Category: Driving
Monday, Apr 20, 2015 | Big Thoughts, Driving, Mothering, Soccer, Travel |
Hello there! Just checking in. How are you? You may have observed (as my dad recently did) that I’ve been checking in somewhat less frequently here, as my writing time is quite cramped. I also take way less photos than I used to, relying mainly on the camera on my phone. Your understanding is appreciated. I think this is a good example of how I make things work, generally speaking; it isn’t always perfect, or even approaching perfect, but I try to do as much as I can, in as many of the areas of my life that I can, using the resources available. And with plenty of compromise.
This weekend, AppleApple and I made a trek to Ohio for a soccer tournament. I’d been dreading the long drive and leaving behind my writing work, but it turned out to be really fun. Note to self: stop dreading things! Good grief! Somehow, in my anxiety about crossing the border and having to navigate solo, I neglected to appreciate that I would be alone with one kid, with very few responsibilities other than getting her to and from games, for several days. I left behind the calendar, the scheduling, the laundry, the cooking, the cleanup — well, everything, really. We had beautiful weather, spring had sprung in Ohio, they sell beer in grocery stores there, and everyone was super-friendly.
Highlights included
* lounging and watching Friends on my laptop via Netflix with AppleApple in the evenings
* a social meal out with the team on Saturday night
* buds on trees, flowers blooming, needing to wear sunscreen again
* an impromptu picnic in a Kroger’s parking lot (we know how to class it up)
* taking a detour home through Bluffton, Ohio to visit friends and see the house I grew up in from kindergarten through grade 3
So my kid complained about me singing along to the radio on the drive. So her team didn’t win every game. I can’t think of anything else to complain about, actually. How lucky we were to get that time together. How fortunate we are to travel at our leisure, for fun, for recreation.
Back in Canada, driving driving driving, we tuned into the CBC news at 6 o’clock and heard about the failed efforts to rescue hundreds of migrants, drowned when the boat they were travelling on capsized in the Mediterranean sea; I can’t get that out of my head. I keep mentally juxtaposing the ease and safety and fun of our journey with the desperation of the journeys undertaken by so many.
I can’t make sense of it. So it’s just sitting here with me today.
xo, Carrie
PS I’ve got some good news on the book front. I look forward to sharing it with you later this week.
Thursday, Mar 5, 2015 | Driving, Girl Runner, Kids, Meditation, Organizing, Readings, Work, Writing |
winter, uptown
This morning I woke at 5:54AM, realized my alarm hadn’t gone off, leapt out of bed, and somehow got into running gear with shoes on and teeth brushed before my running friend arrived at the door at 6AM. Good grief! It’s been that kind of week, with little margin for error in the schedule. But I suppose it’s also been that kind of week, with things turning out just fine even if the wheels aren’t turning completely smoothly. (And how about that–I need a mere 6 minutes to prep in the morning? I could be sleeping in!)
I’ve been working on my manners while driving. Driving = swearing, in my world. There’s something about being stuck in a vehicle, possibly but not necessarily late, behind other vehicles that are behaving in erratic nonsensical fashion that brings out a rage I rarely experience otherwise. My kids are very helpful, calling out my muttered curses. “Mom, you said the “H” word,” CJ told me yesterday as we sat at a green light behind a car whose driver did not seem to understand the meaning of green lights. Everyone was too politely Canadian to honk, of course. “I’m sorry,” I apologized to CJ. “I’m really trying to work on not saying bad words while driving.”
“I know what you should do,” he piped up, while munching a cookie. “You should meditate in the car.” This cracked everyone up when I reported it later on, no doubt everyone imagining Carrie sitting with eyes closed ignoring the traffic and breathing deeply; but actually, I did take a few deep breaths–eyes open–and it helped. It’s all about weighing what matters, and whether you really want to work yourself into a snit over [fill in the blank]. Usually, the answer is, big picture, I’d rather have a chat with my cookie-eating kid than be gripping the wheel, shoulders tensed, cursing the eccentricities of those who share the road. If only I could recognize that before I start swearing, not during. Connecting the dots between meditation and real life is the real challenge.
Speaking of challenges, yesterday definitely qualifies. Piano lessons, picking up kids from different schools at different times, writing on laptop in car between pickups. Home to eat take-out pizza fetched by Kevin, then up to the little kids’ school for their arts night, visiting with friends and neighbours, ducking out early, dropping little kids at home in care of their older sister who was distracted by her imminently due science fair project (the dining-room table covered in chopsticks, copper wire, batteries, and bouncy balls), and at last, getting changed and zipping over to Conrad Grebel College to read as the final guest in their Mennonite Writers Series. After all that running, what a surprising pleasure it was to come to a stop in the Grebel Chapel. I could not have felt more welcomed. The evening was a total pleasure, and something about the format felt as natural as if I were reading to my kids at bedtime (dressed in nicer clothes, wearing makeup, with a microphone pinned to my shirt). As I sat there at the end of the presentation looking out at this warm and generous audience, I thought, wow, this is a damn lucky life. Embrace it, receive it, savour it.
And then go home to tea and bed in such a happy state of mind that you forget to set the alarm, apparently.
Anyway … I’m reading again tonight at WLU, at Lucinda House, 6:30PM. Then I’ve got a little break in the readings, with more to come in April. I will keep you posted. And I’ll let you know how the car meditation is going …
xo, Carrie
Monday, Jun 16, 2014 | Backyard, Driving, Family, Fun, Play, Soccer, Swimming |
Saturday. Early rising. Long drive. Poolside. Laptop open.
“Are you writing your next novel right here?”
“Erm. Kind of. Well, yes, actually. I’m trying.”
Saturday evening. Barely awake. Stroll uptown. The whole family.
Burger Badanga at the Chainsaw. (Fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity)
Free face/arm-painting.
Also, burgers, beer, pop with unlimited refills.
But really it’s all about the football.
England v. Italy.
Not the hoped-for outcome.
“I always feel sad for whoever loses.”
“Wow, Mom. Someone always loses.”
Sunday. Early rising. Ritual stop at best early-morning coffee & breakfast joint in town, City Cafe, aka “the bagel place.” Long drive. Poolside. Laptop.
The kid is fast and strong. The mother is plain worn out.
Stop for falafel and chicken shwarma. Eat under tree. Long drive home.
Followed by deep nap.
Followed by must get up and do days’ worth of laundry, run errands, and think up Father’s Day supper.
Meet “Vanna,” above, our new front yard dwarf cherry tree. “Stella” is in the back yard. Two apple trees, as yet unnamed, await planting.
Neighbour we’ve never met stops to tell Kevin: “I’ve been walking by your front yard for the past ten years, and I just want to tell you how much I enjoy watching what you’re doing here.”
I think: Kevin’s dad, enthusiastic gardener, would have been so proud.
I call my dad.
Supper: hot dogs, bacon, fixings, roasted asparagus, kale slaw (“You shouldn’t call it that! Nobody’s going to want to eat it!”).
After supper: playing in the back yard. Kevin: Gardening and soccer-ball juggling. Albus: Trampoline and soccer. Fooey: Trampoline and soccer-ball juggling. CJ: Soccer, soccer, soccer. Me and AppleApple: catch, with tennis ball and baseball gloves.
The long late light. The best part of summer.
“Should we be responsible parents and tell everyone to go bed?”
“Do we have to?”
Wednesday, May 7, 2014 | Driving, Fun, Girl Runner, Interviews, Publicity, Publishing, Reading, Readings, Running, Work, Writing |
I sponsored the two older kids’ rep soccer teams this season by “buying a sleeve.” We decided to add “A NOVEL” to the title GIRL RUNNER, thinking that a team of 13-year-old boys might not appreciate having to wear that label during games.
This was our dining-room table, Monday afternoon. Two sets of page proofs, one galley, one sharp red pencil, and one mother announcing to all who entered after school, “There will be no eating or drinking on or near this table until I AM DONE!”
I am done.
All may eat and drink here again.
Last night’s reading at DVLB was really fun. I even indulged in a scotch, thanks to the kindness of a friend who treated. Imbibe ye scotches while ye may. Life’s too short not to enjoy the pleasures that arrive. Even if that happens to be on a Tuesday night and you’re running the next morning. And so I did. (And I ran this morning too: Run ye many kilometres while ye may.)
No scotches tonight, however. I’ll be driving to and from Hamilton, where I’m reading at Bryan Price Bookseller, 7pm, with other M Word contributors. (Note to self: look up directions!)
Tomorrow I’ll be at the Anansi offices working on publicity plans for Girl Runner. (Note to self: more directions! Look up!)
Can you read the above? I can’t. File this under Strange Opportunities that Arrive via the Internet. Last month I was contacted by an editor at Unitas, a Chinese-language literary magazine in Taiwan, who wanted to interview me for a special issue they were planning on Alice Munro. (They’d found and loved my review of Alice Munro’s Dear Love in the National Post.) I agreed. And this month, two copies of the beautifully produced magazine arrived in my mailbox, in an envelope covered in fancy stamps. Sometimes the world seems very very small.
I’ve never met Alice Munro, and can’t imagine what I would say to her if we were to meet. It’s an entirely one-sided relationship based purely on my reading of her stories over many years. I’m immersed in MY LIFE IN MIDDLEMARCH right now, a truly wonderful book that combines biography with memoir, and in some way I feel like my relationship with Alice Munro is similar to Rebecca Mead’s with George Eliot; but Mead has the benefit of distance and I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable exploring Alice Munro’s life and work in quite the same way, given that she’s still living, and that our worlds literally overlap in time and space. It wouldn’t be historical exploration. There’s a freedom to digging back into the past, way back. I’m aiming to do it now, in my next novel. Nothing can be perfectly recovered from the deep past, and so one may imagine quite freely.
Yet I’m so admiring and relishing this memoir/biography mash-up on George Eliot — I would do it, if I could figure out my relationship with non-fiction, a form I’m still learning. I’m thinking out loud here, brainstorming as I type. Perhaps not the best way to compose a blog post on which one is about to press “publish.” But if I could figure out how, yes, I would write about Alice Munro.
I think the NMA nomination was especially thrilling (and perhaps seductive) because it was earned for “personal journalism,” aka non-fiction. It’s a form that interests me more and more, that I find myself devouring more and more, and that I want to learn how to master.
Sunday, May 4, 2014 | Driving, Kids, Parenting, Swimming, Travel |
Recuerdo
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
We were very tired, we were very merry–
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable–
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on the hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
We were very tired, we were very merry–
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind went cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morning, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and the pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
(first published in 1919)
The refrain of this poem keeps running through my head. We were very tired, we were very merry.
I drove my swim child to Windsor and home again all in one day, yesterday. “Did you have a good day, Mom?” she asked me. The stoplight turned green ahead of us, and I checked the rearview mirror. “There were many good things about this day,” I allowed, thinking more of the long dark drive ahead, and the lateness of the hour, the responsibility of getting us safely home heavy on me. “Did you have a good day?” I asked her.
“Yes! I had a really good day.” I wish you could hear her voice. The sigh of deep satisfaction.
“Well, then I had a really good day too.”
Thursday, Jan 9, 2014 | Driving, Kids |
This is now just Fooey’s room, with the Lego stored under the bunk bed. The rule is, in exchange for getting such a big room all to herself (something she’s been angling after for ages), she has to let the others in to play whenever they want. This works some of the time.
CJ has moved in to Albus’s room, to the top bunk. Fooey enjoys calling this “the boys’ room.”
So far the different bed times haven’t been a problem. Last night, for example, Kev tucked CJ in while Albus and I were out picking up Fooey from gymnastics. (Gymnastics was my third distinct kid-related trip of the day: piano took up 2 hours, and AppleApple’s soccer ate up another 2 and a half, not helped by me getting horribly lost on the way to the new location. “Do you have GPS on your phone?” one soccer dad asked, after I’d spilled my tale of woe, and another pointed out: “You’ve got it in your car!” True! But stabbing buttons on the mysterious GPS system soothes me much less than calling Kevin to announce how lost and frustrated I am. Plus Kevin always manages to direct me, while the GPS is a bit dodgy).
This transition between subjects and back again needs a GPS, I’m afraid. Or just call someone you love.
When we got home (post-gymnastics), Albus did homework downstairs while I folded laundry and Kevin made the school lunches. It felt very companionable. By the time Albus went to bed, his brother had been asleep for at least an hour. They wake at different times in the morning, too, without mutual disturbance.
I’m in my office, back to a regular routine that somehow has yet to feel regular.
I’m full of plots and schemes and plans and dreams, yet quite bereft of focus. I wonder how long I’ll let that pile of papers and note books and letters and receipts fester atop the small filing cabinet behind me. I wonder how long we’ll be without an oven. How long the living-room will remain an indoor soccer field. How long I’ll sit here looking at these words.
Wishing I had better words to offer up today. But it seems this is it.
