Growing Versions

I've come to except (and accept) little pots of gooey gunk littering my home for a quite a while now. Corn starch, vinegar, baking soda, food colouring, pasta in water that is growing mold and oatmeal face masks run amok. These potions have been fermented, boiled, frozen, baked into pie shapes, smeared and set on fire. What can I about these secret potions? Their mystery persists.

We go about our business.  We have ups and downs and we straggle through the winter months. Finally the spring comes, and we discover the beauty of warmth, the scent of trees, we allow ourselves time to rest.  Not the sluggish, hibernation induced stupor of the winter months, but a light drowsiness in the shade of  a tree that leaves us feeling awake and ready to explore. I had a chance to visit Ellis Island a few weeks ago.  It is a major historical site that has a lot of meaning to millions in North America and throughout the world.  I left it feeling much like I do after a time in the midst of nature.  It restored my balance with the realization that historical sites and nature have a lot in common. They are places to reflect, to be held by something bigger than ourselves.

Relevance is the key to learning. Not a huge fan of learning the alphabet by rote, our child has taken to asking how to spell peoples' names. A social soul, he loves knowing how to write people's name and in the process he's learning the alphabet. So far, he's spelled names of relatives, neighbours, classmates and t.v characters. The alphabet song has more than one tune.

My earliest memories of coming to visit my grandmother in the city are framed in with bright red paint.  My grandmother's home was trimmed in fire engine red and the back yard was enclosed with a metal fence spray painted scarlet.  There are also some very old pieces of furniture that have long since been glossed over with paint.  For me it symbolizes the ultimate effort in making the old new.  It is bold and undeniable and it can vanquish even the most cracked, rotting thing and take your mind off the surface underneath. Yesterday, as I strolled around this old-by-North-American-standards-downtown for the first time in ages, I was struck by this very red building.  Temporarily not in service, but holding out for something new.

I have been doing a lot of math the last few years. I started a business and suddenly, I leaped into a world where basic accounting and math are a defined part of my job.  I have always been nervous about math.  I still wake up with a start some mornings fresh from a dream where I am convinced I have unfinished math business to clear up back in high school, until it dawns on me that somehow I closed that chapter already. I am very conscious of not letting it rub off on my daughter.  I realize that basic math and its more complicated aunts and uncles are just part of the world, a language like any other, that we use to explain our world in a particular way.  No more, no less.  However, some part of me still holds onto anxiety about math. I've never viewed myself as a "number person" and yet, even before I started this work, I did several calculations a  day. As the demand on my math skills has increased in recent years, I have begun to realize t...

My daughter spent the day at her dad's office the other day.  She had a very good time getting acquainted with his work environment and she had many tasks to do while she was there.  One special task was sorting the crayons.  One crayon caught her eye and she's been mentioning it ever since.  There is a crayon named "gold". It is really very special and it adds something important to everything we have coloured since.  I say "we" because she implored me several times over the weekend to colour with her.  Discovering "gold" helped renew her interest in crayons and all the things they can do.  And all the names they can be called.  "Sky blue" and "olive green" are "also names for crayons".  She was not so interested in the google search for "crayon crafts" but rather interested in what the crayons can do as themselves. "Mama, stop checking the internet for ideas!"

There are so many recipes within reach. Despite all this choice, I'm having a tough time boiling down what I actually need to eat.  I labour over heat but produce little that actually fills me up. I submerge my doubts with foods that my body does not understand. I  relinquish my hunger for a deeper one.  What is  it that will nourish me, without taking advantage of me? What do you eat to feel peaceful and fed?

The last two music shows I went to I burst into tears upon hearing the first line of the first song.  For once, I did not try to analyze why but rather allowed the swelling music to float me up and crack me open just for a little while and see where it took me. It paid off.  It sent me in new directions I hadn't thought of before. I have never paid much attention to music.  I like what I like and I have phases where I cannot get enough of what I like.  I put a bunch of my favourite songs on my ipod once and about every 3 months I obsessively play it until I don't feel like it anymore.  I make an effort to send myself emails or post stuff on facebook to remind me of songs I like or that I happen to hear on the radio or whatever.  I guess the best way to put it is that it does not come naturally to me.  It never really occurs to me to seek it out. However, there are those times when I am with a friend and they introduce me to someone or I have an ex...

In grade ten, I took computer keyboarding, a.k.a typing.  For many weeks, we drillled eeeeee...ffffffff.....gggggg...hhhhhh....eeeeeee...ffffffffff...gggggg.....eeeeeee...ffffffffff... In 16 year old terms and any other terms you can think of it was monotonous and boring, but, just like learning scales can be boring, learning how to type in the age of computers has yielded dividends.  I'm still kicking myself for quitting piano lessons all those years ago, but I am so happy that I was driven by getting good marks and did not think to quit the other kind of keyboarding.   Now, it is hard to believe I was not kicking and screaming to get out of keyboarding.  The emerging feminist in me did not object, perhaps because even then, pre-email and Facebook, keyboarding was not perceived the same way as "typing" had been in years previous. The word "computer" changed "typing's" image.  The typing pool was already an archaeic thing and the deman...

The other day a friend commented that a particular playground provided a great backdrop for kids' play and I agreed.  In my mind, based on personal experience and on observing my kids' play, the ingredients of a good backdrop are some trees to swing from, interesting rocks, obscured parts, and corners and tunnels or a closet in an unusual place.  A good backdrop can be a launching pad for a continuously evolving game or series of games and inventions.  It can be key to boisterous play that consumes and invites a range of playing options. I can remember playing for ages in the attic of an old church once because it had so many interesting little cubbies, a set of stairs leading to it and a door which allowed me to pretend it was my apartment for many hours.  My daughter gave me a tour the other day of a playground we frequent. "Here is my bedroom, this is the hall way, and here is the back door and this is where I cook." The line between "game" (with a s...

We sat down yesterday with a "candy bead kit" to make jewellery.  However, each of us came away with three very different projects. An ornamented gas pump for a Lego trailer.... ...or from another angle, a trailer hitch perhaps? ...a wind chime ...I went by the book and made straight up jewellery.

The Band-Aid has an allure all its own.  Over the past six years, I've come to learn about new dimensions of the band-aid and they continue to bewitch my kids.  Decorated by characters or not, the band-aid and its non-brand name counterparts, fulfill numerous roles. Only one of them involves healing wounds. The Band-Aid is a craft supply, a temporary tattoo, a sticker, an adhesive (when tape cannot be located) and an agent that binds two uncooperative objects (i.e. Barbie and a tiny Barbie hat or cell phone).  Somehow, I thought they would have stopped giving after all this time, but on a semi-regular basis I come to find the tell-tale signs of their use (some argue misuse). The plastic tabs litter the couch where they have been peeled back and chucked hither and yon. The Band-Aid has certain properties that I was unaware that they possessed before I had children to teach me about them.  Apparently, when applied correctly, they can make a minor pain anywhere o...

There was a period of about 3 months for both of my kids at around 18 months of age when my wallet was the toy that they could not be parted with.  They would get in the car and I would hand over my wallet and piece by piece the contents would be examined and emptied.  For that period, I got into the habit of putting really valuable things into other parts of my purse before giving it to them.  I would insert interesting tidbits for them to discover during their exploration. I would throw in fake credit cards, Canadian tire money and membership cards, stickers and paint chips and pictures. Do you have change for a library card?