Growing Versions

You know what is really great about swimming? One of the main reasons I like to swim and be in water is that it lets me do things I cannot do or cannot do anymore in real life (IRL). My kids and I have a game at the pool called "do what you cannot do IRL".  We impress each other with manoeuvres that gravity prevents, but water allows. For example, my handstand days IRL are over (as I painfully discovered), but in water they carry on. IRL I cannot carry my kids anymore, but I can cradle them comfortably in water. I can hold myself up with one finger underwater and I can hold onto a rail and be parallel with the floor only in a pool. I can leap and lean way way back in water. Swimming makes things possible that are not possible on earth otherwise. Is there nothing swimming cannot do? How about you? What can you do in water that you cannot do IRL?

When I first lived in Halifax, and having known it as a visitor all my life, it never really occurred to me (or us as its inhabitants, let alone tourists) to visit the waterfront. Even though it is a historical port city, the waterfront was neglected and hard-working but not really a source of leisure.  That all started to change within the past twenty years. Now, even though it still works hard receiving and transmitting goods, it has emerged as a destination for tourists and locals in and of itself. Before this development, I had a vantage point on my city and over time, those vantage points have changed. I used to know my city from inside a classroom, snowbanks and apartments and houses.  Now I know my city from the harbour's edge. I gaze towards George's Island or am dwarfed by huge vessels coming and going. Even when I am not there, I visualize the city from that vantage point.  The waterfront helps stabilize us, its a point of connection and helps us escape the...

“I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless; it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand? The fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to say ‘I’m bored.” -Louis C.K.

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.  

Lately, my son has been responding to my sighs more strongly than the words coming out of my mouth. He'll ask me for a snack or attention or something from the book order (blasted toy order more like) and I'll sigh (breathe a little too audibly) before (or while) I answer and he'll in turn react with either:  "Never mind." or  "What's wrong?" He's like a teeny tiny  barometer  and has been for a while. He picks up on the most subtle tone drop of my voice and responds by changing tack, like a little sailor seeking a headwind. Part of me loves being known so well, the other part, of course, wishes I were not so scrutable. However, sigh language is a form of communication, like any other non-verbal language, which is gradually learned and is responsible for conveying way more than our words do.

I am not good at details.  I like them to take care of themselves. And sometimes they do.  Details, when we have a chance to look, get bigger with examination.  Flaws become information. Overlooked details morph into mistakes.  Some details get bigger and make other details smaller. The liner notes can be lyrics. That's the thing about details.

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?"

He comes here and then I go there and then he comes here, it's a pattern. I eat toast and then cereal and then toast, it's a pattern. I decorated it with purple and yellow and purple, it's a pattern. Making a snack is easy. Cracker, peanut butter, cracker, cheese whiz, cracker, it's a pattern.

I was given a gift this week. I was given a couple of days in a beautiful place without kids.  For the first few hours I did not know what to do with myself, so I had a nap.  All great days should start with a well rested head.  My goal was to do less. Less food prep, less dishes, less socializing and less internet.  It turns out being awake less is also an admirable goal.  It made the time I was awake so glorious I could barely contain myself. Now I know how the dew can settle like a tiny blanket fort over the shafts of wet grass in a way I did not know before.

At the end of last month, I had to be somewhere. That somewhere held me fast in an embrace of saltwater, rose petal fumes and hard granite. I went to that somewhere, to be where I had to be. That somewhere turned into here and now it is, sigh, there, again. I guess you had to be there, but your somewhere that you had to be was probably somewhere else.

Around the age of 9 or 10, I learned how to make pancakes. I began a career of making "quick breads".  I slowly perfected the pancake temperature, committed the recipe to memory. Now I make them once a week without blinking. The role yeast plays in baking consistently did not get through to me. Baking soda,baking powder, those were my leaveners of choice. They were the ingredients that were accessible, uncomplicated and within my technical grasp. If I did use yeast, which I occasionally felt compelled to do when I attempted pizza dough, it was yet another frustrated reason why I was not a yeast bread girl. I rushed it, I tried to make a "yeast bread" project into a "quick bread" project. This summer, I finally decided to revive an old family recipe, my grandmother's french rolls.  Their airiness still lingers on my tongue, 30 years after I last had one. I googled a recipe and reluctantly invested in a whole bottle of yeast. I faithfully ...

I am trying hard to go outside after work with the kids. It is never that easy, but staying home and falling asleep on the couch is not great either. The other night we had a drizzly, foggy walk over to the school yard. It is a school yard with a lot of contours, a hill, and big boulders. It has a life outside of school, just like us.

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.

A whole bunch of blankets falling onto something is a blanketalanche, I've been told. Chipping ice. Freezing 7 stacked cups into a bag of water and then removing it to create a fountain. Grating chestnuts. Discovering that cutting wafers with scissors does indeed create a lot of crumbs. This is the age of exploration.

Re-learning how to entertain ourselves without (or less) help from electronic devices is always a good exercise. And it does feel like exercise. How do you play cribbage again? Where is the croquet set? It does not take too long before everyone is launching vending machine 5.0 or creating a world inhabited by Barbies.  The minute the wi-fi starts flowing again, our circuits start getting jammed up again, but , of course, we won't notice that right away.

I have to remember that there are times when showing up empty handed is better than not showing up at all.

There are so many answers out there. Everywhere I look, solutions, open letters, advice, tips, reading lists, the top 5 movies, suggestions galore. Invariably, the way these answers are arranged, I get kind of tricked into thinking that I asked a question in the first place. Rumi said "silence is the best answer". Perhaps, the same goes for questions. WifeMotherExpletive  declared that June she would go paper based for a month, I am going to follow her lead.  I need some loose leaf to dream up my own questions and listen for the answers in the morning light, the budding lily of the valley and the ripening strawberries or some other place I haven't noticed yet. I'll let the paper absorb the ink for a while.

When my children were very small, they were relatively transparent.  With the exception of the mysterious times when sleep eluded them or unruly behaviour was the only way they could think of to express something, once the mystery was solved, the diaper was changed, the tylenol or the snack was dispensed or the nap was caved into, they went back to being transparent.  They told me directly (most of the time) what their motives were all about. ( I am just painting the walls to welcome Santa, I flushed the spiderman down the toilet etc...)  We were the ones who held our cards close to our chest. We'd sprinkle their day with little white lies to prop ourselves up and get to our destination ( Sorry, the pool is closed today...This soup has no vegetables in it...I am so busy planning a really big slide that I cannot make a little slide today.) Inevitably, their transparency has clouded a little and our own cards are falling from our hands. As they learn to say things ...

Hold fast your dreams! Within your heart Keep one still, secret spot Where dreams may go, And, sheltered so, May thrive and grow Where doubt and fear are not. O keep a place apart, Within your heart, For little dreams to go! -Louise Driscoll The one still, secret spot is so secret, so neglected, it is hard to locate by times. But it is still and it is secret and it is yours. Go there sometimes.

Kid: "Mama, have you ever heard the expression, good things come in small packages?" Mama: "yes, I have.  Like babies and diamond rings." Kid: "Yes, and rocks."