Growing Versions

The ball has dropped in many villages already. 2013 is in the rear window, almost. Two years ago, when I consulted my children about what my resolutions should be their answers were  pragmatic.  The six year old wanted me not to nap too much (believe me, naps were low on the ground back then to start with) and the three year old wanted me to swim and go sledding and draw more.  A hectic schedule and an insomnia problem took care of the nap thing and we did do more sledding and drawing over the past two years.  However, last year I resolved  not to make any resolutions , but to just keep turning towards the light. As resolution season peaks tonight, I got inspiration from this list that  Woody Guthrie made 70 years ago.   It holds up well over the years.  I think I'll make a version for myself, but I'm basing it primarily on #19... Keep Hoping Machine Running. (Source: businessinsider.com) I'm going to keep up the maintenance schedule ...

We have a new pet.  A chameleon is now in our midst. Her name is Cornelius.  These guys can turn into anything. "They can even turn into a hotel or someone's mom." So, you just never know where she may be lurking.

We missed the bus on the way to the skating oval. "No matter" said my eight year old.  "It's better if we walk there." "Oh yeah?"  I was a little skeptical, such long walks were not usually so enthusiastically endorsed. "Sure.  It's close to your work and once I get to the hotel it all gets a little misty, a big blank white. I would like to know how to go there. On the bus I am not paying attention." So, we walked.

Looking back through my old notebooks, I find that many of the thoughts sketched in them are forgotten for years, and then revived and reworked as new. I suspect that such forgettings occur for everyone, and they may be especially common in those who write or paint or compose, for creativity may require such forgettings, in order that one’s memories and ideas can be born again and seen in new contexts and perspectives. -Oliver Sacks I recently came across a journal I had been keeping when I was on an international exchange as a teenager.  It was more than a little eerie reading my younger inner thoughts, but I knew as I read them that that same voice is inside me now. Perhaps the voice has dropped an octave, is a tad less questioning and hesitant, more critical, and has become a bit more seasoned, but the questions and the doubts are all still familiar old friends. I also came across a number of quotes in there that I had already started choosing to use on this blog.  ...

We spent the usual inordinate amount of time in pyjamas, chomping on chocolates and playing by a tree.  We decided that it was time to be outside with real live living trees for a fresh perspective on the whole thing. As the snow gently, but steadily fell, we walked up the street. The snow was fresh and sparkling and, except for the occasional car or bus, the street was quiet.  We had no destination, our sole purpose was walking in snow. Free of groceries to carry or school to get to, we had some time to just enjoy the falling snow. Walking around the neighbourhood is so different in winter. The night and the snow stitched together to blanket us in quiet.  In the words of a spell binding storyteller, Laakkuluk Williamson Bathery, winter nights (much longer in Iqaluit where she lives) are "welcoming and warm." To hear Laakkuluk and others talk about winter listen to a splendid meditation on CBC's Tapestry, The Shortest Day, The Longest Night  .

The cookies are cut and slathered with goo and sprinkles. The presents have been wrapped.  The house has been re-arranged to fit a tree.  Several craft projects have been launched, and have been abandoned for other ones. We are ready for a silent night.

Concealing a gift inside paper or a bag or a sock is a tradition of the holiday season. We've been busy concealing and covering up gifts over the past few days.  However, we've been practising all year long. Every time the kids go their grandmother's house they always play "wrapping presents". Without fail, on these visits, I get gifted with a wrapped picture or a paper fan or a highlighter. Christmas wrapping is like the marathon after all of the interval training.

At the urging of my son, who had been introduced to them at school, I bought a pomegranate. I had never eaten one, although I had had some of the juice before. The pomegranate set up is intimidating. All those seeds made me feel like I was failing before I even started. Then I came across a short video that promises to crack the pomegranate code in less than 10 seconds   It dispelled the mystery shrouding these little blood red pearls of juiciness. The guy who presents this trick is really into pomegranates, he's very convincing that trying them is something not to be missed. Now that the code has been cracked, now that I know that these seeds embedded in tiny purses of juice quench thirst like no other seed I have tasted so far, I cannot stop thinking about them. I am having pomegranate shaded dreams.

This article really made me stop and think about how I need to stop and think more. The Documented Life  is worth the time. It is worth putting down your phone and zoning in for a few minutes--atleast it was for me. It helped me resist the urge to take a few pictures that I really really wanted to take this morning.

 Walking to school has helped us learn about all kinds of different sorts of ice. There is the brittle, early fall ice. Snow that is really ice ice. The slightly spongy stuff that is almost not ice and rather enjoyable to walk through, sort of like walking on bubble wrap. There is the sheet of  ice that feels like it is hovering over the earth. There is the smooth ice ice that has no grip whatsoever. There is ice with grooves. There is the satisfying ice that shatters as you walk, but only once. What type of underfoot ice do you like best? * Here is a sample of spongy ice. 

There were so many pictures I did not take today. The bobbing buoys reflecting in a glassy Northwest Cove Icy water that was undulating in sheets A spiroscope on display in the consignment shop. Walking through a tiny ceramic Christmas village that had come to life.  White snow at a right angle to butter yellow houses A mound of snow capping choppy blue waves So many pictures that I will have store the old fashioned way.

This beautiful feather (and holder) was made for me as an early Christmas present. According to the designer, it is for trapping cats and getting them to do what you want them to do. It is for fanning yourself. And it is for wiping away tears.

"A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life-raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen instead”  -Caitlin Moran Where is your cathedral of the mind ? Is it in a library? In a friend's kitchen? In a community centre? Or an actual church? What makes it so? For me there are a only a few places in this world (so far) where I feel part of something larger.  Places where I feel more whole, where I can be utterly alone and never feel lonely. One is filled with books, another has a refreshing cross-breeze, with only a flipchart in between the two open windows. Another has a big coffee urn and a closet full of baby clothes ready to be given away. As actual churches get repurposed and sold, I know I am not alone in my quest for a quiet corner of the w...

Childhood is a short season.-Helen Hayes

I seriously risk sounding very old here when I say a  "I walked uphill both ways to school in my day" type comment, but I'm gonna anyways. When I was 5 years old, I walked a little over 2 kilometres a day to and from school ( and home for lunch). When I was in grade 1, I walked 3 kilometres. When I was 8, I walked a total of 5.2 kilometres. How far is too far? How far is not far enough?

Five Christmases ago I lived in the country. I lived behind a line of tall trees, down a long stretch of secondary highway. I had a wee baby and a three year old.  That year, when Christmas came around, if I couldn't get a present at the grocery store on the weekends or at the Sears catalogue place "in town", I didn't get it. Pretty much. I had no vehicle through the week, and at the urging of a neighbour, I signed up for "the flyers". At first I was skeptical. I thought, aren't flyers the bane of our existence these days?  We're losing forests to flyers.  When I had lived in the city I had indignantly posted my "please no flyers" sign.  That all changed during the first round of flyers.  I had a tiny baby at the time, and at the urging of people I was listening to, I read everything to her, including the flyers. I would make a coffee and settle into "the flyers". Shopping was an abstraction living out there in the country....

I got to the after school pick up fresh(er) from a twenty minute nap.  The initial nap had sopped up the reckless tiredness that had addled me all morning, but there was so much more sleepiness sludge to be burned off.  I stood staring vacantly across the field as one child played, waiting for the other one to be let out. I wondered, am I the only one here who has so many loose ends in her hands? Loose ends that she's sure will remain frayed and untied-fluttering in the warm, dark December air. While I know that I am not the only one, I admire others' ability to appear loose endless.  Those loose ends implicate me, I think not for the fifth time. The laundry I did not do, the report I put off and the bathroom that is unclean all in favour of the nap. Then, my daughter emerged with her friend, making plans for secret hide outs and a doll sized mall and I decided that loose ends are not just for tying,but also for braiding and weaving and knitting.

Our dryer broke. We've been using a drying rack and it took me a few weeks of not having a working dryer to be properly thankful for the old-school drying apparatus, the drying rack. At first it did not compute. What? No automatic way to wick away the moisture and toss dry laundry back at us? That does not even make sense! We're on the move here. Hustle. Snap, snap. The drying rack has almost been in continuous service since then.  But man, air drying is so slow. I've got things to do. I need the clothes to be dry faster. I found myself fantasizing about clean dry sheets and pants.  Especially the pants. However, yesterday, as the no longer sopping, just moist, clothes hung from the rack, I decided to take a minute to take advantage of such a protracted drying time and cool my jets.  I switched off the t.v.(usually on when Mama is too busy chucking clothes in the dryer and taking them out again to do anything kidcentric) and told the kids, you can do anything th...

I've already started to fill up on sweets and creamy cheesy thingies. The predictable questions crop up. Am I filling a gap that is not even there? Should there be a 364-day chocolate calendar? Is the cheese ball insurance for something? Can canapes get me through another long slushy winter? Does fudge hold the promise of a prosperous new year between its tightly packed carbon molecules? Only a cookie can help me think through these annual questions.

I did it.  I wrote a  novel. I did a lot of other things too, like I found clean pants for my kids 4 out of 5 mornings each week, I usually had a shower and I occasionally had a full night's sleep. I did it and now I know. It can be done.I did it and I did not do it alone.  It was a collaborative effort. A friend spurred me on and she wrote one too.  I did not realize how much that would help to have a writing partner, but it really really did. My family helped me too. My daughter even started writing her own novel in solidarity. I heard, on the cusp of completing 50,000 words, that the average word count for a novel is 100000, so perhaps I just wrote a novella. However, I used very underused muscles this month and it felt good. Perhaps I'll find a need for those muscles sometime, you never know.

Forever is composed of nows. -Emily Dickenson

As I walked to the school, I left behind piles of unopened mail and dirty dishes.  I stepped outside into the late November sunshine, relishing a reprieve from cold northerly winds, and walked along the edge of the sidewalks.  The growth and life that was abundant a short few weeks ago is now almost asleep. Without ground cover, the garbage is more visible.  Broken bags catch on naked branches, coffee cups do rings around the street, but one tiny shiny bird nests on the stony ground. Life among the refuse.

I am writing a  novel in a month. I've read lots of books and the narratives of all of them are being called to action each day to satisfy the 1666/per day word count goal. Just like reading a book, I'm not sure how this one will end. I have used up all my words in this novel (I use the term very loosely) and now I am having to use a lot of them over again. Just 25, 100 words to go. I better not use them up here, there are no spare words at the moment.

The mama has an unsettling dream. An enormous whale swims up along side her. She is awed and overwhelmed to be sharing a swimming pool with such a big animal. The little child beside her wakes up. The child shouts, "I had a terrible dream!" "Mama, tell me how to dream a sweet dream."

We changed the microwave clock, but the rest changed themselves. I only trust the microwave.

My earliest memories are supposedly from when I was about 2 1/2.  However, I do not entirely trust that they are solely my memories and are instead a scramble of photographic evidence of the period and my parents reminiscences. I guess that's how memories begin though.  They start in someone else's head and then take root in your own like a tangled garden grows around long forgotten toys. I have a picture in my mind of my mom pointing out water leaking down through the dining room ceiling from an over flowing bathtub, I remember peering up some attic steps and thinking that the back of an old TV set in an empty room was a chicken coop.  However, these snapshots are an amalgam  of snippets of the shared memories of others and a malleable baby imagination. It was a time when I heard many words each day, but had not yet been spoken any of them. The words chicken coop and stairs and overflowing  were incubating in my mind, awaiting the day of their birt...

Have you embarked on playing a game that your kid has made up?  It is an odyssey like no other. They have poured a lot of time into the project. They've put a lot of time into making up the rules and the point  of the game.  However, it is not always easy to learn those rules.  I'm not great at remembering or learning rules for games from a package in the first place, but understanding how to win the games they want me to play has challenged me in new ways. Play school with me. Like this. Exactly in this way. Which way? This way. Oh, okay... No. Not that way, this way. It is hard not  to cast doubt or raise obvious questions in a parental killjoy manner.  To extinguish the tiny furtive sparks of excitement is not my idea of fun, but playing games I don't understand makes me feel like I'm being dragged around a mall in too hot clothes at the height of Christmas shopping season-overstimulated and bored at the same time. Some made up games ins...

It's the ideal solution for any kid who is worried about his or her parents' intentions towards their Hallowe'en candy. After all, kids can't stay awake all night  to protect it. The solution is a Hallowe'en vending machine.  Sure, you go ahead Mom or Dad and have a piece of candy or a bag of chips, but you must also insert your coin here. You go right ahead. The selection is wide and an inventory has been done and is updated on a regular basis.

As we came around the turn, he roared "Frost!" "I cannot wait for Christmas." "I am going to slide down that hill and that one too." "This hill gets very slidey in the winter." "I practised skating with my friends until someone got hurt." "I slid on black frozen part." "You have to be careful because if the ice is not frozen you can fall through like on that t.v show." "I love this time of year!"

This week the weather turned cold.  Until Monday, I was usually comfortable in skirts without anything on my legs and bare arms were not crazy.  And then, we woke up and could practically see our breath inside  the house.  We have had a good run. A long time coming summer, surrendered gracefully to autumn and the warm days have lingered until now. All week, even when it was not dark yet, I felt the urge to burn a candle.  To have that flickering presence gave me comfort and I could not make supper without one. I could not quite put my finger on why I suddenly thought about lighting one. And then I thought about the tendency to light candles when someone dies or is missing, or lighting candles in church and at romantic interludes. Lighting candles sears a path between us and someone or something else.  It illuminates a way to connect with someone we can't see and the softer, heat generating light helps us get intimately acquainted with some...

I went to my first NHL hockey game the other night.  I was handed tickets for the game at an intersection and I was not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.  I am not a hockey fan. In fact, just before I was handed the free tickets, the giver asked if I was a fan of hockey and I said no.  I was partially throwing up my defences against the potential for unsolicited preaching, but I was also telling the truth.  Despite my initial protestations, I could not turn down four otherwise very expensive tickets.  I took the tickets and we head out the next night. Before that night, nothing about hockey even vaguely interested me. Except for a brief, thrilling experience watching the Canadian women's team win the Olympic gold on t.v. once, I usually let the daily reports about who won what and where roll right over me. As we entered the arena, all those bored feelings vaporized. The atmosphere was charged. The cheerleaders shone and the music pumped through...