Oh, Canada!

On the far side of the semi-detached house next to us live a bunch of rowdy high school students. They moved there this spring. They party. They get drunk. They trespass. They hide their booze in the kids' fort behind the garage when the cops come (since they're underage). They're loud. They annoy neighbours far and wide.

We, the neighbours, have called the cops (numerous times), have gone over and given lectures, have had hushed conversations amongst ourselves about the various ways in which these kids have disrupted the peace of the street.

I suppose it's good that they know we don't appreciate their shenanigans.

But Tim had a better idea.

We decided to throw a neighbourhood party for Canada Day and Tim invited the ska band the high school students belong to to play at the party.It was a blast! Everyone smiled. Everyone danced. As the evening wrapped up, a couple of the teenagers jammed with some of the thirty and forty year olds.
Then we went to see the fireworks and felt much better knowing that we can all get along with our annoying neighbours.

Sing, Sing, Sing

This weekend I had the privilege of camping with a bunch of phenomenal musicians and thoroughly enjoyed sitting around the campfire with them singing into the night and joining in now and then on the harmonica. Guitar, accordion, violin, banjo and voices, blended together and drifted off through the trees and over the lake until the rain forced us to take cover.

I'm not much of a musician, but I love music - listening to it and making it (in my own haphazard way). When I'm with other people and we're making music or singing along with a live band or lazing about on a grassy hill at a festival, I look around at all those different people and can suddenly see our shared humanity so clearly, how much we are really all the same. Music draws us together, helps us find connection, speaks to our spirits. I'm not surprised it's so universally used in worship.

I am eternally grateful that I married a musician rather than an athlete! I love living a life steeped in music. Cousins, you may tease me all you want, but I'll take a music festival or a live band in a dark bar over a hockey arena or baseball diamond ANY day!

Live and Learn

John Holt is one of my favourite writers on the topic of education. I have recently read through just about all of his books (some for the second or third time) and have loved seeing the progression in his thinking from a teacher who wants to encourage other teachers to do things a little differently, to a teacher who advocates major school reforms, to the father of the "unschooling" movement.

In the book "Instead of Education", Holt says that if children can spend a couple hours a day with adults they like, who are interested in the world and like to talk about it, they will learn more in those couple hours than they would in a whole week at school. I'm inclined to agree with him.

As I was looking around at the artifacts at the archeological center here in Kingston last week, I realized that I did not actually know who the Loyalists were or what they were loyal to. I MUST have been taught that in school at some point. It obviously didn't stick. Nor did 90% of the rest of what I "learned". Most of what I remember from school was said to me by two wonderful women, both of whom I was fortunate enough to have as English teachers. I loved the classes they taught, but much of what I can remember them saying was said outside of those classes and had to do with their views and ideas about many different things, not often related to the school subject of "English".

I am very thankful for the wonderful adults in my childrens' lives who like to spend time with them. I know they learn from these people every day just by interacting with them and sharing life. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, housemates, neighbours... you all impart more than I think you realize just by spending time with my children. You play an important role in their education.

Happy Birthday

My baby turned two last month. I made him a lovely spring flower crown, as per our family tradition, which he absolutely refused to let anywhere near his head. So I photographed it sitting on the table instead.This is the first time a flower crown has not had its picture taken on the birthday head.

Sweet Deliverance

Today as I was driving the kids to swimming lessons and listening to Hot Hot Heat, two activities not seemingly conducive to such a feeling, I was overwhelmed with an urge to give birth. It was so strong that my whole body tingled.

Now I'm not saying that I want more kids (although I wouldn't mind) but just that I really love giving birth. Especially two years after last having done it.

The word "delivery" is a good one, I think. Quite suddenly you are delivered of all this pain and intensity. You are delivered back into the world of other people. And an amazing, tiny creature is delivered into your hands.

I cannot put into words the wonder, the triumph, the power of giving birth. The longing for it all to end, the sweat, the tears, the physical exertion, the emotional toll. The need to surrender control, to give yourself over to forces so huge you think they will overtake you. The loss of inhibition. The tunnel vision which allows you to think of nothing else. The union with your body, with nature, with God. It's all over in one climactic moment of release as your body is emptied and, deflated, you cradle in your arms a slimy, wriggling, bluish ball of flesh with flailing limbs and screaming lips. And then you feel yourself filling up. With the knowledge that it was all worth it. With immense love. With joy that your body can't contain. And it all floods over in tears. And you feel the hand of God, Creator, heavily upon you. And you rejoice in the fact that you are a woman.

I try to stop myself from talking about birth too much. I feel like most people don't want to hear about it (all the time). And I know that many women have had horrible experiences giving birth. So if you've ever heard me get going on the topic (which, if you've spent any length of time with me, you surely have) know that I probably felt like saying more than I did. But sometimes, I just have to let myself express how amazing it is to me.

I feel deep grief and, many times, anger that so many women have birth experiences that leave them feeling powerless, hurt or even just indifferent, glad it's over with. That some women can't have a birth experience at all for reasons beyond their control. I feel like it is the birthright of women, ALL women, to know the glory of this amazing feat their body is capable of. To experience it fully and completely and joyously. If I could give one gift to all womankind, that would be it.

Just the Essentials

My mom gave Muirgen one of her old purses last weekend and she has been carrying it around ever since. This morning she emptied it's contents onto my desk. There was:

-a chunk of brick
-1/4 of a foil pie plate
-a pencil
-a lump of charcoal
-1/2 a walnut shell
-an old drain plug on a chain

Tribute to S&R (to whom I sadly bid good-bye)

Step inside the rickety old machine that will lift you up, make you rise, then plunge you down again.

Be greeted by the guy in the navy blue blazer standing on his little rubber mat with the round holes punched through it at evenly spaced intervals.
Wonder how it could possibly make much difference to stand on the tiled floor or the rubber mat when all one has to do is stand, stand, stand for hours on end and push buttons now and then and gaze around and nod and speak in one or two word sentences with the option to smile.
Marvel at his turtleneck and his hair - a thing of wonder to be sure - sleek and grey, nearly neck length, cascading down in loose ringlets that are somehow horizontal.

Shift your eyes around.
Avoid his.

Notice the adverts on the walls.
Check for models in them you happen to know. You once worked with someone who posed here after all.
Scan down the brightly coloured t-shirts, the skirts, the pants, the prices in big, red print.
Don't really take it in.
Just pretend to be interested in order to avoid conversation.

Run you hand, slowly, behind your back, up and down the faux-wood panel.
Feel it's smooth coolness.
Imagine all the other fingers it has felt over the last fifty years: hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of prints, germs, smudges, essences left there to be absorbed through your skin as your pulse throbs beneath it.
Ask yourself what will be left of all those fragments of people once the sales are over, the doors close and the lights go out.

Try to arrange in your head a plan that enables you to be on the last ride this machine takes.
Try to imagine it's future.