My Rebellion

I feel a little mixed up these days.

Something about summer and it's lack of routine always throws me a little bit. Especially this summer, we've been here there and everywhere (and some of those places have been really awesome and I of course forgot my camera).

So I find I'm manic about diving into and completing some projects and I've been letting everything else go.

Manners... those have been sliding for every member of the family.

Haven't made it to the Farmer's market in 3 weeks now.

Bought and didn't make almost everything for my son's birthday party...

Ya that's right...
The cake came from box,
The soda came from cans
And there's no telling where the hot dogs came from really....


I feel that I have truly gone on vacation inside my brain a little bit and taken a respite from the work of constantly revolutionizing my life style and habits.

It's an upward climb and sometimes the constant diligence to think sustainably overwhelms me...when that happens I serve chips and juice boxes and then don't even recycle them...

This literally made two of my friends squeamish...and I don't blame them... tomorrow I may be filled with remorse over those tossed juice cartons and go dumpster diving through the garbage bag of birthday refuse to find them...

I say may be...cause this week I felt a little rebellious.

I've backslid from a lot of the platitudes for living that I've strove for this last year. For all the responsible, sustainable choices I've been trying to make I felt like I was having a harder and harder time doing it, and faking it more and more.
I got really fed up with the effort and rebelled this week, like some snotty teenager I metaphorically dyed my hair green, pierced my nose, skipped curfew and loitered behind a convenience store...the equivalent anyway.

Perhaps this next week I'll get back on track and be back to my normal self ; the "normal" me being the one that wants to start a crazy quilt this week, take my camera with me this time to visit the Antique mall, make some pastry and document the jungle of tomato plants that are finally beginning to issue forth blossoms and fruit...

Oh, I already like her so much better than the insolent beastly girl I've been this week...oh but that canned soda was delicous....and so were the chips.

An Evening at The Movies...

I took a sort of holiday this last week.

 In the few quiet moments I had I chose to vacate my life for another time and place.

I did not choose to partake in any of my regular pursuits. I did not bake, I did not sew, 

I did not read, I did not knit, I did not blog.... 

I watched movies.

I have very fond memories of watching movies all the summers of my coming of age. My sister and my step mother would watch them almost compusively, sometimes 3 a day/night. The video store down the block from our house rented old VHS movies for .47 a night and we'd burn a dollar-fifty a day going through all the lists we could find on (the brand new) internet. Every Harrison Ford movie, Every Tom Hanks, Juila Roberts, Bruce Willis, Sandra Bullock, Oscar Winning, Shoot-em-up, Romantic Comedy, Parody, Musical, Mystery, Drama or Suspense we could get our hands on. We watched new movies and old movies. Black and White movies and sad movies. Critically Acclaimed movies and really, really dumb movies.I watched the classics and the blockbuster hits together. Movies that sometimes scared me, thrilled me or inspired me.

Man Alive, did I ever fall in love with movies. 

I remember the summer of the Hitchcock festival on television very well. Every night a new Hitchcock film and every night I lay awake playing over everything in my head. Not just because they were a little scary, but because I felt like that was the beginning of my foray into movies with real taste it was the beginning of watching movies critically for me. Considering myself somewhat of a dilletante or amateur connoisseur of cinema.
Now that's not saying I think I have really good taste in movies... and that's not saying that I am snob when it comes to movies. I have my standards and preferences when it comes to films, and I must admit that some of my favorite movies of all time are considered really bad by those who really do know how to critique a film. I am totally willing to suspend myself and my preconceptions when I watch a movie and even go out on a limb to defend it if I really loved it. (like Meet Joe Black...it's my guilty pleasure...along with Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure). It's like loving 80's music I guess... which I do.

Anyway... long story short... I continued to love movies as I got older and developed stronger tastes for what I like and got pretty good at enjoying a film even if I had to duck my head under a blanket or cover my eyes for parts of it. ( I don't do violence or suspense very well.)

Then I married a guy who also loved movies...but a totally different kind than me and we watched some great and  some terrible movies together (Aliens VS. Predators Anyone?).

Then we had a baby.... and we pretty much stopped watching movies. Not all together, but nowhere like we did before.  In fact the other day I was looking at a list of Oscar nominated and winning movies from the 90's and 20's and I had seen almost every single one until 2006... the year Ava Grace was born.

We watch very little t.v. in general and we like it that way... I have very little awareness of what movies are coming out or being made... one of the last movies I'd seen in theaters was Avatar.

And then we decided to watch Cold Mountain last Sunday night.

I couldn't explain it. I hated most of the movies... it made me cringe and feel ill and at the ending ( I won't spoil it for you) I was too shocked and indignant to cry...but I just couldn't get it out of my head. Heck, I still can't.

Know why? 

Cause it was an amazing movie... and it made me want to watch movies again. 

So I did.... all this week. Whenever I had a chance I watched movies....Some I'd seen before. Some that were favorites. Some that I had completely forgotten and decided to give another chance.

Some of them were as good as I remembered... others were not... others were even better.

Now perhaps this latest past time is a waste of time, perhaps it's an idle passive entertainment that no good will come of... certainly the only thing I learned that summer of movie watching as a young teen was how sleep in late the next morning... and maybe also how to disembark a bus that is incapable of slowing down below 60 miles/hour or it will blow up....

But that's the true confession of my most recent past times. Perhaps Hollywood is very homemade and it doesn't usually smell very much like Apple Pie... actually it smells like a big bowl of buttery popcorn... which IS homemade and which I think I ought to go get popping right now...it's almost time for the next show.

But first, here's some of the scenes that have captured my imagination this last week... enjoy.

Hands down: the best movie ever. My only lament is that is not 10 hours long.

I cry at this scene every one of the six times I have seen this movie. Fireworks do in fact make me emotional

A fluff movie for sure...but gosh I wish I had a tent like this.

I could've filled this post with scenes from this movie..but you should probably just go watch it yourself.

Got any couch potato plans this summer?

Running Away with the Circus...

That was always my older sister's childhood dream. Right after my dad sat us all down to watch the first Canadian Public broadcast of Cirque Du Soliel (which means Circus of the Sun in French btw) back in 1994.
We sat in the living room, cross-legged on the floor eating snacks (that is, when our mouths weren't just suspended open), amazed at the people twisting, springing and flying across our small television screen.

I remember B. started stretching out that very night before bed....my other sister and I jumped on the trend too, but only my older sister could master the splits or even attempt to bend her small frame backwards like the girls int that circus could do. Contorted like strange pretzels on suspended hula hoops, spinning and flying through the air to French Opera music... how could we not want a piece of that?
We were completely entranced.

In the years that have followed I've kept up here and there with the different shows Cirque has put together, and been proud of something that started as a little band of French Canadian Acrobats has turned into such a phenomenon, the world over. I've watched different performances on television and always been drawn in by the incredible, difficulty and artistry of the performers, it's truly like no other circus I've ever seen.

All of this back story however, makes it strange that I wasn't jumping off the walls myself as the days counted down to seeing the Cirque Du Soliel perform their "Dralion" show last night.

Kevin and I were given tickets to see the show along with my sister and her husband and it wasn't until the lights actually went down and then up, and the music started and dancers in exotic costumes started appearing out of the ceiling and floor that all of a sudden I went "Oh, my gosh!! I can't believe I'm actually here watching this!"

And for the next two hours I was suspended like those acrobats, completely drawn in as I was when just a little girl. The perfection of the tricks, the difficulty; it's enough to make you shake your head in disbelief. And of course the artistry, the music, and dance and strange beauty of it was really too incredible to accurately describe.

The show was themed around lands of the East, from what I could tell; Central Africa, India, China and ( I hazard to guess) Persia? But there was still the strange French flair thrown in that had us scratching our heads in a good way and looking at each other to shrug our shoulders when one of the clown troop was whisked into some sort of afterlife by the tune of a bandsaw and returned wearing a pink leotard singing with lady dressed in gold....You just say, "okay, that's cirque" and get on with enjoying it.

Of course we weren't allowed to take any pictures, so I am relying on the much better photographs from various sources of the web. Most of them from here. So here is just a few highlights of the show,

My favorite act of the night was this young juggler by the name of Vladik Myagostup. I have never seen anything like him before. He juggled 7 balls at a time at one point with his feet, neck, and head...oh and he basically did an acrobatic dance/tumbling/contortionist routine the whole flipping time... my word.

The couple in this photo are not dancing. Oh no, they are flying in giant circles 20+ feet above the ground suspended only by those blue sashes wrapped around his biceps.

Yep....it was pretty much crazy like that.

This troupe of acrobats pulled a lot of weight in the show. They balanced large flag poles dove through these rings they are pictured with, jumped through ropes and filled out all the dancing of the show. They were amazing.

And of course the clowns had us laughing ourselves silly with their quirky, offbeat humor. All  in gibberish, all hilarious.

Oh yes, I too have completely run away with the circus...if you ever get the chance, I hope you do too!

Road Tripping Part II.

Yesterday I wrote about our trip to visit my new niece and how successful the trip was. I think we've decided it's worthwhile to live by the mantra "simplify simplify simplify"...it's much less complicated that way.

Sure, it means we do less...but we enjoy it far more.

I don't know if I'm alone on this, but for some reason when we first had kids it was like we felt this need to prove to ourselves and the rest of the world that we could still be fun and adventurous people. All we proved was that we were stressed out and a little bit nuts...

We'd strap our baby into every carrier, car seat and stroller we had to and pack half our house before embarking on excursions that required us to pray desperately that our little one(s) would sleep during the 20 minute drive from point A to point B. We would push our arrival and departures at different gathering and events (who knows why) and often ended up with sobbing... and the baby cried lots too.

We've spent wasteful amounts of money on forgotten diapers, lost soothers, emergency snacks and cartons of milk. We have spent nights with very little sleep and I'm pretty sure I have a permanent eye twitch. We would always look at those parents who could drag their kids to rock concerts, shopping malls and days at the lake without any fuss, they never forgot anything, left anything behind, made any mess or had any mental breakdowns...Our jaws would drop at this phenomenon and we were determined to join the ranks of cool baby wearing adventurers...

But there are only so many times you can clean vomit out of a car seat, poop out of pants, go for so many hours without sleep and listen to so much high pitched wailing on long stretches of flat highway before you finally give up....

Give up, throw in the towel, wave your white flag, begin to think smaller and start actually enjoying outings with your kids....

Such was our Sunday .

We packed up and headed out from my brother and sister in law's place early and had two refreshed children happily occupied in the back seat while we sailed out of the city listening to Josh Groban... 

ya, it was sweet like that.

We only had 3 hours to drive to get home and all day to get there.

So we first stopped off at the giant outdoor store in the Cross Iron Mills Mall; Bass Pro Shops.

Now, there is probably nothing there that I would ever be tempted to buy... okay maybe the giant sized "Uncle Buck Bin of Cheese Snacks"... but really I don't think I will ever need a cross bow, barbeque, carcass trailer, camouflage outfit, fishing tackle, speedboat, mallard caller, hiking boots, or wolf decoy....but that's not why we go there.

This....is why we go there.

I've never seen another store like it. The amount of detailing and the breathtaking displays of animals and terrain are incredible. The instant you walk in you crane your neck up to take in the swooping eagles the elk run and dioramas all around. It's like a natural history museum of our native wildlife. Really, it's that cool. There's a real waterfall and giant tank of fish native to our neck of the woods and ever display is made of such lifelike animals that it's kind of unnerving... like this life size polar bear... ya, that freaked me out a little. It's paws are twice the size of Jackson's head.

Kevin didn't seem to mind him at all.

Speaking of Jackson... he was trembling when we walked in; not for fear but from the overwhelming delight of it all. He couldn't stop pointing and shrieking at everything he saw and caused a lot of fellow customers to stop and chuckle at how excited he was.

Now, I've seen almost all the wildlife represented at Bass Pro Shops in real life. I am proud to say that on other road trips in my lifetime I have seen mountain goats, bears, elk, wolves, geese, foxes, grouse, deer (oh heaven, so many deer), moose and buffalo...and they are all that much more amazing in person, but I have to tip my hat off to Bass Pro Shops for creating such a memorable experience...even though we didn't drop a cent. If you are ever in the area, you must check it out...it'll give you a nice little taste of our Canadiana, the nature and aesthetic we love here in the west....yes, I'll admit it did make me feel a little patriotic and proud looking at all that natural wonder on display...even if it was the manufactured version in a giant shopping mall... maybe you just have to go check it out to see just what I mean. I don't think you'll be disappointed....you can even stick around longer than we did and partake in a free workshop on bird watching, hiking, mountaineering, duck calling, deer hunting and snow shoeing.... for real.

We however, did not stay for the free workshops or games or crafts that are offered there daily for families like us to educate us on the habitat in which we co exist with these wild animals...we went to the food court. Because we have learned that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure when it comes to feeding our children...so we all had a snack and I had some coffee....because the children ate almost all of my snack.

Just as the doors to the rest of the shops were opening, we were there to swoop in on some major outlet store savings and purchased most of the clothes Ava Grace will need for the fall... all for only $50.00.

We were able to skip the food court at noon when the lineups had really stretched out and were pulling out of the parking lot at 12:00 p.m. exactly.
I had been diligent in packing tons of snacks so we munched for the next half an hour on apples, muffins and cheese and then both kids clonked out for a sleep before we hit the city of Red Deer and the Family Rec Center and Water Park that has become our favorite for it's low prices, small crowds and wicked waterworks. It's kind of the best kept secret in the prairies in our opinion because it's not too big and not too small and EVERYTHING is kid friendly.

We swam and splashed and soaked for 2 hours and then stopped one last time to grab sandwiches for the final drive homeward... oh did I mention it was only 4 o clock in the afternoon? Ya, that's right. So even though we hit bad traffic coming in the final stretch we still made it home at about 6, had time to unpack, bathe, tidy up and have my kids in bed on time for their 7:30 bedtime.

I couldn't stop shaking my head at how awesome it all was to have a plan, stick to it and enjoy it all so much. No more flying by the seat of our pants.

We plan little and so we do much more of the important stuff... and by that I mean so much more of the laughing, joking, tickling, hugging each other cause this is the best day ever kind of stuff....In the end, it doesn't matter how many activities we pack in, sights we see or nights we get away... the only real vacation is the one that's stress free.

Okay, so maybe the eye twitch isn't permanent after all... I'm feeling very hopeful right now.

Road Trip Confessions...Babies... and a Cliff Hanger Ending...

Let me tell you about my success with road trips....

That would be a very short story because the truth is, I've almost never had any success with them at all.

Even as a little girl traveling with my siblings, I can recall debacles of throwing up simultaneously across the backseat, getting lost in the back roads of interior British Columbia, and having our vehicle broken into and our luggage stolen from the parking lot of the Calgary Zoo.

But somehow none of that was daunting enough to think that as an adult I could try again and so Kevin and I found ourselves on ill fated trips in blizzards in May, realizing our vehicle hasn't go the proper registration while in another province, hunting through an auto dump for tires slightly less bald, broken down on the side of the Saskatchewan highway in a heat wave, riding the mail route bus with all our belongings in black garbage bags and stuffed in someone else's van with two giant dogs between us, both wearing neck cones....

{In case you are wondering why it hasn't been turned into a screenplay yet...I haven't gotten around to it, honestly...but it also wasn't ALL one trip}

Then we had kids...and we lost our minds completely. At 3 weeks old we packed little Ava into her carseat and set out in a blizzard 6 hours north to FtMcMurray. We wanted to arrive at a certain time in the afternoon so we simply pulled out from home when Ava woke up for her 4:00 A.M. feeding...And I'm pretty sure that's the trip where we almost ran out of gas...

Just over a year later, my sister and I decided we were brave enough to road trip together to our grandparents house...with both of our toddlers and we got about 1.5 hours from the house when I was hit by a sudden migraine, lost my vision and we wound up in the Provost hospital Emergency room....

When Jackson was five months old we all went 19 hours from door to door to the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii which in retrospect was a great trip, but at the time...I have no idea how we managed it.

I do remember hoofing it to customs like Sherpa in the Vancouver airport with my daughter in a stroller and my son strapped to my chest, backpacks and carry-ons on my back and Kevin behind me cheering me on while he tried to steer our unwieldy baggage cart full of suitcases and car seats....and that was before we got on the plane....

Shall I go on? Shall I tell you about our ill fated camping excursions? Is it still too soon or can I laugh about being stuck in 2 hours of traffic in downtown Calgary one hour after the Stampede Parade... with crying children, no idea where we were going and a tent trailer swinging behind us... oh and our breaks failed.

Or how about a month later when our engine belt snapped just 30 minutes from home in the small town of Rimbey so we set up for the night in  a field next to a cow pasture and listened to the motorcycles on the highway all night....

Believe it or not, these are just the tip of the ice berg....

So what I would much rather do, is share with you some highlights from our recent 

and VERY successful road trip...

coloring sheets on clipboards and stamp markers...best time ever.

On the weekend we traveled south to visit my brother, his wife and my very new niece Annalie Gail.

I may as well just interrupt myself now to show you all a picture of how precious she is so you can coo along with me:

{All together now:.... AWWWWWWWW.....}

First of all the trip was successful because one does actually learn from countless mistakes and one does actually adapt to these types of circumstances. I maintain that I have simply gotten better at going places with my children because if one learns from mistakes....then I have learned more than most.

We rearranged our vehicle so that the kids now sit way in the back of the van ,and although I do think having a grabbing tool to retrieve things and hand things to them back there would be a smart addition to the set up, I'm pretty happy with how it all worked out.

They were pretty happy back there with a bin of snacks and books and toys between them, a dvd player set up to watch on the lid of the snack cooler and tons of new music to listen to.

We had directions, a cell phone and the where with all to make pit stops when needed even thought the drive wasn't too long and we actually arrived at our destination with a little wind still left in our sails.

We stuck close to the home base for visiting and set up all the beds as soon as we arrived so the kids could nap after lunch... they slept well and it was marvelous.

This of course left lots of quiet time in the afternoon for me to hog the baby all to myself:

okay, so I shared a tiny bit

We were blessed to be able to stay the night at the home of my sister in laws parents and it was so great to put my kids to bed in rooms separate from each other and have a decent night's sleep on our own too.

The next morning we pulled out and left Annalie to be cuddled by her own mom and dad and headed out towards  adventures on the way home, north of the city.

and boy was it ever cool... which is why I'll save it for later.

and  for now I will  bid you adieu

cheers.

The Signs of Summer are Showing up Here Too...

As July get's into full swing and vacation mode sets in, it's pretty easy to see how the blogging community takes a bit of a siesta. As our collective attendance in one another's online worlds becomes spotty at best, I trust that it means that summer has truly arrived wherever you are.  I sincerely hope that like us, you are all having a...

 {Road Trippin}

 {Bike Ridin}

 {Bubble Blowin}

 {Pool Playin}

{Tea Makin}

...Good Time

{ Rooibos Sun Tea Recipe}

1 Regular tea Bags
2 Rooibos Tea Bags (we love the Pomegranate flavor from Tetley)

Water.
Sun

Place Tea bags in water in a bottle... place in the sun for at least 3 hours.
Don't use a bottle like mine, even though it looks cool, cause it's kinda hard to get the tea bags out.
Take the tea bags out and place the tea in the fridge.


Serve in a cold glass with a bit of lemon and sugar to taste.

Delicious and Nutritious

(seriously, Rooibos rocks check it out!)

This Moment " A Break for Books at Cafe 1912"

{lovin my niece and nephew}

I have been having a fabulous visit with some fabulous friends, so I've been a little absent here, but after more visiting this weekend with other loved ones and a brand new baby girl (eek!) I'll have lots more to share in the coming week, so I'll be back soon!
Have a great weekend and happy birthday CANADA!!!!

The Wee Book Inn

On Friday, I made mention of my love for old books. I have mentioned it a few times here, actually and made vague promises in the past to highlight some of the books in my own collection. I thought today I might just keep my word.

I wouldn't say I have an extensive or impressive collection, but I do love the few treasures I've found over time, some of them with stories all their own on top of what's written within their pages.

I absolutely LOVE when I find personal inscriptions and notes written inside the front covers or pages of some of the books I have. For instance, in my 1939 copy of Peter Rabbit the inscription reads " To Christopher "tophie" love Nanny".  and the oldest book in my collection reads "Merry Christmas To Ralph  from Grandma  1918".

It's sobering to think that even the little boys who recieved those books as gifts from loving grannies are possibly gone from this life themeselves.  I absolutely loved, among other things, the underlying theme of loving old books in The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. I finished it a few weeks ago now and would love to have it here to quote, but I've already passed it along to someone else to read. Poorly paraphrased the narrator of the book talks about how the dead live on through old books, we get to sit with the author perhaps long gone and listen again to their voice, their humor, their thoughts and wit. On top of all of that, there is a glimpse into another life when I find something so old that belonged to someone else at one time. I think about "tophie" and how it came to be that he no longer wanted his copy of Peter Rabbit, but I like to think that in pulling it out to read to my kids, snuggling up on the couch and using just a touch of put-on British accent I'm somehow honoring the bond of that Nanny and her little "tophie" one more time.

Books have a way of connecting us, so many memories of my childhood come from the relationship I had to my books. I spent countless hours reading as a child and read almost anything I could get my hands on. I read books of poetry, tales from other lands, and even the adult fiction I snuck out of my parent's bookshelves. There I learned what Ubola was, Shark attacks, Russian spies and um... sex.

My sister and I were looking through a collection of Anne of Green Gables books that I had, after she picked up her own set on Saturday morning. We were going through the illustrations on the paper back covers and remembering in exact detail the illustrations that graced the covers of the set we had in childhood and remembering perfectly the summers we spent filling out heads with the stories.

It's amazing actually how much I have retained from my journeys into books. Periods of my life have belonged to different books that I have loved and read that sometimes if I pull them down off the shelf for another read, I am transported back to that time and place and fall in love all over again with how that story made me feel then.

University was my first real foray into reading "real" books however. Books that belonged to the world of academia, high-minded poetry, classics and the canons of Shakespeare, Chaucer and Edgar Allan Poe. I read some absolutely dreadful books in those years of comparative literature and English classes, but I also fell in love with Margaret Laurence, Morely Callaghan, Lenoard Cohen, and E.E. Cummings.

Most of the books I read I had to buy and while most of them came from the overpriced university bookstore, I got smarter over time and found ways to buy them on consignment from a little books shop several blocks away.

I loved that bookshop then and haunted it often, I love it still and visited it just this last weekend.

There are so many things to love about the Wee Book Inn, the selection the prices, the quirky furniture and the ancient cat... but you would be right to assume that my favorite place to be is upstairs where the antiquities and vintage editions are kept.

I feel like a child in a candy store looking at the shelves of books so old that their covers are long faded and the language of the tales inside them so politically incorrect. It is like a whole other generation is sitting there spine to spine begging me to pick them up and peek inside at what their thoughts and imaginations all looked like back then.

The titles of these Tom Swift novels crack me up

And of course many of the books have inscriptions inside. 

Not only am I enticed by the old copies of The Bobsy Twins visit the circus but of whoever Susan was and why her teacher Ms. Manning gave it to her "for your summer, until we meet again".

How lovely is that? And how impossible to leave it there in the store.

But I did. I left almost everything on those dusty shelves or under glass and exhibited considerable restraint passing by some of the same editions of Robert Browning I probably sold back to that same store in order to pay my dorm room rent.


I came home and pulled some of my collection down, running my fingers over their worn leather and linen covers, smelling the mustiness of their thick yellow pages and hunting through the margins for the notes and underlinings some astute readers left behind for me, to show me what on that page stirred them enough to claim it with a ballpoint pen.

Just this morning I pulled down the oldest book in my collection. It belonged to my own Nanny and I'm not sure when she became it's owner but the original inscription is reads to someone named Darlene. The story is of a little girl living in London during World War I, but more importantly it is the story of her life inside her nursery with her family of 16 dolls.

Very gingerly Ava Grace turned the pages and I read aloud some of these bits:

Sunny Jim (her doll whom has enlisted and is now going off to fight in the War) must have a little trunk packed. Dora and Christabel (other dolls) can help me to pack. Heavy things at the bottom of the trunk, such as boots, and a few picture books, just to look at between the battles. We will put some chocolates inside the boots; they will be such a lovely surprise, and make Sunny feel cheerful and brave just before the battle. He will be able to fight many more Germans if he is cheered up by a few chocolates (especially caramels).

I think we can all agree they don't make them like they used to. 

But I sure like traveling back to the world they came from even for just a little visit to see if we can still be on the same page. I'm pretty sure I will always love my own little collection of time machines. 

What's Left Behind.

 On Friday I will celebrate my 26th birthday and I never actually thought I would struggle with it the way I have. I always told myself that when the time came, it would just be numbers on a calendar; that my ghosts wouldn't really return to haunt me; that I wouldn't find myself staring into a pool of grief as I approach the anniversary of my mother's death 22 years ago. 
My mother, herself only just turned 26 left this world suddenly leaving behind my sister, myself and my baby brother; on the eve of my fourth birthday. 


For too many years; my life has been lived, out of necessity, like a well-tightened jar. All the confusion and grief of that little girl has gotten stuffed down with all the subsequent confusion and grief the growing girl, the newly-married girl, the bewildered mother-girl. Once and a while the lid will squeak open just a touch and slowly, as I go from strength to strength, little bits of all that hurting come spilling out of the jar.  Somewhere in all that mess; healing happens and something beautiful get's reborn every time I am brave enough to revisit that death.


I know it is out of the ordinary for me to post something like this here on this blog, but bear with me won't you? Let us be two souls who can sit comfortably with my grief and trembling put out on the table. Somehow in it's nakedness there's a comfort; like somehow to put all of my heart's pain out there as though it sat between our two cups of tea takes the mystery and fear out of it, and I am left with the peace of said my piece. 

If nothing else I hope you see some light in my circumstance; that perhaps the pains of my heart might touch and encourage the pains of yours, and somehow in mutual understanding we can go somewhere new with what we have been left with.

 I have absolutely no idea what to title this...

If this was all that I had left of you...

It would be the moment in my day when I looked at your face.

Saw myself in it and looked harder and harder and harder still

For something more.

If I had the chance to ask for just one more thing from you

It would be would be a cruel thing in and of itself, for you could never give what I want.

Another lifetime, another history with more than this.

I do dream small dreams

Miraculous, yes...

But they take place humbly in kitchens, where you teach me recipes

Bathrooms where you brush my hair

Bedsides where I make my confessions

And hear yours.


If I had more of you than this

I wouldn't have my breath catch up with me

Stolen wouldn't be the word that springs to mind

And my  birthday of 26 years wouldn't feel like a precarious thing

Falling on the anniversary of your ending at 26 short years

22 Years ago.



 If somehow you had left more behind

Perhaps my questions would finally be answered

Perhaps my children would sit in your lap,

Play with your necklaces

Hunt for sweets in your pockets

The way I did

When I had more of you.

More than a distant memory

More than an aching need

And a desperate prayer for God to fill the void that is left in the wake of not having

All of you.... since I was four years old

A little girl celebrating her birthday

Her family reeling behind her back.



I make do with what is left.

But sometimes I catch myself in weaker moments looking too hard into your picture

Trying to emulate you in my tasks

Conjuring up some ghost form called "mummy", or who I imagine you to have been

Someone sitting in my living room

At my kitchen table

On the other side of the phone.



The suddenness of your leaving still hits me and I get stuck like a small girl thick with slow motion feelings of wondering when you will return.

Reality can't really hurt a child who still believes so much in fairy tales can it?


On better days I am reminded

That there is  in fact more of you still left behind than just a photograph.


For in the ache of absence, I can say that in this reality



Perhaps my courage is greater

Perhaps my capacity to rely on Greater Strength is more realized


Those muscles of trust more flexed


Born out of tragic necessity.

Something of living force  stronger than just one life

Lives on in me


I am at the threshold of where you left this life behind

My arms and heart are full

To follow the journey you set out on

And completed far too early.


The heart of this motherless mother beats differently

Than all the perhaps in this world could suppose.

For it beats with a percussion that was what you left behind

For me to find, pick up and take hold of

And never take for granted.