Recently in Family Category

And happy tidings. Rose and I are in Brockville right now, and we will be returning to Montreal later today. I can't say that I am looking forward to it. Let's compare the two places.

Here are some pictures that I scanned from my trip this weekend to Brockville. Enjoy.

The following pictures were taken in a park on Bellechasse.

Is it wrong for me to be so fascinated by how fat this kid is? He's only about 4 or 5 and was in the same park, next to us.

Petunia, Rose's daughter, is 7. But she hasn't been acting much like a seven-year-old lately.

She's a pretty bright kid. She's near the top of her class of brighter-than-average kids. Before last fall, when she learned to read, she said, "When I learn to read, I'll be free!" which prided up her mother fiercely. Reading and learning are a number one priority for Rose, so no effort has been spared to give her access to all of this. Every week, Petunia's reading improved until a couple of months ago.

She started acting very blasé and bored about just about everything except computer games. Nothing interested her. Word games became uninteresting. Reading? Forget that. Her reading skills seemed to be declining rather than improving. She had a bigger and bigger attitude in general. She was 14, and now we have figured out why.

Petunia had a best friend, a girl from England called Jackie. They used to do everything together. They are both in Grade 1, but somehow, perhaps through an older sibling, Jackie ended up hanging out with some Grade 6 girls about 12 years old. Jackie then brought Petunia into the group, however, she had to do certain things in order to be accepted. These things included showing attitude, requesting more adult clothing, doing silly things at her expense and for their amusement and worst of all, playing dumb. I barely understand that last one when they're 12 years old. I cannot figure it out for a 7-year-old other than as a way to gain acceptance to some elite group.

Luckily, her father figured things out, explainmed to Petunia that she was being used and made fun of and that perhaps a better friend could be found. Many other girls would have been lost without their best. They often cling to these destructive relationships because anything is better than being alone. And of course, these things often enough continue into adulthood. Thankfully, Petunia recovered quickly and found another girl that she gets along with so well that they call each other "cousin".

Isn't it crazy that this should even happen, though? What the hell is wrong with these older girls? And Jackie? Seriously, this could have been a lot worse than it was; it seems that 75% of women and girls have screwed-up identity and self-esteem issues. This is one reason why.

Last month I went to visit family that was visiting from SVG and Barbados. It was really quite an experience seeing all the similarities and glaring differences between all of them and myself.

It seems that those that come from small islands have typically small notions of success, at least by our standards, and St. Vincent is a pretty small island. For many of them, getting off the island and moving to neighbouring St. Lucia or any of the other nearby islands is a big achievement for them. It would be the equivalent of say, moving from Sydney, NS to Richmond, BC, especially when you have never been farther away then 10 km from home. Ever. If you can make the move from St. Vincent to St. Lucia, then you are doing really, really well regardless of the reality. And people will play up this myth to their social advantage.

It's why I have so many relatives that believe that we live like kings. If we have a telephone, we must be able to afford to have it, and for us it costs nothing to operate. For this reason, my cousin Agnes ran up a $1600 phone bill ten years ago when she came to visit. She spent a couple of hours a day on the phone to her boyfriend in St. Vincent. (And she was pregnant with his child then; I can't believe this kid is now about 10! More on this later.) You see, she didn't realize that long distance charges were much different than regular charges, and even if they are, we are all LOADED anyway, so it didn't matter. She never did understand why my sister in law, who had spent that much on phone bills over the previous ten years completely lost her mind. It may have been the first time I was ever completely on her side on something.

Every year, the Canadian St. Vincent and the Grenadines Society puts on a picnic at none other than Brown's Bay, about 10 km west of Brockville that attracts thousands of people from literally, around the world, but mostly from Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. I was there two years ago but missed it last year. This time, although I didn't have much money to spare, I was able to just barely make it there. I had special reason to: family that I haven't seen in 20 years was coming to visit.

I reserved the car Friday. This is not an important weekend like Christmas, so I figured that getting a car would be simple. As it turns out, there were (as usual in my experience) no small cars available. I ended up getting this monstrosity called the Chrysler Pacifica. An SUV hybrid. I never thought I’d drive anything like this. It’s 20 feet long and seats ten. It gets a whopping 500 metres per litre. It has a CD player, a DVD player, seat warmers, back massagers, cock knockers, and a sauna. All of the economy price of very little per day.

Due to logistics, I could not take Rose and Petunia with me to Brockville, but I wanted them to experience this luxury car that I would never own, so I dropped them off at Rose's parents' place in Ste-Fleur-de-la-Bonne-Terre. This took a couple of hours out of my day, but I enjoyed driving them around in a fancy car for a while.

(At this point, I would like to interrupt this entry by telling you that I am writing this from an Internet Cafe in Montreal called Cafr Virus on boul. St-Laurent. There is a guy here openly surfing porn. Is that...okay? Normal? Seems awfully strange to me. I also just learned that my eyes are better than I thought they were considering the distance between us. I feel like going over there getting the web address off of him.)

My brother turns 44 today. Not this one, the other one that got him into all that trouble. I won't be able to talk to him as he has since been deported and I will never see him in Canada again.

I wonder if his three kids even realize what day this is.

After Rose and I got back from BrockVegas yesterday, we stopped in Ile-Perrot to drop off the car. We ate at an Italian restaurant with delicious food that I was tasting 14 hours later. For some reason, it didn't go down all the way, so after having some water, I was able to successfully transfer some of it from my stomach to a plastic bag. (I didn't feel like driving the porcelain bus. That's only appealing if you are roaring drunk.) I generally have a rule, in two parts: a) If you are out and you puke, it's time to go home, and b) if you are at home and you puke, stay there. So what am I doing here at work? Firstly, I have been sick recently and I didn't want it to look as though I were playing hooky from the one day this week that I will be at work, even though I could just come in tomorrow. Secondly, and mainly, it was in support of Rose, who has to work the rest of this week. As I am writing this, though, I am regretting my decision. Even though I drank de-fizzed Sprite to settle my stomach and push yesterday's food down, I can't eat, my belly feels funny, I'm hungry and I think that my temperature is going up.

So I might as well weigh in on our trip to Brockapulco. When I got there I saw that my parents were noticeably smaller than usual. My father is about 5'9 1/2, where before he was 5'11". 6 feet when I was young. He sitting in his chair with a blanket covering his legs. He fell asleep watching the game, and awoke with a start when I approached. Not only did he seem shorter, but he was just small in general. It was as though I were looking at him from eight feet in the air.

I went to the other end of the house to say hello to my mom. She was lying on her side in bed watching TV. She, too, was smaller in all dimensions. In fact, I saw just how small the next day. She's in fairly good health for a 70-year-old, but since the last time I saw her (October), I think she's lost about 20 pounds. She says that her appetite disappeared.

I asked my sister for new pictures, and here they are:

Here are two more taken at around 4 weeks of age.

Just to contrast (!) with her siblings, this is how different they are from the baby. Somehow, the father's whiteness came through. P asked me that perhaps maybe his blackness could come through in his baby, were he to have one. He does have soul, but he might need a little more...luck...we'll say.

Did I mention that the father is white with blond hair and blue eyes? Obviously this explains the whiteness, but for it to come through against the genetic odds is rather interesting, I think.

My father turns 71 today, and I found out that he went and got himself a minivan! The broken-down 1992 Dodge Spirit is now history, thank God. but the even better news is that my brother is getting out of jail. He's going into a halfway house for another ten months, but still, I'll be able to see him at least.

I still find his situation to be unjust, though. Not as unjust as this, but it's just fortunate that he is in Ontario in 2005 and not North Carolina in 1970.