Head Tale

When Sasha was born, my coworkers at RPL threw a baby shower for Shea and I.

I still remember a couple co-workers who both had older children – one in high school the other with two in their early 20s – giving me a line that I still think of to this day: “Little kids, little problems; big kids, big problems.”

At the time, one coworker had a child who was dealing with some serious issues related to neurodivergence that were impacting their ability to work and other parts of their life.

The other had a child who had split with a fiance and was moving back in with them while her other child was doing well with an engineering job thousands of miles away on another continent but which meant she only saw her son maybe once a year and had to constantly worry about his safety working in a country where foreigners were at risk for kidnapping and worse.

Pace is 17 and Sasha is only 11 but I often think about how much easier life was when they were small (not that it was easier – this is just the rose-coloured glasses of hindsight – but it’s true that their problems were definitely smaller) as Pace is driving, has a girlfriend and contemplates his post-secondary path while Sasha is also gaining more independence, dealing with the realities of being a pre-teen girl in a cyber age, as well as both of them living in an age of increased awareness of and exposure to gender fluidity, mental health struggles, broken and blended families, addictions, multiculturalism and so many more things that weren’t barely known let alone prevalent when Shea and I were young.