Helmet has flat shiny hair that hovers over her bright red eyelids and hangs close around the nape of her neck, covers her ears and temples closely. Shiny black-haired Helmet wears bigly fitted, geometric jersey reminiscent of the 1980s but with the exaggerated easy proportions of the Noughties remix. Tight leggings cover little walking sticks and her tiny flat flipperfeet smile in bold footwear. Somehow it always matches. How many pairs of shoes does Helmet have? I see her every day at the skytrain, a shuffling, self-conscious fashion plate on her way somewhere.  She has leopard print ballet flats and neon pastel patchwork high tops. She has a bag as big as she is. She has bright red apple cheeks and sometimes alternates with bright red lips, sullen and dull.

Longlegs squeezes her feet into strappy blue shoes with high blue heels. White cableknit winds up her skinny legs and all. Her hair curls and bounces at the ends, held off her freshly made face by a girly ribbon. She’s the perfect foil for Helmet’s harsh modernity – they are complementary colours in girl form. They make each other brighter.

How to write in a blog post about feminism? About how every week it seems there is another example of how far we still have to come?  So I must make my stand, and having made it today I will make the statement here.  The rights of others and the rights of mothers.

In response to statements about how new mothers appear to be “shut in”, how they are “stuck inside”, how they “need to get out more” and so forth, I demand to know what is to be expected of the breastfeeding mother of an under-6-month-old. Should she go shopping every day and waste the pittance provided by Employment Insurance? Is wandering the mall really more defensible than pushing the stroller around the park?  Perhaps local art galleries. I would enjoy seeing how breastfeeding is to be accomplished, how the scream of a frustrated infant is to be tolerated in the vast hallowed halls. To those who judge: have you ever breastfed in a Wendy’s?

And in response to statements about how mothers should grab the opportunity to get back to work as soon as possible, please compare the cost of infant daycare with the income earned. Should more than half the income be consigned to childcare, perhaps the benefits should be weighed against the costs.  Do not tell me how much nonmobile infants benefit from institutional daycare. But I shall agree that once a child is 2.5 or 3, there is a lot of fun to be had in care!

Finally, in reply to the argument that mothers have the requirement to follow their careers because it was won by the women who fought before them, I would like you to consider that the New Model Woman (mother by choice, worker by need, homemaker by tradition), if paired with a man, must have a New Model Man by her side. Without the New Model Man (father by choice, worker by tradition, homemaker by need), there will be personal struggle and inequality.

Men and women must be brave enough to stand up for their choice of personal and public life, against their employers, against families, and against communities, until the society has shifted to allow all people the right to distribute labour and home-future priorities as they personally see fit. We must recognize that the choices we make are completely subjective, they are personal and by luck they happen to fall into the homogenous category of the culture. They could just as easily fall onto the heterogenous margins and it is there, I think that more of us live than admit. We must not be silent and we must not be or allow others to be coerced.

Semester break: I am drifting in the experience of time. It’s incredible. Today we spent the whole day just living, doing what we wanted. The luxury of chosen work. He worked on the Van and I on sewing. I sewed a 1/2 circle cape for the girls and felt quite brilliant about it, mainly because I never finish anything and this, finally, is something I’ve finished. And two of them, no less! So these are capes with hoods a la Red Riding Hood, and they are in bright red fleece, with a pretty green button and “rustic” buttonholes. I’ve got a formula for making capes without a pattern or measurements (I hate hate hate measuring and trying to guess at how long or wide something should be!) and I’m willing to share it, thusly: Kids Cape.

I also made a skirt and a hairband for the little one – and then the bigger one roped me into sewing dolly clothes with her. Took the opportunity to teach her about designing her own stuff – maybe she’ll remember when she’s 15 and decide to make her own style instead of bleating along with the crowd. Oh, well, I can only hope.

Also, I appear to be knitting again. I always like to knit winter things in springtime… but I should learn to read instructions properly and use the right size needles!