Growing Versions

Hold fast your dreams! Within your heart Keep one still, secret spot Where dreams may go, And, sheltered so, May thrive and grow Where doubt and fear are not. O keep a place apart, Within your heart, For little dreams to go! -Louise Driscoll The one still, secret spot is so secret, so neglected, it is hard to locate by times. But it is still and it is secret and it is yours. Go there sometimes.

He is learning how to read, one cereal box, one candy heart, one stop sign at a time. The context is a little unclear. The spelling questionable. The hearts bear sentiments that are so urgent, they had to be printed by a computer onto candy, to be chewed and swallowed. Readers digest.   Reading material on the tip of his tongue.

I commiserated with the mom at pick up about the frozen chunk of ice that broke the front wheel clear off her stroller. A fury at those frozen guardrails that hem us in rose up in me as we brainstormed a way to re-attach that wheel. For a while each winter the thaw and freeze cycle lines the way with grooves filled with shadows and snow. We get stuck walking in those grooves and they harness us into a very limited route. Like an animal tethered to a pole we walk in circles, and strain to upend the stake. Home, school, work, school, home again.  Like a record, we travel the grooves round and round until it stops.  The grooves get shallower, the rain comes over night, and we scatter.

Almost immediately after Cornelius (the gecko) came to live in my son's room,my son has spent a lot of time creating a "jungle" atmosphere for him.  It started with him drawing with green window marker all over the side of Cornelius' terrarium. At first we admonished him, but now that side of his living quarters is Cornelius' favourite place to hang out. We think he feels safer behind all those marker strokes. It is very jungle like for him. The next addition was bringing the contents of the fruit bowl up to his room. Each bedpost had an apple sitting on it, until we insisted on it being returned to the kitchen. The latest was a diorama of a jungle with pasta.  These days, he is full of purpose about jungles.  "What I cannot create, I cannot understand." Richard Feynman

I caught my son inventing a lot of games this weekend.  He was fishing in the shower. Taking showers is a new game too. He invented an intricate cup game and another one where you knock cups down. The ultimate for me,  though, was a re-creation of the three seasons. Desperate to believe in the groundhog's prophecy, I responded to his vision. You know, the three seasons, summer, winter and water. He still holds out hope that we'll manage to invent a bouncy castle.  Maybe next weekend.

I used to take a roll of film to the drugstore or camera store to have it developed. I would come back in a few days to pick them up. If I paid extra, I could come back in 1 hour.  I would look at greeting cards and magazines while I waited. There was a phase for a while when you actually just popped it into an envelope and sent it away. It was the latest thing.  Now I wait a second, maybe 2 or 3 seconds, and then there I go, I have my photo.  (Having them printed as a photograph is a whole other matter). I sit on the bus and glance across the aisle. A girl sifts idly through photograph after beautiful photograph on Instagram.  I take photographs to pass the time. To get through something boring.  I look down at my coffee cup and get twitchy. Recently, a friend said she only had one photograph from her wedding. I started sweating just thinking about it, but although she wished for a few more, she wasn't too bothered. What if I didn't take out my phone...

Toy production and marketing make up a multi-billion dollar part of the economy. In our house, we're living proof that marketing toys directly (or indirectly) to kids makes the world go round. But the things that actually get played with are a whole other matter. 1. Balloons, they really are all that, apparently. 2. Blank deposit slips and stamps keep even toddlers officious. 3.Skipping ropes.(occasionally skipping comes up, but moving things up and down stairs suspended by these darlings is really what they are for). 4.Crib mattresses, no child should be without a crib mattress to slide down stairs, create walls for blanket forts and make tunnels for cars. 5.Sticks. They may just be compost or less to you, but to a child, they can be a companion. 6. Expired membership, credit and library cards  Do not shortchange your child.  They are just itching to play with currency why not spare yourself identity theft by giving them a wallet stuffed with fake cards instead? 7.V...

I think Valentine's Day is like a half way mark. A bait, a switch if I am unlucky, to lure me to the centre of winter. I have candy.  Sugar to prove we are almost there.

Walking home in the beginning snow storm empties out all the words that were said or that could be said. shush shush shush...I walk to wait and I insulate myself deeper inside my jacket. Small talk is difficult in such weather.

Everything is somewhere else, and you can get there by car.-E.B. White

We followed each others' foot prints. We walked in thigh deep snow towards the  road with no cars. We were kept warm by the idea of the lick of flames from a camping fire. We rested against the furry green moss covered rocks all the way along. We had just found out that he did not see his shadow. We walked as far as our snow legs could carry us.