Ideas
My girl takes after me. I like to write my ideas down. I have to write my ideas down, more precisely. It’s my version of “thinking out loud,” and I recommend it to my older children when they are having trouble with anything: mean siblings, unfair situations, anger management, you name it.
Yesterday, I took my own advice. The big kids are at overnight camp, and the little kids are at a dance camp during the mornings, just for this week; and I have no projects on the go. I’ve completed the triathlon, and the related Chatelaine.com blog. I am waiting for line edits on The Juliet Stories. I seem unwilling to commit to a new character and a new story, just yet. I am at the crux of something. Restless. Curious. So I spent the morning talking to myself in terrible printing (barely legible, even to me) inside the pages of a handy notebook.
Did anything come of it? But of course! If not exactly peace of mind, then peace of purpose.
My mother has a phrase she uses often: She likes to “stay open to the possibilities.” And while there’s plenty to recommend the idea, I’ve decided that rather than staying open to the possibilities, I prefer to pursue, invite, and seek out possibilities–and when the time is right, to choose and to commit, which is kind of the opposite of staying open to more and more and more. Commitment means closing off possibilities–at least, some of them. But it also means believing in the possibilities before you and available to you, and not forever hoping that something better may be waiting around the corner. It’s kind of like getting married. When I commit, I like to get it right. That comes with a certain amount (okay, a giant unreasonable amount) of agonizing and analyzing.
But I’m seeing that commitment can be lighter than that, too. I have before me a flexible year. Certain elements are inflexible: my youngest is still a preschooler for whom I am the primary caregiver. But depending on my income generation, there are childcare options to supplement my responsibilities. And I am at home. I can juggle. I’m not tied to the structured hours of a 9-5 job.
One thing became very clear during yesterday’s brainstorming: I am finding more satisfaction from expanding my working life–my public life, essentially. To connect, to be engaged with the world–it’s what I want.
Something clear to me at this exact moment, as my littlest leans his face onto my leg and says, “I’m bored!” is that I’m not a great mother when I’m typing on the computer or trying to think. The balance … is so imperfect.
Beauty
Children with sparklers, on the farm.
An excerpt from a letter to the editor, published in The Globe and Mail newspaper this past weekend, on the subject of government subsidies for the arts: “Canada subsidizes war. Canada subsidizes car companies. Canada subsidizes oil companies. Why shouldn’t Canada subsidize beauty?”
Best beach day
This is our favourite beach. It’s never too busy, but there are plenty of interesting people to watch. And lots of waves.
We settle in, spread out blankets and towels, and stay awhile. We take picnic food and eat in the sand. I read.
Some of us build.
Some of us cast ourselves upon the sand … face-first.
The water is really cold at this time of year. The sand is hot. Plus we were all up late last night burning things in the bonfire. So we’re tired. We can do whatever we want. We’re on holiday.
Bliss.
Camping
Camping with class: two rooms, bay windows, cereal buffet. (We buy cereal only in the summertime, as a treat, and it’s a good strategy for gaining an extra half hour of parental dozing).
Notice CJ’s eye? We like to make it a tradition to have at least one child with a mystery ailment on our Canada Day camping trip. This time it was CJ and a well-placed bug bite that made him look like a miniature boxer, post-bout. CJ also starred in a classic first-aid moment of panic while Kevin was in Tim Horton’s getting coffee (about an hour after this photo was taken). The kids and I were waiting in the car. CJ started yelling about something up his nose. “Did he say ‘rock’?” I asked (not at all calmly). Yup, a little fossil he’d found on the farm and decided to put up his nose (“Why?” the others wondered, but there are no answers to questions like these). In short order, the rock was removed. By lollipop stem. As grabbed from one of the car’s compartments (what? no first aid kit?). Quick thinking, Mama. AppleApple thought it might cheer CJ up to get to suck on said lollipop post-op. But we saved it for later. Because you never know.
This is the fifth summer of camping on Chach and B’s lawn, under the apple tree. Is it an apple tree? Lots of birds singing in the dawn.
Next on the day’s agenda: the beach. But first, a detour for some coffee. Lord have mercy.
Annual burning of the schoolwork
Albus saves his schoolwork all year long in anticipation of this wonderful moment. This year, his sisters joined in, too, and CJ spent the evening racing around, searching the grass for things to burn. Thanks to my brother and sister-in-law for providing the bonfire. And the land for pitching a tent. And the indoor plumbing (not pictured).
