The Real New Year
As a friend recently commented, the start-up of the school year always feels like the real New Year. Here at our house, we’re going out of our way to prove this to be true. We’ve got a tentative weekly schedule mapped out on pink construction paper and filled almost to bursting (with room made, it must be said, for each of the parents to pursue extracurricular interests, aka sanity; Kev’s got hockey and soccer; I’ve got sibs night, girls’ night, and an evening class). We’ve also spent several of Kevin’s holiday days rearranging the house. Top photo: the boys’ room. Note crib nuzzling bunk bed. The next two photos depict CJ’s former bedroom / my office / playroom. It is now excessively, almost disturbingly, clean and empty-feeling. The plan is to expand the purposes of said room over time: it will remain a playroom, and my office (yay! I can now work after the kids go to bed!), and we’re also calling it the study, where children seeking quiet can sit and read or work at the disturbingly empty table that currently has no chairs. It’s a start. Eventually, I’m envisioning several tall bookshelves and another communal computer. I love imagining our house evolving as our children grow and change. Which child will mine out a room in the basement? Or perhaps the attic?While I reorganized the office, Kevin flipped piles of blueberry pancakes. By the time I’d ventured downstairs, none remained. See that last one? CJ did. He wanted it. He is now sleeping the sleep of the contented blueberry belly.
A Grand Debauch
To celebrate their recent wedding, my brother and brand-new sister-in-law hosted a party at their farm, complete with festively blue-and-white striped tent (yuh-huh, it rained off and on, and somehow that just added to the experience), pig roast, bonfire, sparklers, marshmallows, kegs, music, mud, and a device that shot potatoes into the netherworld. Let’s just say it was exactly the wild time that was called for, fun for all ages, complete with a few necessary sparks of danger. Just add fire. A moment that returns to me now: lying in our tent, trying to get CJ back to sleep, listening to the younger/child-less crowd scream out the lyrics to “Sabotage.” Apparently (I can actually picture this) my middle brother somehow managed to get his feet well above his head in a display of dancing virtuosity. How late was this? I have no idea. As soon as we arrived, I lost all track of time, and that was sweet, too. A day and night out of time.And this week Kevin’s on holiday, and we are getting organized, hanging out, moving at our own pace for a few more blissful days before we return to routine. Let the good times roll.
A Few of My Favourite Things
Kids who make their own lunch. And arrange it on a table they’ve set up themselves.
Children who read. 
A baby who still nurses from time to time.
Tiny front-yard gardens that produce actual tomatoes to be picked by girls still wearing pajamas.
The smell of a lime being sliced open, which makes me think we should up and move down south to a country where these would be locally grown (along with mangoes and avocadoes).
What Is That, Mommy? That’s Art.
Here’s an article I stumbled across online that offers a tiny window into the wastelands of CanLit obscurity. It rang rather horribly true. I’ve spent this summer deliberately not writing. Not writing poetry, not writing stories, not writing anything except the occasional blurb-like blog entry. Instead, I’ve been going, doing, cooking, eating, drinking, biking, talking, dozing, rising, reading. At first, I thought I’d go crazy without an outlet for my imagination; oddly, it’s been the opposite, which is frightening me ever so slightly as I prepare to return to a more regular writing life, afforded by children returning to school, and regular babysitting hours funded by dwindling grant monies.
My heart is querying: why? And I’m querying: heart, can you bear to return to that sheaf of rejected poems? Can you bear to begin again another new project? Can you bear to travel to those dark and lonely places?
It’s occurred to me that were I to remove the ambition of being a writer from my psyche, mine would be a full and fulfilling life. With that hole of doubt and hope plastered over, life looks simple–not simplistic. A clean wall on which to hang new photographs, less mirrors.
This post isn’t a question. It’s the hum of an observation.
But here’s a question: what if the gifts I’ve interpreted as belonging to “writer,” actually belong to some other vocation?
I know I’m good at: expressing emotions, witnessing moments, sitting quietly, focussing deeply, finding humour, sharing beauty in imagery and language, listening, reflection, taking responsibility, organizing, planning, assessing situations and staying flexible.
I know sometimes I’m: too introspective, overly analytical, reticent, impatient. Sometimes my expectations (for myself and for others) are way too high. I eat cheese almost every night before bed. My favourite dream hasn’t change since childhood, and it involves riding a wild horse.
Enough with the sequitors and non-. I will leave this post as … to be continued. Ain’t life interesting?
Wedding, July 22, 2009
Apparently, I stopped taking photos at this point. But these few made it onto the camera, and I send them forth into the crowded perpetuity that is Blogland. The first were taken while we were waiting for photographs, just goofing around under the tent. It stopped raining and the sun burst forth just as the ceremony began. Verklempt, I was.May their lives together be blessed.