Ruby Slippers

It wasn't too long ago that I would have considered myself a city girl. Before the kids were born, I was fully immersed in the urban lifestyle. Double income, no kids, car-free apartment-living, lots of traffic noise, washing my blinds four times a year to get the black exhaust residue off...and loving it.

My transition to a small town has been painful at times. It took years for me to get over the loss of my City. There are still things I miss about it - shopping choices, advanced recycling programs - but with every year that goes by, I am introduced to more and more compelling compensations.

It could be that the virtues of small town life, in themselves, are of lesser importance than my emotional need to be happy...maybe I have just adapted to this slower pace, this smaller world, out of my own need for contentment.

I'm not sure it matters.

I've learned a lot in the last 9 years. Even more, I've learned a lot in the last five years. Conservation becomes ever more important to me. Careful consumption. Stewardship. Mindfulness.

The blog has been a big part of this learning process. There have been times I've been tempted to drop it - to stop this (increasingly occasional) conversation we have. Today, though, I was doing some small jobs around the house, and thinking about mending, and the things on my needles, and how I really should get the wheel outside and work on the Shetland, and I realised something.

I want to tell you about it. I like to talk funny nonsense, say sad things, and show you what I'm growing.

I would miss you if you were gone.

And if I'm going to live a humble life in a little place, and learn big things from it....I'd like to keep sharing.

So thank you, for being on the other end of this tin-can phone. I'll try to pick it up more often.

XO

Shannon

The Truth About Flower Girls

Apparently the dress isn't worth it.

Dear Santa

Six months from now, you better not bring any more stuffies to this house, you fat bastard.

Gone Gone Gone I Been Gone So Long

16 days and thousands of miles later, I am back from Ontario. I didn't tell you I was going, because I didn't want one of you to come and burgle my house while I was gone. Maybe take my dog.

I bought the nose stud I was telling you about - and it has been six weeks, so I am finally able to take out the biker-chic BCR and put in the diamond....ta da!

I was startled to see this self-portrait, but my sister (who was on the other end of that headset phone line you see there) tells me that my nose is not that big. So, okay, good. Or maybe she said "Your nose isn't big", which could mean that this is really what my nose looks like and she's just used to looking at it.

Your comments on my roller-coaster post were funny. I have a deep and abiding passion for them, but I absolutely loathe and revile, and cannot stand the thought of, spinny rides. You know the kind of thing - whipping you around in circles while simultaneously turning you upside down/raising you in the air/tilting platforms beneath your helpless body. If I ride anything spinny, I get overwhelming nausea that can take up to 24 hours to subside. That famous Disneyland teacup-thing? sometimes I wake up from nightmares about that. And I haven't even been on it.

This weekend is my 20th high school graduation reunion. What do you know about that! Am I going? You bet. There were only 9 of us in our class, and we're (nearly) all still in touch. It'll be fun, even though it means I am old. "Too soon oldt, too late schmart" as my grandparents' plaque read in quaint germanic letters.

Here I was at my graduation, at the tender age of 16. The aforementioned grandmother stands proudly by my side. (Miss you Gramma.) Note my dress - post-French-Revolution in style, rose-pink in colour (YES momma!) and pouffy in habit. Made by Super-Mom according to my exacting specifications. ("It must look JUST like the cover of 'These Old Shades', only pink!")

It's a little unnerving to see a picture of my young self. I dread the thought of what 20 more years will do to my appearance.

I'll let you know how the reunion goes - too bad I don't still have that dress or I could put it on just for laughs (tears?) and see whether it will zip up.

Carmen Shandiego, Pt II

Have I ever mentioned I love roller coasters? Behemoth = best day ever.

Not sure what to do with that.

My daughter just came in from outside and said this:

"For our bird graveyard museum, Keely’s going to ask if her dad has any dead hummingbirds we can have."

I just sat there, watching her run back down the street, while the soundtrack in my head played crickets chirping.

Next, Maybe Old Yeller?

Last night I finished our current read-aloud - Rascal. Things were going so very, very well up until the last page, when my eight year old sat bolt upright in her bunk. "Wait a second. WHAT IS HE DOING."

The six year old, much like Rascal himself, remained in blissful ignorance until the very last paragraphs. As Sterling paddled quickly away "from the place where they had parted" her eyes grew large and then.....the sobbing began.

Twenty minutes later, as I administered another dose of Rescue Remedy to my distraught baby, I reflected on the need for sadness in childhood. In a happy-ending culture, where Disney's Little Mermaid does not dissolve into sea foam, where the main characters NEVER get killed off, and where children are not expected to attend funerals, the routines of illness, separation, loss and death are unknown to a lot of people.

I've been thinking about this a lot, naturally, and have had some interesting email exchanges with commenters on recent posts. I was surprised by the idea, expressed by several people, that friends of those with cancer often desert them - they don't know how to act around an ill person, they don't know how to be with a dying person.

So they back away.

I wonder whether, in the peculiar type of sheltering that people do with their children - wherein they are routinely exposed to anonymous media violence, but not the human reality of suffering - our society has created a generation of emotionally-paralysed adults who, from lack of practice, don't know how to empathise.

Last night, as I was comforting my little girl, her sister was thinking aloud about Rascal. "Someday I'd like to see the movie," she said. After a minute she added, "Though I bet they changed the ending...they usually take those sad parts out."

But I don't want the sad parts out.

The life I live is incredibly rich. There are shining moments of near-perfect happiness.

There are huge gorgeous feasts with my family.

There are hot and lazy summer days, there are steaming pots of tea in the fall.

There is uproarious laughter.

The feasts are so much better when you're hungry. The lazy days wouldn't be nearly so lovely if my muscles weren't tired from days of work. The laughter is never better than when my face is still wet with tears.

I won't cheat my kids of this: the intensity of relief and joy when it has been tempered by tension and sorrow. Their pets will never 'go away'. Loss will come to them, and sadness, and they need to learn how to cry - cry hard - and grieve and mourn, and dwell in darkness.

And tomorrow, when the sun rises, everything will seem new.