"Would you like milk with that?"

My kids have a few consistent games/play scenarios at the moment. Some of them have endured for years, others are fixed to a place. My daughter continues to play some version of restaurant. She's been at it half of her life and now it has become a lot more sophisticated. For a while in the summer, she had a Tim Horton's set up in the living room, she has since decided a cafe would be more fun. She stockpiles throw-away coffee cups and continues to revise the menu. For my son, he is much more likely to make up games that involve manipulating objects (creating an elevator with a scarf on the banister or a marble/car tunnel with a wrapping paper roll). If he's at Grandma's he insists on pouring and re-pouring a lot of tea with his mobile tea trolley and if he's at Mana's he and his sister raid the wrapping paper drawer and wrap and re-wrap/decorate various objects and practise giving them to us all. I keep watching, noticing, the subtleties of how the games/scenarios change and new ones emerge. What will come next? How about you? What games do your kids play? Are they new ones to you or do you remember playing similar ones?

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A Small Craft

I accompanied my mother-in-law to an appointment this week. On the paper, preparing her for the appointment, it invited her bring along something to read or a small craft. As soon as I heard about this invitation to bring a small craft into an otherwise austere waiting area, my mind started to do bouncing somersaults in many different directions. Googly eyes? Glue gun? Feathers? Play clay? Friendship braclets?

Bringing her back

As the first anniversary finally passed, I exhaled. The sadness still nibbled away at the edges, but not clawing deep into my chest like it had been with varying degrees of ferocity in the twelve months previously. She died in early summer, so I plunged into ocean and lakes and ate fruit straight from the plant. The grief became softer, the folk songs carried me along in the potato patch we planted in therapy. But then, I started to miss her. The deep grief kept her so close and now as the pressure eased, so did her presence. I held my breath and decided to be really sad this morning just to see her face. To sit in her prescence. My breath became jagged as I cried for her, for us. This Taylor Swift cover by Marc Maron broke me right open this morning. Here's to staying broken open enough to keep your loved ones close. And then, I walked into her garden. The garden she envisionied, planted over and over and still pre...

The words coming out of my mouth

These days I wear a mask. I don't wear a mask all of the time, only when I am indoors or unavoidably up close with people who I don't usually interact with. I wear one when I am ordering things, or buying things or attempting to enjoy some form of public entertainment. I cannot rely on reading others lips. My lips are hidden. We ask each other to repeat. We move our eyes or our whole heads to try and enunciate more clearly. I say fewer words, more carefully chosen words behind the mask. Sometimes that is helpful, sometimes that just causes more confusion. I walked into the woods. I did not need a mask. I only saw a few other people and they were distanced. Masks were unnecessary. After so much talking and not talking and avoiding talking out loud I am forced to examine when I speak and when I choose not to. This is not a bad thing since I can be an insufferable chatter box, just a new thing for my brain to adjust itself to. When I am not standing aro...

Growing Versions

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