Beaucoup de Fun

EsNoWriMo kicked off in fine style last night. It was great to participate with Jill, Sam, Scott, Katie and Heather by Skype, even though I could barely hear anything anyone said and the only people I could see were Jill, Scott and occasionally dad drifting in for a snacksie.

I'm only at 900 words, but the first day isn't over yet. I'm sitting on my back porch sipping a gin and tonic and enjoying everyone's blogs. I thought I would post something from the introduction. Imagine if Edie Marlowe-Spade had a few more opportunities in life and decided to become a social worker. It might go something like this ...

Ultimate Mommy Blogger 2.0

Blog entry 401

Beaucoup’s 401th day of life

They grow so fast. I notice that with each day I love my boy more and more, and more. Life is good, especially being a mom. My life changed forever the day Beaucoup was born. My life before was meaningless.

I named my baby boy Beaucoup, because I wanted him to have “everything”. I had to turn to French to find a word that could truly express all my hopes and dreams for him. I know that for him to have “everything”, I need to be there for him at every moment. I stare at him while he sleeps, to make sure he doesn’t stop breathing. I stare at him while he’s awake too, just in case.

I look at all these poor children in the neighbourhood around me who are not so lucky as my boy. I feel angry at all those mothers who leave their kids with strangers, going off to build their own careers. So selfish. I’ve said it before on this blog and I’ll say it again. Feminism is killing children. I swear I’m going to call the Children’s Aid Society one of these days.

I blinked a few times and looked at the woman weeping in my office. I knew why I felt like crying. In fact tears of rage were prickling at the edges of my eyes and my heart was racing. The blog entry that Marietta had asked me to display on the screen was the kind of thing that I might pull up at on a computer during a summer BBQ with friends, to stimulate laughter and angry discussion. But I could not think of a reason why I would feel compelled, as Marietta apparently did, to share it with a social worker.

Marietta did not appear to be prepared just yet to explain her thinking, as she rocked back and forth with her arms wrapped around herself for protection. What had her so upset? Was it the virulent anti-feminism? Was it concern that this mommy blogger appeared to be stalking her own child? Or perhaps she was as offended as I was that the author did not appear to know the correct translation for the word “Beaucoup”? It did not mean, as “Ultimate Mommy Blogger 2.0” seemed to think, “everything.” Rather, she had named her child “a lot.” I hoped that somehow, some way, I would be the one who would get to alert Ultimate Mommy Blogger 2.0 to her error.

“Umm, Marietta?”, I asked in what I hoped was a soothing voice.

Apparently it was not soothing enough. Marietta just wailed all the louder. I was starting to feel desperate. This scene had been going on for some 15 minutes, and I was afraid that Dexter, my boss would feel the need to intervene – again. “Jesus,” I thought, “am I the world’s worst ever social worker?”

I leaned back in my squeaky chair and looked around my office, hoping for some kind of inspiration. Two years of post-graduate training, and all I had to say was “Umm, Marietta” in a voice that was – rather than soothing – something akin to what I imagine Leatherface of Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame would have sounded like if he had ever spoken.

It was time to take the bull by the horns. My eyes lit upon one of my old textbooks sitting on the bookshelf near the window, Clinical Social Work Practice in Behavioural Mental Health: A Postmodern Approach to Practice with Adults. I tried to remember some of the basic principles it had recommended for developing a clinical rapport.

“Marietta, why don’t we create a pastiche from these old magazines?”, I asked, fanning my right hand towards a pile of old newspapers.

This, at least, got Marietta to stop crying. She looked up at me in stunned silence for a moment and I jumped into the breach. “I don’t quite understand why you have brought this blog to my attention. Why does it have you so upset?” Social work is a helping profession, I thought to myself so I quickly added in a deep and booming voice that I hoped conveyed maturity, “Let me help you to help yourself.” I waved my hands around again for emphasis.