Every mother has her shortcomings, as every child will tell you. I have been priding myself recently that my shortcomings in that department can’t have been too serious. After all, both offspring have made it past first year university, are reasonably well adjusted, have lived together in a house in the city for for past two months without seriously hurting one another and still phone home on a regular basis.
But, as they say, “pride goeth before a fall,” and I found out the other night just how remiss I can be as a mother.
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Talking to my youngest, I was reporting on the progress of her cats, five delightful babies born this spring, all healthy and doing well. There’s Puss and Boots and Wellington and McNaught and MacDuff.
I thought. I was telling her quite blissfully about being in the garden with the kittens when Puss came and sat on my foot and MacDuff climbed my leg.
There was a brief silence on the other end, than a plaintive cry, “but mother, we don’t have a MacDuff.”
It seems that MacDuff is MacKenzie, who is Mac for short. I don’t know why I called MacKenzie MacDuff except perhaps I wanted to, but it appears that I will be responsible for giving this cat an identity crisis.
I’m not sure just how we’ll know when said cat has said crisis, but when it happens, mea culpa.
This year, for the first time in about 12 years, my name did not appear on a nomination form for a school board position at either the local or division level. I have been asked what I will do to fill in my time. I guess I have an answer: learn the proper names of my daughter’s cats.
When I announced that I would not be running for another term, some kind people asked me to reconsider.
I was sorely tempted. However, with my girls out of the local school loop, I felt it was time I left the seat to someone with children in the local school.
I am disappointed to read that our provincial government wants to replace elected local school boards with parent councils which would be elected at school board annual meetings.
The system we have at present allows for a local school board elected from the broad base of the electorate and which can be said to represent the community as a whole. It is highly unlikely that the same will be said of parent councils, since only a small segment of the population attends school-board annual meetings.
This will be another piece of our democratic structure stripped away.
