I’ve been doing a lot of training
I love the summer photos. Bright skies, bright colours, squinting eyes.
This past Thursday evening illustrates our family’s collective obsession with soccer. With surprising ease, between the hours of 5:30-8:30pm, five out of six of us were involved on soccer fields in multiple locations. Kev and Albus scarfed down hot quiche and were at their practice at 5:30. Using the carshare car, I dropped AppleApple at her practice at 6:45, then drove CJ and Fooey up to another field where Fooey had a game at 7:15 (Kevin coaching). We met Kevin and Albus in the parking lot with a picnic snack, and I zoomed over to Cambridge to play a 7:30 game with my indoor team. Kevin and kids picked up AppleApple on their way home, and serendipitously saw me, just after I’d returned the carshare car, walking home with my gear. Talk about coordination. It felt effortless.
Of course, Thursday also marked the end of regular season play for Fooey — we’ll have to find a new groove, all over again.
On Saturday, Kevin and Fooey had an end-of-season “festival,” and we all came along to cheer. In the afternoon, AppleApple had a goalkeeping clinic, and I brought my yoga mat to stretch. Afterward, we biked to a nearby pool for a cooling dip.
On Sunday, I drove around southwestern Ontario, retrieving one child from a friend’s cottage and dropping two at overnight camp (one not my own): Albus will be gone for two weeks. CJ is already bereft. I arrived home in time to drag my well-numbed butt off to my evening soccer game (we won!).
I’ve been doing a lot of training. Training for what? Not sure, exactly. I’ve signed up for the Toad (25km trail run), and that seems to have given me the drive to follow a regular training schedule. I’ve gone steadily, from weight classes to soccer games to runs, for over two weeks now, without missing a day. Thankfully, I’ve got time for long runs again. I’ve gone out the past two Saturdays, aiming to run approximately an hour and a half to begin. I made it 15km the first week, 16km this past week (in the same amount of time). Sloooow.
It feels different to train myself back up, having done this before. The first time I trained to run long distances (two years ago), I was doing something I’d never imagined I could. So it was a pretty amazing process. Every extra kilometre felt like a miracle. But now I know what I’ve been capable of, and I’m so far from it. It could be discouraging — and I’m grateful that I don’t feel discouraged. I do feel slow. But I recognize that long runs are about reminding yourself that you’ve always got more than you think you do. That’s another way of saying: you have to learn to trust your body. That’s what endurance is actually about, as much as it’s about putting on mileage (though mileage is critical, too).
(And maybe, too, it’s harder to trust your body after injury. I am running on an ankle that is improved, but still not perfectly healed.)
Training for what? On reflection, I think the what doesn’t matter, it’s the why. Training is just a way for me to keep going. I’m in the midst of some very challenging work. I could get discouraged or weary, and I need, somehow, to remain calm, focused, and strong. Training seems to remind me of my own capacity to work hard. It gives me a parallel (and easier) kind of work to counterbalance the extremely quiet interior efforts required here in my office. Training every single day toward an end that isn’t obvious doesn’t feel frivolous or extreme, though it may look that way. I couldn’t sit still — hold so still — without some sense of being in motion. I’d go crazy, I think.
I’ll admit this is not an easy time in my professional life. It’s a lovely time in my personal life. I’m a truly fulfilled mother of wonderful kids. But professionally I feel a constant low-level anxiety. I wonder about the choices I’m making. I question my direction. I’m unsettled.
This may be a function of being a creative person. I wonder: am I by nature an unsettled and restless woman? Then I need a firm, sound body to carry me through. My mind settles when my body is working hard. It gives me peace.
Responsibility, power, freedom
I’ll miss this routine, now that we’re done: riding our bikes to swim lessons every morning for the past two weeks. Fooey is a demanding task-master who had us out the door early every day, with much grumbling and foot-dragging (on my part). This kid! She is so impressively punctual and organized. I started to sympathize with how the kids must feel as I urge them, constantly, to ready themselves and exit the house: I didn’t want to go yet! I still had things to do! I hadn’t even gotten a sip of my coffee! But, no, Fooey insisted: We are leaving and NOW!
Okay, then.
I’ll miss the routine and seeing them paddling in the pool, but I won’t miss drinking cold coffee. Or the endless visits to the bathroom (that rec centre has an instant laxative effect on my youngest — seriously, we just have to walk through the door and he’s making his announcement about where we must go immediately, and why.)
The older kids were very independent and biked together, not with us, except for the last day when we all had a snack afterward (hot chocolate, french fries, a bag of chips, and a handful of multi-coloured banana candies from the 25 cent machine). Then we biked to the library together, and home. With five of us on bicycles, I felt like a mama duck leading her family along treacherous roadways, on the look-out for danger.
Here is babysitter AppleApple, post-swim, preparing a picnic to take to the park. Behind her, observe her little brother in the midst of a meltdown because he does not want to go to the park for a picnic. He will not go! He hates both picnics and parks! Etc. Well, somehow she got him there. I’ve been hugely impressed and gratified and proud of my kids as both babysitters and babysats (picnic meltdown notwithstanding). Lunches are being planned and prepared independently, I’m writing alone in my office without being disturbed, and there are no electronic devices involved whatsoever. Sure, I’m doing more laundry due to wet/sandy/muddy clothing, and no one appears to have taken up vacuuming, but these are tiny details.
With responsibility comes power, with power comes freedom? I just keep telling my kids how great they are.
When “after” doesn’t look much better than “before”
The problem with these before and after photos, is that the “afters” remain works-in-progress. You’ll see what I mean.
Living-room, before: giant TV cabinet in mid-removal. (Why base a room around a piece of furniture we almost never use?)
Living-room, after. Removal of TV cabinet reminds us, screamingly, that we haven’t repainted this room since moving in TEN YEARS AGO. Ouch. So that’s on the new to-do list. Also: move art, or change art, now hanging way too high above couch on wall that desperately needs painting. But the good news is that the room, as you see, is being used as we hoped: for reading and socializing.
Basement, before. I didn’t take the before-before photo, which would have shown this area looking impressively disastrous, jammed with futon frames and soccer equipment. In fact, this is after Kevin cleaned, in anticipation of the arrival of something you’ll see in the photo below. When I saw how nice it looked, I had the brilliant and possibly tequila-fuelled idea of moving the TV cabinet down here and turning this space into a games room. The idea seemed much less brilliant the next day as we dismantled the damn thing outside in a sudden rain shower in order to get it to fit down the basement stairs. I can assure you, it’s never coming back up.
Basement, after. See: we made room for a foosball table! All the kids can play!
But it still looks like a basement. Like an unfinished basement, to be precise, and that is what it will probably always look like. We may move the foosball table to the far end of the room in order to make the Wii/TV cabinet more accessible, but we don’t have any grand plans for this space. It’s got low ceilings, exposed pipe, stone walls, and ugly old shelves. Someday I’ll get around to clearing the shelves of all the things we’ll never use, but that’s about the extent of my grand plans, and I find myself in no great rush to knock that one off the new to-do list.
Stretching by the soccer field
A few things. If you don’t hear from me, assume I’m writing. Or summering.
So far, this holiday has made a lot of sense. The kids are swimming in the mornings, and I write (working on revisions) all afternoon. We’re travelling by bicycle as much as we can. I’m back to running and soccer, so life it is good. It is filled with goodness.
I took my yoga mat and stretched on the grass, Saturday afternoon, while watching my daughter practice her keeper skills. Rain was lightly falling. It’s been hot, humid. It was just about the perfect afternoon.
No photos of my younger daughter, but you never know, she might step in and make a claim for the title “soccer girl,” too. On Thursday evening, Kevin and I watched in amazement as our sturdy and determined seven-year-old carried the ball up the field, beating out player after player, and calmly fired it into the net. Five times. Seriously. We know she’s got the skills, but this was the first we’d seen the fire-in-the-belly. Our jaws were dropping. We were so curious to know what had inspired her, but all Fooey said afterward when we asked how did you just do that??? was, “It was a different goalie, so it was easy.” Um, okay.
(I wish I could say that. And I wish I had even half her foot skills. I mean, she dominated. That is not a word Kevin and I tend to associate with sweet Fooey.)
I love the very different personalities that pour out of these fascinating individuals I get to claim as my kids. I love trying to figure them out. What makes you tick? What gets you excited? What brings you to life?
It’s berry season in our backyard.
And it looks like rain, again.
We’ve got more soccer coming up this evening, I’ve got laundry to drag off the line, and another half an hour to direct toward Girl Runner. I love when life makes sense like this. It doesn’t always. I spend a lot of time flailing around worrying about direction, although I don’t love to blog about those parts. (Maybe I should? So life doesn’t look too perfect?)
I’m super-thankful when everything seems to fit together.
A list of all that is summery and good
So here’s how our week started: I signed my kids up for swim lessons at the wrong pool, failing to notice my error until two of the kids were stranded at the wrong pool, all by themselves, having biked over with their dad who then went on to work. I was to join them with the younger kids awhile later, and we’d all bike home together. I was in the kitchen packing my backpack when the phone rang. Daughter at pool. “Why are you calling?!” (This can’t be good!) “Mom, you signed us up for the Swimplex!” “What?! Oh no!”
And they were right. I had. There’s a first time for everything, this not being a mistake I’ve made ever before.
They missed their lesson. Instead, they biked safely home together, despite having to manage a detour around construction on their route. (I only heard about this long after the fact.) I biked with the little kids to the Swimplex (they did not miss their lesson). All was well.
Conclusion: My children seem to know how to manage. This is good.
That’s what we’re up to this week: swim lessons in the morning, big kids babysitting in the afternoon. I’ve been working on revisions on the novel and prepping for my teaching gig this fall.
Canada Day was weirdly productive. I sat down and read through the entire novel manuscript, which really needed to be done. I hadn’t touched it since February, so my editing eyes were very clear, and I’m positively teeming with solutions. I starting backwards, and just letting myself take whatever route feels right. Writing new scenes seems to be what’s coming first.
I also gave both boys a haircut. And vacuumed.
We’ve been biking everywhere. It’s hot.
I’m back to running again, tentatively testing out the ankle with short, slow runs aided by an ankle brace. I’ll test it further during a soccer game tonight. Wish me luck. I’ve taken a risk and signed up for the Run for the Toad this fall (25km trail run I’ve done the past two years).
We stayed up awfully late at my brother’s birthday party last night, enjoying pizza, cake, and feats of strength by both my daughters. (The eldest picked up pretty much every party guest, I kid you not. I’m talking adults here. She went around the room.) So that was fun. And we could sleep in this morning, at least somewhat. I could hardly open my eyes, however. I think I ate too many spicy dill pickles yesterday. Puffy. Salt-retention. Too much information.
Our mint is growing wild. I need to get more time in the pool. I coached Fooey’s soccer team on Tuesday evening.
I’m just listing things off here, can you tell? The minutiae. It’s all I’ve got.