Kinda Sassy

Today has been a genuinely wonderful day – and yes, it’s January and yes, it was snowing all day! Bronwen and I spent at least an hour out in the great outdoors, slipping on the ice, covered in flakes of snow, playing on the play equipment and having a blast. It was a day that was cold enough to have softly falling flakes of snow, but not so cold as to become painful after 10 minutes of exposure. There was a hint of blue in the sky hidden behind the clouds that makes a soul smile; a blessed relief after weeks of melancholy skies.

It never ceases to amaze me the sheer number of different kinds of snow that fall from the winter skies here in Canada. There are the softly falling flakes that are the archetypal snowflake designs that we are so used to seeing in the brochures of department store catalogues. There are the soft drifts of snow that cling to a child’s eyelashes and make her look as if she is wearing white mascara – usually reserved for the exclusive use of drag queens at Mardi Gras. There is the hard stinging kind of snow that feels as if the very heavens have turned into cannons, firing hard pellets of ice, leaving small red marks on any exposed skin. There is the snow that falls and turns into small diamond shapes of crystal that glitter in the sunlight. Snow showers, drifts, blizzard, whiteouts and storms snow puffs. You name it; there are some wonderful words for the white stuff that falls from the heavens.

I confess that when first I came to Canada I did nothing but complain about the cold and when I saw the snowflake decorations flanking the escalators in the local department store, I voiced my negative opinion. I thought it showed a lack of creativity to use such a hackneyed expression of winter, my knowledge in snowflakes being as such that I thought it was an urban myth that snowflakes looked that way. Until Matthew leaned over my shoulder and quietly said… “Ahhhh… that’s what they really do look like.” From that moment I couldn’t wait for the next snow to fall, because as the saying goes, seeing is believing.

I’ve cultivated a new hobby to partake in these recent days. I guess you could call me a ‘flaker’ for short, not that that’s anything to do with the flake we enjoy with our fish and chips in Australia, although truthfully, I could really gobble up a piece of gummy shark right about now in this land of salmon and halibut…..

And follow it up with a chocolate flake… yuuuuuummm

Flaking has nothing to do with being stupid and ditzy, nor can it be understood as to being a blonde moment. No, this type of flaking is when I go out in the middle of a storm, catch snowflakes on dark pieces of clothe as they fall and look at them through a magnifying glass. OK… so maybe it is a little ditzy! Snow flake watching is when you take the time to really look at the beauty of individual snow flakes before they hit the ground and are destroyed. Go and look at the amazing photography of Kenneth Libbrecht to see why I’m totally hooked on watching sequins falling from the sky.

Having been challenged by my life coach to find a way to enjoy the cold weather, I struggled because I am not a naturally outdoorsy kind of person and the winters here can be very long. For me, the perfect way to spend a winter day is to curl up with a good book, or have a favourite movie playing in the background as I loose myself in embroidery for hours on end. It is not my thing to grab some vital piece of equipment and go cross country skiing or ice skating. I freely admit that neither I nor my husband enjoys watching hockey, I don’t ever expect to desire to go snowboarding or dog sledding and the Canadian love of curling is simply beyond my comprehension. But with my delight over watching flakes of snow, I have found a way to take pleasure in a previously unenjoyable aspect to life here in a new county. It has taken a deliberate course of action on my behalf to find this new found enjoyment and appreciation of winter in my adopted country.

Obviously a challenge can be found in all this. What is there in your life that you need to change your attitude towards to make things better? How would improve if you changed the way to reacted to them? Would it bring to you pleasure to a previously uncomfortable, unwelcome part of life? If I were to ask you face to face, what is the one thing that you can think of right now to change your attitude towards, what would you tell me?

Officially this is the first post on this blog….

 

 If you got pancakes like this cooked for your breakfast….

 

 

you would think you could at least muster one photo for the flippin’ camera…..

 
….all I get is a stern telling off…

    

 

 

tomorrow she gets gruel…….

[Barbra:]
You don’t bring me flowers
You don’t sing me love songs

During the day I keep busy pretending to be busy. It’s easy when I have a whirling dervish for a daughter. In days long past, men filthy in body and in language, on wind propelled sailing ships that were always referred to in a feminine fashion, that had been out to sea for months on end, would swear they heard the sound of a mermaid singing with a sound so sweet it couldn’t be ignored. However, listening to mermaids leads almost certainly to death, as the songs of the sweet chorus would compel the sailors to steer their ships dangerously close to the jagged rocks of the shore dragging their ships ever closer to complete disaster. Being ship wrecked was to die painfully slow deaths of hunger and thirst on a desert island in the middle of the ocean. No matter the dire warning to ignore the song of the mermaid, sailors would find themselves fatally drawn to the sound of their own demise.

[Neil:]
You hardly talk to me anymore
When you come through that door at the end of the day…

As strong, it would seem, is the lure of the closed cupboards in this house for my daughter. There is something so impossible to ignore in there for her, that no matter how many times I admonish her against it, no matter how many times I broken heartedly smack her little hand, she cannot help herself, drawn back into searching through the cupboards and drawers. I hear a strange metallic rattling and clinking and know instinctively that she is going through the cutlery drawers, pulling out all kinds of strange instruments that seem so essential for cooking the perfect meal. Conceivably, it is the odd shapes of the cookie cutters that glow in a polished manner of faux brass that fire her investigate nature up. Then again, it could be the weird and wonderful whirling machine with the red handle that makes a whizzing sound when the handle is cranked by hand. Of course, there is the undeniable attraction of the sharp strips of sharpened steel that have sent me into a screaming hissy fit fueled by fear when watching her toddle out of the kitchen with one dangling dangerously from her hand. Alternatively, I will hear the sweet light tinkling of glass and the mental imagery leaps before my eyes of her smashing cupboards full of glasses on the cold tile floor.

[Barbra:]
I remember when you couldn’t wait to love me
Used to hate to leave me

On the other hand, I will hear the sudden loud bang of a door where little fingers have been unable to maintain their grip on the entrance to laundry product heaven. The lure of the washing powder, the beaded texture that clings to the fingers so well, and the fragrance that gives the wrongdoing away so strong. The bottles and cans that spray a fine mist that leaves a slippery wetness to everything it reaches. The large brushes with the wooden backs worn smooth with the constant caress of a calloused hand and the bristles splayed out much like the legs of a streetwise whore are also undeniably attractive.

Or, if the bang is somewhat less intense, I know that the lure to the huge variety of potions and lotions that my mother hoards in her bathroom cupboard has pulled at her imagination again. I know that the longing to open bottles is to experience the tactile sensations of the liquids and creams held within. Bronwen is already a sucker for a smooth cool salve with the faintest trace of pink colouring that comes in a shiny flip top tube that her grandmother leaves lying around. Her ’Manyah’ is always buying and never using the emulsions, creams and ointments that form the witch doctor treatments that are peddled every night on late night television. It’s as if owning the promise of youth and wrinkle free skin is more than enough for her; she doesn’t need to hold the manufacturers to their promises by actually using the products that promise to not only hold back, but reverse the hands of time.

[Barbra:]
Now after loving me late at night

[Neil:]
When it’s good for you, babe
And you’re feeling all right

I keep myself busy with other diversions during the day also; to not over burden my daughter with too much responsibility. I go to the supermarket, without real need. I wander the aisles and take 40 minutes to do what could be done in 15. Comparing the prices, I look at products with no real understand of what I’m looking at, the strange shapes of tins, firm boxes, plastic and paper are all lost in misunderstanding. I stand there, omitted from the present in thoughts of nothing of any real importance; just empty thoughts that take me far away from my now everyday reality. Even buying milk is different here to there. Here I buy three litres of milk in a rigid plastic bottle, inflexible and bulky. There, I buy four litres of milk in soft supple bags that yield to the touch, soft and silky, cool in it’s plastic bag packaging.

[Barbra:]
When you just roll over and turn out the light…
And you don’t bring me flowers anymore

I’m living in a room, crowed with the evidence of sickness of my mother who can’t bear to throw anything away. Hoarding clothes in two vast cupboards, they spill out onto short term, portable clothes rails that clutter the room; clothes from 40 years ago, that will never again fit her age altered frame, and never be appropriate. All because she is trying to fill the hole in her heart that has been there her whole life. The more she owns, the more fully the hole will be filled is her obviously mistaken thinking. Therefore, this room holds tins of imported European biscuit’s, hopelessly out of date from a Christmas season long ago, and old toys never played with from her own daughters’ childhood still looking fresh. Photo frames, miscellaneous furniture and old electrical items that no longer spring to life with a taste of a live current are packet higgledy – piggledy. I have tried to impose our things, my daughters’ and mine, on top of her mess, trying to create some order and not getting anywhere, in a room that should be big enough for my daughter to play in and for me to live in. I feel my life has shrunk down to a couple of suitcases again. If I had known that this trip would result in this heartache and chaos, I would have packed my bags very differently. I would have brought more memories and less clothing, more photos, books and personal treasure, less material that only serves to hide the emotional mess through it’s expansiveness. There are photos of happier moments on the wall. It only serves to break my heart over again when I realize there was such heartache hidden behind the captured moments.

[Neil:]
It used to be so natural

[Barbra:]
It used to be…

[Neil:]
To talk about forever

[Barbra:]
Mmm…

In “Almost French” by Sarah Turnbull, an old Greek man explains to her that it’s hard to have a life with your heart in two cultures. It’s almost unbelievable, but I am missing life in Ottawa. I find myself dreaming of the shopping malls, the look of the stores, the bus routes to get there, the food market where I would buy our evening meal supplies, the look of the Parliament buildings with the flame of remembrance on the hill, with it’s roof green as moss or the freshly scrubbed sparkle of brass. I miss beavertails and poutine; I miss the sound of the French accent (even though I do not fully comprehend the words). I miss the friendships I built there. I miss my small apartment that I lovingly decorated and tried to create a welcoming safe haven for my loved ones. I almost feel sad that I might not get to see the first snowfall this coming Christmas season. I complained bitterly whilst living there about the dark days and the extreme cold, but I think I am actually going to miss the crisp feeling of freshly fallen snow under my feet. I will be sad if I never get to marvel at a snowflake on my gloved hand ever again. The experience of it being so cold that the moisture in my nose freezing instantly as I walk out of the heat of the apartment building to the outside world is something that cannot be described.

[Neil:]
But used-to-bes don’t count anymore
They just lay on the floor
Till we sweep them away

I’m beginning to wonder why I build a life when it continually gets ripped out from under me and I have to start again. I don’t know if I’ve got the strength to create yet another life. But I acknowledge that I gave up the right to self destruct when I gave birth to Bronwen. It’s to her that I owe every day my waking up and getting through the day. It’s for her that I claw my way through minute by minute at times. If I was alone, I’d like to think I had the courage to just give up completely, to become an alcoholic, or find some other self-destructive method in which to loose myself completely; selfishly. But in all honesty I don’t even think I’m brave enough to do that.

[Barbra:]
And baby I remember all the things you taught me

[Neil:]
I learned how to laugh and I learned how to cry

I just don’t know how I’m going to start my life – again. First the Church, Pondscum,  Matthew and now, finally alone I must start once more. It’s never like this in the movies. Sure, the heroine has to start over after a devastating revelation that her husband has cheated on her, but over the space of two hours, with a big payout from the previous life, a home is rebuilt, a career blooms and a life is healed. For me, it’s a constant battle to over come the fears of loosing it all, letting down the walls of suspicions and hurt, finally trusting and having it all yanked away from me. Again. And I just feel so old and so tired.

[Barbra:]
Well, I learned how to love and I learned how to lie

[Neil:]
So you think I could learn how to tell you goodbye

When the first signs of daylight disappear and evening arrives, I have no need to panic yet. There are still distractions to be found. I can even get to 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock, 12 o’clock at night if I watch the right television channels and have the right movies. It’s only in the gloomy hours of the blackest night when the so called reality of my strength, calmness, my ability to make my life over again is recognised the for falsehood that it is. I cant deny in the night what I can in the day. My heart is broken, and this hurts more than I can put into words. The tears spill out unchecked and not one tear brings an ounce of comfort or consolation.

[Barbra:]
So you think I could learn how to tell you goodbye
You don’t bring me flowers any more…

It’s at night when the ominous fingers of silence mysteriously slide across the bed, finally reaching the ill defended heart and mind. Great wracking sobs wrench themselves from my unwilling body. I stifle inner urgings to give voice to the low guttural, almost primal screams like an wild woman in the deepest sorrow, because my daughter is lying peacefully, innocently next to me, and I don’t want her to wake and let her see the wild tears splashed across my face again. Her pity is almost too much to bear. The guilt I feel when I see her distress at my distress is a cruelty of human nature. The one person who is deeply affected by my distress, whose concern could bring me comfort when no other comfort is offered, is the one person I should not allow my distress to show to.

[Both:]
Well, you think I could learn how to tell you goodbye…

[Neil:]
‘Cause you don’t say you need me;

The movie “Under a Tuscan Sun” reminds me that there is hope, that of course life goes on if love ends. Nevertheless, right now all I want is my life with Matthew again. I’m loosing my hold on that life, and the faster I try to grasp at it to get it back, the faster I lose it forever. It’s like a bucket of thrashing eels in an Asian market stall, or freshly pulled fish from the sea, writhing this way and that, impossible to tell which move will be next, impossible to grasp a hold of and keep. Holding his hand, walking through a park, riding a bus, simply being peaceful in the same-shared space, all things that I now know I should have cherished much more than I did. Simple pleasures that I worry will never be mine again. I miss saying, “I love you” to him.

[Barbra:]
You don’t sing me love songs;

[Both:]
You don’t bring me flowers anymore…