So, last year, just a few months after my relationship divided itself into two homes, my sister’s did the same.  She’d been with her mate longer than I had been with mine and they too have a child who is two and half years older than the boyo.

This was a hard time for me and for my sister, obviously, but it was a hard time for our whole family as well.  My parents will have been married for 50 years in November and both their daughters were suddenly – in one fell swoop really – “divorced”.  These things are complicated.  On the whole – because we all love each other very very much – we muddle through but there are rough times.

Misunderstandings.  Edginess.

And the scheduling of things has become even more frenzied than it was.  Last year – so that we would not get trapped out of sync in perpetuity – we set things up so that the “grandkids” (i.e. the boyo and his cousin) would be together for the actual day of Christmas every other year.  I went to Vancouver with the kidlet and we dealt with the comings and goings of my sister’s ex and my sister’s new man and had a pretty decent time of it – as stressed as we all were in a way, as new as it all was.

After that week, I gave my son to his dad and I had a week alone.  I was scared of that week.  Fought it for a while.  Didn’t want to be alone for that long without my son or anyone really because of the time of year.  But my lost orca-ring set me straight and I didn’t run from my demons to some place far away or far away and into the arms of someone who wasn’t sure he could catch me – no matter how much I wanted to.  I spent some time with a good friend.

I spent a lot of time alone.

At a certain point I caught myself looking at pictures of my son when he was an infant.  I even looked at pictures of him when he was just a few weeks old and there were still bruises up and down both my arms from the seven blown veins the anesthesiologist gave me trying to get an IV line in…  I had been labouring for nearly 30 hrs by the time he was set to work on me – it was hot – my veins were terribly dilated – it wasn’t really his fault and the fact that everything was dilated made the epidural easy – no problems or complications there and I am quite sure that my son might be dead (he had the cord around his neck) if I had not gotten that epidural and he and I were finally given someone and machines to monitor us both.  I was passing out between contractions right before the epidural kicked in – dreaming of the Little Match Girl and seeing my father clear as day from the perspective of a child in those blackouts… A few bruises on my arms and some post-partum madness was a small price to pay for my son healthy and in my life…

Anyway.  Not easy to look at those pictures.  I hadn’t looked at them in ages.  I hadn’t looked at some of them really ever.  And last December I had spent months more at a remove from things than I ever had before in my life.  Numb.  I looked at picture after picture.  Of my beautiful, beautiful baby…  And I thawed.  And I wept.  And wept and wept.

With love.

So much love.

All the love I’d felt when he was born but was too sad and messed up to give him – all the love that I have ever felt for anyone or anything just pouring out of me onto my computer screen and into my past… I realized that it had all been there even through the crazy.  I HAD given it to him… Lavished it upon him… I was just too broken and numb to FEEL it going out to him…  I healed myself retroactively by looking at those pictures.  Brought that beautiful baby and his sad, sad mother up into the present and healed us both in a way.

So, that week by myself after last Christmas was crucial.  A turning point.  Agony but so important.  I can trace pretty much every single one of the good things in my life right now to that moment of release – that moment of uncaging my love and passion from sadness, depression and 12 years of the oppression of being in the wrong place with the wrong person.

But the thing is – it’s almost been a year and Christmas is coming up fast and this year I do not have my son for Christmas.  I also will probably not be flying to see my family until after Christmas so that the grandkids can be together for a bit.  My sister is near-frantic making plans to work this out with her ex, the new man and his kid… It’s madness.

But me?  I will probably be alone for the actual days of Christmas Eve and Christmas for the first time in my life.  There is tremendous freedom and isolation in this.  I mean I could really, truly be ALONE for that holiday and it’s a strange feeling.  I don’t feel like wanting to get away this year would be running, either.

And I can’t really afford it, but I’ve started looking at vacation packages to sunny places for a few days cuz why not?  Nothing to lose by looking – fantasizing.  Turns out the prices don’t change if you go as a single.  Everything is geared to couples.  Just the way it is.

And the thing is, this year I truly believe I’ve earned it.  I’ve earned some sunshine.  I’ve earned a man who knows he can catch me.  Who reaches out for me before I’ve even leapt.  I deserve that.  I want and crave that.  I deserve that and so much more.

Yeah.  Me.  I deserve that and so much more and I want to give that and so much more.

And I want a beach.  And sunshine.

But if I don’t get it, I’ll be okay.  I have my two kitties.  I have books and journals to read.  I have words I might write.  I’ve never had a hard time filling my time.

I just know it wouldn’t be running FROM something this time.  It wouldn’t be running at all.  It would be a break.  A release.  A real vacation even.

I just know that I want to take new pictures. Of new people.  And new places.

Who knows.  I might need them some day.

The Lousy:

The boyo’s eye is wandering again.  We are going for more measurements in anticipation of more surgery.

Arrived home from Thanksgiving in Vancouver on a later flight that was an hour or more delayed to icy roads and a wise, lovely, generous friend who drove me and the boyo home carefully so that it took us twice as long as usual to get there only to discover that there was a broken water main and no water on in the building.  I had barely any clean clothes, had to teach all day the following day and then go to a meeting and had been planning on showering when I ‘got home’…

I joined a gym and have started to lift weights in a class with other people lifting weights and may actually have begun to like running a little bit.

Right after I changed to my fall duvet and duvet cover, the boy-cat puked all over it.

The kids I teach have no idea who Kermit the Frog is.  I’m not sure my son knows who he is.   This makes a failure as a teacher, as a mother and raises serious doubts about whether or not Western Culture shouldn’t just throw in the towel and dump itself into an ocean.

The Good:

Even if the boyo’s eye is wandering again – his vision is still pretty damn good and seems to be relatively stable and he appears to be working really hard to use both eyes together.

The meeting I had at the end of my tired day in my one clean outfit with my dirty hair full of product to make it passable was with an incredibly receptive, supportive, interesting and interested Professor at a local University who is helping me with my application to the Masters of Education program.

The weather turned warmer so going back to my summer duvet and duvet cover was relatively simple.

I joined a gym and have started to lift weights in a class with other people lifting weights and may actually have begun to like running a little bit.

Oh, and I’ve taken to drinking cold water from an emptied Aboslut Vodka bottle.  This amuses me to no end…  Perhaps I should try bringing it to the gym?

So, yesterday.  Amongst other things.

I accidentally stabbed myself with a safety pin.  Thing dug straight into me about a half an inch.  I think I’ll get to keep the hand but it was disturbing to see a safety pin all curvy and straight and embedded in my palm.

It snowed.  The boy wandered around the house in the  morning gleefully exclaiming, “I love snow, it’s my favourite season!”  I replied, “That’s good baby, I’m glad you’re happy.”

I got a flat tire a day after getting my snow tires put on.

My friend, who was looking after the boy and her own two children ALL DAY along with her husband , then sent her husband to help me put on my spare and they watched the boy even longer while I went to get the tire fixed and remounted.  When I called to say that I was going to be a little while longer they had ordered Thai that they expected me to share with them and that all was totally fine.  They even took my son to a movie today…

Later, another friend of mine read me TWO chapters from a lovely book that she’s been reading to me and let me babble about some things I’ve been working through – mulling on – cogitating…

And I felt like a burden.  And I felt like a babbling, boring lunatic woman.

And then I realized that I was getting things I would – and do – easily, happily, give.  I remembered that things rarely come from the direction you think they will come from, nor do they show up in exactly the way, or time frame, you might have expected.

I realized that though it is hard on the boy to miss time with his dad when he travels and that it’s hard to teach small children all day and then come home to no help and a small child – it’s also REALLY nice not to have to miss three solid days with my son.

I realized I am getting a lot of the things I need.

I realized that I need to get out of my own damn way to accept them.  Own them.

Cherish and welcome them.

And then remember to say thank you.

And mean it.

So, the other day I wanted to get the little man a treat. Something we don’t usually get.  We were at a different location of our usual grocery store and the change in layout drew his attention to different candy in the bulk bins.

He saw and was captivated by Jelly Belly Jellybeans.

And I’m with him on the attractiveness of these guys.  They look good.

They sound good if you scoop them up and let them drop back on each other.  They are a satisfyingly cute yet still somehow sexy size.  They make you feel like you are in charge of your jellybean but that it would put up a fight if it could.

Jelly Bellies are scrappy-looking, unlike the giant ones that often come out of those dispensers for a quarter.  Those guys are behemouth and lunkish and, except for the licorice flavoured black ones and the cinnamon flavoured red ones, they all taste the same.

Jelly Bellies have very distinct and very interesting flavours.

That said, given my taste for dark – even outright bitter – chocolate, real fruit gummies and that if someone held a gun to my head and said you can only ever have salt or sugar for the rest of your life I would choose salt so fast  time itself would have a hard time keeping up… Jelly Beans are always disappointing.  They stick in my teeth, they’re about as interesting as eating a spoonful of sugar and most of them are flavoured with fake fruit.  I cannot really abide fake fruit flavouring.  It makes me feel like I’m having a seizure and like I might just kick a puppy.

If it’s masked with some of that “sour” sugar coating I can tolerate it better but, generally?  Just not my scene.

So.  Anyway.  He wants these beans.  He wants to pick his own flavours and he favours all the ones that make me most want to grit my teeth:  Watermelon, Tutti-Fruity, Apple… Add some Cotton-Candy and we’ve got ourselves a rodeo.  I made him get some Vanilla and Popcorn.  The Popcorn flavoured jellybeans amuse me for their unabashedly postmodern garishness – but he doesn’t really like them.

We pour them into a bag one flavour at a time and add them to our bin of purchases.  When I look at the bill later I realize we could have bought a small car for the cost of those damn jellybeans.  I figure they’d last through a nuclear winter so there’s no immediate concern about eating them quickly.  Thus, I decide I am going to eek those babies out as a treat like maybe 10-15 at a time.  Teeny Tiny Tastes.

Second time I give them to him as a treat, he says, “look at this Mommy.”  And he bites one of the watermelon ones in half with his little teeth.  It’s pink inside.  Green on the outside and pink on the outside.  Like a real watermelon.  Then he shows me the apple one.  Red on the outside, bright white on the inside.  Like a real red apple.  And I loved that he’d even thought to look inside, loved that he’d notice what he’d seen and loved that he wanted to share it with me.

The way he sees things, the questions he’s always asking whether he understands that’s what he’s doing or not.  It’s magic to me.

Then I think, “Damn.  The fully grown adults who came up with these beans thought about it first.”  Thought it would be cool to make a watermelon-flavoured jelly bean that was watermelon green on the outside and watermelon pink on the inside.  They went to the trouble because somehow they had anticipated that someone might not just pop the tiny bean in their mouth – but bite it in half and look.  Really look.

And that was magic to me too.

And it was totally worth the price of a small car.

______________________

Photograph borrowed from HERE

And for those of you who might be reading this who know about some of my screenplay work THIS is pretty damn hilarious to me…

Stacked all around, in pile after pile. Veritable Corinthian columns of paper. More yellow in hue at their base, more white as they reached ceiling. For a moment it seemed they were rows of aging teeth teetering around me. There need only be the pinky red curve of gums where there was instead a floor. Perhaps a red carpet? Scalloped baseboards would have done the trick?

May I ask, I started, what is in these rather prodigious piles of paper?

Letters.

The answer was so curtly delivered there was the sense that had he been able to shorten the very syllabic structure of the word “letters” he would have. There was also a mischievous twinkle in his eye while he waited to see if I would fall for the ambiguity of his answer. Did he mean individual letters of the alphabet? Or, did he mean correspondence?

One of many small dogs brushed past my feet. Brown, shaggy, of very questionable pedigree though suggesting a Maltese and some sort of Terrier had had an interesting time. I had seen no dog door and wondered, suddenly, if the yellowing at the bottom of each stack of paper weren’t in fact pee. I decided the aroma would be unbearable had that been the case and then decided not to fall for his trick.

To whom have you written so many letters then? Friends? Family?

To one person. He seemed disappointed but impressed that I had cut to the chase rather than play his game. A woman. A woman I once loved and will likely always love.

Are these copies?

No. He smiled. Pleased with himself, finally, for this had clearly shocked me.

And he was right to be smug. I was flabbergasted. Jiggered. Befuddled.

I mean it was three lifetimes worth of writing. More. It was more. And this woman he loved, would likely always love, had never read a word of it.  My mind reminded me that he was eighty-seven years-old.

When, I stammered, when did you –

I was nineteen when I first saw her.

Did you ever speak to her? It was an insensitive, instinctual question prefaced on some vague, very contemporary sense that anyone who would do this must be a stalker of some kind.

I did in fact, he smiled. Impressed again, I think, that I had the temerity to ask such a thing so bluntly. We were lovers.

I’d come to interview him about his new novel. He’d read my work, watched my interviews, and decided to invite me to the house. His agent said he’d been doing phone interviews for years and before that he’d met journalists and academics at cafés.

In short, he’d never before shared this world of the painfully unspoken with anyone who could, in turn, share it with the world.

Why me? Why now? My voice was unbearably small.

I’m dying and you look like her, speak and move like she did. Cliché, perhaps. But in the end, it would seem,  good enough.

For those of you who know me or have read as far back on this blog as my first Canada Day post, you know how I feel about chickens and flightless birds in general.  And though there has been some good stuff going down round the octopus niche lately, about which I promise to share when there are more concrete things to report, there’s also been a lot of crap.  I mean, if I could make it to work without crying – on Thursday mornings especially – that would be a really welcome change of pace.  Seriously.

Either that or I need to get over my aversion to water-proof mascara.

But, through it all and because of the unending river of nonsense and joy that is the internet, there are always the Muppets to see me through.

(And when oh when is Gonzo going to make an honest chicken out of Camilla? It’s just not right….)

So, not for the first time, I’m woken by voices outside my window sometime after bars let out but before one can justify just getting up and starting your day if you don’t actually have to.  Last time it was a guy, screaming into what I can only assume is the ground floor apartment three floors below mine because that is the trouble apartment around these parts:

“You fucking WHORE!  I hope you DIE!  I gave you everything and you won’t even give me back my coat.  I hope you DIE!”

This time, though, it was out on the street, there was a cop involved and he was as potty-mouthed as Angry Coat-Guy had been.  The first thing I heard was:

“Get back in your car.  GET BACK IN YOUR FUCKING CAR BEFORE I CHARGE YOU!”

Then things got quieter.  Then I heard a woman weeping.   Drunk or high or both.  Beyond propriety.  Catching the sadness of a situation and the whole damn world; a voice loud with the backing of chemical connection to collective unconscious:

“What is WRONG with people?  Why don’t we all love each other?!!!”

And then a few minutes later, with much less largesse of spirit:

“Five hundred dollars?  I can’t believe this.”

And there was something nauseating about the seemingly heartfelt grandness of the first query and the pedestrian fiscal smallness of the following statement.  Grounded out of the ungrounded madness of empathy into the very real weight of the financial.  Maybe, I thought tiredly while one cat found the back of my knees and the other went under the covers to cozy up to my belly, empaths need money to keep them from floating off into space.

Then a new voice entered the fray.  A man’s voice.

“You’re kidding!  Five hundred bucks because I have a bladder that WORKS?!!!”

Then the cop must have said something quietly and then I heard:

“Oh go ahead, take me in!  Been there done that!  Night in a drunk tank with a bunch of losers!  Whatever!”

And then the cop left and the woman was pleading because I heard the man say, “I need a fucking JOINT not to go back to your place and have a little pow-wow.  Jesus!  Whatever…. No, I don’t want to.  It’s the last place I want to go but let’s just go.”

I was left wondering why, exactly, they had been pulled over?  Was she peeing in public?  And where exactly ?  Cuz my son plays with sidewalk chalk out there.  I was also left thinking, “Honey, worry less about why we don’t all love each other and more about why you are going home with a drunk tank loser who doesn’t know he’s a loser and who is blatantly saying he’s only going to your place by default.”

I mean how sexy and charming is that?  I was just about two shakes of a lamb’s tail away from inviting that big boy up into my apartment cuz he just talks so pretty…

Seriously – what the fuck is WRONG with people?!

It all reminded me of a line from the show Sports Night.  The character Jeremy is writing a letter home to his sister Louise.  His voice over, speaking about the character Dana, says (going from memory here), “I can understand why a woman might think any man is better than nothing but I’ll never understand why she thinks she has nothing.”

But I was also left wondering why the question “Why don’t we all love each other?”  Automatically begs ridicule?  Sober, drunk, sick or well – I don’t know a person who wouldn’t smirk a little if they heard someone say, “Why don’t we all love each other?”  And that seems unfortunate to me.

Seemed unfortunate in the middle of the night when I felt myself smirk.  Feels unfortunate now.

Made me think, “I can understand why we use cynicism to keep ourselves safe, I just don’t understand why we think any of the good stuff ever happens when we play it safe.”

Jess still points out your car to me.

Her hands were shaking as they held her wine glass and twisted the pedestal base two staggered twists clockwise and then two staggered twists counter-clockwise over and over again. One hand raised up from the glass, index finger pointing to an imaginary car that her eyes were seeing somewhere on the beer stained, broad planked, wood floor about two tables away. She used two voices and had both sides of the conversation in a rush and burn.

It’s a blue one this time Mommy! His is red, isn’t it Mommy? Yes, baby, his is red. His is a red one, right Mommy? But that one was blue? Yes, his is a red one and that was a blue one, sweetie, you got it. But we saw a green one too didn’t we? Yesterday, right? We saw a green one? Yes, baby we saw a green one.

She stopped. Smiled.

And by yesterday, of course, she meant about two weeks ago. Their sense of time always amazes me ’cause they don’t really have one. It all happens within about 24hrs. Their whole life. Everything happens pretty much right now all the time always. Fuck I’m talking a lot. Sorry.

He opened his mouth, she held up one of her nervous, fidgety hands to stop him. He laughed.

What?

You were about to say it’s okay, that you don’t mind listening, that it’s fine if I want to just keep on talking. And it’s always sweet of you but it isn’t okay. It isn’t. It never was. I shouldn’t be the only one talking. Not all the time.

Her eyes. Green and brown. Flecks of yellow, the inside corners just a little red. She’d cried sometime today. It was that kind of red. Not tired. Sad. It was the first time she’d made eye contact since she’d met him at the pub, the first time he’d seen her since he’d moved away. Something in him pulled up tight, a thread wrapped around a finger until the tip starts to throb and turn blue. The black of her pupils showed him the cool defiance of his posture.

His mind felt her fingertips run over his lips, her cheek and hair brush his rib cage, the soothing texture of her real laugh in private. In the dark.

I wish I hadn’t heard you were coming into town, she said, I mean, you wouldn’t have called me.

There was no question in her tone. Her eyes turned inward, traced the edges of her stupidity. The wine glass staggered four more times and stopped. Her spine straightened and the thread pulled impossibly tighter inside him. He brushed a thought over the nearly-numb achy blue parts of him to the blood-filled pink parts of him, felt how both sensations were painful and real. Nothing he could say or do would ever make it right.

You’re wrong, she said, like he’d said it out loud.  And then she left.

The boy and I are on the sofa having a cuddle, watching a terrifically annoying show with some of the worst acting I’ve ever seen about motorcycles and how they work and flipping through a colouring/sticker book all about Thomas the Train.

I give the boy a kiss on the cheek.

He says, “I like baths more than kisses.”

I say, “That means you’d rather have a bath than get a kiss. Is that really true?”  He laughs.  I’m not sure he understands.  I say, “So, should I kiss you again or would you rather go have a tubby?”  He laughs again, says, “No.”

Clearly, there is a barrier of grammar or something at play here.  I decide I don’t really care. I just want to kiss my boy.  So I start to kiss him over and over again on the cheek.  Lots of “mmwa, mmmwa, mmwa” sounds and repetitive action.

He says, “No.  No more kisses.  Not ever.  No kisses while I am reading.”

He has no way of knowing that this statement actually cuts me, that I feel it like an extended and well-braced index finger pressed into a bruise, and he has no reason to ever know that so I say, with a big smile on my face:

“Well, too bad!  I like to kiss boys who are reading!”  And I kiss and kiss him.

And kiss him and kiss him.

And he starts to make a noise like a truck backing up, a warning sound and holds up his hand.

“Ehn Ehn Ehn Ehn Ehn Ehn!!! No kisses ever again!”

So, I kiss his hand over and over.  I stick a sticker from his book on his nose and call him a Thomas-Nose.

I kiss him some more.

He sticks a sticker on my nose that says, “Go” and calls me a Go-Nose.

We are both laughing hysterically at this point.  His laugh is beautiful and comes from a place so deep inside him that it gives him a short bout of hiccups.

I love his laugh.  I love him.  I love giving him kisses.

And, whether I’m doing it more in my imagination as the years pass, sending him kisses with my mind rather than planting them with my lips, so as not to embarrass him I just won’t stop kissing him.  I won’t.

Not ever.

Lovely view of small potted Cyclamen and various shades of African Violets. Never liked the variegated leaf variety of African Violet, she thought, detracts from the flower itself, scruffs up the simplicity. Cyclamen are full-on magic, though. I mean anything that is its true self by growing inside out commands respect.

Should probably get up, she thought. But she didn’t.

Though usually quiet in this part of the store, brown business shoes came into view under the hem of dark brown suit pants with a break in them that felt more like they’d never been hemmed than like someone had made a choice to hem them that way.

I mean this isn’t 1920. Might as well be wearing spats with a break like that.

What? The voice was not agitated so much as confused.

Shit, she thought. She’d said that last part out loud. This is what happens when you are overwhelmed by the loss of your brother while in a grocery store floral section. You wind up tucked into a corner, hugging your knees, identifying with houseplants and blurting things out to the pants of strangers.

Maybe – the logic of sadness twinned with temporary madness whispered – she could just pretend she hadn’t said anything. Pretend she was invisible. I mean, this was the first person to even walk by in what? She looked at her watch, and hour and a half.

Wow. Been here longer than I thought.

How long do you usually plan on huddling in floral departments?

Crap, her mind screamed, I spoke out loud again.

Spats guy dropped into view. The suit wasn’t cheap, even if the pants were poorly hemmed. Perhaps he’d lost weight? Didn’t have the right size belt or maybe no belt at all? There was kindness in his face but it was tucked under mischief and fatigue. Early 40s maybe? Had all his hair and it was a rich, wavy brown that went nicely with his pants.

You’re a mess, he said, as if he couldn’t quite stop himself.

I am, she answered plainly. I mean, really, she thought, why argue?

He visibly relaxed, inexplicably relieved that he had not offended her. Her mascara was smeared around and down her face, there was probably something frightening running out of her nose. She couldn’t be sure, but she had a strong feeling that she had pulled at her hair when she’d first crumpled into the flora weeping. She’d clawed at herself like an Italian widow.

The floral section also sold stuffed animals. A small stuffed bunny had brandished a balloon saying, I MISS YOU! And that was it. Twenty-three years ago, Finn’s bunny had been called Pooch and inseparable didn’t cut it.

My brother’s dead, she said.

The mischief faded into real compassion. He touched her hand, his fingers grazed the bunny where it sat in her arms and then sat beside her.

I’ve always liked those, he said, gesturing to the Cyclamen. They make inside-out work, you know?