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"...

An airman and his wife.

After reading one of my blogs to him he shyly looks up and states that he too has many stories to tell - a thousand histories to write. I glance over at this man, and I have to admit I'm intrigued. He reminds me so much of my late grandfather, a man I wish I had taken more time to know. I was too naive to realize how awesome my own grandfather's life had been, how much he could have told me, the stories he had himself. So I am compelled to listen when Scott's Papa mentions this to me. He has recently received a friends autobiography and he is motivated to write one himself. This man I see once a month -a retired airman, a pilot from World War 2 - needs to tell someone about the life he has led and the things he has seen; the people he has met, and the love he has cultivated and known for decades - so I do what anyone would - I offer to help.

My kids love them dearly - this couple they call Grandma and Papa - two unique personalities that move so fluidly together - in the ways that they speak, the laughter they create - that it's apparent the many years they have spent with one another. They are eachother's history - without one the other would be lost - they are that entwined together. My children enjoy their company and are always eager for the next visit. But I want more than that. I want my kids to know them. I want them to understand that they aren't just a black and white photograph saved for historical relevance, or a name on a family tree. They are a history so invaluable that without them my children's lives would not exist now. Fate has thrown these people into my life, but love has kept them there. If not for the choices they made half a century ago - my life would be drastically different now.

His wife - Agnes - has been listening in. She has a thousand things to say - a million anecdotes to imbue on anyone who will listen. But she keeps herself silent. She doesn't mention writing her own autobiography other than to chastise herself for the lack of schooling she has received - for the written word that will never be set to paper. But of course her history will be told, at least a great portion of it; afterall, Lyle's life was lived alongside hers for so long - it's inevitable. And when it comes to those hundred stories he can tell, I have no doubt she will be standing right behind him, dancing that dance only they can waltz together, while informing him that he's remembering it wrong and not to forget all that happened next - their story to tell - my honor to listen...and now...to write.

Jigsaw

I look at them and see the jagged parts. They come together like a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle. For a while you think it's your job to put them together, to bring the edge of one jagged color to another, but just when you think you have it figured out they pluck the pieces from your hands and reorganize all your hard work. The independence comes in bursts at first. So quick and sharp you don't always recognize it for what it is. But  before long you realize this tiny person - an extension of yourself - has taken on a mind of it's own...

He was born so small that when I touched him I shuddered at his vulnerability. How do I handle him without breaking him? I used to wonder. And then I blinked and suddenly he transformed into this boy who resembles pieces of the man he'll become. Bones and muscles and brains locked together in one beautiful form so spell binding that sometimes I have to remind myself he grew inside me once. A hundred good natured relatives and friends tell me he looks like me. They are right. He has my face - my chipmunk cheeks, my full lips, my chin - but there are subtle differences. His eyes are more almond shaped - like his fathers - and they are green. He has one dimple that breaks the continuity of that gorgeous face, drawing your attention to his stunning smile, a smile which will win over the hearts of a thousand girls. But as much as he resembles me physically that is where the similarities end. I imagine he is more his father's creation than mine. His quiet observations mostly go unnoticed by me. But then he unfolds himself and forces my eye contact, and states something so perfectly true that I am reminded that he is his father's son. I always do a double take when he catches me off guard like this. This gift is an off shoot of his empathetic nature. But as in any gift there can be a dark side. His pure and perfect empathy allows too many hurts to be felt. He has a tendency to take things too personally. Tears often stain his face just as often from the hurts he himself endures as from the hurts others feel. His greatest challenge will be to learn that he can't save everyone nor should he try. Right now though, he is unmarred and untouched by the true cruelties that this world can create. It won't always remain this way, but for now it is beautiful to witness.

She was always a challenge. She has fought me every step of the way since the minute she was born. Already - at barely two - she fights for the freedoms she has not yet earned. In this respect she and I are the same. She has yet to learn that she can't forever stand at the edge of a precipice reaching for a goal that is still out of reach. She will tire and fall before it's ever in her grasp; but true to form - her stubborn streak inherited from me; her dare devil ways unique onto itself -will only see her climb that cliff again and again and again until she's grasped what she's aiming for. And only after failing more times then she succeeds will she learn that not everything is worth breaking yourself over. Not everything is worth the blood you spilled in reaching it. She will have to temper her need to acquire everything she wants, lest she be left with nothing she needs. But this being said she has one asset I didn't. She has a big, boisterous personality that will ensure someones hands will reach down and pull her up time and time again. She has a smile that would crack even the hardest facade and big, beautiful, blue eyes that will draw anyone in. She will not need to demand trust, you will just give it to her, and she will not let you down - not on purpose. Taken in pieces she seems scattered, but when seen as a whole she creates such a perfect, little girl that there are moments when she literally takes my breath away. She will be a dynamic woman - she will believe she can have it all- and if there is one person who could attain perfect balance it would be her.

I can't wait to see who Preston will become, what kind of personality he will have. It's hard as a parent to be patient, to settle back on your heals and let them do the work of self discovery, but it's worth the wait - as any good thing is. All of us are a work in progress - a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle that will never truly be finished. But there are pieces of yourself that will always fit just right - pieces that will never need to be shifted or changed in any way - the foundation of who you are - pieces of soul that can never be lost or diminished. No one can tell you what those pieces are and sometimes you won't recognize them yourself, but that's the fun in doing the puzzle - the mystery of what lies within- the picture that is hidden in the pieces.