My sister-in-law, Kristen, has four children under the age of seven.
Last Friday she picked me up and the six of us went off to the Farmer's Market. We wandered up and down the crowded bustling aisles comparing prices on carrots and Brussels sprouts and finally decided on one booth close to the entrance.
I stood to the side with the stroller and Kristen's three oldest children as she wandered around the booth collecting what she needed. Her youngest, Enoch, was following her around and "helping" her get some corn on the cob. He held onto one side of the bag and she held the other, but since he's so little, it was more like a leash for him. She filled the bag and guided Enoch back to the cashier.
But then she took the bag away and handed it to the lady behind the till and Enoch decided to prove, right then and there, that he is indeed, two years old.
He stood behind Kristen, arms limp, completely still, head thrown all the way back, and bawled. "WaaaaHa! WaaaaHa! WaaaaHa!" Each wail a carbon copy of the previous one. He had lost his friend. His eyes were squinted shut and he seemed completely oblivious to everything around him. This was in its truest form, a cry for attention.
The girls behind the counter, and some of the ladies in line, were giggling, and I, still off to the side with the stroller, was standing there nearly doubled over with laughter. Kristen just shook her head.
As soon as she had finished paying, she turned around and touched Enoch's shoulder, holding out the bag of corn on the cob. He slowly opened his eyes and tilted his head back down, still wailing, and took one side of the bag again. Almost instantly, the crying stopped. Kristen let go of the other side of the bag and started to walk away, leaving Enoch there to follow her back to the stroller, dragging the bag of corn behind him, his face streaked with tears. This kid has "pathetic" down to an art.
Two-year-olds: making the world a more complicated, dramatic, and entertaining place.
Tuesday, 31 August 2010
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
Goodbye Again
Written on my last visit. At the airport.
I can't quite figure out why, but I feel like my heart is breaking, like the love of my life is being left behind as I sit here waiting to fly away to a place not so far but far enough to be termed "foreign" by your heart.
A great love is in this place and for some reason I never opened my heart to it this last time. I was too afraid, too fragile maybe, too tender, worried that my entire being would split into two if I let myself give in to this place even in the slightest, even for a moment. It is the most equisitely beautiful, most heart-wrenching place I have ever been. And why??
I grew up in this place, my heart learning to break as I grew older, as I learned to understand that the pain and the screaming and the tears weren't supposed to be a part of my childhood. Once I finally learned that everything was wrong, I learned how to break down and fall to my knees, unable to cry hard enough to stop the pain, unable to mold it into something I could understand or measure. I learned to curl into a ball with my forehead on the floor and sob until my body forced my heart to go unconcious and pushed my mind into sweet sweet sleep.
I'm leaving this place, after a short visit, and I'm wondering as I sit here in the airport why my heart aches so intensely and why the back of my throat is harvesting a teetering gag reflex. Why do I still love this place?
The trees were waving goodbye to me as I drove down the highway to the airport, all their leaves moving and flowing together like a wave in the see, or a flock of birds in the air. That was really the moment I opened my eyes to the beauty of this place. I finally let something in and now I'm cracking in all the most painful places.
The potential stabs at me, sharp and exquisite. This place could have been such a wonderful place. I could have learned about love, instead of having to wait years and years to discover the precious beauty that comes with sincerity and kindness. I could have opened my mind to the beauty that surrounds me. We could have been a happy family. We could have. I could have. The "could have" ... what sharp and striking, bitter words.
And now I sit here, leaving it all behind once again, closing the doors to the potential and shutting the blinds to what could have been. My heart aches for it, reaches out to it, and I deny access, turning my face toward my new home and the love of my life and more happiness than I ever learned could be possible.
I can't quite figure out why, but I feel like my heart is breaking, like the love of my life is being left behind as I sit here waiting to fly away to a place not so far but far enough to be termed "foreign" by your heart.
A great love is in this place and for some reason I never opened my heart to it this last time. I was too afraid, too fragile maybe, too tender, worried that my entire being would split into two if I let myself give in to this place even in the slightest, even for a moment. It is the most equisitely beautiful, most heart-wrenching place I have ever been. And why??
I grew up in this place, my heart learning to break as I grew older, as I learned to understand that the pain and the screaming and the tears weren't supposed to be a part of my childhood. Once I finally learned that everything was wrong, I learned how to break down and fall to my knees, unable to cry hard enough to stop the pain, unable to mold it into something I could understand or measure. I learned to curl into a ball with my forehead on the floor and sob until my body forced my heart to go unconcious and pushed my mind into sweet sweet sleep.
I'm leaving this place, after a short visit, and I'm wondering as I sit here in the airport why my heart aches so intensely and why the back of my throat is harvesting a teetering gag reflex. Why do I still love this place?
The trees were waving goodbye to me as I drove down the highway to the airport, all their leaves moving and flowing together like a wave in the see, or a flock of birds in the air. That was really the moment I opened my eyes to the beauty of this place. I finally let something in and now I'm cracking in all the most painful places.
The potential stabs at me, sharp and exquisite. This place could have been such a wonderful place. I could have learned about love, instead of having to wait years and years to discover the precious beauty that comes with sincerity and kindness. I could have opened my mind to the beauty that surrounds me. We could have been a happy family. We could have. I could have. The "could have" ... what sharp and striking, bitter words.
And now I sit here, leaving it all behind once again, closing the doors to the potential and shutting the blinds to what could have been. My heart aches for it, reaches out to it, and I deny access, turning my face toward my new home and the love of my life and more happiness than I ever learned could be possible.
Sunday, 15 August 2010
Brain as an object
I've been married for nearly two years and I'm starting to realize that everyone who ever said that men and women are from two different planets, or speak two different languages, or have two different brains, was right.
My husband and I have the classic argument that goes from one of us trying to tell the other something, to arguing, debating, voice raising, anger-ing, and finally: realizing; realizing that we were talking about the same thing all along.
My husband works construction and the other day he told me it would be fun to have all his co-workers' significant others come to work and have them do the job for a day.
I asked him why he thought it would be fun: he said because it would. I asked him what would be fun about it: he said it just would be.
He told me I was over-thinking it and I told him I was just trying to understand how he got from one thought to the next. How did he go from "significant others at our job for a day" to "fun"?
He told me that I think differently than he does, that all my thoughts are clear and laid out and 'sensical'. I told him he was wrong.
All of my thoughts do connect to each other, each paving the way for the next, but they aren't in any way organized. I can go to thinking about oranges to thinking about the day I was in grade three and for show-and-tell told the class about my uncle with the lazy eye. Why? Because after I gave that presentation, my teacher told me that when I do show-and-tell I often have no direction; one moment I'm talking about apples, and the next I'm talking about oranges.
So there's the common thread that linked my thoughts together: oranges.
Speaking of thread, I told my husband that my thoughts are like a ball of yarn that's been unwound. The one long thread crosses over itself over and over, there are knots that are beyond un-knotting, some of the thread has worn away and ready to snap (theses are the moments in my thought-process where I forget what I'm thinking about) and all other sorts of travesties. But it's all connected.
He turned to me and said, your brain is a bunch of thread, but mine is a bunch of bouncy balls.
I thought about that for a moment and realized how true it was. We're pretty sure he has ADD so bouncy balls made the most amount of sense, especially since he's also a very bouncy person externally. He bobs his head with each bouncy ball thought, entertained until it dribbles out into nothing and rolls away, then he turns around quickly to find the next one and watch it bounce around for a while.
He says that none of his thoughts are really connected, but I think there must be SOMETHING similar between each thought. Maybe it's the color of the bouncy balls, or their size, or their proximity to each other that causes the link.
In any case, we're still a "newly-wed" couple, we're still in love with each other, and we're still trying to figure out how to get our yarn and bouncy balls to play along.
My husband and I have the classic argument that goes from one of us trying to tell the other something, to arguing, debating, voice raising, anger-ing, and finally: realizing; realizing that we were talking about the same thing all along.
My husband works construction and the other day he told me it would be fun to have all his co-workers' significant others come to work and have them do the job for a day.
I asked him why he thought it would be fun: he said because it would. I asked him what would be fun about it: he said it just would be.
He told me I was over-thinking it and I told him I was just trying to understand how he got from one thought to the next. How did he go from "significant others at our job for a day" to "fun"?
He told me that I think differently than he does, that all my thoughts are clear and laid out and 'sensical'. I told him he was wrong.
All of my thoughts do connect to each other, each paving the way for the next, but they aren't in any way organized. I can go to thinking about oranges to thinking about the day I was in grade three and for show-and-tell told the class about my uncle with the lazy eye. Why? Because after I gave that presentation, my teacher told me that when I do show-and-tell I often have no direction; one moment I'm talking about apples, and the next I'm talking about oranges.
So there's the common thread that linked my thoughts together: oranges.
Speaking of thread, I told my husband that my thoughts are like a ball of yarn that's been unwound. The one long thread crosses over itself over and over, there are knots that are beyond un-knotting, some of the thread has worn away and ready to snap (theses are the moments in my thought-process where I forget what I'm thinking about) and all other sorts of travesties. But it's all connected.
He turned to me and said, your brain is a bunch of thread, but mine is a bunch of bouncy balls.
I thought about that for a moment and realized how true it was. We're pretty sure he has ADD so bouncy balls made the most amount of sense, especially since he's also a very bouncy person externally. He bobs his head with each bouncy ball thought, entertained until it dribbles out into nothing and rolls away, then he turns around quickly to find the next one and watch it bounce around for a while.
He says that none of his thoughts are really connected, but I think there must be SOMETHING similar between each thought. Maybe it's the color of the bouncy balls, or their size, or their proximity to each other that causes the link.
In any case, we're still a "newly-wed" couple, we're still in love with each other, and we're still trying to figure out how to get our yarn and bouncy balls to play along.
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