Christmas album
Category: Holidays
Let it shine
This is my favourite turn of the year: when the days begin to become incrementally longer rather than shorter, and the light is on its way back.
For a brief moment, I loved our family’s attempt at a candlelit dinner on the eve of the winter solstice, several days ago. Light in darkness. Shadow all around. Soon after this photo was taken everything fell to pieces, of course, and I loved that quite a lot less; also it lasted much longer. But that seems the nature of the holidays: chance moments of calm, bits of brightness, shards of reflection.
Wherever you are, whatever you celebrate, and wherever you can find it, I wish you light, rest, and glimpses of peace during your holiday.
Mission impossible
I spent an afternoon earlier this week attempting to sort through our six bins of Playmobil and reassemble castles and families and scenes. There’s a reason I titled this post “Mission Impossible.” I wasn’t doing it because I’m short of projects, of course; I was doing it because CJ was home sick and desperate for someone to play with. So we dragged out the Playmobil. All of it. If you’d been listening in, this is how our “playtime” would have sounded: “Stop sorting, Mommy! Make your guy talk to my guy!” And then I’d make my guy say, “Let’s find my missing candelabra base. We can go on a deep sea mission to the bottom of this bin and ….” Deep sigh from CJ.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m not good with the playing.
My proudest accomplishment of the afternoon was the completion of one room in a princess castle. One room. It is now on a high shelf and everyone who looks at it has to sing “Aaaaaaaah” in an angelic tone while gazing appreciatively. Or maybe that’s just me. In any case, no one is allowed to touch it. Oh wait. Isn’t that the whole point? Of having TOYS? Maybe Albus was on to something when he came into the living-room later that evening and began vrooming the newly restored Playmobil car (with doctor and doctor’s teeny-tiny kit that includes a teeny-tiny flu shot needle) through my carefully sorted piles. Let’s just say the doctor might be in the wrong profession. She should have been a smash-em-up-derby racer with jet-pack engines and maybe a flame-thrower or two. Can you hear the heart-breaking sound of plastic items being explosively scattered across a wooden floor? I’m sure it was fun on the pure level of play, but I become momentarily deeply discouraged. My carefully sorted piles! Tossed asunder!
There’s a lesson in here somewhere, if I care to extract it. But is that the kind of day it is? A day for lessons? No, today, I’d rather skip the moral of the story, down my cup of coffee, gird my loins, and head out into the horror that is the streets of uptown: thick with people driving their cars around and around as they seek for a parking spot and grow increasingly grim and hopeless (and mentally act out the Playmobil doctor’s wreckless acts of destruction). Merry Christmas! I’m going to walk instead. But wow. I need some girding, some serious girding. I’m in the homestretch of preparations. I can do this! I can find and assemble every piece of this Playmobil holiday!
Wait, what were we talking about?
A hint about our day
We are thankful for …
Fall at the farm.
Wild apple trees.
Nobody falling out of wild apple trees.
Puffballs.
Adventures.
Sunday morning long run (34km).
Food.
Family.
The end of a long day
I really should not be blogging right now. I should be in bed. But we arrived home late this afternoon, after a week’s holiday, and I want to write. Need to write. There are many things on my mind, but I haven’t got the capacity to synthesize them all, just now, even if they belonged together, which I suspect they do not.
So here they are, in no particular order.
We uglified the backyard, but it’s nothing compared to what happened to the front today: our falling-down porch got ripped off, with a little bit left, stairs and such, so we can get to the door. As we drove up to the house, I got a glance, no more, and I just felt sick. The house looked so strange, so faceless. I couldn’t take another look. But after a few hours, and before it got dark, I went out on my own with my camera and it looked … okay, really. I could imagine what would be there in the future. Even a little office for me, out that side door.
So, we just went a week without doing laundry … I can’t even describe the pile in the basement. Being obsessive compulsive about tasks, I’ve been running the machine non-stop.
Oh, and on the drive home, we stopped for a bathroom break and discovered an awesome farmer’s market. So Kevin made room in our already packed truck for a bushel of romas and a bushel of red peppers. The red peppers are already roasted and in our freezer. The canner is ready to go tomorrow.
But I am overwhelmed and exhausted and daunted by the tasks ahead this week. There seems too much. This is VBS week, assuming the children agree to go (CJ is the wild card; he spent large portions of today in fits over non-existent catastrophes … nothing like a good half hour of crying in the car to make you feel like a holiday is really and truly over; even better if no good reason for crying can be identified by cry-er or his attentive family).
Lessons, schedules, organizing. Confirming manuscript ready to send, and sending. That’s the week ahead.
But the thing on my mind most of all tonight is the passing of Jack Layton. What to say? There’s no one like him in Canadian politics. And it seemed his optimism might carry him over yet another obstacle; after all, he made all kinds of seemingly impossible things happen. Cancer. The language we use to talk about it is the language of battle; but I’ve never liked that language because it implies that those who cannot fight it off somehow didn’t fight hard enough, weren’t strong enough, succumbed. A word that implies defeat. I really hate that. I don’t know how to talk about it differently, though. Anyone’s who’s lost a loved one to cancer knows that it feels like they’ve been stolen, sometimes slowly, and sometimes suddenly, by an opponent. I don’t know why we personify cancer like that. I’m trying to think if we personify other diseases in the same way, and it doesn’t seem like it. Cancer seems personal. It seems crafty and sneaky and it doesn’t fight fair. And this morning, it stole from Canada a real fighter, a tough and bright and incredibly energetic person who can’t be replaced. Goodbye from us. We’ll miss you, Jack.
No summing this mess of a post up, I’m afraid. Photos from holiday to come at some later time. Maybe when the tomatoes are good and canned.