Slow burn
We’ve added an element to the house: FIRE. It’s a gas stove, not wood-burning, placed in the centre of the wall in our main room. I’m sitting in front of it as I type, with my feet up (sorry, treadmill desk; I’m cheating on you with my new flame). As you can see from the photo below, this room remains a long-term work in progress. Kevin and I have two plans, one a total dream and the other something we could hack together ourselves with some help from Ikea. The latter is likely the route we’ll take… when we get a spare moment. Meanwhile, the room looks like this:
I read to the kids in front of the fire last night, snuggling up for the first chapter of Farmer Boy, which CJ had strongly objected to reading (but I can’t read any more Calvin & Hobbes comics, which he loves but totally doesn’t get, requiring a lot of difficult explication). After some stomping around, and “I’m not listening to that,” he came around to “Fine!” when he realized what he’d be missing out on — namely the snuggling in front of the fire.
Farmer Boy begins with children walking through deep wintry snow to a schoolhouse that seems remarkably lawless and dangerous, the scene of potential violence and humiliation where big boys want to “thrash” the teacher and the teacher is considered especially kind because, unlike previous teachers, he does not beat a little boy for not knowing how to spell. The Wilder children are close in age to our family: Royal is 13, Eliza Jane is 12, Alice is 10, and Almanzo is 8. Almanzo, the littlest, has to carry the dinner pail (CJ, the littlest: “That’s not fair!”). By chapter’s end, CJ was hooked. Here’s what the Wilder children found in their dinner pail: bread and butter and sausage, donuts and apples, and one big flaky apple turnover each. (CJ: “Do they only have one nutrition break?” Me: “Yes, but they call it dinner, not nutrition break.”)
We only read one chapter, but it took ages; the conversation around the story could have gone on and on. The little kids were tucked into bed quite late, and Kevin left for hockey. When I came downstairs, the big kids were so perky and happy and chatty that I couldn’t send them to bed. It was the fire. We just couldn’t help but gather and linger and talk … about everything and anything. I learned more about Albus’s school day than I’ve heard all year. They wanted to know what school subjects I was bad at (domestic science and art), and what I looked like in grade 7 (plain and unfashionable: I mostly wore my hair in braids), and I could see them wondering, would I have liked Mom? I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been cool enough for Albus. But I grew up so differently from them: never staying in the same place for more than a few years, often the new kid at school, shifting between countries and cultures. By age 12, I’d lived in four different countries, and moved approximately 10 times. The life I’m offering to my children is a settled one, rooted, with privileges that they take for granted, and that I remember not even bothering to envy as a child, because they weren’t things I wanted or needed. Swim lessons, sports teams, fancy gadgets and the “right” shoes and clothes. I was a clueless 12-year-old: dreaming about getting a pony. At the end of grade seven, we moved to a farm and I got a pony! I never felt deprived.
It’s funny how we want to give our kids the things we didn’t get (i.e. swim lessons); but also give them the things we valued from our childhood. I valued my freedom to explore, and I valued being an outsider. It gave me a special status, a special vantage point from which to observe. My kids aren’t getting those things; they’re getting rides to soccer fields instead, and new jeans. What terrifies me is raising entitled kids. I struggle constantly not to do too much for them, to ask them to pitch in for the benefit of the family (and not to earn an allowance, another perk they have, which I did not grow up with). I want them to do the right thing; but more importantly, I want them to choose to do the right thing, not be forced or punished into doing it. You know? I want their inner fires stoked.
So here’s my slow-burning hope. Gathering, talking, sharing, instilling values (one hopes), connecting, laughing: these years go by so fast. Last night, I let the kids stay up late. It seemed like a rare occasion, but I hope it happens often, now that we have something to gather around, something warm and ever-changing and comforting.
Imagine your way to success
DJ is posing for the camera, which we’re all finding hysterical
Somehow, last week’s brief thaw fooled me, despite knowing better, into thinking that spring-like conditions were in the offing. I keep stepping outside and registering the cold as a shock — as a personal affront — as if it weren’t absolutely to be expected at the end of February. The windchill registered at -21C on my run this morning, for heaven’s sake! AppleApple has told me that on April 1st, she is wearing a sweater to school no matter how cold it is. I was just glad she didn’t set that particular deadline for March 1st.
To further gather my thoughts regarding yesterday’s post on fear and unwinding, I would like to observe that there’s a fine line between acknowledging and reflecting on one’s fears, and becoming mired and stuck in an introspective feedback loop of one’s fears. I feel like I’m atop a small hill that I’ve been climbing for awhile, and this is a good place to pause and acknowledge that it was hard to trust my brain post-concussion. It was hard, and it was scary, but I don’t want it to colour my life. I’ve got other hills to climb.
That’s why I played soccer a few weekends ago. That’s why I write every day. That’s why I meet friends. That’s why I want to go out dancing and do kundalini yoga again and get a decent pair of snow pants and maybe some cross country skiis so I can play outside whatever the weather — take that, February! I’m a huge believer in imagining your way to success. You have to know where you want to go or you’ll never get there.
Writing and meditation and reflection are expressions I’m naturally drawn to as an introspective person. It’s why I’m a writer, I am sure. But life is lived concretely. It’s hands in bread dough. It’s running as the sky grows light. It’s vacuuming the dog hair (or teaching the five-year-old how to vacuum the dog hair).
Here’s what I’m visualizing. And doing.
My big (overarching) goals for the year:
* write the first draft of a new novel
* promote Girl Runner
* create a solid curriculum for my creative writing class
My small (everyday) goals for the year:
* read
* write daily meditations
* run, weight lift, yoga, spin, bike, dance, play soccer
* help and support my family
* give the kids more responsibilities around the house
* bake
* offer and accept invitations to spend time with friends
* play the piano and sing
I could go on. But that’s a good start.
two Saturdays ago: this was taken after we all pitched in to clean the house together; I hope to blog more about this new plan, if all goes well
A total side note that spoke to the fitness guru in me: I read in yesterday’s newspaper that sprinting is more beneficial to the aging body than distance running (the caution being that you need to be a strong runner, and probably a distance runner, before attempting sprints, because non-fit sprinting an excellent way to injure yourself.) No wonder I love soccer so much — it’s basically sprinting, except you get to chase a ball.
I also read that going for a walk has an almost medicinal effect on the mind and body. Why don’t we build our cities and communities around that simple concept? Imagine the health benefits. Imagine how we’d all be walking off the edges of our worries. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing?
Unwinding
I went away for the weekend.
I needed to be unwound. That’s what it felt like: a slow and steady unwinding of the tightly knotted self. It was almost like I’d forgotten how to have fun. How to partake of fun. How to be fun.
Responsibility requires armour, maybe.
I skiied on this frozen lake. I hadn’t been on cross country skiis since childhood, but it felt like I could have gone forever. It’s much easier to glide across the snow than to slog through the snow in running shoes. Winter’s long long iteration spoke so differently when I was gliding like a hot knife through butter into the wind. Isn’t this a blast, it said.
Our oven has been fixed, have I mentioned this?
AppleApple baked an apple-cranberry crisp to christen it. The crisp took all evening to prepare, and we devoured the entire pan in fifteen minutes flat. Fooey made brownies a few days later. I’ve used it to bake potatoes, but that’s all so far. I’ve got to get some veggies roasting while winter’s still on.
Oh, yeah, winter’s still on. I checked the 7-day weather forecast, and it’s going to be cold, cold, and also, cold.
I’ve come home thinking: I’ve got some work to do. I don’t mean the laundry or the scheduling or even writing. I mean something different. Maybe I don’t even mean work. I mean: I’d like to figure out how to unwind myself. How to be unwound. How to break down my fears.
I don’t like to think of myself as fearful, but it’s there, so why hide it or hide from it? I’m not afraid of external challenges; I accept many things I cannot change. What I fear is closer to the bone: it is the bone, and the guts, the heart, the spirit. I fear the limits of my mind and imagination, and the limits of a body that ages and changes. And I’m afraid of my fears, closing me off from laughter and lightness of heart.
But I’m not afraid to call them out. And I’m not afraid to chase the light — or maybe it’s enough simply to turn toward it. Throw open the windows and doors. Bask. It might be cold, cold, cold, but the days are getting longer, the sunlight is growing stronger.
AppleApple is obsessed with names. Yesterday, while we were sitting around the supper table, she looked up all of our names in one of her (many) baby name dictionaries: according to this one, Carrie derives from Caroline, which means small and strong. I like that very much.
“Like a bird on a branch”
dress-fitting
I just accidentally erased the most darling photos of CJ, taken by AppleApple, after Fooey had styled his hair into a swoop across his forehead. I’ve lost other things over the years, too, to digital carelessness or breakdown. It’s always hard to believe something’s gone, when it’s gone. But those comical photos are gone. Loss is a painful emotion, complicated by regret. I’ll get over it in a moment. This post will suffer from their absence, however. Photos affect tone, and those were really funny photos. But these photos are lovely too, taken during a recent fitting; my mom is making AppleApple a dress with puffed sleeves and a puffed skirt (that she might wear to my sister’s wedding this summer).
There’s a commercial running during the Olympics right now with the tagline: Your someday is here. It shows athletes ready to compete, while in the background run faded film scenes of their child-selves, practicing their sport. I find myself curiously affected by these ads; I’m not moved to tears, I’m moved to a faint frisson of panic. Your someday is here. Yikes. Talk about pressure. It also whispers to me: your time will be here and gone before you know it. (I’m obviously in a cheery headspace.) Because doesn’t it also shout: Everything you’ve worked for has brought you here! Celebrate! Enjoy the fruits of your labours!
This week, the Globe and Mail ran a comprehensive obituary on Mavis Gallant. It was heart-breaking to read that she spent her last decade “plagued by ill health and poverty.” Poverty. That word guts me. I reflect on the number of times I read and re-read Gallant’s stories during the past decade, for inspiration, for pleasure, and to admire and try to parse her technical skill as a writer, and how that pleasure received should have been repaid, somehow. Yes, I’ve bought her books over the years. But considering how many times I’ve read them, those purchases were bargains. How to repay a writer for her gift? How to offer appreciation that affords a great writer simple comforts as she ages? Gallant said in an interview in 2006 that “luckily” she had the temperament to be a fiction writer: “I never wanted to own anything — like a bird on a branch.” So maybe I’m projecting my own worries about future financial stability onto a writer who perched above all that, like a bird on a branch. She always noted that her name, Mavis, meant song-bird.
Mavis Gallant was 91 years old when she died.
It’s hard to believe she’s gone. Loss is a painful emotion, complicated by regret.
A series of unfortunate events
I’m writing this post in bed, because it’s bedtime, and because I can, thanks to my precious and much-appreciated laptop. On a day when I spent five hours driving children around to their various activities, waiting outside of their various activities, and folding laundry during the down-time, I just feel like writing before bed, please. (I also spent at least an hour this afternoon watching Canada play Latvia in an Olympic hockey game, while live-texting results to my brother, who was in a meeting, so I really shouldn’t complain about time wasted.)
I want to tell you about the worst hour in recent memory, which happened yesterday evening, just upon arriving home from AppleApple’s soccer practice. I’d made advance plans to meet my siblings for a drink, basically as soon as I’d arrived home from AA’s soccer practice, and I was really looking forward to sharing a pitcher and catching up, as some of us haven’t seen each other since Christmas, and also because the day had started rather on the wrong foot when a dog made a deposit in the front hall, which I stepped in without realizing, and then tracked around the house in the dark, while up at 5AM to take AA to swim practice. Which meant that when the deposit was discovered, in the light of day, to have been tracked all around, I was on my hands and knees cleaning it up before breakfast, which put me in rather an unpleasant mood.
Suffice it to say, I was looking forward to that pitcher of beer with my sibs.
We pulled into the driveway. Kevin appeared rather mysteriously from the back yard, looking a bit perturbed. “What are you up to?” I asked, still, in my imagination, about to depart.
“DJ seems to have escaped,” he said.
“And DJ’s so dumb!” Fooey said worriedly. “She won’t know what to do!”
Well. The panic began. Children circled the house, calling for DJ. I thought I heard her collar jingling. We searched the snow forts in the back yard, the garage, all the rooms of the house. It seemed apparent that she had indeed escaped, likely through the back gate which had been difficult to close with all this snow. The pitcher of beer began to fade, along with the plate of nachos I’d conjured up to accompany it. I decided to eat a leftover baked potato while Kevin drove off to widen the search. AA and Fooey ran around outside awhile longer, then they both came in and AA announced that she was putting on pants. She was still in her soccer kit. Pants sounded like a good idea. She popped in again not long after to say she was going “that way.”
Kevin drove up, no dog.
“Where’s AA?” he asked.
I thought she was in the front yard, or maybe around the corner. But no. Apparently, she’d gone further afield. And that’s when the real panic began. Kevin headed out in the truck, again, this time to look for our lost daughter. She is 11, I reminded myself.
“But she has a terrible sense of direction!” Fooey reminded me.
I gave her twenty minutes, and then I called the police. Perhaps an over-reaction, but it was dark and growing late, and cold, and my kid had left the house in soccer cleats, in an emotional state, and she hadn’t come back. I was kind of losing my mind, actually. Meanwhile, a couple of my sibs turned up and offered to drive around looking for AA, too, even though the snow banks were so high that no one driving by could spot either a child or a dog on the sidewalk anyway. My sister confided later that she thought, “We’re going to be driving around looking for AA, and we’re going run over DJ.”
Kevin’s texts had ceased.
The kindly dispatcher did not berate me for permitting my 11-year-old to search by herself for our lost dog in the snow after dark while wearing soccer cleats. Or that I couldn’t manage a detailed description of her coat. Or I didn’t know the colour of my lost daughter’s pants!
The back door whammed open. There was AppleApple, in tears because she hadn’t found DJ. I let the dispatcher know that the search was off (sorry, DJ).
“I couldn’t find DJ!”
“It’s not DJ we’ve been looking for–it’s you!” I told her, to her complete astonishment. She’d been so focused on searching (and of course she knew that she was perfectly fine) that she had no idea she’d been gone for a good half an hour.
Meanwhile, Kevin was slow to return. Turns out, he’d gotten into a small car accident on a side street. Yeah, it was that kind of an hour.
But the thing is, all’s well that ends well. AppleApple came home, safe and sound. The truck suffered a minor paint scrape that’s purely cosmetic. And not long after, a woman called to let us know she’d found DJ. In fact, she’d picked up DJ not far our house, probably within minutes of DJ’s original escape. DJ, who is not known for her arresting intellect, was crossing the street. (“And she’s colour blind, so she can’t even see when the stop lights are green or red!” Fooey noted.) Kevin and the girls went to pick her up, halfway across the city. DJ responded with typical DJ-ness to the arrival of her relieved entourage: she was largely indifferent, but agreeable to riding home in the car (she loves riding in cars). It appeared that she’d been nicely brushed during the interlude.
But I heard all about this later because I’d left with my siblings for that pitcher of beer. Which at that point seemed hardly sufficient, although it had to do. I was too tired for genuine debauchery. And my brother Cliff is the father of a four-month-old who rises at 5:30AM, so he was too tired, too. And my brother Christian had to leave as soon as we arrived for a soccer game. So it wasn’t quite what it was going to be, in my imagination, and I didn’t bother with the nachos. But it was still a good ending as far as I’m concerned.