Growing Versions

That (clothes)line reigned me in and led me outside to you.

My daughter exclaimed behind me. "Wow look at the sparkly water!"  Just this once, without giving myself a chance to talk myself out of it, I responded, "do you want to jump in?"  Her answer was a resounding yes. And so,  we did.

The ice cream is melting, the ocean currents are warmer momentarily and summer now has a big deadline.  Go out and be in it.  Eat the ice cream, be rocked by the currents and let go of the edge of whatever you are clutching onto.  Stride out into the sun and let it warm you up.

This week, we've been drenching our bodies in a big pool of water- a lido pool  perched on the edge of the ocean containing salt water.  The boundaries are not always clear.  If you hold your head at just the right angle, you can feel yourself floating in the harbour with yachts and motorboats.  A four year old, a seven year old and a 37 year old are all drenched in ocean water, up to our necks.  This trick makes us all the same height and weight.  To cause to drink, to drench, to be covered up to the neck, all works to unhitch some anchor we were once moored to.  We come out of the water, still untethered, floating obliviously back into the heat and mounting obligations and rule bound structures. drench* verb   (used   with   object) 1. to   wet   thoroughly;   soak. 2. to   saturate   by   immersion   in   a   liquid;   steep. 3. to   cover   or ...

Once again, as I am every year at this time, I am a little in awe of produce.  I used to garden, and I've discussed my struggles with that  before .  However, the later summer days remind me once again why all the work is worth it.  I'm a bit like the grasshopper and everyone who gardens are like the ants.  While I'm chirping and playing my fiddle and swimming, the ants (who are probably chirping and swimming too) are diligently plowing and weeding and caring for their patch.  Right about now, their gardens start to fill with food.  Even the butterflies and bees are in on the action. I'm almost like the raccoon(without the audacity), hoping to get a munch on that fleshy fruit that I've absolutely had nothing to do with nurturing.  One of these springs, I'm really going to have to start being an ant again or a bee or a butterfly.  Those ants, they sure make great potatoes and beans and tomatoes!

Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties. -James Jeans  

There is a lightness, an airy quality to the food we ingest these days.  The summer foods remind me to eat close to the vine. Before the pickling and freezing and canning and baking into things, we eat the food that replenishes the memory of what food we ought to be eating.  Those perfect vitamins and water and minerals growing in our midst refresh our memory of summer's light that we can draw on later.

After many months of resuscitating an old garden behind our house and up ending old fence posts to start building a playhouse, my husband and his trusty team of archaeologist trainees have uncovered some interesting finds. My daughter reported that  "they are from the 1920s, I scanned them into the computer and it told me."  Regardless of their origin or heritage, they sure start the kids wondering, how did they get there? who lived here before us? what did our neighbourhood look like back then?

The other night I saw a movie that seeped so deeply into me, I continue to leak.  Perhaps it was all the flooding and potential flooding that was depicted. Or perhaps it was all the potential ideas that were birthed into my brain as I watched and images that started out ugly and were transformed into beautiful ones. It's a movie called  Beasts of the Southern Wild . Right from the very first scene,  where the young heroine, Hushpuppy, constructs a bird's nest out of mud, you are thrust into a place of both grubby decay and flourishing beauty. The location, called the Bathtub, is initially hard to pinpoint. It is muddy and filthy and full of rotting things, but as you go along you start to recognize that it is somewhere in Louisiana.  It depicts life in a  community, marginalized by choice, through the eyes of a young girl.  Although grim and disgusting, the place is very much a place of joy and survival.  Hushpuppy explains that " The Bathtub has ...

We recently were in a position to  make our own fun  and when the busy book did not inspire we had to use our own ideas. The kids' grandma got the ball rolling by doing the "memory game" where you present a tray of objects that you get to see for a short time and then you look away and write down or tell (if you can't write yet) what you saw. We got into play clay big time.  There were no limits on that one.  Really, none.  Jumping fish, and a blueberry tree and a giraffe that can bounce are proof of that. Then, with a start, I realized that there was the capacity to play Jenga in the house (and all the pieces were in the bag!!) We had been sadly overlooking it all this time.  It quickly got turned into another version, but cool, all the same. The best, most enduring activity was the TASTE TEST.  That idea kept on giving.  Raisins, pepper, salt and cookies and milk.  Not a lot of mystery there, but fun to set up and come up wi...

Feist has just released a new record called Metals.  It's been getting me through a whole lot of math this week and I plan on continuing to float on its surprising surges and beautiful, thoughtful melodies for a while longer. I've been listening to it all week as it is streaming for  free on the CBC website until later tomorrow, August 15th. My favourite song of the lot is "The Circle Married the Line".  She goes for it and blends pretty vocals with sweeping orchestration.  Go now, it won't be there much longer. Feist's  website  has videos from the album too.

On one of our last days of vacation and after a day or more of rain, we head over to the beach to eek out a little beach light.  At first the light was there but shrouded in sketchy clouds.  We made videos of doing the splits and made necklaces and dug a hole, a very deep hole.  Little by little the clouds dissipated and the light that had been so far away all day broke free.  The kids continued to play and their little bodies became glowier and glowier.  Soon, the daylight gave way to the fiery sunset light.  My daughter was thrilled to be witnessing such a glorious sunset and she began to make plans to set my alarm so we could watch the sunrise.  We never did make it for the sunrise. Someday we will. There is something so primal and mystical about sunsets.  They betwitch us and nudge us towards the night. Slowly but surely the sunset released us from this day.

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. -Anais Nin

I am starting to wonder why we get so concerned when a person of a certain age starts repeating themselves.  When an elderly relative starts telling us the same joke they've told us the last five times we have visited,  we quietly roll our eyes but we accept it as  more or less a natural part of ageing.  I had gotten quite used to hearing "backpack" (aka Dora) and "doggie" over and over when my kids were really little, but it seems that 7 year olds repeat themselves quite a lot too.  And families repeat stories over and over telling each other about that hot July day 37 years ago and the origin of that scar under your chin.  At first, I thought it was a mix up and that was the reason my daughter forgot that she'd already told me about her classmate bonking her head on her birthday.  But no, it seems like that story and many others like it need to be re-told (over and over)---as does, reciting lines from movies my kids watch.   ...

This exhibit, as seen above, has been on the road all summer, visiting festivals across the country as part of  the commemoration of the War of 1812.  The exhibit, curated by Parks Canada, is composed of toys that kids were playing with in 1812 and it instantly captivated my kids.  The people working at the exhibit told us that it has been wildly popular with adults and kids everywhere it goes.  This does not surprise me whatsoever.  Even with a bouncy castle and ice cream and a variety of other things centimetres away, this table sent out a siren song to my kids.  My daughter, especially, could not get enough.  Upon reflection, these toys, Jacob's ladder and the ball and cup and kaleidoscope are likely so popular because they demand something of the person playing with them.  You can "get better" at playing them. 

We pretty much only have one reliable channel on our t.v.  There are certainly no shortage of entertainment options.  I will always regret ever distractedly handing over my iphone to a whiny someone to keep them going during a long wait, for example. However, when it comes to straight up t.v.,  pbs is really the only channel that provides children's programming, which , lucky for us, is excellent. Now, Arthur and Curious George and Ruff Ruffman (especially, good old Ruff) and Electric Company are daily staples.  Ruff Ruffman is a like a live action game show for kids 6-12 and the kids do challenges like write a p.r press release on the turkey vulture (whose claim to fame is throwing up) and building a bear proof picnic basket.  My daughter informed me that she would like to audition for Ruff Ruffman and she keeps me posted about how to do so by letting me know what the website is and insisting on how we must make a pilgrimage to Boston where the whole thing i...

  I got a clothesline (and fifty clothespins) for my birthday.  I came home after a week away and there it was strung between the house and the fence. I cannot really explain in words how beautiful I think it is or the level of happiness that string has brought me already. It brings me out of the hot dryer room into the sunshiney evenings that are all too finite. It has elevated a chore to a different height and has restored some order to the place.

Every stress leaves an indelible scar, and the organism pays for its survival after a stressful situation by becoming a little older. Hans Selye

Recently, my son offered to share the lone paint brush we could locate in our messy kitchen/craft space. In fact, I'm pretty sure, for him, it was the more ideal option.  He was not opposed to hand over hand painting. To be subsumed is closeness for him. Let's do this together, as close as humanly possible. My daughter wants to do most things separately--apart. She wants to be admired, adored from a slight distance. Both of them want to be close  but the terms of measuring distance are different.  One measures the distance in molecules, the other in dimensions.

My son "rescued" and then paraded a tiny toad around several times this weekend.  Once it was discovered, great efforts were made to recreate the original rescue and "visit" with the tiny creature(s).  As new kids came along, new invitations were issued. "Do you want to go see the toad?" In the midst of these activities, my other child wanted to know what "enslave" means. She was trying to build a case to dissuade her brother from keeping the toad locked up.  She knew someone who had insisted on bringing a butterfly indoors and how unfair she had thought that had been. She warned her brother of the peril of his ways.  He did not quite get her point.  He patiently explained how much safer the toad would be in an ice cream container with holes in the top. Several hours after the last (as it turns out, fateful) toad visit, we were driving along in the car.  After some quiet thought, my son asked.  "So, what is enslave anyways?" H...

Sometimes a random word comes floating into my mind and I think: "Hey! That would make a great name... for a restaurant (Kilojoule) /candy shop (Glucose)/ bookstore (Shelf Life)"...So many possibilities that would make a great idea way better.  What's the best store name you can think of?  What's the best one you've heard of?  Tell me what would you put on this sign up above if you had the chance.

"It was like a limo house with a 5 layer bunk bed. It went right up to the ceiling and it made him bump his head. It had a warm drawer that does not need electricity so that if the electricity went out and you had no fire you would still warm up your supper. It had three taps, one cold, one warm and one hot."  My daughter described a t.v show she saw.  I have a little trouble understanding when and where since we have no house porn channels and neither does her grandma, but she can picture (and illustrate) it clearly.  Perhaps it was a dream, perhaps she's deflecting attention away from me seeing how vivid her imagination is. How did I stop seeing so much detail in my daydreams?  How did those generous proportions of possibility and vision get so obscured and condensed?  Did they start to be obscured when I started obeying an instinct to tell people it was a show, not my mind, that presented such ideas? For the record, now that I can picture it, I cannot ...

When my son said to me oh so purposefully that he was content to watch the wading pool fill up to the top with falling rain, I knew that we had had a good week together.