Growing Versions

 "We feed children in order that they may soon be able to feed themselves; we teach them in order that they may soon not need our teaching." C. S. Lewis

We are taught from an early age not to yell for help when we are swimming in case we unduly alarm the people around us.  I took this lesson right to my heart. I have been thinking a lot lately about how I have somehow  trained myself to resist help.  Pride is partly to blame, never wanting to be accused of not being "helpful" is also a culprit.  For whatever reason, I feel compelled to tackle most of everything I do solo.  I repel help by not asking for it and assuming it's not needed, until it is. I have, in turned, trained the people around me not to expect that I need their help and I have almost (almost) forgotten how to ask for help. This weekend I needed help. I had a stressful situation on my hands (our hands) and I completely absorbed it.  My lips were trembling I was so stressed out, I could not think straight, my heart was racing. Help! I took my son to basketball. The sun was strong and gorgeous and we walked slowly  home toget...

Green tinged sunshine floods the kitchen.  It blinds me for a minute  to the rotting compost and unfolded laundry (dirty and clean) just a short pace away. My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you? Erma Bombeck

Adding an eye to a piece of paper instantly suggests a mouth and soul are not far behind. Without fail an eye can animate some felt, a sock or rock or a lock, even a scrap of garbage. Attaching an eye to anything, can turn once listless objects into witnesses.

We were completely taken off guard by a "storm day" yesterday. The very last day of summer ended up being a day off due to wide spread (albeit brief) power outages. We spent the rest of the day doing what we did all summer, scrambling for childcare and taking turns doing paid work. It was a fantastic gift. A day of being outdoors after the first few weeks of adjusting to sedentary indoor work. Scramble scramble, shimmy, hustle, lurch and then, sit, Just sit. On a tree or next to one, one more time, before we will officially be doing it in a new season.

Saturday mornings I wake up so empty. I don't mean empty in a bad, nothing kind of way, I mean empty of all the plans and angst and requirements in the form of permission slips and notifications and agendas that slowly but surely get piled up inside of me through the week.  The pile of expectations, hopes I can't quite articulate and just plain pieces of work is stacked up, lopsided, one on top of the other inside me, the big receptacle.  As the week starts chugging up Monday, and staggers around icy hair pin turns Tuesday and Wednesday, the pile eventually falls right over on Thursday in the middle of the afternoon.  All I can do is stuff all those little post-it notes and unopened envelopes, the things "I keep meaning to tell you" all back inside  and do my best to keep them stacked until Friday. Then at the end of the day on Friday , a big hole is punctured in the bottom of the bin and they all leak out. I wake up Saturday empty. A whole day, a whole...

I am standing at the curb. I am anxiously thinking ahead.  Kids have been dropped off -- the second the bell sounds signalling it is legally okay for me to walk away from them at the school yard, I run. From a distance, I must look like a covert spy on a special op, instead, I am just going to the next in a series of pre-scheduled times "I need to be somewhere".  And then, as I wait impatiently for my drive, I look down. a tiny, fraction of a leaf is standing ever so briefly upwards. This leaf is on its way to an appointment with being carried on the breeze, perhaps it will get swept up with chip bags and candy wrappers and be buried, or perhaps it will degrade into soil and feed the tree it fell from.  Either way, it is glowing in this moment. It is still and light is pouring through it. The drive pulls up and we drive off.

On a whim, I asked a couple of the other mom's at school if they wanted to check out the  Robert Frank  exhibit at NSCAD (the art college in our city). It was only going to be open for 1 week and a fraction of his iconic photographs from his famous work from "The Americans" would be printed on newsprint, put on display, and then destroyed directly after it closed. The really amazing thing about this exhibit for me is that I actually went. I never make time for art shows. I love to go to them and I cannot wait, am counting down the days until I can be in the same room as  Mary Pratt's paintings , but I rarely find the time.  I  diligently write down the dates of the openings in my agenda, and then other things crowd them out.  But when I do, oh my, even if I don't like the art, or cannot understand what I I am looking at, something stirs in me--Something stronger than the strongest opinion, something more fierce than my most well worn argument, something el...

This week I had to get a can of paint tinted and I got a pair of contacts fitted. Two very routine (for some) errands that I came away from full of awe and admiration. The first task was to get a can of paint to turn to the colour of "vellum". The guy at the paint counter did not just punch in the formula and wait for the machine to pump out the requisite drops, he fiddled, he estimated, he worked with the paint drop machine as carefully as an artist would. He predicted, as it turns out correctly, that the formula would make the colour too green which we did not want.  He smudged a small amount on to a card and blew it dry with a hair dryer, talked to himself about it needing more red. Added four drops, worried about what that might do, knew it wouldn't be enough, added two more. He played with it for more than 30 minutes until he was satisfied. I was entranced.  I had never seen someone mix paint in a hardware store with so much care and experience before. Next,...

Readjusting to a new school year takes a lot out of a kid and a parent. New teacher(s), a new configuration of students, new friends, old friends who become more distant, old classmates who become deputized as potential friends. It is a little jarring having to grasp a whole new slew of subtleties that your mind had learned to gloss over by the end of June a few short months before. To rest in between days at school, my children are turning to us more than usual for comfort in the form of being read to, which can fall by the wayside when they are feeling more sure of things. They also like to watch a show with one of us.  Dog tired, getting back into the routine, I am less tolerant of their choices and I have been inflicting my own, especially on my daughter. We've started watching Midsomer Murders, a classic British "whodunit", on Netflix. Other than a ghastly murder near the beginning the rest of the shows are a relatively monotonous enterprise of eliminatin...

The past few weeks, if we were stuck waiting for something we took to counting up to ten 1 or 2 numbers at a time. Whoever gets to 10 first "loses" and then we start over.We try different combinations to avoid getting to 10 first. This morning, all dressed up and equipped to start a new school year, the kids held back a bit with me as they got their bearings. As we waited for the doors to open, and the chaos swirled around us, my daughter started another round. 1, 2,3 4 5 6,7 8,9 10!!! And then their names were called and we dispersed. We'll play again another day soon.