Home Work

Recently, I've been thinking about my chosen career as Daytime Mommy.

I've been thinking about what it keeps me close to- my home, my garden, my pets, my heart. My laughter, my home, my love for authenticity.

I love working at home.

I love having these little people show up at my door, full of expectation that we're going to have a lot of fun on this day.

I love their trusting little faces, their tender little hearts, their confidence that I can surely meet their every need.

I don't always have that same confidence. It's nice to see the trust shining in their eyes.

It's so good to remember the simple things in life.

It's so great to rush outdoors at the first sign of sun and never have to wait until recess or 5:00 pm, or holidays.

It's delightful not to have to sit at a desk with a phone to my ear.

To never wear high heels.

We spend our time on spontaneous picnics, walks to the flower shop, the thrift store, the playground.

Pre-school hilarity.
We never forget that there's really no food so delicious as toast and cheese. Except maybe toast and peanut butter, apples and cheese, or homemade oatmeal cookies.

And then there are those spontaneous moments that no substitute mommy could even dream up.

Sure, I spend a lot of time vacuuming. But there's a lot about my job that's pretty delightful.

How do you feel about yours?

Hosting.

I hadn't seen her in twenty years.
We first met in 1987 when we landed up on the same cross Canada musical tour that was the outcome of time well spent at Capernwray Harbour, Thetis Island, BC.

We drove our van-mates crazy. Constantly. All the way from Silberfeld Manitoba to Burnaby, BC. We laughed at all the same outrageous things. Behaved obnoxiously. Laughed some more.

When the tour ended, and the summer stretched before us, my new friend spoke of getting a job at a Bible camp for the summer. I said; sign me up too.

We spent the summer at Camp Arnes, driving more people crazy, learning a lot about how to live on no sleep in unreasonably hot conditions, and indulging in some more laughter.

With summer drawing to a close, I invited Donna to share a one bedroom apartment with my sister and me. Too bad I forgot to ask my sister first. (oops.)

I can't believe that I landed up spending almost every single day for five whole months with a girl I met in a cargo van along the long and dull prairies. But I did. And what we had in common at the time was that we both loved people, laughter, snack foods, and obnoxious behavior.

I saw Donna again a few years later when a friend and I backpacked around in Australia. Donna's life had taken a different course than mine at that point. She had married a pastor and was taking care of their chubby little baby boy when I spent a week in their home.

Fast forward twenty years. Donna's four kids were mostly grown up. My four were in the process. Donna flies to Canada to celebrate the sixteenth birthday of her youngest daughter who has taken a year to attend school in British Columbia. They want to come visit.

Of course, I wanted to see them! But I was nervous- not knowing who she would be after all these years. Wondering if she'd be disappointed in who I had become.

They should have e-mailed and told me how fabulous they are.
Then I wouldn't have had to worry.



Their impeccable sense of style.

Their fondness of ten year old jeans patched in the most creative of ways.

The most amazing eye for handbags;)

The best sort of hobbies.

Times would find us each lost in our own worlds, twirling buckets of buttons around in our hands, altering ancient "Op Shop"* items, or searching for more treasure in any junk shop we could get our mitts on.

It was so good for the soul to see my dining room slowly be transformed into a button shop.

Sheer bliss.

*(Op Shop= oppurtunity shop. ie; thrift shop, second hand store. I absolutely adore this term, and have decided that we should all adopt it, immediately).

Enjoying our daughters.

what an unbelievable gift to watch the girls love on each other! Kindred souls, these beautiful young women. I enjoyed every moment of watching them all become friends.

We did nothing really well.

And its a good thing, because although I tried valiently to give them some tourist experiences, most of my ventures were hopeless at best. The weather was terrible, but I took them to The Forks to check out the water level and go snoop through the antiques market. It was closed.

Arianna had raved about a fudge place that we could maybe drown our sorrows in.
It was gone.

We also went to the worst movie ever produced in the history of the production of movies.
The.
Worst.

(Beastly. Our kids made us. We will make them pay.)

McDonalds wasn't closed, and it never disappoints.

The girls said they wanted to get nostalgic Happy Meals together, but when we got there, they realized that they were Big Girls now and too hungry to settle for a meal that comes with a toy.

So our big tourist meal in the city was McChucks.

Woo-frickin-Hoooo!

Never mind that.

As if buttons weren't enough reason to cause bliss beyond reason- between Brian and Donna outdoing each other in the kitchen, I didn't cook for a solid week!

She also did dishes and laundry.

Gee I miss you doing all that housework your company, Donna.

We also took the kids out for bubble tea.

I think one of my favourite lines of our week together was hearing Donna admonish her daughter to "Finish your dessert!" She's not one for tapioca texture, as it turns out.

Nor was Micah.

Or Sam.

I'm not sure that Donna and Nik will be rushing back to Manitoba for our movies, antiques, bubble teas or fudge.

But it's just possible that some of us will work on rushing to Sydney to check out their attractions!

I love my friends. They are the biggest treasure that I have on this earth.

I did a lot of thinking during my week with Donna. I wondered at how our interests had evolved in such bizarrely similar patterns. I enjoyed her deep and cynic-free faith in God. I was amazed at how many parallels there were in the way we saw the world, our families, and our place in this life. I thought about how rich life is- how what you choose while you're twenty-young can come back in bushels when you're in your forties.

I was glad that we'd both taken chances- Both then and now.

And it makes me say-

Live your life with enthusiasm.
Embrace all sorts of people in your life.

Don't always choose what's straight forward- take some risks.

And imagine possibilities.

My Mom

My mom does all her own stunts.

My mom isn't afraid of laughing out loud.

She does a lot of it and it's sheer joy to me.

My mom has been walking nearly every day since the 70's. While her peers wait in their geriatric rooms for meals on wheels, my mom marches down to the grocery store to purchase a few items for the soup she's brewing. Being the very Queen of All Things Thrifty, my mother would never purchase anything for full price if she could get it dented or bent or day-old. As luck would have it, the veggie bin contained the very things she needed- and for 50% off!

In line to pay for her discount goods, my mother got busy fumbling through her bag for the money she thought was in it. Lost in her panic, the man behind her meanwhile paid for her dented and wilty carrots. By the time my mother finished her fumble, the cashier was handing her some change and the transaction was complete. Flustered, my mother turned to the man behind her:

"Did you just pay for my groceries?"

"Ah, said the man, "I just threw in a looney".

Still flustered, and now embarrassed, my mother walked home to finish her soup, the stranger's change jangling in her pocket.

She still hasn't stopped laughing.

My mom.

I like her attitude.

I miss you already, Dear Friend

I really do.

In Amongst It All

Life is good.

So very, very good.

Here's a tiny bit of it:

Hosting an Aussie friend I've not seen in twenty years has made me pause and ask some pertinent and life altering questions:

What would you rather wear: a TANK TOP; or a singlet?
Would you rather hitchhike; or dink a ride?
Would you rather have BANGS or cut a fringe?
Have a green pepper, or enjoy some capsicum?

And there's more.
So much more.

Distributing

One of the things in life that I've never quite forgiven myself for is the prickly point of never having finished my degree and thereby having never made anything of myself.

I felt like a failure before entering University, and then exiting before having any letters behind my name, and not being able to turn that investment into a bonified job only magnified my sense of inadequacy.

But now I'm in my forties, which is when people say that life truly begins. So, it follows a certain amount of logic that I've finally found my destiny in this life, and that I recognize my irreplacability and proficiency in this very special calling.

Turns out that I'm in Distribution- that very important component of Logistics & Supply chain management (wikipedia). I'm in a very specialized branch which an extensive knowledge base is critical.

Not unlike the woman in Proverbs 21, I arise early in the morning to begin my tasks. Usually the first order of the day involves redistributing the dishes from coffee table, kitchen table, computer room and counter top to sudsy sink, and further distribution to drying rack and cupboards. Then items are re-routed from cupboards to countertop to lunch bag back to cupboard. Meanwhile, the baseline of the whole business begins filling up with crumbs, cheerios, and unidentifiable blobs which require movement from floor to broom to mop.

This is also the time to redistribute all fiber types into the washing machine and dryer. Down the stairs, into the first and second machines, back up the stairs, and into appropriate drawers and closets. Meanwhile check for quality, size, and possible items for re-stocking. Gather up stray socks, sheets, towels, and t-shirts from the floor of whichever area is being re-stocked. Take them down the stairs, through the first and second machines....

By now it's time to redistribute all the cups and plates you've ever owned, and probably most of the ones your ancestors have handed down to you.

Breakfast is over, and it's nearly time for lunch. Another perfect example of the high demand in the industry of distribution. Cupboards and refridgerater are emptied, dishes moved from cupboard to counter to table, then sink and back again. This cycle actually repeats hundreds of times per day without ever seeing resolution or completion.

The entire corporation is run along this model of distribution. On certain days of the cycle, a phenomenon known as "fund redistribution" also occurs with a swiftness that can leave the underexperienced novice blindsided and dizzy. Funds enter the facility, and rapidly are consumed by smaller arteries and vessels known as children, sporting programs, hydro and gas, television and internet, and many, many varieties of loose teas purchased at out of the way locations.

I shall not bore you with every nuance of my chosen field. My life's work.

Suffice to say that it's wonderful to be so terribly important and specialized, even if it has taken me the better part of over half my life to recognize it as such.

No number of fancy letterheads and symbols trailing my name could ever compare with such a revelation.

I'd love to share more about my passion and vocation, but I sense a certain urgency to to sort dinky toys and velcro foodstuffs.

Church Without God and Other Religions

I dream every night that I have to move. I've no car, no moving truck, no boxes. But I have an awful lot of stuff. Some of it is broken, dirty, laying in mud puddles, or piled up in musty sheds. I don't know what to do with it all.

In my dreams I move into and out of different houses. Large, multi-storied, rambling places filled with tapestries, old wood, bright colours, forgotten rooms. Holes in the roof. Water damage.

Small, old houses. Rotting floorboards, ceilings that open up to broken roofs. Rain. Large, expansive sections of floor, entirely missing. Cluttered stairways that lead to nowhere. Tiny openings to other rooms; impossible to access. Roommates I've never met before. Old neighbours within my eyesight, but just outside my reach. Chasms in the way.

*

And in my waking hours, I drive past the church of my childhood. A strange little building, oddly situated at the edge of a wheat field, without a grain elevator, gas station, or anything. And I miss the days when we "knew the way it was". Church was church, just the same as the school you went to for the first ten years of your academic career was the one your yellow school bus drove you to. You don't make a decision about your school or your church. You just go. Monday through Friday you go east to school; pause for baths on Saturday, and then head west on Sunday morning for church.

The people and the messages were consistent in each case. True was true, even if it wasn't - because everyone pretty much agreed on it. When our Sunday School teachers asked us questions, they were easy to answer. We'd rehearsed all the answers since we were born and born again.

It was reassuring and lovely to grow up like that and I miss it sometimes. But it's not so simple that I could just go back and "know everything again".

I've been in so many churches in the last twenty-five years. And I've noticed some things. I love community, and the concept of people loving and caring for one another. I love the teaching that God is love and challenges us to love our enemies, stand up for the repressed, look out for the little guy, share. I love hearing people pray, read the ancient scriptures, join one another in song.

But over the years I've also seen some other stuff. I've noticed ego everywhere, and I know that's not unique to the church. That's just human nature. I've noticed people say some outrageous and divisive things in the name of Jesus. I've noticed guilt laid on thicker than a March snowstorm. I've seen priveleged middle-class caucasians blaspheme people of other ethnicities and lifestyles with a shocking lack of grce. I've noticed peer pressure, language barriers, (the language of church-ism), power trips, bullying, idealisms, and lack of relevance. I've noticed that it's entirely possible to run church without God. I've noticed that you can stack up ideologies and judgements, ins and outs and not even mention His name.

It's not that I really hold this against the institution of church, per se. It's just that it has been sad for me to notice. Sad for me to feel like I don't have a solid footing to place beneath me and the children.

It's not religion that I want, exactly. I don't need a revival meeting or an episode of laughter that renders me unconscious.

Jesus was an inspirational guy. He was anti-establishment, hung out with all the "wrong" people, and broke the ten commandments. He was a lover of peace, a seeker of justice, a feeder of the hungry.

I just want to be inspired to live like that, and I want my children to have a faith that frees them to live out their lives abundantly, selflessly, graciously, joyfully, and in the name of Jesus.

I don't need religion. In or out of church.

So, by night I'll dream, and by day I'll wonder.

And somehow, by hook or by crook, faith in things not yet seen will just have to prevail.

What's A Birthday Without a Little Bitta Body Modification?

Just gather up a few of your favourite fifteen year old friends and change things up a little. A flower here, some black polish over there.

Wrap it all up with punching a couple of holes where you didn't have holes before.

Pick a place where you can hear the sizzle of a large graphic tattoo being burnt into someone's butt just a doorway or two down the way.

Spare your daughters' friends from any piercings or permanent never-go-away-until-you-die-and-maybe-even-later drawings on their legs, arms, ears, or any other body parts.

Even if they beg.

Just so "no".

(mostly because you know their mothers WILL kill you)

Say "yes" to that upper ear piercing, and only realize some time later that your kid probably thinks that she can happily punch away at her body with sheer, sharp-objected abandon.

Be sure to set the record straight on that one before the sun finishes setting.

Begin to worry about her going out into the rain and various holes in her head causing leakage into her grey matter.

Then become preoccupied with how to alter your son's body now that he's thirteen.

Remember that he's not so interested in ink injections or chunks of metal getting pounded into his ears. He prefers treating his body in kinder and gentler ways.

Soft, creamy, smooth ways.

Like three flavours of ice cream that are his very own. No need to share with pesky siblings. No need to dirty any bowls. Only three questions for snacks, after lunch desserts, or a bad case of the munchies:

Oreo?

Coffee Crisp?

Or double chocolate?