Growing Versions

 It you lived here, you'd be home by now.

I stumbled on this fire  in the school yard a full week before I took a picture of it.  The fact that it lasted more or less a full week tells me a lot about how lovingly and steadfastly it has been tended this week.  It has cooked meals for and provided a home base for countless roaming formations of families hobbled together by democratic and not so democratic decision making amongst school children. "I'll be the mom, you be the dad. You can be the baby. Can I be the cat?"

Twice now, I've returned to visit  two of my old elementary schools (we moved a lot), only to discover that they had long since been torn down.   The fields within which they sat did not betray their pasts. The land that once hosted thousands of drawings, and glue and tears and snot and fear and beginnings and endings and friendships now held none of those things. A young tree and a well manicured lawn grew in the place of one, nothing but overgrown grass occupied the place of the other. This week I watched the daily progress of an old school be dismantled on my way to work. Watching a school get taken apart is hard.  Even if I never attended this one, it's vacant and slowly deteriorating shell was holding a place. Now the halls that it contained, the stains, the way the light fell on books so many days in a row is only occupying the minds of former students and teachers.  And later when our minds lose those memories, this school ...

Here are some of the games my son insists should be available and findable on the internet. "A butterfly catching game and then you release them in a house, then he turns into a catepillar and then he goes outside  and he squiggles around and you then the fox eats them up and then you can see is in his brain whoever eats the catepillar and then whoever picks up the catepillar you can see in his hand." "A pot catch with the pot and then you could look inside their head and you can make your own slide and get something to put on your slide.and animals make it and go down it and you can bring with you like playing bey blades down it." If only, and maybe, someday.

As we head into winter, I stumbled on this memory of growing a boy in spring. Growing a boy in winter is very similar, it just requires more layers.

 The day started with me reading the words, "respect your freezer." It was an appeal to utilise your freezer to its best advantage by creating space in it for food that's cheap to use later. I created space by emptying the freezer of crusted-over-good-  intention-derived frozen veggie scraps, meats that could have been a contender and beans that could not be saved. I created space, as it turns out for slushies, the  slushies that we learned how to make on youtube.

As the weather changes, the craft supplies start to surface. We spend more time inside and start gifting each other with cardboard boxes. This morning I woke up to a new cat car in our living room. Last night we made angel wings for the cat.  They wouldn't stay on. These arts are like rafts, helping us stay close and dry as winter strands us together.

"When you are colouring, let your hand go free."

I have long admired the versatility of  pipe cleaners .  Their durability and flexibility make excellent construction tools for kids because they don't require any tools. Pipe cleaners played a pivotal role in Hallowe'en this year. Kazoo holster ( the kazoo , when played emits a high pitched sounds that lays waste to the bad guys) Head gear. An excellent way to hang stuff And they help you display the treats after you get them.