Picture this:

Since I am camera-less, I feel like I cannot post, as I cannot show you the moments in my life. But since when has such a simple thing been an impediment to my desire to communicate? Never.

Snapshot #1: The kids and I packed into Ruby (the van), complete with tasty snacks, baby stuff, playmobile bits, crayons and paper, roaring down the highway to the ferry last week. We're blasting our latest fave tune, The Swimming Song by the lovely Kate & Anna McGariggle. I am wearing blue, hair is newly cut short. We're headed to Vancouver, for a short but overdue visit. My dear friend of my youth, Katie Jane, is in town from Pittsburgh, and I have yet to meet Shona and Ryan's lovely baby, Miss Bryn. So we called Nana, packed our gear and took off.

Snapshot #2: I'm driving through downtown Vancouver with the kids, telling them about when Mommy and Daddy worked as bike couriers, preparing them for the Lions Gate bridge, an awesome sight. Pointing out Daddy's first apartment, Mommy's first job (the White Spot at Park Royal Mall), Daddy's first job (the Esso Station at 15th and Marine), the cottage-y house with the best candy and spooky soundtracks playing on hallowe'en (15th and Fulton) . . . it was a bittersweet walk down memory lane. I recall my West Van youth fondly, though at the time I was unaware of how happy I might have been. Hindsight is like that you know? I suddenly longed to live there, to buy up the little cottages on the hillside shrouded in mist and towering trees. But I knew it wouldn't be the same. We picked up Katie and went to John Lawson Park, and amidst the yoga class on the lawn and nannies perched on the benches, the kids played, Katie and I caught up, and I knew my childhood town had changed. At least as far as I could tell. And why not, I have changed too. The kids, well they soaked it all up and hoped they got a cookie after lunch. So easy to please.


Snapshot #3: Kit, bent over in the back yard, digging up plants, moving hunks of concrete, working all day to create the ultimate Secret Garden for the kids. And it is way cool. Gone are the veggie beds, which were really just a monument to my overwhelmed life, being too busy to weed them so they just fill with mint and morning glory, taunting me and making me feel shitty for never using them to their fullest potential, in the way my apartment-dwelling friends ache to do. Now there is a circular area, surrounded by plants and tall grasses, that will let the kids hide in plain sight and concoct whatever fantasy play should call to them. Yes!


Snapshot #4: Ivy. Big blue eyes, hair blonde yet short, except right on the top of her head, where it sticks straight up and flutters in the breeze, like a dandelion held out a car window. ??? er, anyways. Now you see her, now you don't. Why? Because she's rolled over and is now showing you her bum. oh yeah, we've arrived. at that place, you know the one. Where she is not yet able to sit up or crawl, but no longer happy lying down. 'Wait a minute' you say. 'If she's not happy lying down, but not yet able to do anything else, what on earth is she doing?' Pitching a fit and squirming like a grub, yesiree-bob. the holiday is over, the trying times are here. Yet she's still as fabulous as ever, and in this pic she's sporting her white worn booties, grey karate pants and striped shirt. It's way cool dude.


Now you're kinda caught up. Oh me, you ask? I'm looking fine, thank you very much. my fine cheekbones are complimented by my gentle tan, and my hair is in that perfect place of not too long, not too short, nice and spikey yet flat, kinda tousled. I look good, picture it.


I'm working through a stack of novels these days. I've just finished two books by Sara George: The journal of Mrs. Pepys and The beekeeper's apprentice, as well as Tiger Claw by Shauna`Singh Baldwin. I really liked the first two, learned from the second but was a bit bugged by the heroine's undying-love-thing. Oh, and before those I read The Sisters (or Secrets?) Of Jin-Shei, which I really enjoyed. But this is all pre-ambled to sneak in my latest read, the classic The Bell Jar by Ms. Plath. I just read this paragraph and really like it:

"I saw my life branching out in front of me like a fig tree. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another a brilliant professor, and another was E.G., the amazing editor, and another was Europe and Africa and South America, and another a pack of lovers with queer names and off-beat professions, and beyond these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing just one meant losing out on all the rest."

Yes. I'd switch doctor for poet and actor for professor and writer for editor. But the gist is the same. I've never before heard my feelings explained so perfectly and succinctly. I do not at all regret the branch I've chosen, it was entirely my choice and I revel in every minute of my great great life. but I do not want it to be the only branch available to me either, for the rest of my life. And so I sit and think, and post these little snippets.

laundry beckons. oh to dig it up just like the never-weeded veggie beds, and end the task forever.


kisses

C


P.S. The 5th snapshot is of it and I and the kids, so excited because Shona and Ryan and their kids are coming out to visit us this weekend. Woohooo!!!!!