Growing Versions

The kids and I have been plunging to deeper and deeper depths to entertain ourselves through these ice encrusted days. When the temperature stays low, it forces us to submerge. To hold our breath and search for a way to float back up to the surface.  

“You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place. Like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again.” —Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran

Winter has been hard this year. It has been freezing doors shut, blowing ice through our veins and even my dreams have not been immune. Last night, I had a dream that I put my hand right inside a frozen pipe and hand melted the water free.  

I seem to recall as a kid valentines were a major ordeal. I can still picture me sitting at the kitchen table, while my mother patiently sat with me while I copied down the names of my classmates onto whatever valentines became available to me. I really never gave it much thought.  I never remember feeling thrilled or joyful in the process, one mortifying year, a boy actually took the opportunity to declare his love for me.  It all was so routine (except for the declaration of love) it barely stood out against the snowed in the gloomy February 1980 something backdrop. For my kids, for some reason, Valentine's Day is a major holiday right up there with Christmas and Easter.  They have for two years now, made and filled in their valentine's with at least 2 weeks to spare. They have not waited for the class list, they have just made their own.  I learned the hard way last year, that it is important to do a bit of quality control before they get distributed, ju...

These last few days a combination of dramatic drops in temperature, a sizable dump of snow, followed quickly by rain produced a snow with a solid crust.  So solid, that even me, a fully grown adult, was able to walk on top of it without breaking through. Yesterday was the pinnacle of this type of snow.  Additionally, there were stiff peaked snow bank mountains encircling the school yard that the kids happily scrambled up whenever they could. After supper, the kids declared that they wanted to go sledding.  I was reluctant, but I relented hoping some exercise would help everyone sleep better. We set out.  The hill was dotted with a couple of dozen kids shrieking down the icy slope. My kids did a bit of sledding but were a little freaked out by the speed that they travelled. They gravitated towards the snow piles. The piles created all kinds of crevices to hide behind.  The snow bank was a fourth person in our hide and seek game, a thrill erupted ...

So there are the typical milestone books out there, What to expect at 10 days, 3 months, 37 months.  But so far, I have not come across a book that chronicles the crying milestones. The first time you cry from hurt feelings The first time you  cry from seeing injustice happening in front of you or on a news report The first time you realized that you are going to die someday.... The first time a movie makes you cry. Those milestones are different for everyone, but they are on a chart somewhere inside all of us.