Growing Versions

My days are full of looking for shortcuts at the moment. I am in hot pursuit of hacks. Life has become a series of edits, and revisions. Some shortcuts feel like drastic measures, reserved for emergencies, Others are technically shortcuts, but are actually substantially better than their longcut comrades. There is a small path leading from our house to the school that makes our day better and even gives my kids independence because they can use it to get to school safely without me, if needed. What are your best shortcuts?

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."-Anais Nin

When things speed up, I feel like I am observing my kids in a blur.  I try to hold on tight, but I am often left just clutching air as they (and more often me) whiz past.  The balloon from the party on the weekend floats above us, it's like a symbol of the minutes that I managed to be present, absolving me, while it slowly loses air.

This weekend my daughter decided, after visiting a friend's, that she should redecorate her room. Her friend's room had inspired her and for the first time ever she had her own vision for how her room should be organized.  I was not allowed in for my semi-annual clean and I realized that I won't be so readily invited in to re-organize things in my own way from now on. I came across a stack of sealed envelopes that were addressed to various relatives by my son. They had been written and stacked there at some point and I resisted opening them. I decided I would stick a stamp on them and fill in the address and send them on their way.

Winter exposes what the foilage covers up the rest of the year. Trash blows around and gets frozen into snow banks. The temperature at times forces us to seek shelter, it curtails roaming. We dress in layers. Layers give us options to regulate our temperature. I put on the warmer shirt, the sweater, the scarf and the coat. More if I am going to be standing around, less if I am going to be carrying it all. I enter the restaurant. I take off one layer, and then another. I sit in a pool of noon day sunlight behind glass and forget that layers will be necessary again in one short hour. I stand up and ready myself to go back out. On goes the sweater, the scarf, the coat. I step onto the street, bundled up until I need to delayer again.

I went back to my old childhood home town on the weekend. Early the next morning I woke up and walked from the place we had rented and took a walk around the old neighbourhood. True to form, everything was closer together, older, smaller than I remember. I brought my camera but the pictures I took could not sum up well enough how my memories merged with the real live houses and trees I walked past.  The landmarks of my walk from home to school are already mapped out indelibly in my mind, they form grooves along which I walked, I don't need pictures of them. It was the morning before a snowstorm swept in.  The sky was white, and the day was just beginning. There were no people walking around but it was so loud. All the people I remembered living in that house or that one, chatting and talking and clamouring to be heard.  The curtains rustled as I imagined them peeking out. The snow that covered everything brought to mind all the times we slid down that hill....

Christmas culture is full of miniatures.  Mini villages lit from within, mini skates hanging from the tree, mini tree cookies, gigantic snowflakes, but mini Jesus and his family and all his visitors, mini booze bottles made of chocolate and a mini town under glass that fills with snow when you shake it. While these things are shrunken, the feelings are exaggerated, the memories over sized, the rifts magnified, the love enormous, the shopping is excessive and we eat bigger plates full of bigger portions, and we drink more out of  fuller glasses. It is sometimes hard to feel like the right size at this time of year.