Growing Versions

That gap, the one between you and I, between here and there, between now and then can seem so large. Centimetres can still cause missteps, broken ankles, misunderstandings. Centimetres add up to metres, to kilometres. Distances comes in so many lengths.

The advice was a little late for me, I didn't hear it until after my kids graduated out of infanthood, but it is such good advice that I apply it to my life now even without babies keeping me up all hours. The advice is this: when you have an infant keeping you up throughout the night, keep going back to bed until you accumulate enough hours of sleep that you are used to.  This is not easy if you are at home alone with kids, but it's good advice in principle. This advice applies to anyone.  Ignore it at your peril. I did, but now I am taking it all the way to new level of enough.

The eye of the storm is where all the action and destruction is. Sometimes being displaced from the centre or the axis  keeps you safe. Feeling off-kilter can feel strange and uncomfortable. However, being off-centre gives you something the centre cannot. 

For many years now, I've had some form of the following dream: Swimming in the ocean or a pool and suddenly aware that right alongside me is a whale. These dreams make whale watching kind of terrifying for me. I feel so outsized by these animals in my dreams and of course, I assume it is because I don't like to be close to big overwhelming feelings. I like them at a distance where I can keep them nice and tame. However, now I have come to attempt to embrace the whale as my companion and the other day I was given a little nudge.  The whale for me is a symbol of all the big feelings that I need to just accept so that I can deal with them. The other morning it was foggy and I was drawn to the tall ships to take pictures.  The water was still and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a whale surface. I stopped what I was doing and watched it surface a few more times.Just under the surface, metres away, is my most feared animal.  Yet, I was filled with wonder and I coul...

  In the early years of parenting, I was almost overcome by the potential of there now being  24 hours in a day , instead of the pre-parenting 12.  There always were 24 hours, but now, due to unpredictable sleep schedules, work demands and a need to be alone once in a while, almost all of these 24 hours were now known to me.It was like double the chance to do stuff and time and time again I sacrificed a whole night of sleep to watch back to back Netflix episodes, to complete a proposal for work or to catch up on housework.Now of course, I realize that instead of stealing time, time was stealing from me.  Four years after writing this post, I am scrambling to tidy my life back into 12 hours again.  The chances of a kid needing me overnight are considerably less.  Insomnia is plaguing me by times and preventing me from having quality time not just with myself , but also with my husband. I blame smart phones and my dependence on them. I blame self-employme...

I have a penpal!  Everyone in my household was buzzing last week when I received a personal letter (a piece of correspondance that does not contain ads or bills, in case you are not familiar with the concept).  My kids and husband each separately asked me if I got the "personal letter" from the dining room table.  It was a generous little gift of thoughts committed to paper from  Wife Mother Expletive .   I used to receive several letters a week from my best friend, friends from university, from camp, from weekend retreats.  It was pre email and facebook and if there was a want to connect, that was the only way to do it. Even though I read Wife Mother Expletive's posts on a regular basis, it is a whole other pleasure to read words formed by ink that was warmed in the writer's hand on the way out into the world as ideas and words incubated in their one unique brain.  It reminded me about how much I value mail and am merely anesthetized by endless p...

I just returned from a trip to Cuba.  It was a wonderful week, spent with my intrepid mom. We had trips to Havana and Trinidad and water falls and museums, and we had many "intervals of leisure" (Eva Hoffman, author of  How to be Bored . I came home extremely rested.  Initially, I attributed it to having a chance to slow down, without kids, to swim and read.  However, shortly after my return, I heard this interview with Eva Hoffman, Finding meaning in doing nothing , on Spark, CBC.  She talks about the importance of reserving "intervals of leisure" unconnected to email/devises to reflect and be introspective.  "The value of an experience can increase" when we are not bombarded by electronic stimulus, allowing us to "dip into our memories and make connections" and this was the beauty of my time in Cuba. Now, a few days and several emails and instagram posts later, I do notice a difference.  My extremely rested brain was previously so dehyd...

 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.

There is nothing quite so thrilling as making fun plans, outside, in the open air. The list we made, the ideas we had on the plan making bench.

Years ago, pre-kids, I bought my husband a weather glass (otherwise know as Goethe's Device ) for Christmas. It was just one step up from a gag gift, an old timey way of measuring barometric pressure. We had recently moved to the countryside at the time and we were still under the delusion that we could hack rural living. It turns out, despite its fragility, it has endured, the weather glass, not us living in the country. Rain or shine, commute or no commute, it turns out we have a hard time hacking urban living as well. Now the kids squeal with glee when they notice that the blue food coloured water has started to rise up through its narrow beak. Storm day!  It doesn't matter if the weather glass is in fact predicting a lot of rain, the kids instantly start cooking up ways to spend a potential snow day.  Hot chocolate, sledding, crafts, playing school, tv, making slides....it is all possible.  It is our crystal ball. Urban/rural? No matter. Yesterday,...

As the waves lick the back of our necks, we let ourselves, just for a moment, be suspended in a big briny cradle.  You and I are pulled down and popped back up by the sea and I marvel at your tricks, at my buoyancy. "Look Mama, that wave pushed me right over." "I saw that." "Watch out, here's a big one." "ohhhhh." "Oh no, that wasn't a big one, here comes another one." As the waves lap around our heads, I silently plead with you, "I am here.  I am right here.  I am paying attention. Please forgive me for all the future times I'll be distracted. I am right here."

"I think the brain is afraid of being in a state of constant wonder […] I think we should reinstate wonder, banish expectations." - Rectify I have been watching the show Rectify on Netflix this summer. It is about a man named Daniel who was put into prison (on death row) at the age of 18 for the death and rape of his girlfriend. It's not really a who-done-it, although there are elements of that. Instead, the show is more focused on the inner and outer lives (and where the lines gets blurry in between) of people going through something unimaginable. Twenty years later, DNA brings doubt to his guilt (despite a guilty plea, which may or may not have been coerced). He is released into the world of his loving and supportive family, which seems great, except after years of being warped by solitary confinement, it is not as straight forward as it sounds. The show depicts the first couple of weeks of freedom . A word which I have italicised because the meaning o...

For years I lived within sight of Tancook Island.  Many people had moved off of it and nearby islands to live on land in the same community I lived in. It did not seem that far away.  Isolated, for sure, but close. A couple of weeks ago, we finally went to Tancook island for the day. By ferry, even though it is clearly visible from land, it still takes nearly 50  minutes to get there. Tancook island has a population of 100 in the winter time. Double that in the summer. It has has one of the last one room school houses in Canada. The thing that struck me the most as a mainlander is the fact that the only things that get on that island are by boat.  If you buy groceries or get library books or a new mop or chair, you have to get it to the ferry. They put it in a special locked boxed and then you retrieve it as you walk off the boat. Living on an island without a car ferry (the ferry only carries one car at a time) would really cut down on all the stuff ...

There are some birds nesting in our chimney.  On a day like today when the wind is howling, you cannot hear them over the roar. A few days ago though, as the sun drenched the frozen stillness, their cooing was clearly audible as we sat here below. Their presence raised a lot of questions. Why would they have a nest there when we have fires in the fireplace? Don't they know it's not safe? What about Santa? I guess it is warm, reasoned one child. We picture them trapped, stuck in a well. What do they picture? We are safe, we are warm, we are sheltered from the storm. As soon as the winds die down, we will listen for their cooing again and wonder about their situation.

"A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life-raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen instead”  -Caitlin Moran Where is your cathedral of the mind ? Is it in a library? In a friend's kitchen? In a community centre? Or an actual church? What makes it so? For me there are a only a few places in this world (so far) where I feel part of something larger.  Places where I feel more whole, where I can be utterly alone and never feel lonely. One is filled with books, another has a refreshing cross-breeze, with only a flipchart in between the two open windows. Another has a big coffee urn and a closet full of baby clothes ready to be given away. As actual churches get repurposed and sold, I know I am not alone in my quest for a quiet corner of the w...

I went to my first NHL hockey game the other night.  I was handed tickets for the game at an intersection and I was not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.  I am not a hockey fan. In fact, just before I was handed the free tickets, the giver asked if I was a fan of hockey and I said no.  I was partially throwing up my defences against the potential for unsolicited preaching, but I was also telling the truth.  Despite my initial protestations, I could not turn down four otherwise very expensive tickets.  I took the tickets and we head out the next night. Before that night, nothing about hockey even vaguely interested me. Except for a brief, thrilling experience watching the Canadian women's team win the Olympic gold on t.v. once, I usually let the daily reports about who won what and where roll right over me. As we entered the arena, all those bored feelings vaporized. The atmosphere was charged. The cheerleaders shone and the music pumped through...

Make room for it. Whatever it is.  There is still space up high and way down below. Remember?

I am taking it as a good sign, not a troubling one, that I cannot seem to keep anything in my mind these days. Words escape me. My thought processes have slowed to a trickle like a drought addled brook. Things I normally am juggling or pitching about or manoeuvring are sliding right off my plate. I am denaturing. Maybe its not words and arguments and trains of thought that make me who I am. Maybe its something else. Maybe, but right now, I don't have the words for what that might be. 

You know those times that still stand out in your memory? The all-nighters, the times of being stranded with strangers in a youth hostel, the weekends away with people you have just met (and maybe never get to see again).  Can you still remember the buzz of excitement that ran a current through that time? A time, apart from normal daily life, apart from what you thought was normal before then, but not after. Do you remember a time, perhaps when you met your partner or someone you once were in love with, when you were cloistered away together in a perfect cocoon of good feelings and mutual enchantment? Those memories are technicolour in their loveliness, aren't they? The adrenaline rushes through those minutes, those hours shaped by forces that are unforeseeable before hand and indescribable later on. These bottled moments consist of hands brushing against each other, rising sunrises, epiphanies that get had. Someone has to leave to get beer, a new person joins you, the ...

I had the best nap once.  My mind still floats to the moment when I awoke from it.  I was lying in a bed in an old cottage. The roar of the ocean could be heard in the distance.  I had been so overcome with sleepiness when the nap settled in, that I bisected the bed diagonally with my body.  As I awoke, I remember my eyes flicking open and staring, upside down, at a wall painted turquoise, bathed in the late afternoon light--slowly remembering where I was and what I was looking at. My eyes rested on that spot for several minutes while I soaked up the feeling of being truly rested. I was exactly the right temperature and feeling awake in a way that I had not for many months.  I felt a seam in my world open. I stood up and walked right through it into a new life.  There was my life before  that nap and the new one after .  I was held aloft for hours by its elegant perfection.It must have been good, since I can remember it so well 4 years ...