Dear IF readers,

When I come up for air from loading April issue on Special Needs Families, I will edit and load a video recently taken in Disney World of a day in the week of my recent family vacation with my sister and her family. My sister Pammy.

Pammy and I were both adopted into the same family from different biological origins. She is my older sister by 13 months and has always made a point of this, even when telling men during my college years to stay away from “her little sister”. Pammy is my lionhearted sister-mama. It is not enough that she was older and got to do things first, she also made sure she approved of when, how, and how much I got of the things I was standing in line for. And I love her dearly.

Pammy is also the big sister that sent me pizza money in college. We visited each other always at our different colleges and I learned the ropes of independence at her side. She married early setup house and everyone was welcome any day or night. Pammy’s house is always decorated for the season and there is always a bed, a blanky and TV, and food.

Pammy calls me each and every morning of my adult life at 7:30 a.m. on her way to work to ask me how my day is and tell me about hers. We compare notes on our houses (what is falling apart and costing money), our husbands (our famous line is “God love em’ we might as well keep this one, because they are all the same), our children (usually the story du jour is which one embarassed us in front of 20 strangers in a store), and lately our bodies falling apart after 40.

I do not know how I could ever have survived without my sister Pammy. She is my rock, my steady eddy, my predictable one-a-day vitamin in the morning, and she is so different from me she makes me laugh all the time with her stories. So when I get a minute, I will upload to our IF mag You Tube site, the Disney vacation. I filmed Pammy loading dishes, rounding up the cubs (mine and hers), arguing with her daughter and all those things that she will never forgive me for showing to the general public. But hey, I am the little, disorganized creative sister who gets to serve up a few points off my racket as well………heeee…..love you Pammy.

Good reading, Cat Wayland

Dear IF readers,

As we take our cultural tour around the world with you our readers, there are so many ways to seek and share information - internet research, blogs, online chats, overseas phone calls, library reference books, people on trains, planes and automobiles.

Tonight I took a favorite route. I sat with my $1.00 Atlas of the World, Reader’s Digest Association, Pleasantville, NY, Montreal, Copyright 1987 and read maps of Australia and New Zealand and googled alongside. And tonight I found a site that I found both intriguing and comical -
http://www.immigrate-to-a-new-life-in-perth.com. Perth, Australia. This homegrown site is a passion play from a couple from the UK who emigrated to Perth, Australia and it changed their life so much that they built a site to engage the fence sitters, or help the fellow ex-pats, who knows? Its wonderful and comprehensive. Look it up. I did. And here is what I found out:

Source: http://www.immigrate-to-a-new-life-in-perth.com

There has been a slight increase in Australian Visas issued in the migration intake with 144,000 migrant visas issued for 2006-2007

2006-2007 Australian Migration Program

97,500 (same as last year) visas will be for skilled migrants.
46,000 (a slight increase) visas will be for family migrants.
Did you know that figures released in the UK in April 2007 show that ONE in five Britons who move overseas head to Australia? It’s TRUE the Office for National Statistics figures showed 500 British people were leaving the UK every day to live abroad, with Australia the most popular destination.

In the year 2004-2005, 71,000 Brits moved to Australia.

The writer from this site has a side directory that covers the following:

Perth Blog
Visas
Schooling in Perth
Buying a House in Perth
Home Loan Perth
Perth Beaches
Perth Restaurants
Migration Stories
Perth Suburbs
Rentals
Furniture Rentals
Getting There
360 Perth Tours

And much more…..

Recently in my own life in the U.S. after having children, I looked at my husband and said, “Let’s move South for the Winter”, and we did. And we are happier. So for those in the U.K., it seems its Perth. Good good.

Here is to beach and fish and good living in Perth, Australia, Cat Wayland

Dear IF readers,

International Family Magazine is proud to be a partner affiliate of Hot Moms Club at www.hotmomsclub.com. As you can see, we have a button for membership on our home page now. It is a wonderful organization. It is a club begun by two friends Jessica and Joy who wanted to shift the image of motherhood from one of entrapment to one of joy and freedom. When I say “entrapment” I refer to my own experience of becoming a mother and feeling as though the eyes of the world were on me to be prim and proper, moral, disciplining, tidy, quiet, self-sacrificing, silently suffering, pious, and lord knows what other attribute that I had never been before having a baby.

Hot Moms Club gives women permission to stay fantasticly themselves even after they have children. Hot Moms Club and Jessica Denay’s “Hot Mom’s Handbook” ask women to be role models to their children rather than disappear behind the children or the men in their lives. To be a role model is to be someone who is true to self and has a full-bodied self to contend with. Too often I myself have met women who in nurturing their children disappear into their children’s identities rather than continuing to grow, glow and blossom themselves. A cautionary image for me has always been the little girl who is dressed up like a doll with curling hair, ribbons, pretty dress, frilly socks and patent shoes while holding onto a mother dressed in sweats, no makeup, looking tired with messy hair. When I went into the hospital with the first birth of my oldest son Jax, I brought equally as many fancy outfits for myself as my new little baby.

And so Hot Moms Club. Amen. I would not have fit had they not come along and given the world of mothers another option. Believe me, I am not saying that motherhood is easy and does not work me like no other job (Publishing/Entertainment, Communications/Wall Street) I have ever had. I could more easily be working my four offices, airports and 70 hour work weeks that I left for motherhood. There was always a clean, pretty suit and a warm coffee close by. But if I didn’t try to work as hard at this job than any of my other jobs, I would feel I had failed at the one I cared the most. I care the most that my children are loved and nurtured AND by a mother who loves and nurtures herself. Because by even age 5 in which Jax dresses himself and bounds off to school and friends, he studies Daddy and I very closely. He holds us to standards of behavior and dress and diet and work ethic. And I like that I am still one step ahead of him always. That is how it should be. I am his guide alongside Daddy. I cannot hope he will be a successful adult if I am not.

Thank you Hot Moms Club. Welcome to International Family Magazine and thank you for welcoming us so generously.

Happy reading, happy selves, Cat Wayland, IF Mag Editor

Dear IF readers,

I am the eternal moviegoer. I guess I would have been the child who played hookie from school to watch the all day movies at the theatre had I lived in that time period. Although movies were quite inexpensive when I was a child, I think $3.00 a movie in the ’70s, this was still too much money for more than once a month or so. But in my adulthood, I take in at least one movie a week.

If a movie impresses me enough to see it in the theatre for US$10.00 and then purchase it for US$20.00, it has moved me deeply. That is true of The Darjeeling Limited, written and directed by Wes Anderson. I adore that there is an international cast of Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Amara Karan, Waris Ahluwalia, and more. But it is also a movie of siblings, three brothers. And the dynamics of those relationships are so real to me, the bossy big brother, the sulking baby brother, the contradictory middle child. My favorite scene is one in which Owen Wilson’s character has organized the trip’s itinerary but he has even tried to organize a certain spiritual experience for his brothers. Of course, this goes awry because spirituality does not come with a map. The two brothers disappoint their older brother for not following directions, and have had a divine awakening based on error or accident. That moment of accidental and chaotic harmony is what I remember most about my dearest moments with my own sister and brother. My sister and I used to love to listen and dance to “Tainted Love”. We each had different interpretations and dance moves but in all the crazy wild difference we were connecting in a space of joy that was heavenly. Ahhhhh…… The Darjheeling Limited took me back to that place for a moment. Here is review on IMD and then go buy it!

Source: IMD, Internet Movie Database
www.imdb.com/title/tt0838221/

Three American brothers who have not spoken to each other in a year set off on a train voyage across India with a plan to find themselves and bond with each other — to become brothers again like they used to be. Their “spiritual quest”, however, veers rapidly off-course (due to events involving over-the-counter pain killers, Indian cough syrup, and pepper spray), and they eventually find themselves stranded alone in the middle of the desert with eleven suitcases, a printer, and a laminating machine. At this moment, a new, unplanned journey suddenly begins healing. A year after the accidental death of their father, three brothers - each suffering from depression - meet for a train trip across India. Francis, the eldest, has organized it. The brothers argue, sulk, resent each other, and fight. The youngest, Jack, estranged from his girlfriend, is attracted to one of the train’s attendants. Peter has left his pregnant wife at home; he buys a venomous snake. After a few days, Francis discloses their surprising and disconcerting destination. Amidst foreign surroundings, can the brothers sort out their differences? A funeral, a meditation, a hilltop ritual, and the Bengal Lancer figure in the reconciliation. Written by jhailey@hotmail.com

Dear IF readers,

First I need to respond to a reader who is curious as to the nature of my family crisis that I mentioned in February. Our cousin is out of the hospital and is out of danger for now. She did hurt herself, and is now being treated for depression. She has asked me to travel to see her as she is finally ready for visitors and she wants things to look forward to. I will be flying up North in early April and we speak often. We used to always speak on Sundays referring to it as “family day” and we are trying again to honor that tradition. I feel as though I have a second chance to love better a family member that has been very lonely and sad for a long time. I want to reflect on her challenges with being in a wheelchair all her life, but she might think that was my making it trite or too easy. Her depression is anything but a stereotype. I keep myself from hoping. I can only love her, and the only person I can ever change is myself. I have learned that too often and with too much disappointment in the past. Finally though there is much laughter between us again and chats about family and music again. I cherish that.

Tonight I saw the movie, “The Other Boleyn Sister”, and so I again immersed myself into the life of Henry VIII but this time between two sisters, two siblings. As I have spoken of sibling rivalry in this month’s issue of IF mag, this movie brings that to light in a way that competes with the biblical story of Cain and Abel. In this movie, Mary the sister of Anne is a mistress of Henry VIII. I checked sources and there is truth to that in the history books. But this movie speculates on the fury with which Anne powers her relationship with Henry VIII as something built out of spite to Mary. And that, is a different history but one worth contemplating. History and politics which we study in such sterile terms at times, has many more intimate details and familial passions. History and politics involve humans and humans are so terribly human about things. Anger, jealousy, forgiveness, vainity, pride, lust, these are all very human emotions. And so, unlike the animal kingdom where emotions are played out without so many rationalizations, we write books about emotions and people and call it history. I wonder if the animals sit around their fires telling stories, histories. This fictional history of Anne and Mary as played out in “The Other Boleyn Sister” is as interesting to me as the facts. Who knows what played out between the text of what was written down? I know if Jax and Brody ever fight over a girl with the way Jax loves and needs to win, and the way Brody territorializes a person or a thing and his tempers over it, I can only imagine.

Good reading, good siblings, Cat Wayland

Dear IF readers,

Sorry to be gone so long. My sons, Jax and Brody have had two school vacations back to back. So I have played and played and played alongside them for almost 3 weeks now, Disney in Orlando and then Daytona Beach. And I have watched my sons love one another as siblings do.

My boys move in and out of each day with love, and war. It is always passionate and rarely lukewarm. When they are loving one another, it is such a wonderful thing to watch. The other day, Jax went out to check whether Brody was safe on a veranda, and when he found him safe, he hugged and kissed him and patted his back reassuringly. I melted.

The Wars are about things and people. Tonight I offered my boys 2 small toys I found in a convenience store. I thought about offering them the same exact thing as always or mixing it up - giving Jax the fish he loves and Brody the ducks he has been collecting over the weekend. I mixed it up and guessed wrong. The war began and a gift became an object of territory and envy. My heart sank. I bookmarked it. Not ready for different gifts. Remember to buy same exact thing. Noted. Wait for war to end.

All day long is the subtext of competition over people and especially mommy and daddy. “I love you Boo” I will whisper into my youngest ear as we sit together reading a book. And no matter how far away in the room, my oldest will say, “Do you love me too, Mommy?” And Brody as well. “You are so loving Jax” I say often to him as he gestures towards people, “Am I loving too, Mommy?” “Yes Brody, Yes Jax, I love you both and you are both loving,” I say over and over all day reassuringly.

And it is tiring to reassure two humans all day. It is a careful balance to make sure that both feel the same, loved equally, given to equally. And yet, when I remember my own little heart many years ago, and I remember the bursting and the diving of my feelings from gestures, or possessions, especially the possession of my parent’s love, I breathe in that energy of memory and I reassure them one more time before exhausted they fall asleep. Tonight they are in Mommy and Daddy’s bed after the long trip. They are snuggled together on the same pillow. Jax always on his back with his arms spread like an eagle, Brody on his tummy tucked under his big brother’s arm.

Here is to a month of sibling stories, join me in the storytelling, Cat Wayland