Canadian

There is a scar in my right armpit that I am pretty self conscious about. While we were still in Bangladesh I was walking with my sister and a friend and fell into an open sewer.

If you've seen the movie Slumdog Millionaire think back to the scene where the main character as a boy is in the outhouse and learns of the famous actor visiting their town. He comes out and is covered in human feces that has had time to soften into a mud-like consistency and then emulsify. Then take it one step further and imagine being stuck in it, trying to stay afloat because I had fallen through a two foot wide opening in the ground and landed six feet below in a virtual river of shit.

Not a memory I treasure but something I've thought about often in recent years. You see it took me a long time to really think about the differences between that life and this one. The disparity between living in a third world country and living in one of the wealthiest most peaceful countries in the world.

Until relatively recently I took my story for granted. I mean I always knew it was pretty amazing but it wasn't until I really consciously weighed the variations did it hit me how different my life could be if I still lived in Bangladesh.

I read a book this past year called Shame by Taslima Nasrin a Bangladeshi author only nine years older than me who has been forced to live in exile because of the views she expressed against her own religion in her writing. Because of these views she faced serious death threats from Islamic fundamentalists and was forced to leave her homeland. Sadly her father died and she couldn't even return to the country to attend his funeral. Can you even imagine???

I don't mention my adoptive parents very often. There was some difficulty over the years which for me has been amended. But I have realized the miracle they enabled when they chose to adopt my sister and me.

They already had two boys of their own, were pregnant with a third and had adopted a little girl from Bangladesh in 1977 when they saw a picture of Tara and me during an adoption support meeting. They told us that immediately they felt we were meant to be their girls. By June of 1978 we had become their girls. Free to grow up and have opinions. Free to dream about a future that was wide open. Free to speak our minds. Free to marry who we wanted. Free to raise our children to be free. Free.

I don't want to wax patriotic. I don't often embrace Canadianna. But today on Canada Day at home with my son and husband where we are peacefully free to do whatever we want, say and believe whatever we want and be whoever we want, I have to admit that it is good to be Canadian!

I've got all the answers

We've had some time off this past week. Canada Day falls on a Wednesday so both Shaune and I used some vacation time to take advantage of an extra long weekend. I have nothing remarkable to post about but here are some of my random observations about life since last Thursday:

• While at the emergency room today (we took Deaglan in for what we thought could be something troublesome but it ended up being nothing - thank God) I noticed that Triage is a bittersweet concept. On the one hand we were completely relieved that our case did not warrant being moved to the head of the line. I mean we tore out of the house in a disoriented panic and concluded from the reaction of the emergency staff that maybe the situation wasn't as dire as we'd thought. But then we had to sit and wait on a tiny cot for two hours trying to contain a boisterous 18 month-old who, although gave us enough of a scare earlier to drop what we were doing and get to the hospital, showed no signs of illness whatsoever and whose energy level seemed to multiply as soon as we entered the emergency room. I had to remind Shaune that it was a good thing that they were treating the most severe cases first and that we were blessed to be considered low priority.

• Vacations last longer when you aren't running around doing vacation type things. We didn't go anywhere or get anything major done. A few times we thought out loud about going to the beach (about an hour away) or to Ikea (about an hour and a half away) but then it would start raining or one of us would feel like taking a nap and we'd agree that we were fine just hanging around. It's been nice.

• I don't think it's right that toddler toy companies make profits. As far as I'm concerned whoever made my old wallet and our dust pan should be the ones raking in the fortunes. When I need to distract Deaglan and catch a few minutes break I just pull out our dust pan - it's one of those that has a long handle like a broom. He literally squeals with delight at the sight of it. Throw in my old wallet and a set of keys and I could run some errands and he wouldn't even know I was missing. Clearly I wouldn't leave him alone but it does make me wonder how well these million dollar toy companies really know their demographics. Imagine the money they could save in building materials. I could just see it - "we'll take these old boxes and empty toilet paper rolls and call it a "Building set" and charge $75.00".

Anyway, nothing spectacular to report - just some random and silly thoughts.

The Namesake

Natalie asked me where we found the name Deaglan. The truth is, Shaune found it on the internet. Shaune's first name is actually Patrick after his paternal grandfather. At first we toyed with the idea that should we have a boy we would keep up this tradition maybe name the baby after his paternal grandfather and father. So we were going to call him Patrick William, William being Shaune's dad's name.

A week before our ultrasound we lost our dog Judge. Although he had been living with insulin dependent diabetes for over a year, the loss was sudden and devastating. He was our first baby. I wrote about it here and here . So when we got to the hospital to see our unborn baby in my womb, we were craving some happy news, something that we could get excited about. I mean we were really thrilled about expecting a child but we wanted something immediate to distract us from the heartbreak we were experiencing.

In Ontario, the ultrasound technician is not permitted to tell you the gender of the baby. You have to wait until your next doctor's appointment to find out. However, we were fortunate that our technician was a young mother herself, expecting her second child and she just happened to know one of my sisters from highschool. So although she couldn't tell us whether the little monkey in there was a boy or a girl she gave us enough hints for us to figure it out. I know that there is a 50 per cent chance that you can have one sex or the other but I was completely surprised that I would be having a boy. My sister has had three beautiful girls, Shaune has three sisters and as you know from a past post, my biological siblings are all girls. I guess girls is all I know. We walked out of that hospital and kept saying to each other - can you believe we are having a boy? We must have sounded like fools but we didn't care. This news made the baby seem more real. We were really going to have a baby and he was going to be a he.

At home we discussed the name. Shaune suddenly had a change of heart.

"Do you think we should name him Patrick or go with something else?" he ask me nervously several times.

"It's up to you I like the name."

He went downstairs for a while and came back up with a piece of paper with something written on it.

"What do you think of this?"

On the paper it said DEAGLAN. Without hesitation I told him that I loved it.

"You pronounce it like Declan and it means full of goodness. It's a mix of Irish and English."

So our little he became Deaglan William. And that name has been a pain in the butt ever since. People have no idea how to pronounce it. Our doctor insists on calling him Deeglan (hard g) even though I am completely obnoxious in how many times I say his name within her earshot in one visit. People also call him Deglan (hard g again) and Dee-ag-lan. Because of this Shaune has insisted on more than one occassion that we change his name. Can you imagine?

Doctor: How is DEEGLAN doing?

Me: Uhhh actually it's Jack.

Seriously though I love the name and I think after several years of hating us for giving him this burden of explaining and enunciating he will someday thank us when the girls are ooohing and awwwing about what a cool name he has.

Friday shoot-out Eh?

Reggie at Midlife, menopause, mistakes and random stuff has Friday shoot-outs and the theme today was your hometown eateries. We live in a medium sized city in Ontario and although it isn't our hometown, it's growing on us. We've lived here for about ten years. We miss the beautiful beachfront of where we grew up but this place is special because this is where we got married, and had our son. I had to include this - our national treasure. Tim Horton's or as as we Canadian folk refer to it - a Timmies or Tim's.

This is Joe Kool's and it is specific to the culture of our city. People come here just to have lunch or enjoy the nightclub atmosphere after the kids have gone to bed. We live in a college and university town which means this place is packed throughout the school year with students.

The Tasting Room is lovely restaurant with a wonderful wine list and great food. It's close to where I work and is one of the places workplace occassions are celebrated.

Our city has some really good places to eat but it also is over-run with roadhouse type chain restaurants. Having a resident chef and a baby who is in bed by 7pm, we rarely go out to eat anymore. Mostly you'll find us at home enjoying a delicious home cooked meal.

Inter-racial

Deaglan has a diverse ethnicity. I am a first generation Bangladeshi. Actually, Bangladesh became a country the year I was born. It used to be East Pakistan. Shaune was born in Sarnia, Ontario. His parents were also born here but a couple of generations back there is Irish and English heritage.

I wonder what his experience will be as a mixed race person. I hope that the world will be kind to him. I hope he never experiences any limitations based on what he looks like. I hope he never puts limitations on others based on what they look like.