Two

Dear Edie,

You are two years old tomorrow. It seems as though I should be exclaiming how fast it all has gone, how shocked I am that another year has passed so quickly; but in truth, experience has ripped from me the ignorance that time is ours to wield and that if we ignore it, and turn our backs to it that somehow it won't trickle through our fingers. With this new found knowledge that life is lived in moments not milestones, I have found a new appreciation for time. Two years my little one is not so long, but it holds an infinite amount of memories and wealth of loving acts.   

 In this second year of life you were no less a challenge than in your first year. I'm sure you know that you have never been the "easy" child. You do not readily accept change and yet fight tooth and nail for the freedoms which ensures you can induce some if you so choose. Some would call you stubborn but your single mindedness is mere determination, nothing more, nothing less. And your confidence, it grows with each new day. Yesterday you did not dare to jump off the deck, today it was the first thing you did. I imagine that given enough time you will evolve and become a child more beautiful in all your intricacies than I could ever describe in a single letter.

Two years has passed, a time that was filled with smiles, steps and first words. I held your hand, caressed your head, and slept with you on top of me. I kissed your hurts, and winced in anticipation of them. I have danced a million steps with you, and sung you countless lullabies. Two years of time that you'll never remember but that has created a bond that can never be forgotten.

Happy Birthday sweet sweet girl.

I love you every second of every minute of every precious moment.

Daddy Dearest

You are bigger than Lightening McQueen, or Dora the Explorer, you reach levels of fame and adoration Oprah Winfrey can't even claim. Their worship of you is all encompassing. They can't help this obsession, they are of the age where expression of emotions is neither controlled nor carefully guarded. When you walk through the door after being gone for a period of time their shouts of "Daddy", could be replaced with "Superman", "Hercules", or "Ghostbuster".

If they want to reach the sky, pull down a cloud or feel the gentle edges of a rainbow - they call for you, Superman.

If they want a helicopter ride or a horse to call their own, if they want to hang by their ankles or flip like a seasoned gymnast - they call for you, Hercules.

If they need a hero to rescue them from the ghosts in the trees, ninjas in their closets, or monsters on their ceilings - they reach for their fisher price phone and call for you, Egon.

If they could articulate their feelings; speak the words to express what you mean to them, it would never match the depth of all that you are. But if it could be summed up... if the emotion of it could be expressed in a word... its the one spoken when you arrive home from the mystery of "work", from a day where you disappeared and the calls for you were left unanswered, when your heavy boots echo on the porch steps, and your key sets the tumblers free in the lock...

Daddy!! they will scream and you will know. They love you. They missed you. Their hero. Is Home.

Happy Father's Day Scott

We love you.

Armageddon

Six months ago I saw my world crumble around me. Everything I had built, all the hard work I had put into "belonging" was ripped from me as easily as paper. It's an illusion. What you have, what you think is yours to keep. I am no longer able to convince myself that treading water is the same as swimming. When your world collapses at your feet, movies and the media will fool you into believing it will be from one large catastrophe that will strike the rest of the world, just as surely as it has struck yours. It's supposed to come from the sky and burn the cities to the ground, or from the sea and wash those cities away, or perhaps the earth will just swallow you and your good neighbours up. Any which way the end comes, you're rest assured in the knowledge that from the ashes a unity will carry on. The catastrophe will make us stronger as we take each other's hands, cry on each other's shoulders and eventually rebuild. You never acknowledge the possibility that the world ending event could be yours and yours alone.

 Never was this more apparent than the morning after discovering my son was ill. That night I went to sleep, exhausted and hurting. The terror of it was indescribable - it still is. So when I blinked my weary eyes and listened to the early morning sounds of the day, I was genuinely shocked to hear the birds, and the happy voices of neighbours, and the shouts of my children calling for me. Where were the screams that would match my own, the sobbing that could drown out the ones that wracked my own battered body? Where was the suffering that the world should have been in? Why didn't anyone else see it and feel it? Was I the only one privy to the knowledge that we are all fragile? That this wool blanket we have wrapped ourselves in and called society is only as strong as the people in it - and no one is as strong as they need to be.

I can no longer see the world through those special glasses we are all conditioned to wear - you know the ones - the rose colored ones that paint our world with the bliss of ignorance. I am shackled by this experience as much as I have been set free from it - and it's confusing to me.  Armageddon doesn't come the way the movies claim it will - it will stalk your neighbour, pick off your sibling, destroy your boss - for "this is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper".- T. S. Eliot

I am now a shadow of my former self, tethered to my own experience with the distinct ability to grow darker in the brightest light. I have grown acclimated to this pitch black, to the darkness I see around every corner, even as I carry the bright lamp labelled 'hope' and march forever onwards into it's abyss. Don't get me wrong, it is not a worse world, just a changed one - one where possibilities of all forms can seek me out - the good with the bad, the real of reality...

Procrastination

Procrastinate: to put off till another day or time; defer; delay.

Is it still procrastination if the task is never completed?

After having gone through three pregnancies in three years my body is starting to feel it's age. I learned the hard way that I'm not the spry little gymnast I used to be while attempting a front walkover for my children. After collapsing out of the handstand onto my head I was sore for days - both physically and emotionally. The day you realize you're body is starting to suffer the wear and tear of forgotten years is a devastating moment. Everyday now there's some new ache, from my neck to the soles of my feet. A lot of these pulled muscles and pinched nerves come from hauling around kids all day and breastfeeding at awkward angles. It doesn't help that the big 3 0 is on the horizon. This devastating reality is enough to make me want to start an expedition to find the fountain of youth.

Perhaps though, I could go into the land of middle age with my head held high, if only Scott would understand my precarious self-esteem. It's been two long years since we moved into our house. Two long years where my body has endured numerous months of pregnancy and 16 months of breastfeeding. Two long years where I have had to crawl, sprint, or tuck and roll under the windows in my bedroom. All I wish for is the neighbours to wonder what I look like naked to have some mystery left to that quiet mother of three in the house next door. At this point though I'm positive they have seen every tattoo, stretch mark, and saggy bit of skin I have. It's probably why they avoid talking to us...or why some of them have come to the door and offered us their recycled blinds ( I wish I was exaggerating ).

Scott is always so offended when I mock statements like "I wish we had our own property so that I could level the yard myself", or "If only we didn't have to get strata to approve everything, then I could stain our deck", or "I could clean the gutters myself, why do we have to pay someone to do it". Because Scott, for the third week in a row you have missed the garbage truck, we have three full baskets of clothes to put away in the bedroom, and the peeping Tom across the street won't even spy on me anymore because he's seen it all before.

Procrastination is too kind of a word to describe some of Scott's techniques of avoidance. I love you Scott, but the neighbours and I have created a petition.

All in favour of blinds for the naked woman in number 29.

Sign below

1. Tenant #11
2. Tenant #3
3. Creepy peeping Tom

and the list goes on, and on, and on.

...........................

Naked!

The water pools around their feet and slowly begins to ripple and rise over their naked bodies. This part of the day is always quiet as they wait patiently for the bath to be filled up. After I turn off the water they inquire about their toys. I pass them some from the drawer beside me and they play nicely together for a record breaking time of five minutes before the screaming and shouts of 'mine' echo off the walls of the tiny room someone had the audacity to call a full bath.

It's 7 pm and a headache creeps up on me - familiar, dull - the ache of motherhood. I pinch the bridge of my nose where my glasses usually sit, but thanks to the constant splashing are now resting on the bathroom sink, and I ready myself for the inevitable high, pitch wails of toddlers fighting the hair washing routine. I start with Gabe because although he can articulate his hatred towards getting water in his eyes he doesn't sob uncontrollably like his sister does. As careful as I am about keeping the water off of his face it's inevitable that some foreign drop of H2O finds it's way under his closed eyelid and the accusations of water torture spurns his sister into hyperventilating and performing any number of useless attempts to escape the enclosure of the tub.

By the time I turn to Edie she has accepted her fate and doesn't start her head splitting screams until I begin to rinse the soap out of her hair. By the time I'm finished I'm ready for this whole bath time scenario to be over with. But instead of getting calm, complacent children eager to leave the confines of the torture room, I receive excited and happy children who have managed to stir up a second wind for playing with their toys and fighting each other over the ones they don't possess.

By the time I manage to drag them from their bath they are wrinkled and cold and begging me to wrap them in a nice, fluffy towel. Of course they demand a certain color and they like it to be wrapped around their shoulders and tucked in at their necks. If you don't comply with these wishes then they wont leave the bathroom without full on tantrum meltdowns. Two seconds after being wrapped in color coordinated, properly arranged towels, they throw them off and run streaking throughout my house usually screaming 'naked!' as they careen from room to room. I manage to pin them down somewhere between the tub and Eden's bedroom to put diapers and pajamas on the crazy, little, flailing bodies when Gabriel says in passing "Edie has two bums!"... I respondm "I'm afraid that's just a vagina, Gabe"

I chuckle and think that it wont be long before they are demanding to bathe by themselves - so I guess I should just try and enjoy this while it lasts, but maybe for the preservation of my own sanity... I'll take a few blackmail photos here or there - can anyone say "grad congratulation photo"...