Growing Versions

 This time of year is trying. It tests our nerves as we are hemmed in by frozen banks of hardened snow. We obsess about keeping warm and every step we take requires a calculation. But a warm day comes along when we don't have to try so hard for an afternoon or a morning.  It gives us hope that the trying season is about give up.

When I started  Growing Versions , I had a head full of steam, I was a creatively starved office worker, looking for a place to pour my ideas. I was  ready  to finally buckle down and start writing. In the beginning,thoughts and ideas came flooding out in a torrent, tumbling out. For months, I posted almost every morning before I got the kids up to start their day. As time passed, the posts came further and further apart. And I do mean came .   I rarely go searching for them. I sit  or go for a walk and an idea comes seeping in. I came to see my blog as a little house that I can enter whenever I choose.  Some days I leave the door open all day, with the sun streaming in. Others I don't venture near it, but know it is there if I need or want it. The blog is something I built in a flurry, during an intense time when I was both starting a business and raising little kids. I also was a volunteer doula, often staying up all night with a labouring ...

When I first observed my daughter attempting to write in a Mothers Day Card at age 1, I was unexpectedly taken off guard.  I treasured what she presented me.  As time went along, her and her brother's work piled up and, with notable exceptions, I did not necessarily take that much notice.   Something I have started to miss as my kids grow is the art projects. Far fewer come home with them from school and when they are at home, art projects are not the focal point as they once were. So when they do take it upon themselves to create something at home, without prompting, I stop everything to admire it .  I walked right out of the house and bought a frame for the one above when I discovered it. When the other kid noticed the depth of my gratitude, she went about making her own version.  Just another example of how buying food colouring during a stormy week was one of the best purchasing decisions I have made in 2017 so far.

I have cried twice already today and it is not yet noon. That is not the norm. I believe in the restorative cleansing power of crying, but I have not done much of it in the presence of others.  Never have. The first time it happened today, I cried briefly as I comforted my very grumpy weeping child. The second time, next to the eggs in the grocery store, my eyes filled with tears while an acquaintance told me about how hard life is for her right now.  As we were contorted by laughter a  few minutes later the relief was palpable, laughing and crying tied so close together as they are. There is still plenty of day light left today. Crying with others is part of our life that we probably don't do enough. It's a mechanism, a threshold for clearing a path.  

We experienced a pile up of a combination of snow days, strike days and sick days. We got inside our house and stayed there for days on end.  Sometimes we made messes. Sometimes we cleaned them up. Sometimes we staggered into Blizzard conditions. Others we buried our whole bodies under all the blankets and stuffies and pillows in the house. We are still digging out from the very bottom of the pile, scraping from the bowl and leaning into the melting ice packed all around. Drip. Drip. Drip.