Skip to main content

Alicia


I've been keeping an eye on Alicia for a long time. It's tough to reach out to someone when they are thousands of km's away but thanks to Facebook and other such technology I can continue to keep some sort of connection with the only neice I've met (my brother has at least 1 girl that I know of that I'll likely never get to meet since she was adopted out).

My brother was forcibly removed from the families house when my sister and I were about 7 years old. I'll never forget that day because it might have been the day I died. My Dad had confronted my brother about his bad behaviour and told him that he had to leave before he endangered our family. It was almost dinner time so my sister and I were seated at the dining room table and my Mom had just brought out the plates. My brother mumbled that he was going to grab the cutlery and my Dad saw him reach for a large knife. My Dad tackled him to the floor and once in control of him literally tossed him out the door. My sister and I hadn't seen the knife and didn't know about our parent's decision to toss Sean out so this violent scene was scary and confusing.
My brother had been a problem for as long as my young mind could remember. He tortured my sister and I from the time we were born and often came home drunk or high or occasionally covered in blood. My parents were at a loss for how to help or control him so they did what they felt they had to do to protect our family.

Years later when I was around 12 my brother returned from the streets of Calgary desperate for a place to stay with his young pregnant girlfriend. My parents saw some positive changes in him and wanted desperately to help this baby have a better life so they took them in. I was so excited when Alicia was born. She was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen. I felt honored to be given the opportunity to bathe, dress, and change this little miracle and liked to pretend I was her Mom when I strolled around our neighbourhood with her. I don't quite remember how old she was when Sean moved her and her mom with him to an apartment in Calgary but it wasn't until years later that they moved to Ottawa. She was such an adorable toddler and grew more smart and beautiful every year. I was sad when they moved far away and took a few opportunities in my early adulthood to fly out and see them.

Things got awkward though when I could no longer maintain a healthy relationship with my brother. I made a tough decision to shut him off fully from relationship with me as did my sister. Its complicated but I still love Alicia (and my Nephew Joshua that I've only met a few times). Joshua is currently out of my reach but Alicia lives with her Mom and her Mom was always nice to Angie and I. Alicia needs family right now...she had something traumatic happen to her recently and needs a good support system to overcome the pain and fear of post traumatic stress. I've tried to be one of those supports for her online but saying hugs and giving someone hugs are two very different things. I talked about going out there to see her but I wasn't sure how that was going to work.

About a week ago my brother in law Isaac talked to her on facebook and invited her out here to stay with them for a week. She asked her Mom and her Mom said yes! My Mom offered to pay for the flight and suddenly the neice I was afraid I might never see again is arriving in Calgary tomorrow! I can't wait to see her all grown up and to connect with her!  

Comments

  1. I'm really excited for you! I hope you have a wonderful visit.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Redemption

I spent some of this weekend thinking about the word redemption and what it means. Not necessarily the religious context of it, but the taking a wrong and making it right idea. I think this stuck with me because I watched a few movies over the weekend in which the themes were about making things right and using your pain to help others. Like everyone I have had some painful things happen to me and have struggled with the anger and despair that often accompanies being hurt. In the book The Shack the author calls his main character's pain (due to the murder of his youngest daughter) "the Great Sadness." This makes sense to me because some of the bad things that can happen in life seem so consuming that they haunt you no matter how hard you try to ignore them. I am often reminded of this fact when something new in my life causes me pain (a conflict. a death, etc). All of a sudden the floodgate of old pain re-opens and I find myself back at the beginning of my pain...

Where has the time gone?

Alright so on the subject of random blogging, it has been a little while since I wrote anything on here. It's not because I have nothing to say or because nothing interesting has happened over the last few months, but because I am a self proclaimed random writer. I've never been good with deadlines or journaling or anything that takes follow through. I'm more of a in-the-minute, flying off the seat of my pants, motivated by inspirations and emotions kind of writer. So maybe I will give everyone a brief update on what has happened since July. 1) Enjoyed my trip to Pender Island (didn't see any whales on the whale watching excursion (boourns), but did see the biggest grossest jellyfish ever!) 2) Went camping with Danaya and her family along Kootenay Lake and survived a 16km hike up a mountain and back and hours of huckleberry picking (had a blast) 3) Cooked lots of Huckleberry goodies when I got home to share with family and friends (cobbler, pancakes, muffins, etc) ...

Easy A

I remember seeing a commercial for this movie a few weeks ago and thought that it actually looked pretty funny. I'm pretty wary of teenage comedy's as usually the level of well thought out humour, intelligently designed plot, likeable characters, and enjoyablility is just not there for me. This movie on the other hand was very funny, well thought out, and well acted. Emma Stone plays Olive, a clean cut and generally invisible except to her few friends, teenage girl who finds herself a victim of the High School rumour mill when she tells a friend a lie. Her friend wants her to come camping with her family, Olive is uncomfortable with their strange habits (such as eating topless) and tells her friend that she can't come because she has a date with a college freshman. The next week her friend takes her vague responses to her questions as an indication that she must have lost her virginity to this mystery man. Olive decides to go with it so her friend will get off her case and ...