about where any possible comparison stops. Where Downton Abbey sought to be a reflection of the era it portrayed, Gran Hotel is using the period as an accessory to its storytelling.

 

The popular series, which ran from 2011 to 2013 in Spain, is offered by Netflix in 3 seasons totaling 65 episodes of about an hour each (so that’s about 100 hours when you factor-in re-watching all the hottest kissing scenes, *coughs* *loosens collar*). The series is in Castilian (European) Spanish with English subtitles. The subtitles are easy to follow — and entertaining for the third season where typos, missing words and the original Spanish sneak-in, suggesting that the translator got as carried away as I did — and the repetitive nature of the plots, roving and twisting around each other, may even allow you to pick-up a few words of Spanish such as disculpe, lo siento and perdon (excuse me, I’m sorry and pardon me). It turns out that Spaniards apologize as much as Canadians do.

 

Each one the three seasons is wrapped around a main plot and a few simple subplots. But unlike American series who like their plots and subplots to go on forever and finish abruptly, Gran Hotel’s writers wound and unwound each plot with satisfying regularity. Questions are answered in ways that are not always believable but consistent once you accept to suspend just enough disbelief to enter into this lavish parallel universe. Gran Hotel is light and satisfying entertainment. There are no zombies, no gore, except for some obvious cinematic blood, and your favorite characters will not be killed willy-nilly. If this is how you like your entertainment, read on as I share — without spoilers except for one that should be obvious from the series’ cover picture — my 7 (plus one)  favorite things about Gran Hotel.

 

1. The romance. Here comes the obvious spoiler: the series is spun around the star-crossed romance between Julio (Yon Gonzalez) and Alicia (Amaia Salamanca). Now, I am a very demanding consumer when it comes to fictional romance and let me tell you, this is one of the most contagious TV romance I’ve seen since Colin Firth longingly beheld Jennifer Ehle in the BBC production of Pride & Prejudice. Gonzalez and Salamanca have incredible chemistry, they burn right through the screen. Pacing is the key to a good romance and this romance is perfectly ordered. It always leaves you yearning for more but never frustrated. Their first kiss — deservedly — won TV awards in Spain and each subsequent one is equally deserving, not to mention the hotter stuff. I’d watch the series just for the kissing, seriously. Add two beautiful actors speaking Spanish to each other with the slow-burning emotionality we’ve come to associate with everything Spaniard and you have a love story playing out without a false note over 60 hours.

2. The pacing. One thing that seriously annoys me in American TV entertainment is the tendency to take viewers within a hairsbreadth of a plot resolution, only to be taken on another round of near discoveries, near deaths and missteps. I heard Gran Hotel aptly described in The Protagonist Podcast — listen here, it takes about 10 minutes to get in gear but it does justice to the first 2 episodes and doesn’t contain any spoilers — as “Downton Abbey meets 24” and it’s a true description. Of course — as with 24 — viewers need to overlook how quickly characters get from one place to the next, get changed and read letters. But I was happy to oblige in exchange for not being taken down some obscure plot rabbit-hole.

 

3.The physicality. Spaniards sure like their face slaps and Gran Hotel actors really know how to put their backs into it. When Julio fights, he fights. At first I found it a little ridiculous, over the top maybe. But I came to appreciate the unrestrained physicality because it carried over to…

 

4. The men-hugs, men-tears and men generally being very expressive with each other. The friendship between Julio and Andrès is real and meaningful and nothing else would explain how Julio can keep his job by so rarely doing it. My British period drama habit had me used to very restrained displays of manly emotions. The spectrum of British male emoting oscillates between angry, outraged and “I’ll go speak to your father…” Julio and Andrès hug, kiss, confide in each other and cry in each other’s arms, while remaining perfectly attractive — and attracted — to the female kind. Fancy that.

 

5. The smoking. The series is a 60 hour long shameless and unrestrained cigarette advertisement. The smoking=sex pipeline is not even thinly veiled. To this Canadian viewer this is entertainment anathema and I love the Spanish for their unapologetic want for political correctness.

 

6. The beauty. This series is visually enchanting. The outdoor scenes were filmed at the historic Palacio de la Magdalena in Santander, on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. The men are good looking but the women are stunning in a non-Hollywood kind of way. The make-up was purposely kept to a very natural look, allowing us to truly appreciate the beauty of the ladies. Except for a few shots of bare backs throughout the 3 seasons, everyone keeps their clothes mostly on, even the few sex scenes are tasteful and understated. The beauty and romanticism are wrought through acting only and this is a feat that should be attempted by American entertainment sometimes.

Women of Gran Hotel

 

7. The cheese. There is some seriously awesome cheese in Gran Hotel. From oodles of fake blood, to a Laurel & Hardy-like policemen duet, to Julio digging his own grave with his shirt off, fighting with his shirt off, looking for a lost button with his shirt off, to babies being born completely clean and as chubby as 3 month-olds, to weird twists and turns in unlikely plot lines, Gran Hotel has a soap-operatic quality that would be overwhelming if it wasn’t for how honestly it comes by it. Embrace the cheese, don’t fight it.

(Plus one) * A word of warning to my Catholic readers. I know that many Catholics are sick and tired of the perpetually negative portrayal of the Catholic Church in entertainment. The third season of Gran Hotel features a plot line involving an affair with a Catholic priest. If you can’t stand the sight of a Catholic priest behaving badly, you might need to give the Padre Grau story-line a pass. I found it tolerable myself because unlike in American entertainment where he would have been portrayed as a cruel or sick pervert, Padre Grau comes across as just another sinner, which most priests of my knowledge would admit to be. Every single character in Gran Hotel has a morally questionable dimension. Everyone has a secret, everyone hides something, protects someone, makes poor decisions. The Catholic priest is just as sinful as the rest of the cast, no more, no less. Otherwise, Catholic ceremonies and Sacraments are portrayed tastefully and many a thing are left “en las manos de Nuestro Señor” (in the hands of Our Lord).

Et voilà! Gran Hotel is the stuff cult followings are made of and considering how much fun I had looking-up links and information for this post, I am in grave danger of booking a themed tour of Spain’s Mediterranean coastline soon. This is a series that remains true to itself from start to finish and consistently treats its viewership with respect. If you have a taste for pure escapism entertainment, book at night — or 20 — at the Gran Hotel.

Julio y Alicia

 

 

 

La discipline sans menaces 

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Lorsque j’ai commencé à éduquer mes enfants à la maison, j’ai rapidement remarqué un rétressissement marqué de mon espace vital. Mes enfants étaient omniprésents. Soudainement, nous étions ensemble toute la journée. Et la soirée. Et la fin de semaine aussi. Il nous fallait apprendre à vivre ensemble et à respecter l’espace de chacun. Pas une tâche facile dans une famille grand format.

Le respect de l’espace vital de chacun ne se fait pas qu’au plan physique: il faut aussi apprendre à se traiter avec respect minute après minute, heure après heure. Je dis souvent à la cantonade qu’il est impossible d’élever des enfants sans pots-de-vin — et je ne parle pas d’un verre de rouge après l’heure du coucher — mais pour plusieurs d’entre nous, les menaces plutôt que les promesses sont la pierre angulaire de notre approche disciplinaire. Sur les forums Internet que je fréquente, les approches basées sur les menaces ou le retrait de privilèges foisonnent. Pendant longtemps, j’ai souscrit à ces approches, préférant faire référence aux “conséquences” d’une action plutôt qu’à une punition.

J’ai rapidement appris que nos jeunes enfants (et même nos adolescents!) n’avaient pas assez de contrôle sur leur environnent pour que notre approche disciplinaire puisse reposer sur les conséquences naturelles d’une action. Pensez-y. Un enfant joue près du four, un enfant désobéi et va jouer dans la rue, un enfant mord un autre enfant. Les conséquences naturelles de ces actions sont physiquement ou emotivement inatteignables. Qui va laisser son enfant se brûler sévèrement ou se faire frapper par une voiture par acquis de discipline? Et pour la morsure, les remords et la perte d’un ami sont à plusieurs années de faire une différence. Il arrive souvent aussi que les conséquences naturelles soient trop onéreuses pour la famille ou se résument à punir toute la famille pour les actions d’une petite personne. C’est le cas lorsque nous promettons à bout de nerf d’annuler Noël, un voyage à Disney ou de quitter le resto sur le champ. Nous devons tous nous rabattre sur des conséquences inventées pour faire une impression: retrait de privilèges, isolation, confiscation de jouets, privation de dessert.

Cette approche a plus ou moins de succès selon le tempérament de nos enfants et le notre évidemment. Certain enfants choisiront toujours la “conséquence” histoire de garder le contrôle sur une situation qui leur échappe. Certains parents passeront rarement aux actes histoire d’éviter un face-à-face explosif. L’appel aux conséquences est d’une utilité limitée, surtout lorsque celles-ci sont inventées et doivent être mises-en-œuvre par les parents. L’utilité des conséquences naturelles est leur renforcement naturel, sans avoir recours aux discours, à la répétition et à la punition. La conséquence inventée (par exemple, range ta vaisselle sale ou perd ton tour de PS3) doit être imposée par le parent tout comme les mesures punitives. C’est donc une punition déguisée en conséquence.

Un autre problème avec le recours aux menaces et à la perte de privilèges, particulièrement dans le contexte de l’instruction en famille, c’est que la plupart de nos enfants mènent une vie dans laquelle le privilège est partie intégrante, c’est-à-dire qu’il est difficile d’isoler le privilège pour pouvoir l’enlever. Au jour le jour, une fois que nous avons retiré le privilège d’écran ou le dessert, peut-être une sortie chez un ami ou une fête d’anniversaire, on arrive à bout de munitions. Mes enfants perdent souvent leur privilège de télévision ou leur iPod avant 9:00 du matin. Lorsqu’on manque de “conséquences”, on doit se rabattre sur notre autorité toute simple. Et c’est ainsi que je me suis rendu compte que mon autorité, sans menaces, était plutôt mince.

C’est ainsi que je me suis embraquée dans un défi de discipline sans menaces.

J’imagine que vous attendez que je vous admette que tout marche à merveille ou que tout a foiré? Ni l’un ni l’autre. C’est une aventure à long terme. Mais je peux vous dire que nous avons beaucoup de chemin à faire avant d’arriver à un résultat tangible. La discipline interne est le travail d’une vie, si j’en crois mon expérience.

Le rodage ne s’est pas fait sans frictions. Libérés du contrôle artificiel qu’imposaient les “conséquences”, la fratrie est graduellement tombée dans le chaos le plus total. Le travail d’école est tombé en friche et le niveau de criage, d’insultes et de chamaillage ont atteints un nouveau record (ce qui n’est pas peu dire). Mon autorité ne tenant qu’à un fil, je suis devenue irascible, impatiente et généralement irrationnelle. La conclusion de mon expérience de discipline sans menaces était déprimante d’une manière ou d’une autre: soit je devais remettre les menaces au menu, soit je devais me déclarer vaincue et à la merci de mes enfants.

Avec un peu de recul et de réflexion, j’ai réalisé que le recours aux menaces me permettais de ne pas imposer de limites strictes, d’encadrement ferme. Une fois au bout du rouleau, je n’avais qu’à brandir  le retrait de privilèges pour que les choses se placent. J’ai appris que sans menaces, je devais être beaucoup plus claire et prévisible quand il en venait aux attentes et aux limites. Éliminer les menaces me forçait à être à la fois plus tendre et plus ferme. J’ai du établir des règles de conduite dans la maison — autant au niveau du comportement que de l’espace physique — que je dois faire respecter sans exception sous peine de me perdre dans l’anarchie. D’une certaine manière, c’est un style de vie plus restrictif qu’avant mais j’ai espoir qu’avec un peu de temps et beaucoup de pratique nous allons arriver à un point d’équilibre. En somme, j’essaie d’être moins “réactive”, c’est-à-dire que je n’attends pas d’être en face d’une situation critique avant de réagir. J’essaie de ne pas me rendre au bout du rouleau. J’y arrive en ayant recours aux routines et aux séquences, en baissant le volume pour garder le calme et en n’ayant pas les yeux plus gros que la panse au niveau de la discipline. Je prends un bouchée à la fois, un changement à la fois, et je mâche et remâche jusqu’à ce que le morceau soit passé.

Heureusement, j’ai l’occasion de pratiquer souvent!

 

 

 

L’école à la maison en français en Ontario: à quoi ça ressemble?

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Il y a longtemps que je vous ai promis une publication sur l’enseignement à domicile en français. Je dois avouer que cette publication s’est fait attendre parce que nous nous ajustons encore au rythme de l’éducation à domicile. Les bonnes intentions de septembre se sont métamorphosées en réalité de janvier. Mise en face des limites bien réelles de la vie dans une famille nombreuse avec deux enfants de 3 ans et un bébé, j’ai du rabattre les voiles de mes ambitions académiques pour faire face à la tornade de ma vie quotidienne.

Commençons donc au commencement. Quel était le plan original? Lorsque j’ai décidé de faire l’école à la maison, mes enfants souffraient d’un genre “d’écoeurantite” aigue du français. À chaque Noël et pour leurs anniversaires, ma famille et moi nous efforcions de leurs trouver des romans à la mesure de leurs intérêts et de leur intelligence mais en vain. Seulement notre ado du milieu les lisait. Les autres s’en tenaient à leur position de départ, en quelques mots: “les livres en français, ça suce.” N’a aidé en rien le face-à-face violent entre mon fils ainé et la politique du français en vigueur à son école secondaire: les élèves n’avaient le droit de lire en anglais qu’en classe d’anglais. Pris en flagrant délit de lecture en anglais à plus d’une reprise il a été averti, averti encore, envoyé chez la directrice, ses parents ont été consultés et finalement mis en retenue. Sérieusement. Le français, c’était la langue de l’école, la langue du travail et la langue des enseignants un peu craqués qui mettent un garçon de 16 ans en retenue parce qu’il lit “Shake Hands with the Devil” dans sa langue d’origine. Enfin, ça ne donnait pas des rapports cordiaux entre mes enfants et leur langue maternelle. J’avais l’intention de réparer tout ça. Puisque mes enfants sont des lecteurs avides, je pensais enseigner le français d’une manière organique et plaisante à partir d’ouvrages de qualité intemporelle, ce que la pédagogue Charlotte Mason appelle les “living books”. Et c’est avec ma grammaire d’une main et mes livres vivants de l’autre que je m’apprêtais à redonner à mes enfants le goût du français.

Je n’ai pas réalisé que cette approche demanderait beaucoup de préparation pour maman et un minimum de bonne volonté de la part des enfants. Nous n’avions ni le temps pour l’un, ni le germe de l’autre et mes meilleures intentions se sont retrouvées le nez à l’eau. J’ai donc réajusté le tir et commandé des bons vieux exercices de français.

Voici maintenant la partie difficile, celle où j’admets mes erreurs et vous recommande de ne pas faire les mêmes. Puisque la grande majorité de mes lecteurs francophones se trouvent en France, je me permets de commencer par une mise en contexte. Les francophones en Ontario sont en situation minoritaire. Le français est une langue officielle au Canada (avec l’anglais) et nous avons accès à de nombreuses ressources en français, même à l’extérieur du Québec. Mes enfants sont allés à l’école en français pour toute leur scolarité et ma fille ainée étudie à l’université en français. Malgré toutes ces ressources, nous devons quand même tenir les rênes du français bien en main pour le transmettre à nos enfants. Hors de l’école, la vie se vit en anglais.

Avant le déménagement nous habitions dans une région traditionnellement francophone et j’ai un peu — regard piteux — pris le français de mes enfants pour acquis. S’ils me parlaient en anglais, je répondais en anglais. Je les laissais jouer ensemble en anglais. J’écoutais surtout la radio en anglais dans l’auto et à la maison. Bref, lorsque nous avons retiré les enfants de l’école, leur exposition au français a chuté dramatiquement. Et soudainement, je me suis retrouvée à ramer à contre-courant. Je me suis soudainement imaginée avec des petits-enfants qui ne parlaient pas un mot de français et pour qui j’étais la mamie un peu bizarre qui leur parlait une langue qu’ils ne comprenaient pas. C’est aussi facile que ça l’assimilation. C’est un phénomène qui se produit par négligence plutôt que par application.

J’ai donc du retourner au B-A-BA de la vie en situation linguistique minoritaire et reprendre le contrôle du français à la maison. En commençant par l’école à la maison. J’enseigne toujours le français et l’anglais langue maternelle, c’est-à-dire que les deux langues sont apprises en tant que langue première. Mais le français, qui était souvent négligé par manque de temps de préparation a repris une place de premier ordre lorsque j’ai abdiqué et commandé du matériel éducatif “tout fait”.

Pour les petits (qui sont en 1ière et 3ième année, ou pour mes lecteurs français, CP et CE2) j’utilise les magnifiques ressources de la librairie des écoles. La librairie des écoles publie la méthode de mathématiques de Singapour, qui est non seulement réputée pour ses excellents résultats mais rencontre les attentes du ministère de l’éducation de l’Ontario. Et même un peu plus: mon fils de 9 ans a du commencer avec le manuel de CE1. Nous utilisons ces ressources pour le français (lecture, écriture, grammaire) et les mathématiques. Ils ont aussi un manuel d’éducation civile et morale qui me tente bien. Malheureusement, la librairie des écoles ne publie que pour le cycle primaire. J’aurais bien aimé en avoir pour les grandes aussi. J’ai également fait imprimer en couleur le manuel ancien Mico le petit ours que nous utilisons ensemble pour faire changement. La méthode syllabique très simple convient parfaitement à ma fille qui a un peu de mal en lecture.  Nous apprenons aussi des poésies que nous trouvons dans le Larousse de la poésie pour enfants.

Je supplémente les mathématiques avec Khan Academy (en français!) pour la pratique. Les enfants aiment bien pouvoir travailler sur l’ordinateur, ça change le mal de place.

Pour les sciences, j’ai commencé en septembre par une approche classique (genre “cours classique”) avec beaucoup de lecture et d’apprentissage par cœur (classifications, branches, genus…) mais cette approche ne seyait pas du tout à mes enfants actifs. J’ai donc demandé à David de choisir trois espèces animales qui vivent près de chez nous: un oiseau, un mammifère et un insecte. Il a choisi l’ours noir, le faucon et la coccinelle. Nous allons faire une étude approfondie de chaque espèce avec beaucoup de bricolage et d’exploration de notre forêt pour apprendre l’habitat. J’ai trouvé un curriculum complet sur l’ours noir avec feuilles d’activité sur le site de Ministère des ressources naturelles de l’Ontario sur lequel je me base.

Nous apprenons aussi le corps humain avec un livre des éditions Usborne (en français!). Nous avons beaucoup de plaisir à impressionner papa par nos connaissances des os et des systèmes du corps humain.

Pour les grandes (en 8e et 9ème — 5ème et 4ème pour mes amis français, secondaire 2 et 3 pour les québécois) j’utilise un mélange de livres (elles doivent lire en français à tous les jours), de dictée (eh oui, la bonne vieille dictée) et de grammaire Bled. Elles peuvent choisir leurs lectures. Elles doivent également lire et transcrire des œuvres de poésie. Je les prépare lentement à faire de l’analyse de poésie. Côté composition, elles ont des lacunes assez majeures et je crois qu’elles ont besoin de lire sans obligation (à part de le faire!) avant que je puisse les pousser plus loin. Nous sommes en mode “récupération”. Les mathématiques et les sciences se font en anglais. Si elles devaient réintégrer le système scolaire (ce que ma plus vieille espère) elles devront aller à l’école anglaise. Je préfère donc qu’elles y soient préparées. À partir de la 9ieme, elles prennent leurs cours de math et de science en ligne via “Virtual Learning Centre”. Elles reçoivent leurs crédits secondaire de l’Ontario et recevront donc un bulletin qu’elles pourront utiliser lorsque viendra l’heure d’appliquer pour leurs études postsecondaires. Côté pratique, c’est une chose de moins dont j’ai besoin de m’inquiéter.

Et voilà, un sommaire bien rapide de nos études en français à la maison. Je trouve la plupart de mes ressources éducatives sur Amazon.fr et plus rarement, Amazon.ca et la Librairie du centre à Ottawa. Je suis aussi accro du très beau site français Les petits homeschoolers où je trouve toute sorte d’idées intéressantes et d’activités à faire avec les enfants.

 

 

Are we killing you yet?

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This post was originally published on Vie de Cirque in March 2014

About a month ago, our family was the subject of a full-page feature in our local newspaper. This is not the first time that my little gang and I appear on the pages of a newspaper: last year, I took part in a Globe & Mail piece on the decision to stay home or return to work.

When you are the mother of a large family and you make a media appearance, you have to expect the global warming trolls to come to the party, regardless of the topic. We seem to be a looming menace: if everybody did what we did, the environmental impact would be disastrous. In theory maybe, but what about reality?

A quick glance at the literature shows that concerns over demographic decline are at least as pressing as those relating to overpopulation. Birth rates (the number of live births per thousand of population per year) and fertility rates (the average number of children born to women of childbearing years) are declining throughout the world. While many under-developed countries still show birth rates over the population renewal rate (2.1 children per women), their birth rates are in decline. Statistics suggest that the increasing world population is not caused by too many births but by an increase in life expectancy. In other words, we didn’t start breeding like rabbits; we just stopped dropping like flies. The elderly population is on the increase worldwide but the children population is decreasing steadily.

Blaming large families like ours for overpopulation discounts the fact that for countries like Canada, the fertility rate is significantly below the population renewal rate despite a handful of large families. Think about it: the fertility rate of 1.1 children per woman includes women like me. We don’t seem to be making a noticeable difference. If anything, we make demographic decline slightly less scary. I often meet funny people who enjoy telling me:

“I’m happy that there are people like you to make up for people like me.”

Except that we are outweighed: there are too many people like you for people like me to compensate.

Some will tell me that demographic decline is desirable to make-up for our poor ecological balance sheet. While it is true that resource abuse is threatening the environment, I would counter that what is killing the planet are abusive mentalities, not large families. If large families are too few to make a statistical difference in birth rates, what makes you think that there are enough of us to compromise the environment? Resource abuse and overuse happened in parallel with demographic decline. The problem is not simply how many people are killing the planet, but how they are doing it!

Our family lives in the suburbs of Ottawa in a typical wealthy suburban neighbourhood found throughout North America. Large single family homes, 4 bedrooms, double car garage. Two cars, or rather, one car and a larger vehicle such as a minivan or a SUV. The house we currently live in was designed for a family of 4 or 5 people. On my street, in houses of similar size and function, you will find mostly couples with no children or 1 or 2 children. Some are young families hoping to expand but most are older. They all live in 3 000+ sq. ft. homes built on prime agricultural land, with 2 vehicles, air conditioning and heating brought to you by some coal-fired power plant somewhere in Ontario. It doesn’t cost more to heat-up 3 000 square feet for a family of 10 than it does for a family of 2 by the way. Except that with the size of my bills, when the weather is nice I open the windows. Most of my neighbours turn-on the A/C in May and turn it off in October. And while my pile of garbage is bigger than theirs, the diesel-powered truck moves for them as much as it does for me… and their garbage pile is not one fifth of mine, although their household is. Their vehicles are never full and move at least as much as mine do. Every March Break, we stay home while most of my children’s school friends fly-off to a sunny destination. And you are shaking your accusatory finger at me?

Let me tell you what is killing the planet. It’s egotism. It’s a culture of entitlement that drives us to grab what should be ours, whether we need it or not. It’s the pursuit of “more”, not to say “too much”. Take a drive through Ottawa’s old neighbourhoods and take a look at the little brick bungalows. 2 or 3 bedrooms, no bigger than a triple car garage. Reflect on the fact that these homes were once considered family-sized, at a time where families were bigger. Today, my single family home features two bedrooms with full ensuites. Ideal for the only teen who would rather not share a toilet with his parents: your children can now sleep, socialize and shower in their very own personal wing. They don’t even need to interact while going to take a pee! Progress would be a built-in meal door. But the problem with the world is my husband, my children and I???

From my home office window, I watch the school buses go by. Every day, a well-meaning mother drives her daughter – who looks to be about 12 years-old — to the corner and picks her up at the end of the day. In Ottawa, a student cannot walk more than 500 m to get to a bus stop. If the distance between his home and the bus stop is greater than 500 m, a new bus stop is created. Throughout this very cold winter, the coldest on recent record, our attentive mother drove her daughter to and from the bus stop. The daughter never wore as much as a hat. No scarf, no mittens, not even a pair of boots. You need to understand that within a 500 m radius of my home office window, there is no low-income housing. We are not talking about a child in need; we are talking about a child who cannot walk 500 m (probably less) in the winter because it is “too cold”. And it’s too cold by choice. That’s the kind of choice, made every day, multiplied by millions of us, over our lifetime that brought planet earth to her knees. Not a handful of large families.

Yes, we use too much electricity, we drive too often and we wear too many clothes. We gather so much that we must build air-conditioned condos for our stuff. Not only have we covered our prime agricultural land with asphalt, we now build apartments for our stuff! We got there while our population was decreasing. Could you be looking for a culprit at the wrong place?

As for me and my husband, we will keep having children and raising them to become responsible citizens. I don’t know if we will succeed: the social forces pushing us toward overconsumption and self-centeredness are strong. But I believe that we have a better chance of succeeding because a large family is an incubator for the values that we hope to pass-on to our children. You should be happy: they will be paying for your adult diapers and performing your hip replacement surgeries for the next 60 years.

Picture by Jenna Sparks, Lifestyle photographer: http://jsparksphotography.zenfolio.com/

Picture by Jenna Sparks, Lifestyle photographer.

La menace du nombre

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Il y a environ un mois, notre famille a fait l’objet d’une chronique dans notre journal local. Ce n’est pas la première fois que j’apparais avec ma petite bande sur les pages d’un journal : l’année dernière, j’avais participé à un article sur la décision de retourner au travail ou de rester à la maison pour le Globe & Mail.

Quand vous êtes mère de famille nombreuse et que vous vous pointez le nez dans les média, il faut vous attendre à ce que les trolls du réchauffement climatique soient au rendez-vous, peu importe le sujet de l’article. Nous serions un bien piètre exemple à suivre : si tout le monde faisait comme nous, l’impact environnemental serait désastreux. Peut-être en théorie, mais qu’en est-il de de la réalité?

Vous n’avez pas besoin d’être expert en démographie pour voir que les familles nombreuses ne sont pas à la source de la surpopulation de la planète. En assumant que vous acceptiez les arguments en faveur de la surpopulation. Car une lecture brève des titres à ce sujet démontre rapidement que les problèmes reliés au déclin démographique sont tout aussi pressants que ceux reliés à la surpopulation. Et que les problèmes d’allocation des ressources reliés à la surpopulation sont temporaires. Je m’explique. Une lecture rapide des statistiques sur les taux de natalité (nombre de naissances enregistrées au cours d’une année par 1000 habitants) et les taux de fertilité (nombre moyen d’enfants par femme au cours de leur vie, entre 15 et 50 ans) sont en déclin de par le monde. Bien que de nombreux pays sous-développés se trouvent encore au-dessus du taux de natalité qui assure le renouvèlement de leur population (2.1 enfants par femme), leur taux de natalité est en déclin. À la lecture des statistiques, il semble que l’augmentation de la population mondiale ne soit pas autant liée aux naissances trop nombreuses mais bien à l’augmentation de l’espérance de vie.  Autrement dit, nous n’avons pas soudainement commencé à nous reproduire comme des lapins, nous avons simplement arrêté de tomber comme des mouches. Le nombre de personnes âgées est à la hausse mais le nombre d’enfants est en déclin de par le monde.

Blâmer la surpopulation sur les familles nombreuses comme la nôtre ignore le fait que pour un pays comme le Canada, le taux de fertilité est bien en-dessous du taux de renouvèlement, malgré la poignée de familles nombreuses qu’on y retrouve. Pensez-y : le taux de fertilité de 1.1 enfant par femme inclue les femmes comme moi. Nous faisons donc une bien maigre différence. Au pire, nous rendons le déclin démographique un tout petit peu moins menaçant. Je rencontre parfois des petits comiques qui me disent : « Je suis bien content qu’il y ait des gens comme toi pour compenser pour les gens comme moi »… Sauf que nous ne faisons pas le poids : il y a encore trop de gens comme toi pour que les gens comme moi puissent compenser.

Certains me diront que le déclin de la population est souhaitable puisque notre bilan écologique est peu enviable. C’est vrai. Il est difficile de ne pas voir comment l’abus de ressources est néfaste pour l’environnement. Cependant, je vous dirais que  ce ne sont pas les gens qui tuent la planète mais les mentalités. Puisque les familles nombreuses ne sont pas assez nombreuses pour affecter le taux de natalité d’un pays, qu’est-ce qui vous fait penser qu’elles sont assez nombreuses pour détruire l’environnement? L’abus de ressources se produit en parallèle avec le déclin de la population. Le problème n’est pas seulement combien de personnes piétinent l’environnement, mais comment!

Notre famille vit  en banlieue d’Ottawa dans un quartier bien typique des banlieues aisées que l’on retrouve aux quatre coins du pays. Grosses maisons unifamiliales, 4 chambres à coucher, garage double. Deux voitures, ou plutôt une voiture et un véhicule de type utilitaire sport ou minivan. Notre maison est faite pour une famille de 4 ou 5 personnes. Autour de chez moi, dans des demeures similaires en taille et en fonction, il n’y a que des couples sans enfants ou avec 1 ou 2 enfants. Certaines familles sont jeunes et espère faire grandir leur famille mais la majorité sont plus âgés. Ils utilisent comme nous 3 000 pi. ca. de superficie, bâtie sur des terres autrefois agricoles, 2 véhicules, l’air climatisé et le chauffage alimenté à l’électricité produite par une centrale au charbon quelque part en Ontario. Il ne coûte pas plus cher de chauffer 3 000 pi. ca. pour une famille de 10 que pour une famille de 2. Sauf que la taille de ma famille et de mes factures font en sorte que par beau temps, on ouvre les fenêtres. La plupart de mes voisins allument la climatisation en mai et l’éteignent en octobre. Bien que ma pile de déchets soit plus grande que la leur, le camion se déplace autant pour eux que pour moi, et leur pile de déchets n’est pas le cinquième de la mienne, même si leur maisonnée l’est. Leurs 2 véhicules se déplacent remplis au quart, pas moins souvent que les miens remplis à craquer. Et alors que mes vacances de mars se passent à la maison, avec un petit voyage de 60 minutes à la pente de ski la plus proche, la moitié des copains d’école de mes enfants sont partis en avion vers une destination plus ensoleillée. Et vous me pointez du doigt?

Je vais vous dire ce qui détruit la planète. C’est l’égoïsme. C’est une culture de pouvoir qui nous pousse à prendre ce qui nous revient, que nous en ayons besoin ou non. C’est la recherche du « plus encore », pour ne pas dire du « trop ». Lorsqu’on se promène dans les anciens quartiers d’Ottawa et que l’on y voit des petits bungalows en brique de 2 ou 3 chambres à coucher, pas plus grands qu’un garage triple, on se rappelle d’une époque pas si lointaine où ces maisons étaient considérées d’une taille acceptable pour une famille… alors que les familles étaient plus grosses! Aujourd’hui, ma maison unifamiliale a deux chambres à coucher avec leurs propres salle-de-bains. Idéal pour l’ado unique qui préfère ne pas partager une toilette avec ses parents : vos enfants peuvent maintenant dormir, surfer et se doucher dans leur aile personnelle. Ils n’ont même plus besoin de sortir pour faire pipi. Il ne manque que la trappe à repas! Mais c’est moi, mon mari et mes enfants qui sont le problème?

De ma fenêtre de bureau à la maison, je regarde passer les autobus scolaires. À tous les jours, une maman bienveillante vient reconduire sa fille qui semble avoir environ 12 ans à l’arrêt d’autobus et revient l’y chercher à la fin de la journée en minivan. À Ottawa, un élève ne peut marcher plus de 500 m pour se rendre à son arrêt d’autobus. Si la distance entre son domicile et son point d’embarquement est de plus de 500 m, un nouveau point d’embarquement est créé. Tout au cours de cet hiver rigoureux, le plus froid qu’on ait connu depuis belle lurette, notre maman bienveillante est venue déposer sa fille à l’arrêt d’autobus. Sa fille ne portait jamais de tuque, de foulard ou de mitaines. Pas même une paire de bottes. On s’entend que dans un rayon de 500 m de ma fenêtre de bureau, il n’y a pas de logement à loyer modique. On ne parle pas d’un enfant mal habillé par nécessité mais bien d’un enfant qui ne peut pas marcher 500 m (sans doute moins) en hiver parce qu’il « fait trop froid ». Et il fait trop froid par choix. C’est ce genre de choix, fait à tous les jours, multipliés par quelque million d’entre nous, sur l’espace d’une vie, qui sont venu à bout de l’environnement. Pas une poignée de familles nombreuses.

Oui, on utilise trop d’électricité, on conduit trop souvent, on porte trop de vêtements, on amasse trop de cochonneries et on doit maintenant construire des espaces de rangements climatisés pour accueillir les choses dont nous n’arrivons pas à nous débarrasser. Vous pensez que ce sont les familles comme la mienne qui rendent Dymon Storage si profitable? Non contents de tapisser nos terres agricoles d’asphalte, nous construisons des appartements de banlieue pour nos choses, que nous devons ensuite conduire en voiture d’un bout à l’autre de la ville. On en est arrivé là alors que la population continue de décroitre. Serait-il possible que vous cherchiez votre coupable au mauvais endroit?

Pour ma part, je vais continuer à avoir des enfants et à les élever de manière à ce qu’ils deviennent des citoyens responsables. Je ne sais pas si je vais réussir : les forces sociales qui poussent à la surconsommation et au nombrilisme sont puissantes! Mais je crois que j’ai une meilleure chance de réussir parce que la famille nombreuse est un incubateur pour les valeurs que je cherche à inculquer à mes enfants. Vous devriez être contents : ce sont eux qui vont payer vos serviettes d’incontinence et remplacer vos hanches pour les 40 prochaines années.

Picture by Jenna Sparks, Lifestyle photographer: http://jsparksphotography.zenfolio.com/

Picture by Jenna Sparks, Lifestyle photographer: http://jsparksphotography.zenfolio.com/