Wednesday, Jun 11, 2014 | Dogs |
Suzi dog
The dogs keep staring at me. Why? What is the matter with you, dogs?
They are pacing my office, stopping to watch me with hopeful, expectant, crazed eyes, and I have no idea what they want from me. Is it a tornado? Impending inland tsunami? Are they hungry, bored, thirsty, in need of a pet?
In tandem they place their little paws on my leg and raise themselves up and grin, staring manically.
I pet them, briefly, while they grin and stare, but it only makes them jealous of each other. “Go on, get down.”
They retreat, but only to my feet.
It’s unnerving. It’s like trying to read the newspaper while someone reads over your shoulder. You know they’re there, reading over your shoulder, even if they’re doing it quietly. I can see you, dogs! Good grief. What the hell?
The dogs.
Twice, recently, Suzi has had brief episodes of behaving like a regular dog: she’s played fetch with a ball. She performs this dog-like trick just long enough to make us think it’s repeatable, and then, less than a minute into the game, she stops cold and ignores the ball, which thunks sadly to the floor, instantly forgotten.
“But Suzi,” we say hopefully, momentarily believing in her dog-like potential, “look, it’s the ball, don’t you want to chase it?”
Suzi gazes off into the distance, pretending never to have been involved in such indignities. Was it an hallucinatory episode? “No, but really, she was chasing the ball and bringing it back to me! You saw her, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”
DJ dog
Suzi is the smaller one, a neurotic ball of nerves and need, and DJ is slightly larger, and essentially untrainable, although she can perform spontaneous backflips when her dinner is being served; and the dogs seem to be getting old, suddenly, and that worries me. We don’t know how old they are, as they came to us having been rescued from an over-crowded pound in Ohio. I have pangs, thinking about them being old, perhaps older than we’ve guessed. I look for new grey hairs around their muzzles.
I check the Weather Network. No signs of tornado or tsumani. I open the back door. They show no interest in going out. Apparently they just want watch me, anxiously.
Um, okay, dogs. (I’m fine, I think. But you’re making me wonder …)
Tuesday, Jun 10, 2014 | Uncategorized |
I’ve got work to do. It’s quiet work, the kind that doesn’t produce anything that can be seen, or displayed, held or sold. It’s the work of a mind that is continually rehearsing the immediate future, at the expense of settling into presence.
You’ve probably noticed that our family’s schedule leaves little breathing room; this is not a complaint, merely an observation, because it is also absolutely of our own doing. It’s a choice — to live at a pace that tries to accommodate four children’s varied interests and our own, to do the jobs we’ve chosen, to be and to express who we are. But it would be disingenuous not to be brutally honest about the consequences: it can wear a person down. There was a moment, last week, when I was pretty sure I’d reached my limits.
The weather was gorgeous. I was wearing a “business casual” sundress. I’d been up since 4:50AM. I’d taken the bus to Toronto and back for meetings at my Canadian publisher’s offices. It was now 5:15PM, and I was standing beside a carshare car, and it would not open. The keyless entry system appeared to be broken. The carshare company wasn’t answering their help hotline. Kevin and Albus were on their way to a soccer game in Stratford. I had children waiting for me at home, to take them to the school’s fun fair and to soccer practice. And the car would not open.
All my advance planning seemed suddenly fragile. One error could cause a cascading series of tumbles. It could all fall apart, just like this, and my stomach was in knots of anxiety.
This could be my breaking point, I thought.
But then it wasn’t.
I ran home, used the land line to get through the carshare company, rented a different car to which I sprinted in my business casual-wear, a full kilometre, thinking, okay, this is what I’ve trained for. We were late for soccer practice, very late for the fun fair, but that was all. And being late, well, it’s not the end of the world. It’s not the end of anything. Fooey even won a cake at the cakewalk. Perfect bedtime snack.
I could take several different lessons from this.
I could stop trying to squeeze so much in. Or I could stop worrying in advance about things going wrong. I can’t seem to do the former; so how would the latter work?
Lay out the plot, make the plan, write it down, then let it go. Stop rehearsing. Be late sometimes. The stakes aren’t really that high, in the grand scheme of things. None of these items on my to-do list are as important as I’m making them out to be, in my own mind. Do we have food to eat? Yes. Do we have a roof over our heads? Yes. Do we have each other? Yes!
Privilege can warp perspective. I’m so privileged that I don’t even notice all that I’m able to do, without a second thought: let my kids participate in multiple sports, rent carshare cars, own a pretty sundress, buy tickets to the fun fair. I’m inventing needless anxieties. Maybe it’s a way of distracting myself from settling into the work that I need to do. I’m beginning to suspect that distraction is the easy way out. It’s the enemy of presence.
A few years back I wrote a song with lyrics that went like this, in part:
Say it simple, say it best
If you’ve loved then you’ve been blessed
If you’re loved then you’ve been found
Fall to earth
Fallen
And have no fear
*
Monday, Jun 9, 2014 | Dogs, Morning, Photos |
Enjoying the peace of this photo. Or maybe it’s the pause. The moment suspended.
In a rush. Monday morning. Dog can’t decide whether she wants in or out. Need to get on bike and get to a school meeting. Still not getting enough sleep.
I’m tempted to put all of the above into hashtag form, but I don’t know why. Maybe hashtags are kind of like miniature poems? Or maybe I should just sign up on Instagram? Here’s how it would look …
#inarush #Mondaymorning #dogatdoor #biking #meeting #moretiredthansleepcancure
:::
Just have to add a postscript. Goes like this.
#bikechainblues #argh #greasecoveredhands #foreverrushing #notquitelate
Saturday, Jun 7, 2014 | Kids, Prizes, Travel, Work, Writing |
We don’t always have a ton of luck with the vegetables we plant in our raised beds, but every spring we give it another go. One year we scored with a broccoli plant that was still producing in November, but that never happened again. Cherry tomatoes work best, and herbs grow well, but any squash or zucchini that’s sprung forth has been quickly gnawed by our ravenous population of squirrels, which even the dogs can’t keep away all the time, though they relish the battle.
Fooey brought home a very healthy bean plant from school, which she planted with the beans that we’d started for AppleApple’s science fair project. Fooey’s teacher told her she had a green thumb, and it seemed that Fooey took that idea to heart. She’s planting two eggplants in the photos above. Good luck, eggplants! And beans! (I’m already stir-frying you in my imagination.)
This morning I am more tired than I’d like to be, and perhaps slightly more emotional too. I’m in the kind of mood where I’m practically weeping over a story in the newspaper (this one — about a kindergarten teacher in Toronto, who died tragically young). I’m hoping no one turns up at the door. I love stories about people who live outside the box. And I love stories about people who care deeply for the well-being and dignity of children; my son’s kindergarten teachers are amazing, and we’re constantly impressed at the ambitious yet simple events and outings being planned on the kids’ behalf. Life is so much richer when it’s blessed by people who care.
I’ve been to Toronto and back two days in a row, contributing to the tiredness of today.
Last night, I went in for the National Magazine Awards gala, and did not win in my category (the prize went to Liz Windhorst Harmer, who was radiant in her excitement). I went mostly to be a fly on the wall, having never been before, and to celebrate the career of Kim Jernigan of The New Quarterly, who was being honoured with a special prize. It was an odd experience, made pleasant by the company; but in truth I’m not sure I entirely understand award galas. I understand the value of awards themselves, to those whose careers are lifted by recognition, but I don’t understand the gala part. These must be expensive to produce, and as a writer, were I to win an award, I’d much prefer a cheque to a flashy ceremony. This is probably an heretical opinion to express, and I will now be karmically banned from ever being nominated ever again, but I guess I would wish for a celebration of writing to be more, well, celebratory, less American Idol, less winner v losers. What is our mania for making winners and losers out of individual creative efforts? I can honestly say that being nominated was a gift and a complete surprise, but that “losing” last night had an equally surprising effect of making me feel, well, like a loser, at least temporarily. That may say more about me than it does about award ceremonies, but it did get me thinking about the double-edged sword of recognition. One wants recognition, as a writer, and if one wants a viable career, one may in fact need it, but it comes at a cost we’re not so willing to discuss, attached as it is to corrosive emotions of envy and greed. Shake hands with the devil.
I can think of only one response to counteract corrosive emotions: get grounded.
Like Fooey’s doing in the photos above: Get into the earth. Dig in. Get dirty. Plant. Hope for harvest.
So, on this bright fresh beautiful morning in June, I’m going to be thankful for this bright fresh beautiful morning in June, for being here and alive, and for the way things have worked out to bring me right here, right now. I’m going to think about the short life of a teacher who did what he seemed born to do. And I’m going to keep doing what I am so very fortunate to get to do, too.
Wednesday, Jun 4, 2014 | Summer |
I can’t wait to have a new blog set up that will display these photos properly.
I love this one.
The ball in motion in the air, the child practicing while the parent offers instruction, but most of all the little guy sitting and watching. We had such a fun time together that evening, shooting hoops. This photo captures something outside of that experience, though, and seems to communicate a separate narrative that may not be the real one, but strikes me as being, instead, extremely poignant. There is a loneliness to the child in the foreground, watching, waiting his turn, hand resting on chin.
And all around, the green of nearly-summer, the bright, angled evening light.
