Growing Versions

So, if you are not sure what Baby split with company means, you are not alone.  Perhaps it is because you are not a serious enough bowler and even if you are, perhaps you learned to bowl in a different jurisdiction than where this term is used.  It seems, upon a preliminary research quest, that even in bowling language there are dialects. Fence posts: The 7-10 split. (bed posts, goal posts, mule ears, snake eyes) I love bowling.  I love bowling alleys more.  Like many things, I've become reacquainted with them since having kids.  I have been reminded of their charm and their elusive je ne sais quo that persists even as I experience them as an adult.  With a few exceptions, bowling alleys, while many of them have been outmanoeuvred and have been supplanted by storage facilities and pubs, have, if they have survived, endured largely unchanged.  What exists already works fine and is functional enough that they don't need to be replaced. ...

Why do you stay in prison? When the door  is so wide open? Move outside the tangle of fear thinking. -Rumi

We were watching one of my daughter's favourite shows yesterday when one of the characters proceeded to play charades.  He confessed, after none of the other characters could guess what he was doing, that he was a "snowman grinding coffee beans" (of course!) I spit out my coffee (and expelled it through my nose, if you must know) upon hearing this line.  It was so ridiculously funny.  I love unexpected belly laughs that contort my whole body. A surge of laughter that springs on me a new spurt of blood flow through the tips of me-- the outer edges of which can go months without a platelet-changing-of-the-guard. When was the last time you were taken off guard by a deep down laugh?

For the past few days, thanks to a minor communicable childhood ailment that no childcare provider wanted in their midst, I had the pleasure of my son's company.  I have not done full-time childcare in a while and after the panic subsided, I began to see this time as an opportunity to reconstitute myself.  I have been rushing headlong into many a day without really noticing things.  At first I stumbled...only half of me was present (if that).  I almost banged into another car and then another as I came back to myself.  I lurched for a while and then I started to take my son's lead and notice new things.  He insisted on bringing a blanket and  a snack to the playground for a picnic. He raced teeny Winnie the Pooh and Dora figures down the banister time after time.  He earnestly weighed the pros and cons of one pair of new sneakers over another. He jumped down the front steps and in the next breath pointed out the emerging flower buds. ...

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.   -e.e. cummings

Yesterday, all the kids at my daughter's school got skipping ropes from the Heart and Stroke Foundation.  I think this is a really great idea but I had to laugh when I saw the kids pouring out of the school with the jump ropes in their hands.  Exactly one of the kids, of the dozens I saw, was actually skipping rope.  The rest were playing "helicopter", twirling the rope wildly above their heads, others were enticing their little siblings to chase them by encouraging them to run after the end of the rope and still more kids were using the ropes as reins and whips. Witnessing all the dozens of improvised uses of the skipping rope reminded me that hearts benefit not just from jumping up and down in one place, but also from lunging, running, galloping and stretching and...

I've noticed that whenever I have enough head space to keep up with my son's demands for more pushes on the swing, we end up having very good conversations.  Propelled, perhaps even regulated, by the momentum of the swinging action, he tells me things he "knows for sure" are true. As I prime the pump, he tells me things that he seems to have stored up for such a moment. As he surges forward on the swing,his body becomes syncopated with the rhythm of the swing and his thoughts come tumbling out. Today, as he swung up to the sky and back he declared: "I can do anything mama, I can milk a cow, I can chop down a tree, I can chop down that tree over there, I can ride a bike!"

  Non-cooks think it's silly to invest two hours' work in two minutes' enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent*, so is the ballet.   Julia Child  When we are short on the real ingredients, or are recovering from a sugar-laden holiday, play dough  substitutes fabulously for the sugar and butter and flour (we still use real sprinkles though). The play dough versions provide a greater variety of treats that we haven't yet figured out how to make in real-life.    * I had to look up evanescent.   It means:    vanishing; fading away; fleeting or  tending   to   become   imperceptible;   scarcely   perceptible.

It has been a very long time since I kissed and danced at the same time.  I should really do something about that.  That's what occurred to me when I saw this guy streaming past me yesterday on a skateboard, while simultaneously playing a guitar.  I always pat myself on the back for being such a master multi-tasker but time and time again being good at doing more than one task boils down to the same thing: doing double the tasks (i.e. work) in half the time (or double the time, if I mess up).  That's it.  Other than the sick satisfaction extracted from stapling and talking on the phone or boiling pasta and detangling a Barbie tangle at the same time, that kind of skill, if you can call it that, is nothing but a symptom of a hepped up work day that's crowded with tasks , not because they need to be done but because they can be done.  Really, most of the time, I get little more out of multi-tasking than the fleeting sense of "achievement...

In grade ten, I took computer keyboarding, a.k.a typing.  For many weeks, we drillled eeeeee...ffffffff.....gggggg...hhhhhh....eeeeeee...ffffffffff...gggggg.....eeeeeee...ffffffffff... In 16 year old terms and any other terms you can think of it was monotonous and boring, but, just like learning scales can be boring, learning how to type in the age of computers has yielded dividends.  I'm still kicking myself for quitting piano lessons all those years ago, but I am so happy that I was driven by getting good marks and did not think to quit the other kind of keyboarding.   Now, it is hard to believe I was not kicking and screaming to get out of keyboarding.  The emerging feminist in me did not object, perhaps because even then, pre-email and Facebook, keyboarding was not perceived the same way as "typing" had been in years previous. The word "computer" changed "typing's" image.  The typing pool was already an archaeic thing and the deman...

"Understanding means throwing away your knowledge."  Thich Nhat Hanh Just woke up from a dream in which I could not find the words but knowing I must.  I woke up wanting to start fresh and say words I hold back and hold back words I say too much. I need to let go of what I know about myself and others so I can understand both better.

I let the beach and the trees and the tadpole pond (and the grandparents) help do the parenting this weekend.

Mama: "What are you writing in your notebook?" Kid: "Ideas." Mama: "Ideas about what?" Kid:  "...air planes, and movies and gumballs..." Do you have a notebook?  What are you writing in it these days? I think I need to start an idea notebook.  All I have is a lousy to do list/bills to pay notebook.

I am not known for being direct. I'm known for being so circuitously indirect it pains even my closest friends.  In fact, I have taken great care throughout my life to take the indirect route.  Rather than telling someone my opinion outright or deal with conflict head on, I've practically devised an art-form in feeling my audience out and saying, maybe not what is only expected of me, but saying it in the most palatable way possible.  It's down to culture, partly, and gender roles and family dynamics. However, all this changed when I had a child in my life.  It did not change completely, but substantially.  Almost right away and especially when I returned back to work, I noticed that I no longer skipped around the bush quite so automatically.  I suddenly did not have time for that any more. I literally had a fixed set of minutes within which everything had to begin and end.  There was no more time to pull taffy answers out of myself and others, I ne...

I get so boring when I am worried about something, probably because during those times I feel like I'm on a very long tedious train trip, spiked occasionally by flashes of fear. I feel like I am travelling around and around in circles, trying to circle my way out of what might, if someone else were looking at it, be a straight forward problem.  I would not know because I'm staring straight ahead, without looking out the windows much.  During these times of stress, I long to board at the station and pull up to the next one and just get out and go about my business.  But no, when I get going, I am like a fish in a bowl. Every time I see the castle, a glimmer of a solution makes me catch my breath and then turn my head away to look for a new one. This cannot be the one, there must be something more magnificent, more perfect, more accessible. I love to travel but times like these I wish I could challenge myself to see where the train is taking me and  consciously ch...

This video,   DIY Arcad e, as seen on thisiscolossal.com, made me cry.  Made by the arcade's very first live customer, Nirvan Mullick, it features ingenious 9 year old creator, Caine.  Caine envisioned and fully realized an arcade full of games which he built in his dad's storefront of his junk yard in East L.A.  Both the joie de vivre of this young boy and  his Dad's openness and support of his son's creative pursuits are equally awesome to watch. Caine's Arcade from Nirvan Mullick on Vimeo . I would buy a fun pass(500 plays!!) in a minute if I lived in L.A.  I cannot wait to show my daughter, I have a feeling we'll have some ticket dispensers on the go.  I love all the details that he thinks of, including, the calculators to verify the fun passes and the prizes. (Not to mention a real-live cash register!!!!) I feel like I should not let another box leave this house.

As a kid I was in love with the idea of being a ballerina.  I would cut out pictures from magazines and paste them into my scrapbook, I took session after session of dancing lessons in freezing cold church basements and I imagined myself performing on a stage someday.  In retrospect, I did not LOVE dancing, I LOVED performing, but for a few years it captivated me and I was determined to go become a dancer. I would sleep on the pull-out couch on Friday nights and  on those nights I got to stay up late and watch the Dukes of Hazard.  Then one fateful day, I was sleeping on the pull-out couch and I ended up getting sick with a stomach bug and  instead of the Dukes of Hazard, I blearily watched hour upon hour of coverage of the 1984 Ethiopian famine.  It profoundly  touched me and opened my eyes to a world I had not conceived of before.  In the days and weeks following, the dawning of this new awareness, as I began to grapple with the enormity o...

The other day a friend commented that a particular playground provided a great backdrop for kids' play and I agreed.  In my mind, based on personal experience and on observing my kids' play, the ingredients of a good backdrop are some trees to swing from, interesting rocks, obscured parts, and corners and tunnels or a closet in an unusual place.  A good backdrop can be a launching pad for a continuously evolving game or series of games and inventions.  It can be key to boisterous play that consumes and invites a range of playing options. I can remember playing for ages in the attic of an old church once because it had so many interesting little cubbies, a set of stairs leading to it and a door which allowed me to pretend it was my apartment for many hours.  My daughter gave me a tour the other day of a playground we frequent. "Here is my bedroom, this is the hall way, and here is the back door and this is where I cook." The line between "game" (with a s...

"Sound imposes a narrative on you, and it’s always someone else’s narrative." -George Prochnik, In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a world of Noise When I was about 6 years old, my parents invented a new strategy to deal with the cacophony of noise at the dinner table.  When the questions and talking just got too overwhelming, they would declare that we would be having a Monk's meal.  By this, they meant we were meant to eat in silence.  Because it had a name, it was relatively easy for my brother and I to buy into the ploy and we would continue the meal in silence.  We got it, they were tired of the noise, and it was time for quiet.  Now that I have kids, I completely understand why they started this ritual and I have started using this with them.     What rituals do you have to create silence?  

Johnny don’t fight at school. Your mother is waging the war on cancer. Your father has his battles everyday at work. Your sister has to attack her studies. We just can’t have you fighting at school. (example made by M.J. Hardman  Language and War  in the International Humanist News, 2002)* I decided to make an effort recently to take note every time that I hear language that denotes violence or war.  It did not take long for that list to get very long. body wars battleground battle cry A bomb went off Blew him out of the water tug-of-war This means war! go to war over it war against cancer I have also started to catch those expressions in my throat and try and hold them back.  However, since they are so pervasive and automatic,  I have had to do a lot of swallowing. I called the movie theatre the other day to find out what PG means.  We were debating whether or not to take our kids and a few of their friends to a movie with a PG...

I was laying down on the floor next to my son's bed the other night,willing (okay, mentally begging) him to sleep.  As I lay there, I turned my head distractedly and looked around.  My eyes rested on an old cardboard box that was holding odds and sods in the kids' closet.  On the side of the box, it said: "50 lbs. WHALE MEAT". Reading the label startled me.  The box had come from the village where we had lived for 7 years before moving to the city 3 years ago.  The coastal village had one of the last remaining whaling stations in North America and it was closed down in the early 70s.   The box had contained some old books that we had gotten from some friends who still live there, so I can trace back its origins more or less, but it still stopped me in my tracks.  What struck me was that in a 2012 world where what this box once contained is now widely considered morally off limits to box up and distribute, the box itself was still quietly sitting here ...

We sat down yesterday with a "candy bead kit" to make jewellery.  However, each of us came away with three very different projects. An ornamented gas pump for a Lego trailer.... ...or from another angle, a trailer hitch perhaps? ...a wind chime ...I went by the book and made straight up jewellery.

Kites.  Every single day that I pick up my son at daycare, he has commissioned a kite. I say commissioned because, although he has potentially had some part in decorating the kite itself, he has directed someone with authority over the hole punch to make it into  a kite.  A creature of habit, he associates daycare with kites, while he associates drawing with pre-school.  It is inconceivable to him that a drawing might be produced at daycare, daycare is a kite-making place.

I forgot, but this year I've been reminded.  Food colouring is a really important ingredient to April Fool's Jokes.  It keeps coming up.  I've opened the food colouring package for the first time in years.  It will be really funny when the green coffee comes out of the machine.  So funny. So many more possibilities...