Sent and spent
I sent this pair off to buy something for lunch, for the second time this week. They went to Vincenzo’s and got sushi and soda pop. CJ ate a blue frosted cupcake before they were even home. “We tried the free samples!” (On Monday, I let them go to the grocery store to get something for lunch and they returned with: Corn Pops, Cap’n Crunch, mini chocolate chip cookies, and three cheese buns. I think I see improvement?)
Fooey is doing tennis camp this week, which is why she’s not been involved. (Side note: she’s been working on filling in a journal all about herself, and had this to say on the page with prompts about her parents. “The one thing I hope I never inherit from my mom is the way she … HAS NO STYLE.” And: “The one thing I hope I never inherit from my dad is the way he … HAS NO HAIR.” My attempts to defend myself were met with scorn. Well, justified perhaps, because that kid has style.)
It feels like a day for black and white.
Here is my desk, right now. On the left, see the syllabus I’m working on. In the middle, my BlackBerry, which flashes whenever I get a message (very distracting, but I must like being distracted; text me, please!). On the right, this week’s calendar full of to-do lists and daily events not to be forgotten. And on the computer screen, a message to my editor with the revised version of Girl Runner attached. Yup! She’s gone off. I’ve sent her on her way.
Kevin, who has been my first reader for as long as I’ve had a writing career, stayed up past midnight reading the new draft, and told me this morning that he couldn’t put it down. He offers the following blurbs: “I felt like I was running in Aggie’s shoes over a 100-year race.” And “The book had the perfect combination of pace and depth, just like the 800 metres.” And: “Normally I can read only a few pages at a time. I read half the book in one sitting.” As he’s obliged only to say good things, for the sake of our marriage, you might think this input is highly suspect, but I’m going with it. It’s been a summer of intense and sometimes crazy-making labour, and I can’t do more without a serious break from the material. And my editor is pleased to have it back on her desk again.
And now I give myself the respite of a week or so, before the madness of the fall schedule begins, to be quiet, peaceful, breathing, playing, and not working. Tall order.
One last thing. My next post is going to be about everything I’m excited for this fall. It really and truly is. Because there is so much coming in and now that I’ve sent the manuscript I can breathe and sit back and look at it all. And rest my head. And say thank you.
The light on the inside
Family news: On Friday, Fooey’s five-hour friend party came off without a hitch, and on Sunday, AppleApple left for a week at summer camp. She refused to take along a comb, saying she didn’t expect much showering to happen at camp, but agreed to bathe and brush through her (matted) hair immediately before departure. Hm. Still looks matted.
Book news: I’ve finished this round of revisions on Girl Runner. I printed a version yesterday and then tried to edit it while simultaneously playing board games with CJ. This worked better than expected, though only because CJ is very very creative with the rules (so I didn’t have to follow them precisely).
I’m not lacking for blog topics, but the topics that keep cropping up seem a bit grim. Ya’ll don’t want to hear about me being levelled in Sunday’s soccer game by a ball kicked with force at close range directly into my face, dropping me like a rag doll to the field, am I right? Teammates nearby were convinced I was knocked out, and I honestly don’t know. I lay there hearing voices, curiously removed, and trying to figure out how to open my eyes. I’ve never been hit like that before. It was like running into a wall at top speed.
It’s been that kind of a summer, spotted with the odd misfortune. Yet, I hasten to add, there’s been so much goodness to these months, all mingled in.
When I read old blog posts, say, from the era of toddler CJ and preschooler Fooey, I’m struck by how funny the scenes were, as I described them. Chaos was transformed into hilarity. I’m afraid the current iteration of my blog lacks for humour. It’s followed me where I’ve gone, and I’m so much less with the kids, so much more with my own pursuits. Maybe I take myself too seriously. On Sunday morning’s longish run, I began to think about this somberness I’m carrying around with me. I can feel it dragging on behind me, and I’m not sure what to attach it to. I think it has something to do with not starting midwifery school this fall, with instead sticking to the familiar script of mother, cheerleader, organizer, writer, with readings to prep for and grant deadlines to contend with and rejections to face down. Yes, I’ll be teaching a course this fall (and it’s already filled and I’ve received my first messages from prospective students addressing me as “Professor Snyder”), but, really, life looks much the same as always.
Whatever its cause, there is a sense of weight with me right now, and I find myself entertaining fantasies of moving, selling our house, going on sabbatical, travelling, buying a horse farm — you know, transporting myself somewhere else. Being someone else?
As I ran, on Sunday, I thought about how the things we imagine to be permanent in our lives are so often temporary, while the things that we imagine to be temporary may in fact be more permanent than we’d like to admit. I wondered: is this heaviness my new permanent? I keep expecting it to pass, yet despite moments of levity and relaxation, it continues to hang around.
I keep returning to her wisdom. Your ultimate responsibility is to the light on the inside of you.
Projects and tangents
Ten years ago, in late June, we moved into our house, two little babies in tow: Albus had just turned two and AppleApple was seven months. The house seemed enormous, and almost unfillable, but we seem to have solved that problem. Our bedroom is perhaps the one room in the house that remained untouched over the past decade. We added drapes. We moved bassinets in and out and in again. For awhile, my writing desk and computer were crammed in a corner (I wrote virtually nothing publishable during that stretch; weird, huh). But the walls remained the unpainted dull white plaster through which the lathe could be seen. Yes, that’s how unpainted our bedroom has been for the last decade.
So it took an invasion of bed bugs to move everything out and paint. Well, at least it happened.
Kevin stayed up late last night to finish it. We decided to go with a darker colour field on one wall against creamy-white ceiling and other walls. We chose a soothing deep blue with hints of purple.
“Your room looks beautiful!” Fooey told us this morning.
We’re debating whether there’s time to paint the living-room, too, which came freshly painted when we moved in, which was, as noted, ten years ago, and is now, not surprisingly, full of holes and scrapes. We are, however, also hosting a party for our eight-year-old tomorrow evening. Can we do it all?
birthday cake for birthday girl, with scrounged candles from junk drawer
Meantime, I actually (unbelievably!) turned over the last page of my manuscript yesterday evening, the version that holds my editor’s revisions. That doesn’t mean the book is ready to send back to her, but it does mean I’ve now worked through every single page and addressed every comment. Today it’s back to the beginning to see whether my many many many changes hold together. Good grief. I’m in a state of anxiety, let me tell you. I also note that we’ve got less than three weeks left of summer holidays. That’s me you hear crying out from the heart: nooooo!
:::
Here’s my tangent, which I post at risk of sounding ancient, crusty, and out of touch with young people these days (say that last bit in a quavery old woman voice for full effect).
I’ve been listening to top forty radio this summer. Sometimes all I want is a singable song while I drive home from a soccer game. Unfortunately, the songs with the good hooks seem to be highly inappropriate, not to mention misogynist in tone. (Blurred Lines, I’m frowning at you, with your fun sound and sticky bass line, which I would like to enjoy listening to, but can’t without censorship: there are kids in the car! And I’m a feminist!) So it was an odd relief to get snagged on Lorde’s Royals while stuck in traffic with CJ the other day. We both liked it. I think my ears were craving that clean choral sound, and a subject unrelated to booty, booty-calls, getting booty, shaking one’s booty, and anything else booty-related. It’s the female body as material object mixed up with materialism itself, and I hate the juxtaposition, and the shallowness and amorality underpinning it. There aren’t even any interesting metaphors in these songs. You know you want it. Um, no, I don’t, not all the freaking time! You’re boring me! C’mon top-forty songwriters! And then I came across Macklemore’s Same Love, and felt relief, too, to hear a straightforward political song with a lovely singable hook, on a top forty station. But I miss K’naan. Where’s he gone? Any other pop fans out there? Who are you listening to this summer?
The curator is in
on the Cataraqui trail
A legitimate concern about blogging, one I take seriously, is whether or not it turns a person into a curator of her own life rather than a participant. I have no answer for this, just instinctive response: if it feels off or forced, don’t do it. Maybe that’s why I’ve been taking less photos this summer, and also leaving my phone at home sometimes, shutting off, disconnecting.
But then I look back over this blog’s history and feel so appreciative of the scrapbook-like nature of its collection of years. Obscure CanLit Mama is almost exactly five years old. I was truly Obscure on the CanLit scene when I began blogging, and I’m only slightly less Obscure now, though much appreciative of the path forged. I wonder what the opposite of Obscure would be? Secure? Established? I’m uncomfortable with the thought of attaching those words to myself. My identity is tied up with being on the margins; but maybe that’s short-sighted and snobbish and needlessly, well, obscure.
My fears: One never wants to get too big for one’s britches. Pride goeth before a fall. Be careful what you wish for.
This is not the post I set out to write. It’s been almost two weeks since I had a chance to settle into my novel revisions, and I’ve missed it like homesickness. I’ve missed it like friendship, like comfort, like a good night’s sleep. Sitting at my desk and writing all day has become essential to my well-being, seems like. Maybe it always was, like running, and I didn’t know it. But I know it. Honestly, I could hug these words for being here right now, for letting me sit amongst them, for letting me think things through via some magical collaboration of mind and hands and eyes. Tap-tap-tap on the keyboard.
This is the post I set out to write.
The one about being a curator of my own life. Still, I would argue that I’m infinitely more participant than curator, that I’m only marginally curator, and that curation is a bit of a calling for me, being reflective by nature, wanting to gather and observe and make orderly. This blog represents only the smallest slice of experience. It’s my hand wrapped around a moment and then opening to let it go.
Here is yesterday:
We’d planned to do back-to-school shopping with my mother-in-law, who loves to shop. Instead, AppleApple sought me out (I was doing laundry in the basement) holding her arm at an odd angle, teary-eyed, to say she’d landed “funny” on the trampoline.
So, instead of shopping, I left my sister- and mother-in-law home with the other kids (Kev was golfing with his brother, lucky man), and we went to emerg. Many hours and several detailed x-rays later it was determined to be a bad sprain and not a fracture, which opened her summer back up again. We’d been sitting there together, bored, chatting, waiting, unable to stop ourselves from imagining the possible cast and all it would affect: camp, cottage, swim team, soccer team, piano. This was definitely a best-case scenario result.
DJ at DQ
We were home in time for supper. Kev and Albus were off to another soccer game, so after supper, the rest of us decided to walk the dogs to Dairy Queen. Spontaneity, family, scooter, stroller, bike, dogs, baby, sling, and a beautiful cool evening. Oh, and sweet treats for all. Pretty much vacation perfection. We took the long way home.
Then it was bathtime. Kev and Albus came home with another tied game under their belts, against the same team they played twice on the weekend — every game weirdly identical, with our boys going down by two goals, and coming back to tie it up in the second half. This third game, and the bizarrely harmonious result, lightened the mood between the two teams, which had been tense over the weekend.
I read from Little Town on the Prairie, with everyone listening. Little kids tucked and lights out.
Kevin is the blur in red and white
And then more spontaneity: the big kids and I went to watch Kev play soccer. My brother also plays keeper on the same team. It happened that a friend was there to watch her husband play, too, so we sat together under the lights on a picnic table and cheered, and made silly commentary, and generally had a blast, despite the mosquitos. Apparently the four of us made a bigger fan club than the team has had in ages, and our shouts were appreciated. We even made friends with a linesman who loaned us his bug spray. The game ended 0-0. We didn’t see the Perseids for the lights, but there was something about it all that brought me great comfort and joy. Being alive … how many moments do we get like this? As many as we want? As many as we leap into?
the trees behind the field looked like a painting (that’s my bro in net)
So I took out my phone and stole a few photos. Maybe it’s curation rather than participation, but I want to remember. I want to remind myself, when I’m busy and harried and it’s not summer anymore, that the best times are easy to come by, in a way. They’re there for the taking. You sit with your kids and shoot the shit. It’s so basic.
And then you come home and enjoy a beer with your sister-in-law and talk about things that want talking about, and you sleep, and you wake, and you work, and you pray, and you write it all out, if that’s what you’re made for.
running through beauty, in it and of it
Weekend update
It was fine weather for a soccer tournament. Coach Kevin led his boys’ team through to the finals, with proud fans cheering from the sidelines.
Kevin’s family is visiting, which boosted our audience numbers.
I almost never get to see my eldest play. The way the soccer schedules have worked out, AppleApple’s team plays the same nights as Kevin and Albus’s team, which means we’re almost always driving in opposite directions, to faraway fields, with Kevin and me updating each other by texts, and smaller children either dragged along or, more often, looked after by Grandma Linda. So I felt lucky to get to watch a couple of his games this weekend.
In the final, the boys came back from a 2-0 deficit to tie the game and force extra minutes, and then penalty shots. In the end, they didn’t win. But they’d played with such heart and without ever giving up, I wanted to hug each and every team member. (Don’t worry, I didn’t! Can you imagine the embarrassment that would cause?!)
At one tense point, AppleApple said to me, “I don’t know how you can stand to watch, Mom!” Considering she’s caused me some of my most heart-wrenching competitive viewing moments, I found this very amusing. She had to go to a nearby field and kick the ball to ease the tension. I don’t know how I can stand it, sometimes, either, but I’ve gotten good practice over the years. I can’t say it’s fun, exactly, but it’s thrilling, definitely, especially when seeing my child step up to a new level of play, and put his or her hard-earned skills to use. The reward is in the effort, I think, much more than the result, though it’s always more fun to win than lose.
I’m a fairly recent convert to team sports. There are so many positives that come from being part of a team — given good coaching, of course. Here’s what I look for and commend my kids on after games, win or lose: never giving up, hard work, keeping a positive attitude no matter what’s going on around them, thinking of the team as a whole, staying focused, clean play, respect for everyone on the field, communication, trying new skills, and playing with heart while not letting emotions take over. There was much to commend my boy on after this weekend’s tournament. I can’t take credit, but I can take pride.