Too hot to think
It’s too hot to think.
I’m as cranky as a baby with a heat rash.
Around 3:30AM, I lay awake and thought through how we might get air conditioning. It felt like the heat was lying on my chest, like it was a living creature, a pressure or weight that made it harder to breathe.
On Canada Day, we went to the beach. It felt safe, and it also felt like paradise, to be driving through lush Ontario countryside, undulating green, toward a deep, cold lake. It wasn’t that everything felt “normal,” but despite the differences between this summer and last summer — the complications of living in pandemic times — the possibility for adventure and temporary escape was proven to exist, too.
I’ve been running early in the morning, before it gets extra-hot. Despite all the stretching (dynamic pre-run; static post-run), my lower back aches as I sit here.
I’ve tried to write. But I’m not thinking in any organized fashion.
I’m going to take a trip to Dairy Queen this afternoon with a couple of the kids, we’ve made a plan, and part of my plan is to get a treat to deliver as a surprise to my mom … expeditiously, before it melts. She loves a strawberry sundae.
I’ve got a pile of rhubarb on the counter that needs to be made into something delicious. And loads of fresh greens in the fridge. Tiny eggs from Farmer Claire. Raspberry canes in the backyard loaded with fruit, on the cusp of ripening. Sprays of colourful flowers everywhere. This is a most bounteous season. But maybe not for story-writing.
It’s too hot to sleep.
It’s too hot to think.
xo, Carrie
June reflections
June Reflections
- What felt good this month? Honestly, it’s been a challenging month, with a lot of push-pull emotions. But this question is reminding me of all that’s been good, too. It felt good to re-enter the world, occasionally. I sourced several comfortable masks to carry in my purse. Started physio, the result of which is that I’ve been able to go for some early morning runs (personal moments of bliss; I hi-fived a tree branch this morning!). On Tuesday afternoons, I’ve been biking to pick up Fertile Farm’s CSA offerings, just like I did in the before-times. (We’re getting two different CSA boxes this summer, Tuesdays and Saturdays, so our Monday supper challenge is to finish all the greens in the house before their impending replenishment!) Strawberries and asparagus are in season: eating lots. My peonies bloomed, and I cut some of the blossoms and dried them, hoping their scent will last. We celebrated Father’s Day with homemade carrot cake, shared with my dad in the back yard. The back yard, by the way, is AMAZING. I’ve been joining Annabella for double yoga sessions on Saturday mornings. Hanging laundry on the line. I met with my girls’ soccer team on Zoom and we started a fitness challenge (which explains why I’m suffering through burpees every morning). The kids finished school, and yesterday morning, Calvin and I kicked off his summer holidays by drawing and writing together in our journals, like we’ve done in summer’s past, which is very good indeed. And, last but not least, Kevin’s been concocting fancy weekend drinks with herbs from his garden.
- What did you struggle with? My emotions. I’ve felt restless, sometimes bored, distracted by anxieties. Mental fatigue. Making case-by-case decisions about our family’s activities as invitations to socialize begin again: what’s low-risk, what’s doable, what are the compromises or modifications that make normalcy possible? I almost had a panic attack on a walk with a friend last week, when we ventured to a park that felt too crowded with unmasked strangers. I suspect my absorption of US news is affecting my perceptions of safety here in Southern Ontario, where the numbers of new infections are relatively low. Also recognizing that the sameness of my days is causing a crash in creativity. As the months grind onward, I crave variety, challenge, adventure, new sights and sounds. There’s not much growth in the comfort zone.
- Where are you now compared to the beginning of the month? More restless, less focused, but also more optimistic about our collective ability to adapt to post-pandemic life. Work-wise, I finished writing a complete first draft of the 16th century novel. It requires major revision, perhaps even rethinking, so I’ve set it aside to steep for awhile. In its absence, I haven’t landed solidly on a writing project as absorbing. However, I do have big news: this month I signed a contract with a major Canadian publishing house to publish my next novel (tentatively titled Francie’s Got a Gun; not set in the 16th century). It’s been a long time coming, and I’m slipping the news in here rather quietly; look for a more formal announcement once the manuscript is finalized (due date for revisions: January 31, 2021). Maybe by the time the book comes out (2022), we’ll be free to throw a big old-fashioned launch party, which is really the reason I wanted to publish a new book and I’m not even making that up. God, I love a good launch party. I’m going to spend the next 2 years planning it. All of that said, and as this rambling paragraph attests, I’m casting around right now looking for something to occupy my energies, as I wait for notes from my new editor, dip into other writing projects, and hang out with my children.
- How did you take care of yourself? This month, I looked after my physical health. I went to physio on the advice of my chiro. I did a tea cleanse for the first two weeks of June. Also: almost-daily cardio, dry brushing, stretching, yoga, reading for pleasure, weekly sibs check-ins, salads, homemade yogurt, journaling, evening walks with Kevin and Rose, planning some fun events for our summer holidays, meeting friends outdoors and for walks.
- What would you most like to remember? What it feels like to walk uptown again, after several months’ absence: how strange the air feels, how empty the streets, how heightened my awareness of surroundings. Eating ice cream with a friend on one of my first outings post-lockdown. How my brain has struggled to feel safe doing activities that were once so ordinary they required no thought. Also: Black Lives Matter, and the hope for change.
- What do you need to let go of? I need to let go of my desire to control, which is a desire to protect and a compulsion to try to prevent bad things from happening. I’ve noticed particularly in interactions with my children that I’m always on patrol, attempting to prevent disaster, messes, missteps, no matter how insignificant (“don’t leave that jar of pickles on the edge of the counter”; “did you put on sunscreen?”; be careful, watch out, don’t forget, did you remember to, have you thought about …). My watchfulness is not helping anyone. My hyper-vigilance renders me needlessly anxious, and also feeling pointlessly guilty and responsible for anything bad that happens that I haven’t prevented; but it’s also harming my kids, who deserve my trust, and who can really only learn from experience. Painful as that is to recognize. I’d like to stop putting up caution signs and issuing warnings, and just … let go … let go … and I mean this on all fronts, in both my professional and my personal life, I want to walk a path that honours and accepts all I can’t know, all I do not control. God, it’s hard. But stuck together in close quarters, lo these many months, I’ve seen the harm of it more clearly, and I’ll keep trying to open my hands, unclench my jaw, and let go.
xo, Carrie
Hopefully hoping
Last post, I wrote, somewhat tongue in cheek (I hope!) that it had just occurred to me that as I get older, I could be getting worse not better.
Here’s what comes to mind when I think worse, not better: Less ambitious, less courageous, more cautious, more conservative, less likely to throw myself into something new wholeheartedly, crabbier, boring, predictable, less engaged with the world, more fearful, content with the status quo, narrow-minded, petty, envious, self-indulgent, less willing to give of myself.
You probably have your own personal list of worse, not better.
Which makes me wonder, what’s on the better, not worse list? Funnier, looser, less concerned about what others think, flexible, giving, generous of mind and heart, trusting myself and others, sharing responsibilities, moral clarity, openness, curiosity, wonder, kind and tough, practical and impractical, disciplined and relaxed.
Oh dear. Some push-pull on that list.
What if: Instead of fearing that I’m getting worse as I get older, I acknowledge that I’m changing? My ambitions are changing. My desires are changing. Having checked the major life goals off my list (education, family, career), it seems harder to name what I want. Maybe the goals at this stage (mid-40s) are looser.
At moments, I do sense a wholeness, a oneness, an understanding of purpose that feels deep and wordless, and wondrous. But it is fleeting, as ecstatic experiences tend to be. I get the feeling, in these moments, that our purpose here on earth is to be brazenly present and wholly human, insatiably curious vessels of grace poured into imperfect containers, cracked and fragile and not meant to last. We’re meant to be brief, and aware of our limitations; in our brevity, we sense eternity; in our faultiness, generosity of spirit.
I used to dismiss religion’s various visions of heaven or paradise. Hated it, actually. But I’m starting to understand, more deeply, why these visions exist. Because here on earth, we’re bound to invent a series of flawed experiments, no matter how heart-felt our intentions. Criticism is easy, also necessary, also demonstrates involvement in the process; but the ease with which a critic can point out flaws, versus the challenge to she who attempts change, or reversal, or to implement a new idea, structure, system, vision, dream—well, it’s a pretty massive gulf. It’s why Canada keeps commissioning reports and implementing few/none of the reports’ recommendations.
The will to act almost has to be collective.
And while we wait for collective action, people suffer. As individuals, we see our neighbours suffering, and we find band-aid solutions, work-arounds, we tinker with the machinery we’ve inherited, upheld by greed and power and inertia. But we can’t knock it down till enough of us amass at the gates and demand change.
I’ve been thinking a lot about hope. Hope despite set-backs. Hope despite seeing the same script played again and again. How to serve hope, see hope, carry hope? And I think, ah, that’s where the vision of heaven comes in. It’s something to hold onto, to imagine, to dream of. It’s often present in art. Think of gospel songs: crossing the river, being called home, carried home, the relief and sweetness of rest after labour. This represents what we long for, and can’t quite glimpse. Wholeness, resolution, peace.
Yes.
Yes.
I can’t possibly know exactly what a better world would look like, let alone figure out how to get there. Just like I can’t even seem to see what a better Carrie would look like, let alone figure out how to get her there. I do hope I’m not getting worse. I hope the small actions I undertake every day in hopes of being healthy, humble, self-aware, humorous, curious, generous, trustworthy and trust-giving, are not outweighed by my multitude of neurotic tics, anxieties, fears, lethargy, indecision, vanity, ignorance, injury and self-interest. But who knows, really?
I’ll just have to hope without knowing, be without knowing, and take action without knowing, exactly, the consequences. Better or worse? Change keeps happening whether we notice or not, sanction it or not. So, whether better or worse, definitely different. Hopefully braver. Hopefully clearer. Hopefully lighter. But who knows.
Watching: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story” (Ted Talk)
Listening: Today’s program from Tapestry, on “how to ethically navigate the pandemic’s new normal as restrictions begin to lift” (CBC Radio)
xo, Carrie
If I could join the revolution
Lately, I’ve been writing more in my own private journal, circular interior debates questioning my work here on earth (you know, basic existential navel-gazing). I’ve also been recording minor daily interactions that have become normal, but would have seemed strange pre-pandemic. Neither of these genres are blog-friendly, mainly because the posts are lengthy and, as mentioned before, circular. I go round and round, wondering and questioning and hopelessly meandering toward discerning … discerning what, exactly?
There’s the rub.
Lately, I’ve been:
Watching: Never Have I Ever (teen drama/comedy, Nexflix); Slings & Arrows (90s Canadian nostalgia, CBC Gem)
Reading: Untamed, by Glennon Doyle; Such a Fun Age, by Kylie Turner
Eating: greens greens and more greens from two different local CSA farmers
Doing: a 30-day fitness challenge with my soccer girls, which include planks and burpees; ergo, making myself get up by 7 every morning, making myself stretch, do planks and burpees, and ride the spin bike while watching Murdoch Mysteries (almost excessively Canadian, Netflix)
Now is the season of my case-by-case risk-assessment examination of each and every interaction proposed by a family member. It was always going to be easier to shut everything down than to open up again. We knew that. In practice, it feels brutal. What is the emotional cost of weighing the risks versus the reward each time a family member wants to get his hair cut, go to the mall, play outside with a friend? But truly, what it boils down to is: how do I decide, based on guidelines from politicians and public health and my own grasp of available data, whether I’m keeping my family safe or being over-protective? If you think it’s uncomplicated, well, that’s an opinion, one of many gradations of opinions on this subject, because we all have different thresholds, different information, different values, different interior emotional lives, different family dynamics, different pressures, different people we’re protecting, different fears, different experiences, different needs, different imperatives.
So, I revisit my friend Katie’s guidelines: STOMP. Space: more is better; Time: less is better; Outside: better than inside; Masks: important; People: fewer is better. (Maybe it could be SHTOMP, with the H for Hand-washing: often and well.)
Recent thought: What if, as I get older, I’m actually getting worse, not better?
Lately, I have no sense of myself in the wider world, or even in the small world of my own house. Lately, I feel no direction pulling me. I feel no peace, either. I am not content. I am dissatisfied with the state of the world, and with my own response to the needs crying out to be addressed. I am overwhelmed and muddled. I keep thinking that a major plot line will present itself to me, a direction. If I could join the revolution, where is that happening, and how, and can I enlist? What slogan would I write on my scrap of cardboard, to lift over my head, as I march down the street?
Black Lives Matter
No Justice, No Peace
Migrant Labourers Deserve Dignity and Rights (too long; writing slogans clearly takes talent)
Don’t Bring Guns to Wellness Checks!
Defund the Police
Universal Basic Income
Art is for Everyone
Pay All Essential Workers Like They’re Essential, Because They Are
Fuck the Gig Economy
Ban the Stock Market
Indigenous Lives Matter
Canada: We’ve Got Some Serious Work To Do
Cruel systems surround us. Unless we’re cut by them, we can stay blissfully unaware. If we’re the beneficiaries, maybe we’d rather not know, for when we do know, we don’t know how to untangle ourselves either. Systems are entrenched, heavy, crushing. I’m suspicious of any solution that puts the onus on the individual. But I can’t do nothing with all the everything I’m seeing!
For example: What would make it possible for people to work with dignity at jobs that we know are essential? What if, for example, people who love farming could afford to be farmers? What would that look like? Why do we accept profit as the most important goal? Who benefits from the push for corporate-style agriculture with heavy equipment, ruinous pesticides, antibiotics, fertilizers, and a low-paid migrant labour force? Where is the dignity in that? What if human dignity (and, by extension, environmental dignity) were the focus for all systems instead? I imagine this every day, and I haven’t got a clue what work to do to get us any closer.
One precious life, one precious life, one precious life, and what am I going to do with it; what am I doing with it? What I want to make manifest boils down to this: Dignity for All.
xo, Carrie
How are you?
Almost daily, I am reminded that we are each experiencing this time of pandemic and protest somewhat differently, which means that even a simple question like “How are you?” is fraught with complications — but also rich with honesty. Because in the before-times, we probably answered, “Fine,” or “Good,” or “Okay,” or, maybe, with a close friend, “Do you really want to know?” But right now, if we ask, “How are you?” we’ll very often get the truth. For someone who appreciates messy, this is novel and pretty cool; because the truth is usually messy. Do you mean, how am I at this very exact moment in time? Or how I was when I woke up this morning? Or how I’m aspiring to be? Or shall I just spiral through my multitudes here and now?
So. How are you?
I feel like I’m (temporarily) finding my feet amidst the confusion of “re-opening.” I’m figuring out my own boundaries, which means I’m figuring out my family’s boundaries too. And I’m finding the capacity to put into words the limitations and constraints with which I feel comfortable.
My friend Katie designed this amazingly succinct graphic that helps keep some “rules” straight in my head.
In truth, I think I’m finding that daily life is easier so long as I accept that we’re living during a pandemic, and there’s no returning to “before.” I’d like to grieve and move on. But I know not everyone is there.
Rather than pining for “before,” we need new things to look forward to, and we need new rituals to sustain our days.
A new ritual I’ve been enjoying is tea, three times a day.
I’ve spent the past two weeks doing a “tea cleanse” led by my sister-in-law, who owns a local tea company: SquirrelDuck, look her up! Her teas and tisanes are fresh and delicious, with something for any occasion, and the “cleanse” was a chance to reset some small habits, and to mark the passage of each day. We officially finished yesterday … but I found myself in the kitchen this morning preparing two cups of turmeric tea with lemon, one for me and one for Kevin. A sunny friendly welcome to the day. For the cleanse, afternoon tea was a dandelion spearmint mixture (I’m drinking some right now!). After-dinner tea was hibiscus with apple and beetroot.
I plan to continue this ritual as long as it feels soothing and special, perhaps substituting different teas along the way (so many to choose from!). My personal favourites from Beth’s collection are Ginger and After Dinner; she also sells coffee. (And no, we did not quit caffeine for our cleanse.)
Side note, related: Have you noticed how magnified and lovely the small pleasures in life have become?
If you’ve spent time with small children, you’ll know this is what they do: notice the small things, express their emotions freely, and, more often than not, adapt to change with what seems like miraculous aptitude. We all have the chance to be like children again, noticing the small things that please and soothe us, observing the world around us, listening to learn new stories and perspectives: tentative, maybe, unsure, sometimes, not having all the words to say what we feel; scared — that too; but also attuned to what’s possible, alert to what’s waiting to be discovered, asking many questions, wondering, exploring what’s new, speaking the truth.
xo, Carrie