a girl's best friend

Maybe I shouldn’t be so open in the company of thieves and scoundrels, but I’ll just go ahead and say it: I’ve got a pair of big freakin’ diamonds adorning my lobes. They’re beautiful, and extravagant to the point of ostentatious (at least, for me). They were a present given to me on the second Sunday of this past May. Mother’s Day, otherwise known as: Dear-God-Where-Can-I-Get-A-Brunch-Reservation-This-Late-In-The-Day-And-Do-You-Think-She’ll-Disown-Me-If-I-Just-Bring-Her-Burnt-Toast-In-Bed? You can forget birthdays, anniversaries, and even skip Christmas once every couple of years, but Mother’s Day? MOTHER’S DAY? Forget to buy a Hallmark for this one and you forever more live in peril. Or you at least will have to wash your own underwear from then on.

I’ve learned long ago that when I want things from men, I have to ask for them. Be direct, and as clear as possible. (The worst they can say is no; which is fine, because half the time, I don't even really want what I'm asking for anyway. Complicated or just confused? Meh. No matter.)

Anyway, the point is that when it became apparent that the Babe was waiting to make his entrance into this Cruel and Beautiful World sometime in April, as opposed to the end of March when his train ticket had originally been reserved for, I seized the opportunity to finally rid myself of the latest pair of cheap and rusting Shopper’s Drug Mart studs ($8.99) to slowly give me lead poisoning. “You know,” I purred to Adoring and Wonderful Husband. “April is the diamond. Maybe someday I could get a pair of your first born son’s birthstones for my ears to commemorate the fact that I will soon go through the most excruciating pain in my life ALL FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR FAMILY NAME, hmmmm?” (Stage director’s note: Character bats eyelashes and pouts.)

It only took about four centimeters of dilation before Adoring and Wonderful Husband was on the line with The Official Jeweler of Jason Spezza, because DEAR GOD, DO YOU KNOW HOW LITTLE BABIES COME OUT? I wasn’t surprised when I came back into bed after a morning pee that Sunday in May to find a little blue box tucked beside Boh as he lay sleeping in his bassinet on my side of the bed. I was surprised by the size of my newly found heirlooms, though: I had specified small diamonds, which Adoring and Wonderful Husband took to mean, Rocks As Big As You Can(not) Afford.

But I was sincere when I told him I didn’t want anything too flashy, just something small and dainty to remind me of my Favourite Little Guy in the Whole Wide World; something to keep the holes in my ears that my Baba took me to get when I turned five from closing up. Why? Because I’m scared. Scared of losing the things in this world that mean anything to me. Scared that if I let myself get too attached, I will wake up one day to find that one of the backings has fallen away, and that I’ve lost my treasure forever. Scared that people who don’t like diamonds will judge me for putting value in them myself.

Scared that I’m not worth it.

Slowly (well, not so slowly) I got used to my first ever Mother’s Day gift, and I no longer compulsively check to make sure the earrings are still there. And when I’m scared that I’m not worth it, all I have to do is look in the mirror and be reminded that there are people in this world who think that I am.

Bling, bling baby.

the not-so-fabulous adventures of a wannabe Single Me

I'm on day five of Temporarily Suspending Reality So That I Can Pretend To Be Single Me Again. I'm tired. Being a Single Me is tiring. And expensive. And did I mention tiring?

So.

Tiring.

The warm nest I've created for myself is disrupted. Dirty dishes grow mold on the kitchen counter, and instead of neatly folding my trousers to hang them back on the hanger so as to get another wear out of them before requiring a wash, my pants are scattered all over the bedroom floor, legs inside out, panties still inside of them, a consequence of late nights that push me into slumber before I can properly undress.

I've slept with my makeup on twice in the last two days. I haven't done that for two years.

There's a whole different side to Ottawa that I wasn't aware existed. It's an Ottawa where you go from an eight p.m. office departure straight to a downtown pub and then straight into a cab to speed you home so that you can go straight to bed and wake up five hours later to do it all again. It's an Ottawa where you listen to a smartly dressed young whipper-snapper tell you about her bad date with Paul Wells. ("I don't think of myself as Paul Wells, prominent writer for a major national newspaper and magazine, I think of myself as Paul Wells, little guy from Sarnia trying to interpret the world for others." RIGHT. THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT YOU THINK OF YOURSELF.) It's an Ottawa where, if I were really a Single Me, and not just pretending to be one during the couple of days that the Babe gets to bond with his Grandpa and Grandma, I would live in a small one-bedroom apartment at the corner of Metcalfe and O'Connor, with an overweight apartment cat and a dead houseplant, and my Friday nights would all be about Thai food and cheesy chick flicks and awkward dates with random dudes who got gift certificates to LavaLife from their mothers for Christmas. The parallel universe is sexy for about two hours, and then you wake up the next day with a hangover and a need to buy two or three Starbucks just to make it through the day. And you remember that the steak and salmon you share with the love of your life over a nice bottle of red on Fridays is so much healthier for you than take-out Thai. Honestly, who knows how much MSG goes into that shit?

Fun is fun. And life is life. I look forward to the return of my guys tomorrow. The nest is cold without them. (But don't worry girls. Single Me has it within her to make one final appearance tonight in the Market. Be there or be square.)

breaking the news to daddy

Dear Adoring and Wonderful Husband,

After throwing a load of laundry in downstairs, I came up to find the Babe - your son - eating cat puke. Please don't hate me.

Signed,

Mommy

bell-ringers

Sometime in the months getting prepared to move from Regina to Kingston, I developed an ulcer. I think. I've never had a formal medical diagnosis of it, since every time I happen to be at the doctor's office I conveniently forget about the pain in the pit of my stomach that doubles me over like a you-know-who who's been sucker punched every time I get severely stressed. Thus, in addition to the mega pack of Tums (various fruit flavoured, fortified with calcium) that saw me through my nerves as our cross country journey loomed ever closer, I had a couple motivational quotes sticky tacked to the wall behind my computer at work. I just had to look up past the briefing note I was typing to remember why I was uprooting our lives and dragging Adoring and Wonderful Husband away from the haven in our hearts that will forever be home. Two quotes were my motivation.

1. A ship in the harbour is safe - but that's not what ships were built for.

2. I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. (Twain)

(To be honest, that last quote had been on my wall for a while; it's what helped convince me that it was okay for me to take six weeks off work to travel through Europe with Adoring and Wonderful Husband for our honeymoon. Strange, how I should have felt so guilty for asking for that time off. I wonder if my former bosses even remember me anymore, but I will never forget sitting on the cobble stoned streets of Lyon having a beer with our new found best friends - some of with whom we never had a conversation in English, but were bonded nonetheless - watching and waiting to see who would be the first pedestrian to step in the pile of dog poo we saw being freshly laid only minutes before. Stereotypes are stereotypes because they're often true.)

At the gym the other day, I saw another motivating quote on the t-shirt of a member (who must have gotten it from the club when she signed up for her membership): "Don't let the things you can't do prevent you from doing the things you can." And today, watching Boh as he again proves to me what a marvel he really, truly is, I caught on TV an interview with Paul McCallum, former kicker for the Saskatchewan Roughriders, now the kicker for the BC Lions. Talking about his move to the cloudy waters of the West Coast after the horrible way Saskatchewan fans treated him after he missed the kick that would have taken the Riders into the Grey Cup two years ago (the year the Cup was in Ottawa by the way, and Adoring and Wonderful Husband and I had tickets), he explained how difficult his decision was. But, he said, "sometimes you have to take a step back before you can move forward." Think I just might add that to the list of things that move me into action.

My other motivation?

insomnia

10:00 pm. A quick channel flip to the Outdoor Life Network brings up Pilot Guides. Featured destination: Australia. "We should go there for the winter next time I'm on maternity leave," I say to Adoring and Wonderful Husband. "We'll take off for four months or something and rent an apartment on the beach. Wouldn't that be fun?"

Crawling into bed, my mind is racing. Australia. Australia. I want to go to Australia. We need to start saving money. I want to go to Australia.

I want to take the kids travelling for two years when Boh is 14. (The others will be 12 and 10.) I want three kids. I want to take my three kids to South America, put them in school for a year, have them learn Spanish. (They will already know French by then.) Then we'll go to Africa for eight months. Volunteer somewhere doing...something. Then just travel for four months. Start in Spain and work our way up the through Eastern Europe, to the Nordic countries, to London, and back across the pond again in time for grade 11. (But what about the eastern Pacific Rim countries? Maybe the kids should learn Chinese instead of Spanish? I could teach English in Korea, or Taiwan, or something. I want to go East.)

I want to be the Go-To Guy at work. I want to be excited every day I wake up and jump in the shower. I want to make a difference.

I want to learn French. I want to learn France French. I want to take my kids to spend eight months in the South of France. Check out the Cannes Film Festival. Lie topless on the beach.

I want to learn to write. I want to author a book. The ABCs of Policy Analysis. Or fiction to rival Atwood. Or just be able to blog something witty once a day.

I want to keep my house clean. I want to walk my dog everyday. I want to spend my nights watching Boh play hockey, football. I want my kids to follow their hearts. I want my kids to be kids. Have the time to follow their hearts.

I want to learn not to want.

I want my kids to grow up with their grandmas nearby. I want my kids to experience the world. To know how they would solve the crisis in Darfur by the time they are 18. To know where Darfur is by the time they are 18.

I want my kids to feel the Saskatchewan soil of farmers past course through their veins. I want my kids to smell a prairie spring day. Fresh.

I want a cabin at Regina Beach.

I want Adoring and Wonderful Husband to live his dream. I want a four bedroom house in Sandy Hill. I want to live out of a backpack.

I want to live the simple life. Learn to live in the moment, be happy with the day.

I want you to like me. I want to be the kind of person people like.

I want to run the New York City Marathon.

I want to learn to paint. Or sculpt. Anything that will outlive me. Capture my essence. Say something about humanity. Sign and signifier.

I want to understand the market. The world economy. The rise and fall of our empire. Mathematics.

I want to die an old woman, surrounded by my husband of 50 years, and our kids, and our kids' kids. Speaking Russian. Say to them, "There's nothing I wanted but you. You're all I ever wanted."

I want to go to Australia.

I want to fall asleep.

[I want to quit coming back to add things to this list of things I want.]

thanksgiving

1. I am thankful for the CIBC’s Run for the Cure and dj steveboy’s podrunner podcasts. Both have done me a world of good.

2. I am thankful for waking up before the Babe from one of our afternoon naps together. It means we both have woken up because we want to, and not because the other is calling the shots that day, leaving us both happy. Also, it means that when Boh wakes up the first thing he sees is my smiling face, the face I use to communicate to him “I love you; I will always be here for you when you wake up.”

3. I am thankful for waking up.

4. I am thankful for every time I learn something new, like that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two minor characters from Hamlet (I really have to read that play), and for every time I remember how amazing occupying this world truly is (see: acres and acres of maple trees halting the process of photosynthesis while driving to a mini Ituna in the midst of Canada's biggest concrete jungle, and Boh.)

5. I am thankful that the year after my Baba passed away I moved to the province where my Baba’s youngest sister, Auntie Ollie, lives. In Auntie Ollie’s tiny one-bedroom apartment in downtown Toronto, I have eaten three glorious Thanksgiving suppers (soon to be four!) in the company of the most representative cross-section of Canadians I can think of, people who’ve become family, even if I have to be reminded of their names every year. In Auntie Ollie’s tiny one-bedroom apartment in downtown Toronto, I’ve found a little piece of Saskatchewan that was exported over twenty years ago, modified, and still immediately reminiscent of home. In Auntie Ollie’s tiny one-bedroom apartment in downtown Toronto, I get to see a woman who once in a while laughs the same way my Baba used to, a little throaty from years of smoking, but genuine, in a way that makes her eyes sparkle, letting you know she is in that solitary moment truly happy to have you there, even if you are for the weekend invading her tiny one-bedroom apartment in downtown Toronto.

rat #3

I’m pretty sure it was November 5th last year that Adoring and Wonderful Husband and I walked the six blocks or so it takes to get to the Ottawa General Hospital from our house. We were going for our 20 week ultrasound, our second one, the one that could tell us if we were having a boy or a girl, but we wanted to keep it a surprise. It was a bit chilly, so we moved briskly, passing the elementary school that backs our house. The sign out front encouraged parents to enroll their child in the school’s gifted program. “We’re going to have to put our little guy or girl in there someday!” we smiled at each other.

The ultrasound was routine. Or so we thought. In hindsight red flags should have went off when the technician kept insisting that she couldn’t get a good shot of the baby’s skull, even though I myself could see what she was apparently looking for. The long walk down a hospital corridor to a private room accompanied by one of the doctors on call confirmed our worst fear: something on the ultrasound didn’t look right, in this case the baby’s brain.

Suspected ventriculomegaly. Don’t google it; the search only yields ugly “what ifs?” and a scary “please God, I’ll start going to church, just please.” Suffice it to say it’s a condition where one or both of the brain’s ventricles is enlarged, possibly preventing normal cognitive development. Nearly a year later, anyone who has been subjected to pictures of the Babe ad nauseum on this blog will be shaking his or her head, saying, “I should hope that kid has a bigger brain than normal! Look at the size of the noggin it’s in!”

But we didn’t know that then. And so the next couple months were filled with more ultrasounds, even more worry, and the stinging possibility that things might not turn out well. For the longest time we weren’t able to let ourselves do any of the things normal mommies- and daddies-to-be like to do, like spoil their first child to the point of bratty-ness even before he or she is out of the womb. We would cuddle a cute teddy bear at the store, and promptly put it down, because no one wants to pack a room full of toys away when no baby has even played with them yet. But over time things got better. The repeated ultrasounds showed no growth in the size of the ventricle, which was a very good thing, and the shock of it all started to wear off. Enter a big ol’ bin of rats at IKEA, at $3.99 a pop.

Of course, because I am the type of person who loves bins full of cheap stuff, I got one. And it has since turned out to be the best baby toy in the history of baby toys. It has little arms and legs for chewing, and a long, long tail for tying the suckie to, so it can’t get lost. And whiskers for tickling, and a pointy nose for kissing. It’s perfect, and the Babe goes everywhere with it, earning him the nickname Rat Boy. The rat gets almost as many smiles as he does, especially from me, because that little piece of fabric and stuffing has done so much more than sop up my baby’s drool: it gave me hope when I needed it most, and represented a future in which everything worked out in the end. It made me excited to become a mommy, even when I wasn’t sure I would get to be one.

A month or so ago, another bin of rats popped up at IKEA. I bought five. Thank goodness I did, because we are now on to rat #3, the first having met a sorry fate up against Super Cooper, and the second losing his way somewhere in the cavernous aisles of Loblaw’s. Hopefully IKEA springs as eternal as hope does.

sticks and stones

Adoring and Wonderful Husband has the cutest pet name for me: Bulldozer. I have the grace of a bull in a china shop, and the patience of a gastrotrich that knows its life span is only three days (which is apparently the shortest life span of any animal in the world. Though the shortest life span of a vertebrate is the 59 days a tiny reef fish survives up to according to Australian researchers. Will the wonders of Google never cease?) You get the point: Bulldozer undoubtedly captures my aptitude for being, umm, rammy.

My razing ways are often verbal as well. Though I try to justify my brutal honesty to be exactly the kind of thing people want to hear – insightful, helpful, called for even– hindsight is wont to bring more clarity to past conversations than anything that could have spewed from my mouth at the time. The first time I was ever called on it – called on it and took it seriously – was sometime during university, when I was sitting at some nameless Regina bar with high school friends, likely studying for PSci 231: The Politics of Canadian Continentalism (or something like that.) K. and I were chatting, about what I have no idea, when the subject turned to art class in grade nine, where he and I sat beside each other. I didn’t remember it, and was a bit flattered that he did (he had since become a firefighter you see. The kind of firefighter that’s on calendars.)

“Wow, I can’t believe you remember that after all these years!” I likely purred, likely smiling smugly, likely thinking that he remembered the seating arrangement because he likely liked me back then.

“Yeah,” he said, matter of factly, and without a trace of hostility now that I look back on it, which surprises me. “I remember because you turned to me one day out of the blue and told me that I would be hot if only I got taller and gained a bit of weight.”

Ouch! I felt horrible about it, and apologized profusely, which he shrugged off, seemingly not too bothered by my words at the time he reminded me of them, eight or so years after the crime in question. And why would he be? Since that day we painted our favourite photographs using water colours (which is the only art project I remember doing that year), he had indeed gotten taller and put on a bit of weight, becoming probably the hottest guy to graduate Martin Collegiate in 1996. But that’s not the point. The point is that he remembered it, which tells me it was a significant enough comment to him at the time I said it. A comment pretty much on par as if he had told me, “You know Winter, you would be hot if only you lost 15 pounds of ass.” Motivational? Maybe. The kind of thing you say to someone if you want them to daydream about jerseying you so that they can knee you in the nose without fear of having their blue jeans stained by your blood? For sure. It’s an episode that reminds me to bite my tongue when I otherwise want to wag it. To consider how what I’m saying might make a person feel about themselves and about me as someone who is supposed to be a friend, supposed to be a nice person. Not everyone can get the last laugh like K. did, now can they?

dignity, on sale now for the low, low price of $29.99

University was my thing. For some, glory came in neat annual packages entitled Freshman, Sophomore, Junior and Senior. (As in: high school. At the prestigious U of R, we simply called ourselves First Years, Second Years, Third Years, Fourth Years, and – in some prolonged cases, such as my own – Fifth Years.) For me, university was my chance to break away from the label-conscious high school era and into a time when sweats were the haute couture and nerds were integral fixtures of the social scene (finally, I had a life).

I met a far wider variety of fine folk than I’d ever encountered. Pink-haired people. Tattooed people. People with more piercings on their face than I have hair follicles on my head. Marxists-Leninists (it was the U of R, after all). Feminists. Lesbians. Lacto-ovo-vegetarians. And often, all these traits could be found in just the one person sitting beside you in Stats 151.

I also met poor people. Like C., a girl from Moose Jaw I became fast friends with in Political Science 101. Sure, I suppose there was poverty around me in my high school days (it was an inner city school, after all), but I never really paid attention to it until I met people my own age who struggled to live the life I took for granted. Unlike me, who was propagated with the wisdom of Cicero and CB Macpherson for free, C. had save and scrimp and scrape and suffer in a way that was foreign to me, in a way that I didn’t understand, still don’t, and hopefully never will.

One day we went shopping together at Value Village, the one great retail equalizer where everyone is of comparable taste and means. I loved the Village, and still do, for I have found some amazing articles of apparel there. Like the pumpkin orange, three-quarter length suede jacket I wore that day as I shopped with C., purchased at a Salvation Army in Calgary for only five bucks.

“Look here!” C. called, browsing the men’s outerwear section. “It’s a jacket just like yours!”

“It is!” my eyes lit up as I grabbed the leather from her hands, in lust immediately. Only subtle details differed: more mahogany than tenné, with thick cream accent stitching to give it an ultimate wow! factor. I coveted it, and I knew C. did to.

“I would love to get this coat,” sighed C., taking the jacket from my clutches only to resignedly put it back from where it came. “But I just don’t have the money.” And I knew she didn’t; I wouldn’t have been surprised if she couldn’t have afforded $5.99 that day, let alone $29.99, which is what the price tag read.

“Me too,” I ignorantly chimed. “I love my jacket so much; it would be so great to have two. I don’t have any money on me now either, but maybe I can see if my dad will lend me some.” And he did. And I went back that night, and got the coat. The look in her eyes that said “you bitch!” (and rightly so) didn’t even faze me.

I recall this episode now, and I wonder how I could be so nescient and neglectful. Chalk it up to being nineteen, I suppose, and a young girl who wants, wants, wants. Just like Akakiy Akakievitch, my overcoat was my undoing. It’s funny how a Value Village could be the scene of so much avarice.

In case you’re wondering, I still have the coat, and wear it every Fall. It’s perfectly suited for over a pair of blue jeans or a dress, in those October instances when I’m still clinging to summer.

Ed, the green-eyed monster

I think it’s safe to say that Adoring and Wonderful Husband and I are veritably content with the state of our existence. Each and every year since we’ve met, pretty awesome events have filled our calendar. Life-altering things. Things that are nothing to sneeze at. Par exemple: Year One – Buy a house together just twelve months after He of Yee-Inspired Stomach Flips (what he was known as before becoming Adoring and Wonderful Husband) first held the door open for me on my first day back as a summer student at the east-end auto claims centre in Regina. Year Three - Marriage at a big red barn on the prairies in front of 125 or so family and friends who were promptly served following the nuptials slab after slab of deep fried steak worthy of being featured on the Food Network. Year Four – Harrowing move across the country with nothing to cling to but a couple grand in student loans, a bunch of wire hangers in the trunk, and the hope (the hope!) that Adoring and Wonderful Husband wouldn’t file for divorce as soon as we were in our new jurisdiction. Year Seven – A babe. And not just any babe, but The Babe. The Babe to end all babes in fact. So, are we good? No, we’re better than that: We’re freaking fantastic.

But that doesn’t stop the pangs of jealousy that kick us in the gut every once in a while, doubling us over like a you-know-what who's just been sucker punched in a back alley somewhere. Take the evening preceding this morning, for example, when Adoring and Wonderful Husband and I were reading the blog of a friend’s sister and learned that Friend X is apparently preparing for an imminent move to New Zealand. New Zealand, you say?

Cue. Latent. Hostility. Here.

“So, Friend X is moving to New Zealand?” I asked, the end of my question intoned at a slightly higher frequency than it would have been if I had asked instead about, say, whether or not hemorrhoids were itchy, or if they just hurt (because how am I supposed to know if I ever get them?)

“I guess so,” Adoring and Wonderful Husband replied, dully, with the same cadence that he might use if he were to state blankly that the weekend fliers were on the front step, did I want them?

“Hmm,” I said.

“Hmm,” he responded.

“That’s cool,” I offered.

“Yeah.”

And that was all the time we devoted to that topic. That’s cool. Which it is, but would be so much more so if WE were the ones moving to New Zealand instead. Just like as cool as it would have been if WE were the ones to buy low and sell high in Calgary this past spring, making 100-grand plus profit. Maybe even as cool as if WE were the ones to take classes in how to dive in the waters of a tropical paradise as opposed to studying up on The Essentials of Risk Management or Public Policy and the Third Sector. Cool? Cool indeed. That is, if the colour of cool is green, and it lives in your closet, and is named Ed.

home (hōm) n: i. habitat, abode, dwelling; ii. place one lives with the pleasant connotations or family ties included

My love of the West was cultivated in grade three, when my dad and my brother and I drove through the mountains to Vancouver Island to attend my Auntie Denise’s wedding (my mom flew and met us there). It was a beautiful drive. We stopped at the side of the road and drank from a waterfall. We saw baby bears. We stole peaches from an orchard. We camped at the KOA on the ocean, where I met my first boyfriend, whose name was Aaron (I think). Suzanne Vega’s “My Name is Luka” played incessantly on the radio. And I lost the Precious Moments picture of a girl praying at her bedside that my Baba got me for successfully completing catechism (I think I would have had to stab the priest in the eye with a willow stick to fail). Ah, the West. I truly do love you, Prairies and Mountains and Biggest Baddest Ocean Going. So WHY I AM CHEATING ON YOU??

Before Adoring and Wonderful Husband and I moved to Ontario, the forewarnings of just how mean Upper Canadians could be were startling. For a sheltered prairie girl like myself who only knew Ontario as the nasty province that constantly bullied Quebec (or so all my political textbooks enlightening me on the French fact would seem to suggest), it was enough to make my stomach knot in trepidation at the thought of my first day of school, as though I was waiting to cash in on my two front teeth and barely potty trained once again. Thankfully the grad program in which I enrolled pretty much held my hand for the entire ten months, and thankfully that guy who was married to that girl who worked with my mom and who had lived in Ontario for all of 18 months was totally and completely wrong about how boorish Ontarians actually are. (Or maybe he wasn’t in error, but rather misinterpreted aplomb for insolence, a crime for which my fellow Kanadarios are often accused and convicted of.) Nonetheless, this province has grown on me, something I’ve found lately to be Very. Disturbing. Indeed.

I expected to come back from my travels this past week to the Holy Land with renewed resolve to get the BLEEP! outta here. Aside from the obscene distance from loved ones, there was no particular reason for wanting to leave, other than “it sure ain’t the West! Yee Haw!” Granted, I can’t really call the driving we did last week up and down Broad and Albert Streets a true representation of what it’s like to call the earlier time zones to the left of the Peg home, though I did nonetheless come back with a renewed (or just new) appreciation for what we have here: good jobs, great scenery, fabulous friends. And while that doesn’t mean we’ve necessarily decided not to call the flatlands (or maybe even the footlands) home sometime in the not-so-distant future, it does mean that I will accept our nation’s capital for what it has been to us for the last two years, and will be for at least one more spin round the sun: pretty darned homey for a place that may never really be home.

baggage

My same compulsion to eat the last half plate of greasy fries even when I think I'm at the point of losing my lunch altogether also has me hoard every last book that's ever been on sale at Chapters. Whereas I am the only one to suffer the consequences of the former (or, more accurately , my thighs and buttocks are), the latter habit has also been of disdain to my in-laws. That War and Peace novella for $3.99 that I have never, ever read? It sits alongside David Copperfield ($6.99), wondering when the dickens I will finally crack it. Both have found shelter in a dusty cardboard condo that takes up valuable real estate space in the room formerly known as The Cave where Adoring and Wonderful Husband sheltered his eyes from the light of day, lest the UV diminish his capacity for drinking excessively at Boston Pizza with his jackass buddies, or lead him into the temptation of saving money as opposed to blowing it all at the casino. But I digress...

Every time we travel back to the Holy Land, I pack the biggest suitcases we have only about a quarter full so that when it comes time to get back to reality I can stuff those suckers right up until the zippers threaten to burst open like Star Jones' stomach, one Big Mac later (too much?) And every time we get another visit under our belts, the boxes of my former life get pared down even more, transported to a new basement floor (if not discarded entirely), so that there's now only five boxes of me left on this soil, in this city, in this place I used to call home, instead of seven.

And I wonder: What happens when I get down to zero boxes? What happens then?

style at home

I used to be an independent woman. I drove my own car, paid my own bills, pumped my own gas and made my own breakfast. I even mowed a lawn once in a while. And then along came Adoring and Wonderful Husband, and my inner Damsel in Distress reared her ugly, if perfectly coiffured, head. (Actually, my tresses are just as disheveled as ever, but I have to at least PRETEND I exchanged my autarchy for some good girly reason, n’est pas?) Fast forward half a decade or so, and you’ll find a Slothenly But Deserving Wife who can’t remember the last time she refueled a vehicle let alone did anything to grass besides walk on it or smoke it (Ha! Ha! Only kidding Parental Unit. I just say ‘no!’ when someone is peer pressuring me to stroll atop a lot of Kentucky Bluegrass. Why? Because I know NOTHING GOOD CAN COME OF IT.) So, really, it should come as no surprise that subways do nothing but freak me out and drive me to bury my face in the lap of the person next to me (and I can only hope said lap belongs to an acquaintance, or at the very least someone who bathes on a regular basis).

I hate taking the subway. Faced with the prospect of riding the tube, my stomach spins and my chest tightens. I’m not kidding. The line maps make no sense to me; it’s like I’ve accidentally crossed the bridge into Hull with only my Saskatchewan French (read: English) to guide me. In other words, do-able, but certainly not advisable. Luckily, Adoring and Wonderful Husband likes to fancy himself James Bond-like when it comes to the many forms of transportation, and so I happily take his hand while underground to be led, concerning myself only with any wayward syringes that may be lying around, taking care to ensure that none catch on my open-toed shoes.

But if I were brave, I would plan all my future travels around cities with subways, and I would keep all my stubs and frame them as art. I would become one of those atl-ASS hosts who sneers at guests less well-traveled than them, and who barely tries to contain a snide smirk as they hold their glass of dry white wine limply in their left hand, while casually gesturing with their right to little pieces of coloured paper on their living room walls that hail from Rome, London, Paris, Tokyo, Washington, Sydney… Why? Because humiliation and righteousness make for the most fashionable décor.

density

Climbing under covers still warm with the heat of the evening’s setting sun, and into a seasoned sleep routine focused on, well, sleep, I close my eyes and lie stiffly until sure the Sandman won’t be interrupted by the sound of a baby crying, by the sniff of a puppy yet to pee, by the thirst of a body that’s forgotten to drink. With none of these to call me up, I settle into the dusk ever more smoothly, with eyes still closed, and a mind inspecting its nighttime map, choosing its travel to Dreamland.

To tired to cross the bed to kiss the person next to me, my husband, after realizing this had been ignored, I instead recall the moment of newness, the lightness, of a goodnight kiss that in the early days took my breath away each and every night, that made my heart beat outside my body, next to my skin, every inch of it, as though that kiss were all I needed to live, the oxygen of his life breathing into mine. A pang of sadness convinces me to roll over, press my lips briefly to his, feel better, but still long for the lightness of unfamiliarity that made me addicted to him in the first place.

Ahh, the lightness…

the lightness…

the lightness…

Eyes still closed, heart full (if a bit heavy), I let him stroke my arm in the darkness, singing me to sleep, shoulder to elbow…elbow to shoulder.

And back again…

back again…

back again…

“Have you been drinking orange juice lately?” he asks, stopping on my shoulder blade, hand throwing an echo through my skin to the bone, the pulse measuring density, thinking about the future, concerned for loss, for weakening.

“Sometimes.”

“Because I buy the kind with calcium just for you, you know.”

“I know.”

Eyes still closed, I smile into sleep.

Ahh, the density…

the density…

The Density.