Bittersweet Canada Day

So, even though I now live in the great state of Texas, my heart still belongs to Canada. Tomorrow is the biggest national holiday Canada has......and I'm not there to celebrate. Part of my wants to jump on the next plane up there so that I can be with family and friends and catch up with my siblings and their kids, and cousins and their kids and mom and grandpa, and the aunts and uncles that I love and miss.

However, on the other hand, I am kind of glad I'm not going to be there. Canada Day has been a bit of a tough spot with me for the last 8 years; ever since grandma died. My grandma, Jeanette, was the epitome of a family matriarch. Mother of 6 kids, plus raising the son of her twin sister, could not have been easy on her. I have less than half that many kids and I go bonkers on a semi daily basis. She had over 35 grandchildren, and every single one of them believes, even to this day, that they were her favorite.

I miss her. I miss her a lot. I miss the sound of her voice; often loud, but always meant with love.....even when calling certain someone's "jackass". I miss the smell of her lotion and perfume. I miss the smell of her house at the holiday times. She always made the best fried chicken, potato salad, hot cross buns, Swedish bread......well anyway, the woman could cook.

She passed away quickly and quietly, no fanfare, no disease or injury, not even a goodbye. I think that's what made it so hard. The day before her death, she talked to my son on the phone, but I was wrapped up in something else and didnt' get the chance to myself. Luckily, I can say that there was nothing left unsaid between her and I. She knew exactly how I thought and felt about her, and I knew how much she loved me. In that, I take a great comfort.

Getting Older Sucks

There's a certain comfort in familiarity... in the gentle lull of routine. It sedates us. Makes us drift along contentedly in the day to day dramas of fixing lunch, buying groceries, and changing little clothes after a morning in the sandbox. So it's always a shock when you get jarred into reality for a moment or two.

One day you're 19 and invinsible... the next you're 30 and barely able to move in the mornings. The face in the mirror becomes unfamiliar, but you accept it as your own anyway because it's all you have. And so much of what you felt passionate about 10 years ago suddenly seems so silly, irrelevent, and worst of all... unattainable.

I suppose they'd call it "growing up"... but it feels far more like "shrinking in". It's as if the world gets smaller and smaller the older we get. Less people, fewer places. Our lives become confined by schedule and obligation... most of our "free" time spent wandering between the rooms in our homes... picking up this, vacuuming that, helping a child get dressed, preparing meals.

We move far away from friends, settle into domesticality.. and our world shrinks even more until we're just tiny satellites orbiting that shining star we call "Family".

And Family is beautiful. It's warm and draws us near.. keeps us locked on with it's emotional pull.. with the way a child's smile can burst forth like a solar flare and melt your heart.
There's no better place to drift than in the orbit of the people you love... that much is clear.

But unfortunately that satellite gets smaller the older you get.. shrinks as less and less of it is needed. Early on you dump out all the parts of you that don't fit.. make room for what you need to be. Sure you try to hold on to a few souvigniers of who you were before you took your place attending to Family.... but over the years they get scattered and misplaced.

And eventually you just get smaller and smaller and more and more insignificant... until one day there's simply nothing left of you at all. You leave to orbit into a completely new eternity, and while you stay relatively smaller.....your "family" has suddenly become enormously larger.

How's that for a little pre-menstrual melodrama? LOL. Can you tell I am having a hard time with being 30 this year? Ugh.. when did the years start flying past so fast??

Goofball Impunity

The best part about having a kid is the way it allows you to relive all the best parts of your own childhood, and to do things you never got the chance to.

Having kids makes you stop into places you'd probably normally pass by. Circus tent? Well, the boys need to see a circus! Carnival ferris wheel in the distance? Get on over there and buy those boys a corndog and a lemonade.. take them on the tilt-a-whirl.. they deserve it.

You do things like buy season passes to Seaworld just because they liked the movie "Finding Nemo", and you sit through all the little shows for them... but really it's for you, too. Because you forget how much fun it is to climb the rope ladder of a pirate ship, eat warm cotton candy, or ride on a carousel horse... but the memories come flooding back pretty quick when you share those experiences with your little bundles of bouncing excitement.

You get to plan cartoon birthdays with bright and colorful decorations.. wander party stores searching for the right pinata... run around the toy department pressing all the buttons, excitedly searching for the right gifts, and dragging your husband away from the Star Wars section while reminding him it's not his birthday yet.. so drop the x-wing fighter. (Okay, maybe that last one is just me.)

Having kids is like having a license to be a perpetual Peter Pan. You get to be a goofball with impunity... and that rocks.