…when you were making other plans. No NYT yesterday. Big news, though: Matt had his back-to-work discussion with his employer, the personnel manager at his Loblaw store, the Workmen’s Compensation rep, his Union rep, and i’m sorry to say his mother, not intending to be a hover-mother but there to interpret and try to be a fly on t he wall for later reporting. It should have been his Community Living counsellor. I’ve told you before that Matt is challenged. Loblaw is committed to hiring challenged staff and means it. Matt earned his 25-year-service pin last year. So, in spite of a cruelly complicated broken ankle, now healing, he was there to find out what was in store for him now. (I guess that’s a pun.) The Garden Centre! Lovely.

That was yesterday. I’m not ready to write about NYT today because I have something interesting on the agenda today. Have you heard of the Longtitudinal Study on Ageing? I‘m not sure what branch of the government it falls under—continues under—but it’s been going on for a number of years now, and I’m on their list to talk to every three or four years. This will be my third conversation and I’m as curious as they are to observe how I have deteriorated. I still have my marbles but i’m sure I will be demonstrably slower. I know my legs are.

Later in the day i will have another phone discussion with my publisher, about the design of my book, finally coming to fruition, two months behind what I had hoped because of Matt’s and my fractures. At least I get to stay home today. I was behind on my reading and the books keep piling up (because i keep buying them. So I’ll have to do some thumbnail reviews soon, a pleasant task.

No matter what the plans are, life does go on.

Anon.

I’ll deal with that tomorrow. I had a lovely day reading the paper edition. But tonight I wrote a letter to my grandson-in-law who finishes his paternity leave tomorrow and goes back to his day job. (I’m not going to say work, because he has been working.)

Dear Matt:

You have been much in my mind the last few months as you have been experiencing a huge lifestyle change and a very large learning curve. You are in the vanguard of a generation of men who have not experienced this before. I’m sure it was a shock.

Oddly enough, I experienced the opposite after I was widowed as I realized what men go through and what I took for granted. E.g. when I went out at night with my husband, all I needed was a lipstick, which I put in his pocket. He had the driver’s license, the keys, the money, everything he needed to take care of me/us. Later I needed all that plus my glasses (for driving), and always with the consciousness that I was my children’ s only parent so I had to be very careful.

I remember, too, as I was trying to make a living for all of us, I was in a meeting trying to get an assignment to write a documentary film script (which I didn’t know how to do), and time was running out. I had promised to meet Matt and a friend with two kids to take them swimming in my apartment pool. But I could not leave that meeting, and I realized the pressure on men who have to meet similar requirements, with no choice but t to hang in there.

So, I imagine you discovered the opposite side, when you had to make a decision for Mia and you had to handle a situation you were not familiar with. Previously with the new baby you performed tasks that had been laid out for you but now you found that you had too make the plan to follow. It’s different, isn’t it?

I keep telling you about Dorothy Dinnerstein (1923-1992). Her book, The Mermaid and the Minotaur (1976), was in every feminist bibliography when I was writing my book about women’s diaries. Her belief is that the status quo won’t change (even now with #MeToo) until men share equally with the nurturance of their children. That next generation will have a different mindset because of it. It’s not going to happen overnight. It will take a generation – or two? But you are in the vanguard.

You fill me with admiration and hope.

Bless, Bettyjane

If you don’t mind, I think I’ll make this my blog for today. It’s important.