Light

Much of what gets written down in books, talked about; the ideas we exchange during human interaction involve a central question: what’s this got to do with me?

During my MFA residency week, my mentor, Jane Silcott, mentioned a few times that she was fascinated by light.  The way light moves and changes, bends or refracts.  And on the one hand, I thought, light…hm – so what?  And on the other hand, I thought me too, because I love light; I just hadn’t taken the time to properly think about it before and its relevance to my life.

In her book of memoirs, Everything Rustles, which is described on the back cover as “a debut collection of personal essays” in addition to looking at “the moments right now that shimmer and rustle around her,” Silcott explores “love, grief, uncertainty, longing, joy, desire, fury, and fear.  Also wandering bears, marauding llamas, light and laundry rooms.”  There it is again, that fascination with light.  Now, when I read through her book, I wasn’t reading with an eye for light in mind and planning to write about it.  But something about her light caught my eye.  A scene comes to mind, something to the effect of Jane watching the light change from her porch and an annoyance at being disturbed by a family member for disrupting her peace.  I can relate.  I remember another essay, Natty Man, where the light is mentioned, “I’m enjoying the last bit of light sunny air when the natty man appeared.” and yet another, where the absence of light, the dark of night, causes her fear.

Flipping through the pages of Everything Rustles now, I come across, “What is it about morning light, the in-betweenness of it, that space between night and day?” in the essay Thereness.  That question is tucked in there, just past the page in my book with the remnants of a dirty paw swipe left on it.  I remember reading that particular essay sitting on the edge of the dock, listen to the happy cries of children splashing in the water, fending off puppy licks as I read about my mentor losing her father, the page swathed in heavy sunlight.

And so the light gets in, our stories blur and her words begin to take on meaning in my own life.  And so it goes with stories well told.

After talking with Jane and reading her book, the question of light demanded to be answered.

After dinner last night, I found myself sitting by the edge of the dock, supported by my hands, legs crossed out in front of me, during that magical hour of dusk when the sun gets sleepy.  I happened to glance over my shoulder.  There, in the space between the boards of wood, was an illuminated support beam.  And I thought, what a miracle the sun can reach its light all the way under there, while also thinking, this is my life, right now, and that the light could so ground me in it.

We bought a small kayak and I took it out for its first paddle to explore our lake.  In doing so, I found the perfect pink granite rock that I could swim to later on.  Not enshrouded by weeds or clam shells, perfectly inviting, and close by.

First thing the next morning, with goosebumps on my flesh, I suited up, moved my goggles in place, snapped on my flippers and aimed for the rock.  I strive for an even stroke, a calm breath.  One, two, three breathe, one two three breathe, one two three breathe and look where you’re going.  Thirty minutes of swimming without rest is tiring and in a lake, somewhat disorienting, so I am grateful for the rock.  As I swim there and back, there is the greyish blue-green of the water I look down on and the blinding light of the sun as I turn my head to the side quickly to breath.  Darkness, darkness, light; darkness, darkness, light.  I stop to get my bearings, look around.  Scan the horizon for boats.  We live on such a small lake, and I keep mainly to the shoreline, but I think of the cottage we stayed at in Muskoka a few summers ago, and the woman in the neighbouring cottage who paddled out in her kayak to paddle alongside me as I swam back across the land divide because, as she explained, “a woman was killed here by a boat last summer – please, never swim across alone.”  In the bright morning sun, I can see clearly, no boats.  I continue to cut through the water, and there it is – light – beams of it cutting through the dark water in front and below me with ease, diamonds, glittering along the surface.  The light is all around me.  I just need to open my eyes to see it.

 

A Rustling

I’m lying in bed.  My mind is swimming with thoughts about circumstance and what I’ve been writing, keeping me awake.  Never a good thing when you’re planning to get up at 5:00 a.m. the next morning.  And how did that go, the getting up at 5:00 a.m.?  This morning – it didn’t.  I sat down at my computer close to seven.

Time to take stock.

I smell like campfire.  My hair, pulled back in a messy ponytail, is falling loose and I have an itchy bug bite on the skin over my left ribcage.  I can’t re-read that sentence without wanting to scratch the bite.  I touched it again, just now.  My face, which has grown darker in colour these past few weeks, feels a bit oily (I haven’t washed it) and I’m groggy with sleep.  It’s colder outside, yesterday and today, a surprising yet also obvious factor of living further North; the cold seeps up through the floorboards as we sleep.  We are not insulated here, though we’re nice and cozy in our beds under down comforters.

There’s a giant pot of water standing on the stove that Dan boiled before bed, which I used to rinse off the Ontario strawberries and blueberries for my cereal this morning.  Our water comes from the lake and it’s unsafe to drink.  We’re having our mail forwarded here, to our cottage address this summer, and when the mailman came out to assess whether we could have a rural mailbox or not, he reported back that it would not be safe to do so along the stretch of road above us.  And so we will fetch our mail from a communal location, much farther away, the same as we did at home, only different.  Only the UPS guy is crazy enough/forced to drive his big truck down our laneway.  Our internet hub arrived this way, in the middle of the day, seemingly out of nowhere.  A young uniform-clad man in sunglasses delivered our package with a knowing smile, bent down to pet our puppy, then made four attempts to peel back up the steep incline of our laneway.  He made it out on the fourth attempt and for that I was glad.

The previous paragraph is not entirely true.  The septic system guy also made his way down our laneway, but having experience with such properties as ours, he parked at the top and walked down to assess the situation.  The mark of a pro.  Then, in a human feat – and with a driving ability I never hope to master – he reversed his large truck down our laneway (backwards!) and made it out no problem.  For those who plan to visit, don’t worry, managing the driveway isn’t as hard as I’m making it sound.  You will arrive safe and sound.  You just won’t want to leave.

Wildlife surrounds us.  Wolves come here in the winter, bears abound (though we’re unlikely to see any), moose – so we’re told – and deer, definitely deer.  I’ve seen several deer already.  And a miraculous thing:  when we arrived to look at our cottage late spring, I noticed the ring of trees around the lake all sat neatly trimmed at their bottoms.  Somewhere along the line, I made an assumption that treelines around lakes looked the way they do because of rising and falling water levels, the way rock is eroded by water over time.

“No, no.  It’s mother nature’s hedge clippers,” our real estate agent informed me.  The deer trim the trees by eating them.  That’s as high as they can reach, craning their necks, while standing on the ice.

The people who owned the cottage before us put out birdseed on the balcony to feed the blue jays, and so we do so now as well.  They left nuts they used to hand feed a chipmunk, and while we’ve been dallying, getting our bearings around here, the chipmunk runs around twittering and swearing at us; I imagine something along the lines of “Give me some F*%$ing nuts!”  Ariel is keenly working on repairing that relationship and building the trust that has been broken back up.

I will probably do laundry today.  We have an old washer here, a top loader – a luxury for a cottage – that can process small loads.  There has never been anything light about our laundry loads before, and so we adapt, we do less laundry more frequently.  We re-wear the same clothes like they’re going out of style.  And we check the weather.  Thunderstorms coming.  Better get the laundry washed and hung up now.  It’s a windy day, loads of time for our clothes to dry.

And yes, there are bugs you must prepare for.  The blackflies are particularly pesky as the sun is setting.  Those little vampire bugs are relentless.  Our children’s’ necks and behind their ears are mottled with scars, entry wounds that itch, but they don’t seem to mind too much.  Bug spray helps, so does a windy day like today.  Overcast days with clouds make the bugs all too happy and so we lean toward the sun.

On the day of their arrival, I took the kids to the dock with the sun shining down.  They dipped their toes into the mushy sand of the beach.  Penelope was the first to dive forward and swim with Ariel close behind her off the dock into dark waters.  Elyse came in once with me, dangling her legs off the water mat we bought for them, but proclaimed the water to be too cold.  They’d just spent a few days enjoying the luxury of my parent’s pool and I sensed Elyse’s reticence involved more than just the temperature.

Cottage life involves a rugged wildness, an embracing of nature in all its glory and horrors.  On the day Dan and I arrived here, I had been walking through the muck of our beach, picking up sticks and leaves, clearing the sandy path and then swam out into the deep.  I felt a tingling between my big toe and as I treaded water on my back, I held out my foot to take a look.  There was a slimy black thing.  At first, I thought it was a leaf, but then, as it shimmied to the bottom of my foot, I could see it was no such thing and I proceeded to remove it, which I did with some difficulty.  If you ever happen to get a leech on your foot, for future reference, look for the small end of its body – that’s where its mouth and main sucker is located – then gently use your finger to lift the sucker to the side, thereby ensuring its tiny jaws do not remain lodged into your flesh.  I had no such issues but was certainly put off by the incident.  I asked our new neighbours on both sides, “Hey, have you noticed leeches around here?”  Both sets were surprised.

“I’ve been coming here my whole life,” said a woman with grown children, “and I’ve maybe ever had two.”

“Nope! None over here.  I guess it’s just at your leech beach!” another man teased me.

Well, I’m glad I got my leech experience out of the way, and even if there’s more, now I know what to do.

But what can I see right now, as I write this.  I see my children catching fish with their father, one right after the other, off the end of our dock.  Just beyond, the two loons, the true owners of this lake, are gliding, diving down for their breakfast.  I see an entire glass window filled with waves; their lapping seems almost to reach my feet from where I’m perched above.  The waves stretch far across to the shore on the other side where they are greeted by trees lining the shoreline and thick up over the hilly terrain that reminds me of a roller coaster ride.  Even on an overcast day, brightness lights up the periphery of my workspace.  On days when the skies and the water are clear, it’s hard to tell the lake from the sky, the reflection a heavenly mirage.  Frogs croak, the loons croon – their eerie calls echoing into the night – blue herons fly overhead while the crows caw out in their raspy voices.  The air around here is thick with dew and I often think this is what fresh smells like.

Someone’s fish just got away.

The pines and the birch branches on our piece of land are blowing, swaying in the wind, the leaves high above rustling, irrespective of whether I’m here or not.  But bearing witness to this all, it’s quite something.

 

 

Forget Normal: a case for the MFA

Normal life.  What does that even mean anymore?  Did such a thing ever exist or perhaps the term has become as outdated as ‘normal families’ and ‘normal children’ has for me.

Normal life would suggest a pattern of specific behaviours.  I do ‘x’ and then I do ‘y’ and then I do ‘z’.  Lately my life has looked more like: SJgahhjkgSA$#@IFS(F?US?J0u8472.

Not much of a pattern, more of a free-for-all, more like one of my computer passwords.

Going from being a ‘normal family’ to redefining what that means and looks like, to accepting ‘normal family’ encompasses a whole variety of situations – or rather that a ‘normal prototypical family’ doesn’t really exist – helped me make one of the biggest mental shifts of my life.  If I didn’t have to be normal and my family didn’t have to be normal then that opened the door for a whole host of other exciting avenues.

I’m not knocking normal, rather I’m opening the door to the great unknown and saying, “why not go in here?”  I’ve become rather fond of wild places, of the great unknown, of showing up at houses with appealing entrances.

And so I dived headfirst into my Masters program.  You know when you have a great idea and you get really excited about it, and maybe even mull over the possibility for years and wait for the timing to be just right and then that thing you wanted, you are ACCEPTED, you GET IN and IT’S HAPPENING.  Then you defer for a year, because life isn’t quite right, and then it’s here, that thing you really wanted and YOU’RE DOING IT.  I’m struck by that moment when it arrives, the momentous occasion of going from dream to reality.  But I’ll skip to the point.  The doing is tedious.  The doing is hard.  The doing is work.  No matter how much I like the dreaming, the doing is the fun part.  And so my former ‘normal life’ as a mom who wants to write is no longer.  I wrote before now because I wanted to, and for many years with urgency, but now I HAVE to write.  Not that this is the judge and ruler of my behaviour, but we are literally spending thousands of dollars for me to do so.  Money talks!  Money talks!  Now I am part of a writing community.  Now I’m in writing groups with editors and published authors who are looking to me to hear what I have to say.  Soon I will be face-to-face with agents and publishers.  There’s no time for remembering what normal used to look like, this is my new normal.  The glittery, dazzling literary world.  I feel like I have been knocking on the door for years, and somebody finally let me in and is showing me the way.

A writing program, such as the MFA, is a writer’s dream not just because of its focus on the craft, but because of the writers themselves!  The people!  I am so fascinated by my fellow classmates.  The cliché, in this case, is so true: every one of them has a story to tell.  And that’s why they’re here, beside me, engaging in the normal task of writing in the extraordinary setting of the MFA.

Things will never be the same.  This notion, this idea, comes up over and over in my memoir, a repeating theme, but over time, through my transformational journey of understanding what it is to become the parent to a child with Down syndrome, with much self-reflection, the tone of that messaging changes.  Things will never be the same and I wouldn’t want them to be.

Change, for me, has become a mark of growth.  How much more could my life possibly change over the next two years of this Master’s program?  Who knows? Chances are, at some point, I will settle into some kind of neat and tidy routine.  For a while.  Then the world will tilt, and I’ll have to stumble back onto my feet again.  But our world is constantly spinning, we only think we’re standing still.  Our sure-footedness is the illusion.

Our ‘new normal’ after the pandemic may not look like our ‘old normal’, but can we use this as an opportunity to change something maybe we didn’t like about our ‘old normal’?  Can we find the silver linings?  Can we step one foot in front of the other and knock down that door we’ve been eyeing.  You should know that Elyse, my seven-year-old daughter, never hesitates when it comes to knocking on strangers’ doors.  Ringing their doorbells, too.  She wishes every day were Halloween and so she makes it so, by declaration and by ignoring our cries of protestation.  Unfortunately, it isn’t always enough to declare our wishes, we need to take action, step through the threshold, fully commit to our objectives, and often we need others on board.  And timing.  Halloween only works one day of the year.

Living life is like turning the pages of a book; once you’ve experienced the story, you can’t unread it, it’s there inside of you.  There is no going back.  Nothing will ever be the same.  You can flag a passage, return to highlight your favourite lines, but ultimately the story doesn’t change.  You have to pick up a new book for the story to continue.

I’m somewhere past my title page, floating in a sea of ideas that I will shape, with time, into a sculpture of ice.  This endeavour of becoming makes me wildly happy.

I will leave you with a vision of my ‘normal life’ stranded on an iceberg, floating gloriously far away from me out to sea.  I’m in a speedboat with the people who matter and my new writer friends, heading in the other direction, and I don’t look back.

Writing the Mermaid

I am a mermaid, with bug bites in awkward places and a new cottage and a new puppy that trails by my side down the dock.  The puppy doesn’t choose to swim, but I plop him in anyway, to make sure he can float, because I am a mermaid and if you’re part of my tribe, you’d better prepare to get wet.

Or maybe I am a fish.  What an odd looking fish, the other fish must think, as I pass them by with my naked scale-less body.  And why does it surface where there are no bugs to be eaten?  Look!  It beaches!  I fool them, those scaly fish, and then my daughter catches them with her hook; but she releases them, like the spider I enfolded in the crumpled-up napkin and carried outside.  I’m not a fan of killing things.  Mermaids are one with nature.

Or maybe I am a seal, with my black leather-like glistening skin, my wetsuit and flippers, making my way along the shoreline, cutting the water down, gliding through it.

No, I am a mermaid, and like those mythical creatures drawn to shore, unsure of where I belong, I’m seeking my place among my school of fish, my fellow merfolk.  My MFA cohort, of course.

This week is my MFA residency through the University of King’s College/Dalhousie, and yes, I am at a cottage, and yes, I have been swimming like a mermaid when I can, and yes, I am trying to figure out my book project and my classmates and my workload and my life beyond this week with children and husbands to distract me and yes.  It is better to remain grounded in this moment.  Not worry too far into the future.  Too many yesses is a no-no.

And I told my classmates, I warned them, “you’re a part of my life now and that means I might write about you.”  They all nodded their heads, they understand.  Writing is not so much the life we have been given, but the one we want to make, that we seek to create.  They would no sooner take away my source, my lifeblood, than I would deny them theirs.  These are my people, these writer folk.  I like them a lot.  My own mother would deny me a rich source of material; she forbids that I write about her.  I told her, okay, I’ll write about you when you’re dead, in about ninety years.  She laughed, I can tell you that much.

Back to the writer folk, because I can write about them.  The books my classmates are working on are going to be so excruciatingly beautiful, I can’t wait to tell you about them.  For the most part, our projects are mostly theory for the time being, but the writing will come, the writing will come.  Let me whet your appetite with: flowers and mental illness, guilt, a dog over a man with pizzazz and glitter, a trip down the Camino on the way to redemption; dogs that eat health cards and other life shit that’s funny as hell and my next book: I Don’t Do Disability and Other Lies I’ve Told Myself.  The writers are equally as interesting as their stories – especially for a writer!  I haven’t met these people – hello, Covid – I just spend all day with them online.  Though we’re spread out about the Canadian coral reef, wow, this group makes it enjoyable to be staring at a screen for so long.  Sharing a passion for writing is enough to bind strangers, more than enough.

It’s a strange and wonderful experience to encounter others who adore reading and writing as much as you do and who are as interested in your work and writing as you are.  ‘Colleagues’ I believe these people are called.  Writing from home, one doesn’t encounter many ‘colleagues’.  MFA programs are good for that.

Perhaps my project is the mermaid, the mythical creature.  My hair may be damp from the lake, but it’s my project that’s the slippery fish to grasp.  I generally have a better sense of what I’m writing, after I’ve written it.  That doesn’t fit well into the academic mould or way of doing things, but it’s fine.  I’ll try it their way. I do have my limits though.  There are some things I just won’t do when it comes to assignments, like follow word counts.

There are some excellent reasons and cases to be made for avoiding the creative life.  Chasing mermaids is hard work.  Hell – they don’t even exist!  Yet, I’m drawn, with my fellow merfolk, to this fantasy world, this place of creation, this transforming myself into whatever it is that I want to be.

Black Lives Matter

“I can’t breathe.” ~ George Floyd.

Pockets of the United States have descended into chaos in the week since Floyd died in Minneapolis after a white police officer pressed his knee into the 46-year-old black man’s neck. ~The Washington Post

“Peace on the left, justice on the right.” As if to say the two must go hand in hand. ~Terrence Floyd, George Floyd’s younger brother.

I’m having a hard time concentrating.  I want to say something about what has happened, about racism; I want to speak out against the grave injustices of this world, but there is so much I do not know I’m afraid I’ll get it wrong.  I don’t want to offend by not saying the right thing, but I feel a tug, an incessant urging to say something and get over myself, and people are dying – so.

I realize that as an advocate for those with Down syndrome and the disability community, there is one core tenant of advocacy that I hold dear: the view that all human beings are equal.  That I hold people with equal weight in my head and my heart.  I believe in this mantra, we are equal, we are one, but if what has happened and reading the news and following threads on Twitter has taught me anything, it is that there are just some things you cannot see unless it is happening to you.  I am not a black man or a black woman, and so I can’t speak to that experience; I can only seek to educate myself as to how people of a darker skin colour than mine inhabit the world.  I want to know.  And I don’t want or seek to speak for black people – or a person of any skin colour – any more than I desire to speak on behalf of the disability community.  As an able-bodied white woman, I can be but an ally, a supporter.  I would like to declare myself as such.  That means I am actively going to seek out a black perspective in the books I choose to read for myself and for my children, in who I choose to follow, in the diversity of the people I admire and learn from.  The more we know about each other, the more we know about ourselves.  The more we see ourselves in the other, the more fully human we become, I believe.

And sometimes I get so angry about the way we, society, treat skin colour; the same way I feel angry about how people are judged based on their cognitive ability.  The amount of melanin in a person’s skin; the count of a person’s chromosomes; the size of their frame; the sex or gender of their partner.  These factors do not define the person as a whole.  We are more than our bodies.  We are beings of heart and soul.  And our bodies, in all their shapes, sizes, orientations, limitations, colours and creations are beautiful; we are flowers, the fruits and labours of love.  And my soul is aching, wholly aching, for the pain needlessly caused because of hatred for ‘the other’.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  Martin Luther King said that.  I saw those words written on the side of a building once and they said something to me about how I felt deep down inside.  I’ve mentioned those words before, but they come back to me now because there are injustices occurring everywhere and I can’t pretend – don’t want to pretend – I don’t see.  There are so many people whom I love and care about who have black skin: people I’ve worked with and who are in my family, who’ve married my friends and who are my friends; people I write with or who live in my neighbourhood and I don’t want to let them down.  If I have a voice anyone is listening to, then I want to use it for good.  We have that choice.  Those of us with privilege.

I don’t believe in black and white narratives of good guys and bad guys.  That all bad guys are white and good guys are black, or vice versa.  There are black men who have done wrong and black men who have become president and done so much right.  There are white men who have done right and there are white men who have done so much wrong and become president.  Privilege.  Power.  Those who abuse it.  Those are truths I believe in.  I don’t believe in black or white narratives, but I do believe in things I can’t see, that can only be felt.  I do believe in a racism so ingrained in our society, we can’t even pinpoint it, but we can feel it; we know it exists and we cannot sit idly by.  Because when it slips out, becomes seen, it is deadly.

George Floyd is killed on camera for the world to see; and we do see it, we see it plain as day, right there on the street.  “You’re killing him, stop!” wasn’t enough.  Simply asking wasn’t enough.  His murder is a crime against humanity.  Against men and women, mothers and children everywhere.  George Floyd was somebody’s son.  He was once held, a babe, safe in his mother’s arms against her warm chest.  One of his final words was “mama,” he cried for her, for help.  Nobody saved him.  A man took his life.  And now we are left to weep.  We are left to weep and wonder what could I have done?  We rightly wonder, what can I do differently now?

We can raise our voices to denounce hate.  Even the hate lurking that we cannot see.  We can actively seek out the voices of the other.  What do black activists have to say?  Those are the voices I want to lean in to right now. Those are the voices who have my ear.

And if you aren’t an ally to the other, you aren’t an ally of mine.

 

What Would Happen?

What would happen if you followed your dreams?

 What would happen if you followed not just your dreams, but that little voice in your head, the one you want to ignore because it completely throws the balance of your life into chaos; that voice with the cord that attaches itself all the way down to your heart.  And when that heartstring is pulled, there is no ignoring its song because it’s playing your tune, the tune of who you truly are.

What would happen if your baby was born with Down syndrome and that caused you to question many long-held beliefs that had you standing on shaky ground.  Would you then look around at the people standing next to you anew, with a startling clarity?  Would you live your life differently, follow a different path?  Maybe.

What would happen next?  Well, your baby would be born and you would be a mother or father, of course.  Personally, I have never really embraced the term ‘special needs mom’, but if that floats your boat, you do you.

You would research the proper use of language to be able to use it correctly with your own child.  Was it ‘Down syndrome’ or ‘Down’s syndrome’?  A person with Down syndrome (lower case ‘s’) is the correctly spelling and usage in North America, while in the UK, Down’s syndrome spelled with an apostrophe is the norm.  You would read and you would learn and, something new – or perhaps, not new, just reimagined – you would write.  You would write a blog and one day – today! – you would have been writing that blog for almost nine years, because you started when your first born came along as a way to keep in touch with family far away.

Then what if that blog became something more to you?  What if that blog became a story you needed to tell the world?  What if you wrote a newspaper article, just one.  Just one measly article – what could it hurt?  And what if the rush from that one published measly article and your hope to help create a more just society for your daughter would then inspire you to write more, to keep going, to dig deeper, to settle right into advocacy work.  And what if then, you joined a board of a local Down syndrome association and you met families, many wonderful families, who have children with Down syndrome, families you may never have been fortunate enough to have met otherwise, but they didn’t really have a regular place to meet – so what if you set that up?  What if you coordinated a meeting place and what if you showed up there, who else might you meet?  And what other stories would be told?  Many.  And what if those stories filled your head and some danced for joy and others sank with sorrow into a sea of tears that needed to overflow onto the page?  What if you could write about…all of this.

What would happen if you looked for a memoir on the bookstore shelf written by a mother who had a child with Down syndrome…but there were none, well, when you dug deeper, there were a few, but none quite as young or Canadian or as uniquely…you.  None with your story to tell.  Well then.

What if, scene by scene, chapter by chapter, you began to write your story down.  What if your story were to unfold before your very eyes as you devoured books on disability and memoir.  What if you read one hundred books a year, for three years in a row, mostly memoir – would you know how to write your own then?

What if you could receive an education by doing, by living, and by reading voraciously?  What would happen if you threw in every ounce of emotion you ever felt (leaving room for the emotions of the reader: pro tip), and let it simmer for a while, for a few years and then when you were in the exact right place in your life, which is to say, pregnant and planning to move, which is to say – right in the middle of it – you were to write that book, the story of receiving a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome with your daughter?

And during the process of writing a memoir, what if you were to learn something?  About storytelling, and time management, and publication, and copy editing, and narrative arc and plot and weaving in themes and cutting out crap.  What if you were to learn something that could be useful to others beyond the obvious of getting that book about Down syndrome out into the word?  What if you could find your voice.

What if, in the process of writing your memoir, you dreamed up a whole new career for yourself.  What would happen if writing became more than therapy, if it became your lifeblood?

Just what might happen if you decided to take writing seriously?  You couldn’t do that, could you.  That might be too selfish, play too directly into your deepest desires – or could you?  Well, if you keep writing, if you work hard at it, you might just face a whole lot of rejection, and then you might get published in a magazine or two, and you might see more of your name online and in print, and one day, (hopefully soon), you will see your book published, the one that took you three years to write.  And by that point you may very well think of yourself as a writer.

You might decide that while writing is writing and writing is everything, that money and making a living is important too.  You might become an editor on the side and of course, given your background and inclinations, you might consider furthering your qualifications and continuing your education to better be able to teach writing.  You might then consider getting your Master of Fine Arts in creative nonfiction, because you’ve always wanted to do your Masters, you love education, and while you’re waiting to do that, because your children are still growing up, why not travel the world with them?  You never know what could happen, so better plan that trip fast.  What if your travel agent should tragically pass away, would that thrust you into action?  It did for me.

And what would happen, if you decided that you love to write so much you’d like to attend a writer’s retreat?  Let me rephrase that with the truth.  You want to go to a writer’s retreat so that you can learn how to run your own.  Then what would happen if you just went ahead and ran your own writer’s retreat anyway?  Would anybody come?  Would anybody care?  In other words, if you build it, would they come?  And would you come into contact with more wonderful writers?  Would you have a chance to share new viewpoints and explore the world through the eyes of these dazzling women?  You would.

Then what would happen if you wanted to keep your retreat going.  If running a writer’s retreat became an important way to connect with others and use your skills as a teacher and a learner and a writer.  What would happen if you one day envisioned hosting retreats of your own, in your very own special place?

Then one day, what would happen if the world as you knew it fell apart.  If all sense of normalcy was erased.  Would you crumple to the floor and refuse to get up?  That would be understandable, if that’s where you needed to lie.  And some days you do.  You lay there motionless, watching the world pass you by.

But what if you held onto hope, and let the heartstring pull and listened hard to your own inner music?  Might you remember your retreat, and the second book you are going to write and the MFA program you got accepted into and the people who are counting on you?  Even if no one is counting on you, what would happen if you rooted for yourself?  Became your own biggest fan?  You’re #1 – go me!  What would happen if the cheers in your head became louder than all the noise of the outside world?  Not in denial, but in defiance and with reverence to all that you are and can be.

What if you thought about buying your family a pool with the money from all the cancelled plans of the summer, but then instead you thought, no, I want to buy a cottage. What if that would cost you everything you had, but would bring you closer to the people you loved?  To the nature and the water you worshipped?  To following your dreams and dancing to the tune of your heartstring.

Would you listen?

I think I just did.

 

Loss: Tending to the Rose Garden

Loss.  The idea came to me in hazy form one afternoon, but I had no time to jot down notes, to ease into the topic and now it’s five a.m. and while my body needs time to boot up, so too is my brain sluggish at this time of day.  I’m becoming accustomed to early mornings; I’ve been rising early all week and attempting to make the change both mentally and physically.  It’s the time I have, so I will use it well.  And that is the idea of this blog: that what has been lost, will be found, though often regained in some other form.  We are here to talk about roses.

For every loss I’ve experienced in my life there has been something I have gained from the experience.  I can’t say this is true for everyone, but for me, this has been the case.  The key to accepting my losses and moving forward to find the good has been perspective – finding the roses.  There is no doubt gaining perspective has cost me dearly.

There are the losses I’ve experienced lately:

The loss of time; I’ve learned to appreciate the time I do have and be more flexible.

The loss of routine; we have had to reconstruct our new normal and in the process are able to appreciate the relative ease of life before when casually picking up a few items from the grocery store was no big deal.

The loss of peace; we are working on nurturing each member of our family and ourselves.  On addressing each of our needs.

The loss of space; this one is a hard one for me.  I’m still working this one out.

In the past, I’ve dealt with the loss of a loved one.  While loss isn’t easy, and even when we do gain something from that loss, that does not mean to say the pain is diminished.  Since losing my maternal grandmother, I have found new ways to connect with her after she is gone.  Through cross-stitching – an art she taught me – and thinking of her, to sensing her spirit in the rabbit outside my window.  Though she is gone, and while her loss is real and felt, our relationship has not been broken, it has been transformed.

Loss is relative.  While it is true, we will all lose our lives eventually, we have today to gain in the meantime.  Focus on what you can do today.

I once thought I had lost the child I was expecting.  I experienced a loss of normalcy and I was devastated.  Down syndrome was not what I had planned.  But over time I was able to see I had more to gain than I had ever lost.  The power of that perceived loss transformed me in ways unimaginable, has pushed me to travel and see the world, to be more accepting of those around me and to become an advocate for those of differing abilities; to be a writer and become the person I was meant to be.  I can’t say I saw all that coming when I was pregnant though.  I can’t say I saw any of it coming.  I can’t promise you that your losses will bring you great things.  But hold it in your heart that it is possible that what you perceive as a loss today, may one day be your greatest blessing.

I’m thinking about loss after finishing listening to Still: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Motherhood by Emma Hansen.  In Still, Emma Hansen relives for us the painful experience of losing her son Reid who is stillborn at 40 weeks.  A body, a life, so fully formed, to never experience the light of day or the feel of the breeze on his skin.  There is no reconciling this loss, but Emma does survive it.  She goes on to have another baby, after much difficulty, and then at two days old this second baby turns blue and is rushed to hospital.  If you want to know what happens keep reading, if not, and you think you’d like to read the book, skip to the * below.  Because of losing Reid the way she did (he was born with a true knot in his umbilical cord) Emma and her husband had felt helpless and they were determined to be prepared for this next baby.  They had taken an infant CPR course and once home from the hospital after giving birth, Emma had been watching her baby like a hawk.  She acknowledges that the experience of losing her first child enabled her to act quickly and save the life of her second.  The beauty of Everett’s big brother Reid looking out for him from above and beyond is not lost on me here.

*Oh, hello.  We’re back together.  Loss seems irreparable, and likely the pain will dwell with you for a long time, perhaps forever.  There is no promise that the pain will recede, just that there will be more to come; there will be an after.  There is no replacing the pain, just as there is no replacing the loss of a loved one, but over time, and perhaps with a shift of perspective, there will be beauty once more; there will be new hope and transformation.

Ariel and I finished reading The Secret Garden together last night.  As two forgotten children learn to care for a forbidden garden, they form a connection, with one another and nature, that nurtures their souls.  The act of being in nature heals their broken spirits and slowly their surly dispositions turn golden as the sun they play under, and as fair as the flowers they tend to.

There is a line that stuck with me, that reminded me of loss and perspective.

“Two things cannot be in one place. “Where you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow.””

Where you tend a rose, a thistle cannot grow.  We must, deliberately then, sprout and give rise to those thoughts which bloom into delicate ornaments.  Those are the flowers we must tend to.  Pull out the weeds, and in times of difficulty, look for the rose buds to appear.  Someone or something may come along and cut the head off those roses – that’s life – and eventually, we know the last petal will fall and we will lay to rest alongside our roses, but while we are here, why not put everything we have into minding and making our gardens bloom?

As I stare out my window right now, I see buds on the trees.  Because I got up so early, I saw the sun rise into the cloudless blue sky I’m now witnessing, and into the promise of a new day.  And I smile, having tended to my roses, and feel grateful.

Keeping the Peace

My husband and I have agreed on a common goal for our family during this time of pandemic, which is to keep everyone happy, healthy and above all else:  keep the peace.  Keeping the peace is not as easy as it sounds.  KEEP THE PEACE.  I want to shout it out loud, but that feels counterproductive.  The challenge is to keep the peace when there is just so much each member of our family could be arguing about.  It’s your turn to take the dog out.  Don’t let the dog out!  Don’t run away from him.  Stop biting me!  It’s my turn to work!  Whose socks are these?  Who didn’t flush the toilet and WHY IS THERE A FULL ROLL OF PAPER TOWEL IN THE TOILET?  Who’s fault is that?  Why does it matter?  Who’s in charge here?  Why are the kids on their ipads?  Why aren’t the kids on their ipads?  Get them outside – bring them in!  What’s for lunch?  What’s for dinner?  I don’t want this!  I don’t want that!  It’s my turn.  It’s NOT my turn.  I wanted THAT.  Here, take it – no!  Who’s doing the dishes? Who’s watching the kids?  Who’s watching the dog?  What’s he eating now?  Have they eaten?  Who’s looking after the house?  Where did this literal pile of dirt come from?  Who’s making plans?  What are the plans?  I don’t like those plans.  Who’s sleeping? Who’s awake? No one?  BE QUIET.

The noise, these days.  There is an abundance of noise in our house and in my head.  The temptation is to S-CREAM…then everything goes quiet, momentarily, but that only leaves you feeling worse.

In the past week, I’ve begun my Master’s work.  I am now officially a full-time student of creative nonfiction for the next two years, during which time I will produce my second book-length work of nonfiction, a collection of essays with a disability theme.  I’m bursting with excitement over my course work and about my project.  The challenge is finding the hours in the day to focus and let out that creative energy and get to work.  I’ve got my eye on the wee hours of the morning.  A writer’s life is truly one of solitude, and while as a mother and primary caregiver I’ve always had to balance my need for alone time to create with caring for a family – now, even more so.

I’ve been drawing strength from a remembered line of Brene Brown’s:  we’re doing the best we can.  Brene Brown eventually comes to this conclusion after being hired for a speaking engagement out of town, and then asked to share a room with what ends up being the world’s worst roommate.  Her roommate smokes INSIDE the non-smoking hotel room in the face of Brene’s protest and manages to burn a hole in the curtains; then she pulls out her snacks and after getting chip crumbs all over the couch, she wipes her greasy, chocolate-coated, hands down the armrests to tidy herself up, to name a few of her unseemly transgressions.  Yet even she is doing the best that she can, Brene Brown comes to realize.  We must allow each other grace.  Not be a pushover, but allow grace.  Brene Brown comes to understand that the way to allow others grace is to set boundaries for herself.  She no longer accepts speaking engagements where she has to share a room; that is her boundary to set.

When I want to throttle the being who put a full roll of paper towel in the toilet or the being who walked through the house with their muddy boots on after the floor’s just been mopped, or the being who sucked up all of my time to work, or who sunk their teeth into my calf or whatever it may be; I’m trying to remember my own deep breaths, while balancing the deep sighs of those around me.  Each living creature in my home has needs, every day – surprise! – not surprised – and the responsibility of these needs boils down to two people, which actually then boils down to me as manager/CEO of household affairs.  The temptation is to drop the weight so I no longer have to bear it; allow our lives to crumple at my feet.  Fend for yourselves, I’M WRITING!  I would snarl, but that isn’t really who I am or aspire to be, so instead, I pick my moments when and where I can.  I will turn to dawn for solitude.  On the day Dan and Louie have a day-long errand to run, I just let the kids be without the snarl, and they’re okay, and they learn absolutely nothing from me, other than that I have needs too, and I am completely, 100% okay with that.  Nobody died.  And nobody yelled.  We each revelled in the here and now and the ‘just be’.  We were quite content to leave each other alone for a day.

I found myself raising my voice a few too many times this past week, and not just at my own family.  We are owed an exorbitant amount of money for a cottage rental cancelled this summer and by the time I’d reach my fourth phone call with the company, after waiting an unreasonable four weeks for a clear-cut reimbursement owed to us, I lost my composure.  My argument essentially boiled down to, “Not my problem.  You do what you have to do to GET ME MY MONEY.”  This woman had no power to do any such thing, and I knew this.  We both knew it.  Even as I raised my voice to express my frustrations, I knew this.  The woman on the other end stammered her apologies and then finally transferred me to someone higher up who was able to tell me exactly what is going on with our money.  I took a deep breath and would later recoil at my own ugliness.  To be rude or emotional over the phone with a complete stranger was totally unlike me, completely out of character.  Though I can be pushy, this was beyond pushy.  This was an emotional outburst.  Well it worked.  I’m getting my money back – but in exchange for what?  I lost my inner peace.

There have been signs around me to slow down, take stock, find my way back to our mantra for peace.

In searching for publishers, I came across a promising one named Guernica.  Intrigued by the name, I looked it up, and there was the painting, Picasso’s Guernica, named after the town in Northern Spain that was destroyed by German bombers in 1937 during the war.  The painting has become a monument, a constant reminder of the tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace that has been dubbed ‘a plea for peace’.  I also came across the book title Are We Done Fighting?  Building Understanding in a World of Hate and Division by Matthew Legge, and I thought I could truly relate.

The feeling of peace being disrupted comes from the greater scenario at play in the background, but it also comes from my lack of solitude and the feeling that something is missing.  Sometimes an odd sensation will come over me, that feeling of looking for something misplaced, like I’ve lost something important to me.  The feeling comes over me most strongly when I’m online or scrolling through social media, trying to find what it is that I’ve lost; the irony is that it’s time and solitude, at a time when the others are sleeping and I am alone; I’m wasting what precious time I do have.

“Where is it?  Where is it?” my scrolling finger and senseless wandering seem to demand.  But I never find what I’m looking for.

I allow for one last sign to catch my attention beyond battles with the world and Picasso’s Guernica, my plea for peace.  The sign appears in my day planner, of all places.  I flop open its pages and there, staring back at me, is a simple inscription for the month of May.  Five little words: Bloom where you are planted.

And here I am.  Both feet planted firmly on the ground amid five other beings.  There is plenty of love on which to grow here, it just needs to be cultivated and harvested.  That takes grit and hard work.  Our garden needs plenty of attention, and I’m not the sun, I’m just one measly watering can trying to cover as much ground as possible, watering our patch of earth to the best of my abilities, doing the best I can.  Others are stepping in here and there, doing what they can, but I miss my full gardening crew and I bet you do too.  Many hands make light work.  We’re in a bit of a draught, but we’ll get by.  I still hear the robins chirping; I know the gardener that holds me, and he’s okay.  He’s better than okay.  Our flowers will bloom, we will tend to one another.  And the sun will shine high above us.

Real Life

Real life.  Real life right now looks like a tumbled stack of Jenga blocks.  We’re all standing around with the last piece in our hands – stunned – wondering what in the hell happened.  We had our next move planned out, then crash.  The world caved in.  Luckily, we’re crafty, we know how to build that tower back up again one block at a time.  We wish we didn’t have to start again, find a new way of doing things, but that’s the only way to play the game.  Crash.  Build the blocks back up.  Crash.  Build the blocks back up again, one at a time.  One foot in front of the other.  There are new paths to trodden.

Real life looks like a rust-coloured puppy sleeping beside me in his crate as I type at my bedroom desk.  It’s a manual on my left called Writer’s Market 2017, because at that time I had already begun thinking about publishing my book.  The thought process continues, and I’m doing something about it, I am.  On my right, real life is a scrawled in notebook, with a miscellaneous total, $444.89, barely legible on an otherwise blank page.  The amount we are owed from the AirBnb in Guadeloupe, the Caribbean island we never visited because of rising concerns over something called Coronavirus…I think (hope) that money is coming back to us, but we have to wait for it.  We have to wait.  Like everything else right now.  Unless.

When I woke up this morning, I looked in the mirror.  This IS real life, I thought.  This moment.  There is no before to preoccupy us, only what comes next and only what is now.  I often think in terms of “real-life” being when my kids go back to school and when my husband drives to work, but if traveling the world and traveling in general have taught me anything it is that this is real life happening, right at this moment.  Wherever you are.  So make the best of it.  Curl into your place on this earth like a warm bed with flannel sheets and a down comforter.  Nestle in with a favourite book and turn each page anticipating the next conflict, the next turn of events, because that’s what life is – a grand adventure.  Choose your story wisely, boldly.  Revel in the details.

Real-life is my husband’s melodic voice, his version of Twinkle-twinkle Little Star, accompanied by Elyse on the piano, floating up the staircase to the beat of my heart.  Real life is a polar pocket of arctic air descending on us in May – MAY!  Real life is sometimes crushing: no money, no time, no space, no success, many failures.  Real life isn’t always great and often feels worse.

But in front of the mirror, the realization was that we can’t wait for life to start again.  Life is happening all around us, every minute, right this second.  Working nine to five isn’t real life; it might be what you do with your days, but real life is living and breathing with the people you love.  Real life is setting up a game of Jenga and delighting in all three of my girls gathering around to play.  It’s sitting next to Elyse on her bed and listening to her read the book J’aime for the tenth time.  It’s fluttering and sputtering my words out onto the page with today’s thoughts, not tomorrow’s, and not dwelling on yesterday’s past either.  If you are waiting to become, then you will be caught in a cycle of perpetually becoming.  Why not just be?  Be the person you are right now, today, no regrets and no excuses.

If your real life is hard right now, I’m sorry.  You certainly don’t deserve these unforeseeable circumstances, nobody does.  I believe things will improve and get better.  I wish you less hardship and send goodwill your way.  Keep dreaming and reaching.  If you believe things will get better, often they will.

I’m reminded of the Special Olympics motto, ‘Let me win, but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt’.  Is there a loftier goal than to bravely put ourselves out there?  Life is a tough game.  There are winners and there are undoubtedly losers.  We inhabit different roles as the blocks get stacked against us or line up in our favour.

“When this is all over…” I hear people say, and I get that, I really do, but we still have right now to hold on to, to live in – this moment, the present, a gift.  Even if it’s hard, don’t forget to live right now.

And right now looks like closed curtains, sheltering my eyes from the sun, a drained glass mug of tea, an empty can of pink grapefruit sparkling water, a cell phone in a glittery red case on its charging base; a pink pen poised and ready, pointed in my direction.

 

The Opposite of Loneliness

While tying my shoelaces up for a run, a thought popped into my head, I am not lonely.  I came to a shocking realization: I don’t experience loneliness anymore.  My family is around me 24/7, I don’t have time to feel lonely, even if I was.  It’s not that I’m particularly lonesome in my regular everyday life; my days are full and I keep good company, it was just an interesting observation that at a time when socializing is at a minimum, while there are those I miss, I am not forlorn.  My crew is solid.

To follow up on last week’s post, sorry to disappoint those readers who were actively looking for me to fall in poop (you know who you are and you know what karma is), I thought I would fall up (follow-up) with how the poop joke has played out this week.  Keep things light-hearted.

Elyse was on a virtual chat with her speech-pathologist reading sentences posted on the screen for both parties to see, when I arrived home.  While I was out running an errand, Dan reported Elyse was participating well in her session.  The minute I popped my head into the kitchen to check on things the read-aloud sentence that should have been, “Elyse went for a walk,” became, “Elyse fell in poop.”  The speech pathologist pressed their lips together and I did the same, but then as I’m much less professional, I burst out laughing.  Elyse smiled her cunning, knowing little smile and laughed at her clever joke.  She knows how to work a room, my girl.

That evening we were outside in the backyard playing as a family when Elyse tired of the game and went inside.  The first time she locked the rest of us out, I coaxed her to unlock the sliding door with a promise of fruit snacks.  Don’t judge me, it worked!  The second time, I was smart enough to grab my house keys for the front door.  After a stern talking to, I headed back outside.  We were quickly locked out again, and as we have rigged a makeshift shield to block the bottom of our fencing to protect our pup, the backyard gate can’t open so I had to hop our fence to make it to the front door.  I ended up hopping our fence three times.  Once Elyse helped herself to leftover Easter chocolate.  She held up the bag for me to see behind the locked door.  Another time, Penelope got trapped inside with Elyse.  Neither of them can open the sliding glass door, but Elyse can unlock it.  But that doesn’t help when she locks the screen door as well, because then I can’t access the glass sliding door even after she unlocks it. Oh lalalalala! (this is an expression Elyse’s EA uses in response to her comedics).  The third time Ariel had to use the bathroom, and so I made one last scramble over the fence and gave Elyse an even sterner talking to.

“This is not okay, Elyse.  Locking us out is dangerous.  You need to say sorry!  What do you say to mom?”

Looking somber and down at her toes, properly ashamed, finally having learned her lesson she said,

“Sorry, poopy.”

And I couldn’t not laugh.

And we laughed and we laughed and we hugged and I dragged her outside barefoot into the backyard and made her repeat to her dad what she had just said to me, because it was so well timed and unplanned, and it was just so damn smart.  Elyse has a wicked sense of humour and through her antics and one-liners her intelligence shines through.

Then she pulled another one over on us.  She tried the poop joke again, while chatting on the phone with her Educational Assistant, but nobody was biting.  (Oh lalalalala!)  Apres lunch, she shifted tactics.  We took an hour-long family forest walk, and upon returning Elyse took herself upstairs to her bedroom, tucked herself in, and promptly fell fast asleep.  She slept for three hours.  Being a seven-year old jokester is exhausting work.

I haven’t slid and fell in poop – yet – we’ve established.  In the past, I’ve certainly stepped in doggie doodoo, been rained on by a bird, and experienced the projectile range of a baby’s excretions while diaper changing, but I have yet to fall in poop.  Sorry to disappoint.  I did once, however, offer to close the open shed in our backyard on our way out the door to a family dinner.  The conversation from the front of our van went like this:

Me: “Shed’s open.”

Dan: “Oh.  I’m not closing it, called it.”

Me: “I got it!”  Flying out the car door.

In a mock sprint along the side of our house, I flew from the front driveway, onto the grass toward our back shed.  I was just picking up speed when I hit the grass.  One step, two steps…on the third step, my right foot gave way to the soft mud, which I slid through with all the grace of a baseball player sliding into Homeplate.  How had I not seen this coming?  The mud rode all the way up my leg, imprinted on my backside and onto my back.  I managed to avoid my hair.  Dan half hid his laughter while asking if I was okay.  I couldn’t breathe, I. Could. Not. Breathe.  Oh, lalalalala.  Laughter is the best medicine.

While I generally abstain from watching tv, in favour of reading books in the evening, lately I’ve made an exception to carve out some adult time.  And what have us adults been watching?  Comedians.  All I want to do right now is laugh.

I want to laugh and I want to be inspired.  Not in the cheesy, “you can do this!” kind of way, but in the life offering lessons and grace that awaken my writer senses.  On today’s forest walk, it was Penelope, my youngest, making me think.  She pointed to a puddle, “Are those piddows from the rain?”  But ‘piddows’ sounded more like ‘pillows’ than ‘puddles’ and so I thought about rain pillows, originally rain piddows – whatever you prefer – a wet and restful place to lay one’s head tucked into the earth.

The mispronunciation and misunderstanding of language provided by children is a source of never-ending entertainment.  My niece, around age six, once congratulated me on getting something right. She told me I “mailed it”.  My nephew, at two, called quesadillas “tasty ideas”.  These utterances came out over ten years ago, but we’re still talking about them, asking for ‘tasty ideas’ when what we really want is ‘quesadillas’ and congratulating each other with ‘mailed it’ instead of ‘nailed it’ and there has got to be a reason for that.  These memories make us smile and a smile’s just a guffaw away from something more…something uproarious and not at all unpleasant.  Something essential.

Elyse understands the value of comedy; she knows what is essential.  And she’s not afraid to let a punch line drop.  She says the thing you’re not supposed to say, but that everyone is thinking.  Her EA told me there was a student wearing overalls and some other fancy get up to school one day.  Though she’s supposed to be speaking in French at school, Elyse cut to the chase in her native tongue,

“Why are you dressed like a farmer?”

Everyone had been thinking it, her EA told me.  I think a farmer’s dress is practical and pretty snazzy, myself.

Elyse will be the one to stick her tongue out at strangers (much to our dismay), especially if it gets a laugh from the crew.  This morning it was replacing the lyrics to “move it, move it”, with “poopy, poopy” as she booty shakes her behind.  Ariel often raises her eyebrows and looks to Dan and I in response to Elyse’s pranks.  But it’s hard to make out our expressions – the harsh, chastising features that should be there, doling out parenting advice – with our faces turned away from view, shoulders hunched and bobbing, eyes squinting with tears, mouths stifling until we burst.  Let it all out.

This is the opposite of loneliness.