Boys of Summer

Summer is the season of indulgence. The moon is lazy to rise and the sun generous with its last light. Grannies take midweek vacations and suggest going out for dinner when it's too hot to stand in front of the stove. Mothers pretend to look the other way when candy is offered to children who are already awake passed their bedtime. Even the statues on the sleepy streets of Sidney are content to offer up their laps to the boys of summer.

 

And the walk that should take a tired family home instead leads them to the ocean's edge, where the sea and the sky are the same breathtaking blue. It's the same shade as these boys' eyes, if ever you get a glance. One of these boys will take a dip in the Pacific, because in summer you can be spontaneous like that. You can catch everyone off guard. 

True Love Makes the Beloved Free

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I have thought long and hard about how to share this part of the Js' story. There really isn't a right way to go about it, but there are certainly many variations on the wrong way. I hope, dear and loving readers, that I'm not choosing the wrong way in choosing to share the news here.

Josh and I are parting ways. We have been separated, more or less legally, for going on two years now. We still share the townhouse, but since May I've been living in my parents' home. The boys travel between us, two days on, two days off, and every other weekend.

Whether this news comes as a sadness, a surprise, a relief, or some combination of the three, it has come to be my reality. At least we are no longer in limbo, wondering whether or not to use the terms husband and wife in the present tense.

I want to share some of Josh's own words here, since his voice needs to be heard as well as mine. I hope I have his permission to share them. The day after we met to discuss what to do with the house and how best to divide our time between the boys, he wrote me this:

Even though I'm indulging no hope or expectation, and very much looking at this as an ending, I know I will never write you off, nor close the door to you. It's not something I could do if I wanted to. I feel like the way I married you -- the ceremony and celebration entirely aside -- was the building of a gateway into me, just for you. A permanent one. That's the big gamble of true marriage, I think. You build a thing that can't be taken apart once it's been made, even if you need to be apart as people. So I just wanted to tell you this: that gate is always going to be yours if you need it. I hope that doesn't come across as a weight or a way of clinging a little. It's meant to be the opposite: freeing, because like thich says, true love makes the beloved free. It's an acknowledgment on my part of what is. I'm moving on, but I'd be lying if I pretended the gate was gone.

I get emotional just reading that, and if you know Josh or I well, you will know we will always love one another. We will always be the best of friends to one another. We will always put the needs of our boys above our own, and share the knee-bending amazement that only parents can in light of the sheer existence of the children we created together. What was between us will never be undone, a simple truth that grounds me and consoles me.

Feel free to message us, write us, call us, text us, drop by and offer us your love. But let it be said: from every ending there is a new beginning. As I said before, we are each growing our own way, and there is joy in what may come of that.

xoxox J

Never Blush To Dream

a lost love

slides into your bed again

there's no treason

though the blood stirs

when a stranger speaks his name

each lover keeps the home

he made within your mind

and has a key

to lie with you unbidden

so long as you are holding

gentle thoughts of him

2

never feel a guilt

to hear me

whisper still within the night

old loves lurk in eyes

that brighten

to the new enchanter's sight

i too must rise from warmth

to drift with other ghosts

from worldly view

yet i'll come into your bed

some night again

and dream myself alive in you

"Never blush to dream" by Earle Birney

Psyche Opening The Door Into Cupid's Garden 
John William Waterhouse

Devoted

Three cheers for fathers, great and small. They make your favourite, least healthy meals and let you eat with your elbows on the table. They read comic books to you and do all the right voices, including Captain Haddock's spit-heavy Scottish brogue ~ Blistering barnacles!

Three cheers for J, who does his duty as a daddy not because it is a duty, but because he is devoted. And E and M are lucky beyond their blue-bright eyes to have this very father. 

Poor, Shy Love

Some things are hard to say. 

Perhaps that needs to be rephrased: Some things are hard to say when they are true. It is actually quite easy to lie, despite what most people would have you believe. E knows this. It's hard for him to say he's sorry, but he'll do it. He'll do it with an eye roll and an exaggerated drawl that makes the apology sound more like a toy running on dying batteries: "Sooohhh-ooo-reeeeee!" 

True things can be easy to say, you might argue. Like when someone asks if you'd like some chocolate ice cream (and you happen to really love chocolate ice cream). It's easy to say, "Oh yes. Yes please." J has experimented with this by offering all manner of sweet frozen treats, and her boys always give her an honest answer.

But this isn't really about ice cream, or saying you're sorry when you're not. This is about saying what's hard to say, and in this instance it's easier for J to say it here, through the protective screen. You, dear readers, are easy to confide in. 

This post is about J and her dad, and what's hard to say for one person is better said by another, far more articulate and with CanLit cred to boot. In writing of her relationship with her father, Gabrielle Roy (google her if the name draws a blank) wrote, "The truth was that we were two of a kind, each living in fear of finding our poor, shy love for each other misunderstood." And so it is with J and her dad. 

She can say the words I love you when she's walking him into the nuclear medicine wing, fully aware that he'd rather she not make a fuss: it's just one test and then one surgery and maybe another after that; it's just the course of life when you're over 60 and never wore sunscreen and don't appear to fear anything, let alone cancer. She can say I'll see you after, fully aware that she is not 100% this is true, but it won't help to tell him that when she says those words she really means I'm scared this will be the last time I see you. 

What she really means is she's scared she'll go her whole life never really being sure he knows how much she loves him, this gentle, loyal, hardworking, dedicated man who was always somewhat at sea with such a sensitive child as J. 

Lost And Found

Through an unforeseen, inevitable series of events, J finds herself living in her parents' home once more. She is 35 years-old. This feels both backwards and strange. There is shame, discomfort. Regardless, she is here. She has come home.

There isn't really space for J in the old family home, so she offers to tackle the job of cleaning out her dad's old den, which hasn't been used -- let's be honest -- for more than storing recycling and seasonal decorations since J was a teenager. You do the math.

To restore the den to its former dignity is a formidable task and J does not undertake it lightly. She is inspired by The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, which she has recently finished reading. Following the specific steps and recommendations of the author, organizational-sensei Marie Kondo, J enters the room and formally kneels in the only patch of floor space she can see. She closes her eyes and addresses the room in her mind. She thanks the space for having served her family for so many years and asks permission to tidy it so that it might have a new life. Then she begins. 

Project den: Day 1

According to the KonMari method, it's best to tidy by category. J begins with the most obvious item: books. J's father is an avid reader, an erstwhile encyclopedia salesman, and a reclusive bookworm. It doesn't take J long to fill 22 bags and boxes to their breaking point with paperbacks and hardcovers.

She quickly moves onto the next category: papers. And this is when she finds an envelope addressed to her former self.

The envelope contains a piece of lined looseleaf paper with the date pencilled in the corner: Sept. 30/79. What follows is the story of J's birth, written in her dad's surprisingly legible hand. Maybe this isn't such a miraculous find. J knows the story, right down to the dirty-brown details of the meconium cocktail in which she first bathed. What is miraculous, though -- or at the very least magically coincidental -- is that J's father wrote this story for her, addressed that envelope to her, and that J herself should be the one to find it. 

This is a life-changing magical find. J could easily have let the den and its contents rot for another 10 or 20 years, however many her dad has left on this earth. She may have found it while cleaning out his estate and sorting through his personal effects as part of some funereal preparation. But she didn't. She found it now, proof that the day she was born had some profound impact on this inscrutable man, her father. Proof that he loved her enough to record the story of her entry into this world. Proof that even at 35 she is the luckiest little girl. She can bask at least one day longer in the knowledge that her daddy loves her, always did, even if it got tricky to tell her so. 

Where Do We Go From Here?

Nine years ago today, and almost to the hour, two best friends exchanged their wedding vows. They vowed to be a home to one another. To sing to their children together. To forgive one another, and to let their love be stronger than any other feeling that passed between them. 

Today they aren't together. He is pruning trees on someone else's property, while she attempts to study how best to help other people's families. Likely they're both thinking about each other, wishing they were doing anything but what they're doing right now, separately, under the same relentless grey sky. 

Nine years, for those who still keep track, is the willow anniversary. Willows are remarkable trees, one of the few whose branches can bend impressively without snapping. Willows can teach us how to yield, how to grow in unlikely places, how to hold our sorrows without succumbing to them. 

Here's to nine flawed and lovely adventurous growing-up years of the Js. May their branches diverge and the tree continue to grow, deep and wide and blossoming every spring. 

Remember December?

What do we remember about the season that's passed? J worked her fingers to the bone typing out the last of her essays, before surrendering to the haze of the holidays. M learned to wobble on ice, beneath the ridiculousness of an oversized helmet. J cut his hair short, again, and contemplated the spread of his forehead from a new angle. 

The days were surprisingly sunny, and E and his daddy built astonishingly stable forts on the beach, preparing for the inevitable date when E leaves home and lives off the land, like Alexander Supertramp before him. When the Christmas tree was up and decorated, M insisted upon having his photo taken in front of it, a callback to last year when Aunty K took shots of the daycare kids in front of the tree as take-home presents for their parents. It just goes to show what a kid will remember, and this season, although long passed, four months ago now, is still very much in our memories. 

Novembering

This is old news now. I mean, M has been three for what, nine years now? Ten? But seriously. Three is a big number. It's a milestone, when one and two are all the years you've hurdled. And it deserves a celebration like no other. It deserves a woodland theme, with fox and owl and bear masks, and a house full of people who will howl it up proper with you. And even it we're almost halfway through M's third year, it deserves a foxy blog post. 

If, however, you are born in February, it's a rare and balmy day that allows you to celebrate outdoors. So you take your kicks where you can, when you can. Like walking past a tourist photo-trap. See above, and below for that matter. E has always been a bit of a ham, and we love him for it. 

Experimenting

Here's an experiment. Take one boy and put cleats on his feet. Suit him up in shorts and a jersey. Give him a ball, face him at a net, and see what happens. Maybe he'll stand there, staring. Maybe he'll run in the opposite direction. Or maybe, just maybe, he'll make an effort to score a goal. If he does, he'll most likely miss. But maybe he'll keep coming back to that same net, with that same ball, and sooner or later, likely later, he'll score. 

Take the experiment to the next level. Take another boy, the first boy's younger brother, and put him on the same field. Don't bother giving him a ball or pointing out the net. Watch what happens. Bet you that little boy will show you he can kick just like his big bro. 

This experiment is not recommended. We do not recommend you leave two little boys, brothers, in the back seat of a car within reach of black Halloween face paint. The result is that one boy will likely take it upon himself to paint his brother, taking little care to avoid the eyes and hairline. The black paint will also become a permanent part of the interior ceiling of the car, where two victorious handprints will serve to remind you of the experiment, and your parental folly.  

Dear Grandma

Dear Grandma, 

I'm sorry it's been so long since I've written you a proper letter. I've spent most of my life somewhere far away, and you always wrote to me-- long letters in your beautiful teacher's handwriting. And usually I'd write back, and then we'd have to talk on the phone so you could ask me what it said because no one could ever read my handwriting. Anyway, this letter might be a long one, because I'm sharing it with a lot of people who love you and I want to make sure I get it right.

I remember you first in Anola. There were two grandparents and a big white farmhouse, fields and woods, chickens and cows, 500 cats and a big black dog named Spike. And there were three little kids who came on weekends. Mike, Josh, and Carol, in order of age, or Mike, Carol and Josh in order of size. Mike came up with all the ideas; Carol got in trouble for the ideas; and a white rooster sometimes tried to kill Josh. 

You grew a huge garden, with peas and corn and a big raspberry patch that we sometimes got lost in. In the spring the garden was a mud pit. Once I went in with my rubbers and lost first one, then the other, and then I started to cry and you had to lay out boards so you could rescue me. Then later I played on the boards and then you had to rescue me again. 

In the morning you would give us raspberries in milk with a little bit of sugar, and at night old dutch chips with a dip you made from sour cream and onion soup mix. Everything we did made you laugh, even when we used the satellite dish for a slide and all Grandpa's shows were scrambled, or when we used Grandpa's water bed as a trampoline and Grandpa went to bed on a piece of wet plywood. Nothing we did made Grandpa laugh.

You spoiled us rotten; we never wanted to leave. You let us take pictures with your camera and burn things in the barrel and use the axe; you let us name all the kittens that were born in the barn and hold all the kittens at once and walk around with kittens on our heads. You let me keep a dead gopher under a flagstone and check on it again and again to watch how rotten it was getting. You're a legend to me, even now. When I'm a Grandparent I'm going to be exactly like you.

I'm sorry I moved so far away when I was ten. It wasn't my idea, but unlike you my mom didn't do whatever I said. Not long after you and Grandpa moved to Rennie St. in South Transcona and it was kind of the end of an era. But you wrote me long letters and you walked every day to the mailbox to see if you had got one back and once in a while you did and it was unreadable.  But in the summers I came to stay with you and when I was still little enough we shared a bed and talked before I fell asleep. 

I guess it was some time around then I started to notice that time is a thing that passes. Maybe you have to be over ten before you can learn that, or maybe a cat or a dog dies or you move far away and then suddenly your life has chapters. And for there to be chapters there must be some that are over.

You were in your 60s by then and you would have already known that for a long time. You had lost a little sister, a mother and father. Other losses that I will never know.  Still you dressed year after year in bright pink or green and spoiled us at Christmas, and bought me CDs and let me play them loud in your house, and Grandpa began to wish for deafness. There are pictures of you standing beside a spruce tree you planted, small at first, then every year taller and taller. 

Kids grow up. They shouldn't. They should stay small and beautiful and always lost in raspberry patches. But they grow up and go away and keep going away, and write fewer letters and talk too fast on the phone. Dogs and cats get old and stiff, and fart and then ask to be let out, or in and out and in and out until one day they don't. It's a stupid world, in many ways. Winter is always too long. The train takes too long to get to Winnipeg. I feel like I'm still a little boy and now my train will never get there. 

I wanted to be able to speak to you for everyone, Grandma, but I can't. You were my Grandma, but I have trouble understanding the other people you were, the mother, the wife, the schoolteacher and friend at the Free Press. The little Ochre River girl. In life you only get to know people from the sides facing you. I wish I knew how to honour all of you, even the sides no one saw. 

I don't remember all the different things I must have told you in those letters from Manitoulin, from Toronto, from Victoria, but I know that they were all really saying the same thing. You must have been born to be a grandma, because you were the greatest. You spoiled us completely rotten--all the way rotten--and held us so tight that we are still warm from your love. 

Love Josh, Mike, Carol, and all of us. 

In loving memory ~ Noreen Rioux 1930 - 2015 

A Year In Review: Part Four

As the dog days wound down, we wrapped up the summer with a multi-family camping trip at Goldstream Park. While there were arguably as many adults as kids, the balance toppled when a few parents (who shall remain nameless and notorious) started a water fight. There was no dry zone. Perhaps the most memorable moment was the stealth attack on the Js. It's not entirely clear who the target(s) or organizers were, but the event played out as follows. J was supporting her better half in a headstand, and just at the moment when she was prepared to step back, they were both doused from all sides. What can one do but breathe and be wet?

 Since his mom is an erstwhile actress and his dad enjoys stealing scenes, it was inevitable that E would take to the stage. He made his debut as "Frankie the Frog Detective" in a retelling of The Golden Ball as part of his summer acting camp. Upon request, and with a small measure of encouragement from his music-loving family, E began taking violin lessons. His little brother liked the look of the instrument so much, he took it up himself; from the looks of things, it won't be long before these brothers are duelling strings. Can you picture this little blondie in his black best, seated somewhere in an orchestra?

Most of the remaining days of summer were spent bumming around the yard, watching the unplanned garden express itself. 

 

On weekends, we took family trips out to the Sooke Potholes. E built a snake out of skipping stones, and all three boys were brave enough to wade into the glacial water.

 Other days we stayed closer to home, building elaborate sand castles on the shore of Beaver Lake. 

E had so much practice working with his hands that by the time school started up again (halfway through September) he was dextrous enough to tie his own shoes. 

Our first boy is now in first grade. Time continues to baffle us. Little M is growing into a mischievous elf, an inevitability in this family, but it will be the better part of two more years before he follows his big brother to school.

Stay tuned, lovely readers, for les aventures à l'automne!