Goose Mothering Season
Good to have them in a row
Friday marked the best day of spring for me - I saw the first gaggle of goslings on the Humber River. Oh, pairs of Canada geese have been milling about in the river valley for a few weeks now. While for the rest of the year, they co-exist peacefully with the human and dog population of the Humber trail, the last few weeks have marked a period of gander aggression, giving us the strong signal to stay the hell away from the nest. You don’t want to mess with an angry gander!
And now they’ve got babies, the aggression has amped up. Last year, there were so many living on both sides of the path in Raymore Park that I often went well out of my way to avoid the ruckus caused by even a hint of human interference. I get it. These darling feathered babies are their sole purpose in spring and darn it, they’re going to get them to the finish line unscathed! Parents hang out in groups called creches, sharing in the parenting duties a bit. Interestingly, both goose and gander are remarkably attentive to their charges.
But it is short-lived. At three to four weeks, the goslings are mercifully self-sufficient, although they don’t reach reproductive maturity for a couple of years.
How lucky, though - they parent for one month in every twelve and have the rest of the time to hang out as a couple and travel with their friends. Seems a pretty ideal situation. (If that had been possible for me, I might not have remained Childless by Choice.)
On this mother’s day, I think of my own mother and her prolonged parenting duties. Forty years ago this September, she burned rubber leaving me standing in the parking lot at McMaster University. She’d been a full-time mother for - wait for it - 34 years!
Yup. In 34 years I estimate she prepared and cleaned up after 37,000 meals; did at least 10,000 loads of laundry; vacuumed the main floor of the house 12,000 times; and did 2,000 cleans of the bathroom. And let’s talk about the meals for a sec - all hot, mostly with dessert. Her days were spent baking bread and pies, peeling potatoes, roasting meats, chopping veg, and washing dishes. Endless bloody dishes. (for this, she roped us in - everything else she did herself) She also grew, canned, and froze her own vegetables and fruit.
And she wasn’t just doing it for one or two people. For six of those 34 years, she had five children at home, ranging in age from teens to baby me. As children started moving out, hired men filled the gap. With no TV, being miles from even a corner store, and living in a very small farmhouse, everyone was underfoot most of the time. Honestly, when I think about her life for those years, I cannot think of anything less fun. Or less intellectually stimulating.
Small wonder she was happy to let my summertime be one of free-ranging on our two hundred acres and the neighbours’ farm with their kids. So long as we arrived home for meals, no-one ever gave us much thought. The idea that Gen X raised itself is thought to come from dual-income parents and latch key kids. But with both my parents on those 200 acres with me all the time, I still had maximum independence, making me well-prepared for adult life. For this, I will always be grateful.
From my position in Chandlerville, adjacent to a park, I watch a different kind of mothering. Kids are a lot less free - not running the streets unsupervised - but in traditional two parent families, both parents are more involved than my generation experienced. There’s a lot more of that goose creche behaviour too - mothers taking turns supervising the goslings. There’s also a lot more attention paid to the social needs of the mother too: date night is a new concept. It was a very rare night indeed when my parents got a babysitter and went out.
I used to joke about Mom’s rubber-burning those four decades ago, but honestly, could you blame her for finally getting to enjoy a bit of downtime?
So to all those actively mothering out there - enjoy today. Reflect on how much more pleasant your lives are than generations past. And for goodness sake, allow a bit of free-ranging! The goslings don’t always have to be in a row!
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