Growing Up

As parents, we always know that our kids will grow up. Which is to say that our brains understand that these small creatures we created are animals and as such they will ingest food which will create additional body tissues causing them to grow taller and heavier, progressing from crawling to walking to running to… well, whatever comes after running.  We know they will grow stronger, smarter and more independent. 

Our hearts on the other hand, don’t have this same understanding. In our hearts, these tiny little creatures are still cute little babies who need us for everything. Our hearts will always ‘know’ that these creatures, regardless of age, need us for everything. They are so small we can carry them in our hands, they have that “new-baby” smell and they need us to comfort them when they are scared or lonely.  They fall asleep on our chests, their wispy hair tickling our chins and their soft pink toes not quite reaching our waists. They look up from our arms with bright eyes, and their little fingers grab our pinkies with a strength that we exclaim over.  Of course, from time to time, our hearts get a shocked awakening to what our brains knew all along.  And it aches when it happens. 

Our eldest celebrated his tenth birthday with a group of his friends yesterday.  A video-game playing, YouTube watching afternoon lead into a quick bite to eat at a burger joint prior to heading off to the movies.  As my son, my tiny little baby, sat with his friends at a table without me, all of them talking and telling stories, joking with each other and having a great time, it really hit home that my baby isn’t a baby any more.  He doesn’t need me like he used to.  I could have left the room and they likely would not even have noticed. 

We’ve seen these signs of independence coming. He’s been riding off with his friends for a couple years now on trips around the neighborhood, and this summer has marked his first forays into going with a friend down to the corner pizza shop for a slice with no adult supervision. I’m proud of his growing independence, and the signs of maturity I am seeing in him. When I look at him now, I see less of a little boy and more of a young man. 

And yet, there’s a small part of me that is sad to see it happening. I know that soon enough, he’ll be driving, then college (or whatever he chooses) and then I’ll be wondering why he doesn’t call more, and will he be coming home for Christmas this year. I know that he will grow up, move out, maybe have a family of his own.  I know that it’s a perfectly natural process – that everyone does it.  I know that, but my heart doesn’t.

Two up, Two down!

After a serious marathon couple of days of writing, I finished the NaNoWriMo challenge.  50,000 words in 30 days.  I stopped writing mid-month for about eight days, it then decided, on November 27th, that I did want to complete the challenge.  So on November 27, with only about 25,000 words written, and a story that I wasn't sure where to take it, I picked up the thread of the idea, and ran with it.

I have to say, I am very pleased with the outcome!  Just like last year, it is by no means finished, but the ideas that it generated, and the paths the characters have taken, are fascinating.  The more I write lengthy pieces, the more interested I get in the creative process, and how it is different for everyone.  I've read several books now on how to write, and each one is different, which I suppose is the message to take from that.  If you are a writer, or want to be one, then you just have to find what works for you, and run with it.  The important part is to just keep trying.  And that's the hard part for me.

Laziness is a constant problem for me.  I don't usually feel terribly motivated to do much of anything, other than hang out with my kids and play games with them.  Which, as a father, is pretty much what I am expected to do.  So I suppose that is a win for me.  Or them. Or both.

When I was younger, I was a lot more driven.  I had long term goals and intended to follow through on them.  But as I have aged (and the big 40 is on the horizon, a month or two away now) I have found that I seek out goals and thrills less and less.  And that is OK.  There is nothing wrong with being happy with where you are.  There is a great deal of satisfaction in feeling that the place you are in your life is a good one and you don't really want to change.  But...  There is always a but, isn't there?

There is a fine line between satisfaction and complacency.  And complacency can very easily lead to stagnation.  It is important for us to challenge ourselves, it is important for us to learn new things and try new experiences, if we don't do that, we may be cutting ourselves off from something we would love, if only we tried it.

I suffer from "man-itis" - a common condition among men where we find the things we like, and then just stick to them for ever.  Ask any man about his clothes, and most of them will be able to tell you where they always buy their pants, and even that they don't have to try them on anymore, as that style and cut fit them perfectly, so they can just walk into their store of choice (mine is Mark's Work Wearhouse for pants) go over to the pant section, grab two pairs (one khaki, one blue) and take them to the counter.  Ditto our favorite restaurants and pubs.  We have our beer and our dish that we like.  We get them every time.  If it changes because the menu changes, we will be upset.

Now I don't mean to suggest that man-itis is a bad thing.  It isn't wrong or bad to stick to something that we enjoy.  But it does mean we don't learn to enjoy new things.  We don't discover new loves, new passions.  We need to make that effort to try new things all the time.  Or at least I do.  The rest of the men, you guys do what you want, but I am going to try a couple new things this week.  I have no idea what they will be, but they'll be new.

I have no idea how this turned from a quick "Hey!  I did it!" about NaNo into a discussion of personal habits and expanding horizons, but hey, that's the writing process for you.  :)

Karma

Now I am not a religious man, nor even a particularly spiritual one.  I often defend religions, not because I think that they are right, or that there is a creature/being/entity in the sky/heaven/space/another planet that is watching us or judging us, but because I think that people ought to be entitled to their own opinions and beliefs, so long as those opinions and beliefs do not infringe upon the opinions and beliefs of others.

My close friends and I frequently get into heated debates on this subject – dyed in the wool atheists are as much fun to tease as fundamentalist religious believers – and I enjoy those debates.

Yes, plenty of terrible things have been done in the name of religion – though I would argue that the majority of those things were cloaked in religion to cover up the real reasons for the actions, namely power and control, but that is another blog post.  And there are countless good deeds and good outcomes from religions in general as well, but that is also another blog post.

Nope, the reason I am here today is to tell you that I have incontrovertible proof that there is finally one true religion, and that religion is Hinduism.  Or Buddhism.  Or maybe Jainism.  Or Sikhism.  Well, one of those religions is the right one.  The reason?  Karma is real and I saw it in action today.

We went to get groceries today, and while we were waiting for the cashier to complete running our items through, my lovely wife asked the man behind us in line if he collected Air Miles.  He replied that he did indeed, and happily provided his Air Miles card to the cashier, who cheerfully ran it through.  As I paid for the two hundred dollars of groceries, I asked my wife when we stopped collecting Air Miles, pointing to the Air Miles card in my hand.  She laughed and told me she hadn’t been collecting for a long time.  Who knew!?

A few minutes later, standing on the curb and waiting for our taxi to arrive (too many bags to just walk home, and no buses operating yet – damn you transit strike!), the gentleman who received our Air Miles walked out of the grocery store and paused to ask us where we lived.  Once he ascertained we weren’t too far from his route home, he offered us a ride.  Then backed his van into our driveway and helped carry our groceries into the house.

Now some would say that was just the fastest payout of Air Miles in history.  Others would argue that was just a nice person doing a nice thing – which is wonderfully common here in Halifax.  But I put to you that this is nothing less than categorical proof of the existence of karma.

I Remember When...

Once upon a time, a young boy moved to Medicine Hat, Alberta.  He knew no one, had no friends and was joining the class in the middle of the school year, a daunting task for any newcomer.  He’d grown accustomed to this, as he’d done it about six times by now, his step-father was prone to jumping jobs without any thought for the consequences on the family, and especially on his step-son, a chubby and intellectual kid that he never really understood – and I think secretly didn’t like all that much.

The boy meandered his way through the first few weeks of school, not making any friends, sticking to himself and reading alone for the most part.  He was old enough to start showing an interest in girls, but they were a mystery to him yet (he was only ten at the time) and the boys all wanted to play rougher games than he was really interested in.  His teachers liked him, he was quiet and attentive, without really causing any distractions in class (which of course counts for a lot at that age) and smart, but they could see he was very alone, and they did what they could to shield him from some of the inevitable bullying that chubby, smart and quiet kids suffered then, and still suffer today.

But one day, and very much out of the blue, everything changed.  The boy met a classmate, John, who saw the book he was reading (David Eddings’s Pawn of Prophecy if I recall correctly) and asked him if he liked “dragons and stuff.”  The quiet boy smiled and said that he loved them, and that The Hobbit was his favorite book (and remains so to this day).  That day, he made his first friend in this new school, and later that week, he was invited to John’s house to play a game John’s older brother had just received, a game called Dungeons & Dragons.  The moment he saw the cover, bright red with a roaring dragon being faced by a mighty warrior, he was hooked.  They spent a while making their characters (he made a dwarf, because back then, dwarf was a class, not just a race) and then spent the rest of that weekend living the lives of noble heroes, mighty wizards, skulking thieves and ancient races.  It was probably the best weekend of his life at that time.

When his mother found out what he’d been doing all weekend, her joy that her son had made a friend was replaced by concern about this game he’d been playing.  She’d seen a young Tom Hanks in a movie about Dungeons & Dragons and was concerned.  The movie portrayed the game as a brain washing exercise, and suggested that the players could be so caught in the fantasy of it that they would hurt themselves and others.  She called some friends who all told her that it was the devil’s game and that her son should never be allowed to play it.  She instantly forbade playing it.  The boy begged and pleaded with her, using the logic that his family knew would drive him to law school later in life, and finally she accepted a compromise.  She would come and watch a playing of the game and make up her own mind.  It was possibly the first and last time she would ever compromise with this son, and despite all that happened before and after, he would forever remember this one act of generosity on her part.

She visited John’s house later that week and spoke with both John’s parents and his older brother.  All assured her that there was no devil worship involved, and that it was not any sort of cult or brain washing experiment.  So they all sat down (John’s parents both joined in for the evening) and set out to conquer the Keep on the Borderlands.  Half way through the evening, the boy’s mother laughed and dusted the chip crumbs from her shirt front, loudly proclaiming that people could be very stupid about things they didn’t understand, and that D&D was certainly no more than a game.  She left that night chuckling to herself about dwarves and elves. That Christmas there were two cardboard boxes under the tree for the boy – both the shiny red Basic box that had caught his attention, and a brand new one, the bright blue Expert set, complete with The Isle of Dread adventure.

For decades, he’s played these games and dozens of others. For decades they have brought out the best in him, and sometimes the worst as well.  They taught him to act, and in that he found a passion for the stage.  They taught him to communicate in different ways, and in that he found friends and family near and far.  They taught him to examine situations from different angles, to look at things from a multitude of positions and in that he found a passion for the law and for critical thinking.  They have brought him friends and lovers.  They have helped him through dark times in his life, and brightened the good times even more.  They have had a hand in shaping him into the man he is today, and that is no mean feat for a collection of papers and oddly shaped dice.

When my sons come to me with things I don’t understand, or hobbies that I believe are ridiculous, I will hold on to the image of that young boy, and I will remember how he changed when he discovered there are worlds other than the one we walk through every day.  And I will listen to my sons, and I will not close my mind to their dreams and fantasies.  I will do my best to support them in their choices even if, perhaps especially if, I disagree with them.  Because dreams and fantasies make us who we hope to be.  They give us the flying carpets that the regular world denies us.  They let us imagine ourselves better than we are, and then, if we are lucky, the courage to make them a reality.

Does it still count, if... 8.5 / 30

you are physically incapable of completing a blog post?  :)

Sure, you can call it a rationalization if you want, and you'd likely be right, but I was literally unable to get to the computer long enough to complete anything resembling a blog post yesterday, owing to not being in the house long enough.  The boys and I went to the Discovery Center, then I was off to a friends house for a marathon gaming session that ran until 3:00 am.  Fun was had by all!

On the fun note, those of you living in the HRM must visit the Discovery Center at your earliest convenience!  The new exhibit (which we got a small taste of yesterday, though it won't open completely until Monday) is by far the best, most kid friendly, awesomest one they have ever had.  Whether it was the giant soft dominoes, the huge backgammon / dance board or the four foot tall singing billiard balls, there was something for everyone to have fun with.  And yes, we had fun!

So, back to writing tonight.  I'm still giving myself half credit for this one though. 

This Ain't Wild Rose Country 3 / 30

I was all set to rant about the idolatry I see all around us – the false gods being raised up, the golden cattle of Paris Hilton, Octomom, the frickin’ Kardashians and all these other talentless people that have become famous, for as near as I can tell, no damned reason at all.

But I sat down, the smell of woodsmoke lingering in the air from the fire we had, with a stomach full of fresh apple crisp (I didn’t use enough butter, but it was still damned tasty) and toasted marshmallows (you should see the mess Griffin can make with a ¾ melted marshmallow) and I just couldn’t bring myself to rant.  Life is too damned good, at this particular moment, for me to hold on to any cynicism.  I know it’ll come back tomorrow though, so I am content, for now, to reminisce.

Rose hip tea.  Anyone ever tried this stuff?  And no, I don’t mean some Lipton or Tetley tea bag – I’m talking about picking rose hips off a rosebush, throwing them in a pot of water and boiling that pot over an open fire for ten minutes.  You ain’t had rose hip tea until you’ve had it like that.

I had my first encounter with rose hip tea when I was a tender and insecure lad of fifteen.  My class, like all the other grade nine classes of Alexander Junior High in the mighty city of North Battleford, Saskatchewan, embarked on our one week survival camping trip.  In between listening to our Walkman tape players and playing Frisbee and football, we learned how to survive, should we ever be stranded in the wild.  We learned to identify directions based on sun angles, star position and the moss on trees.  We learned how to gather pure drinking water without having to boil it, should we be lucky enough to be lost and have a pot and a four foot sheet of clear plastic with us.  We learned how to back a cake (Duncan Hynes of course) at a campfire – on the off chance that we were lost and had cake mixes and pans in our backpack.  But we did actually learn how to identify what foods could be eaten.

We ate ants, grasshoppers and a few spiders.  We learned to determine which mushrooms were edible based upon characteristics that are long forgotten by me at this stage in my life.   And we learned how to make a few teas from various flowers and herbs that are everywhere in the Saskatchewan wild.  One of those, as you may have guessed, is the wild rose plant.  Hell, it is the provincial weed after all.  Those idiots in Alberta actually made it their provincial flower.  Sheesh.  No wonder we Saskatchewanians make fun of them.

Unlike the cake (which we burned horribly) and the grasshoppers (mine was still kicking) I loved the tea.  I was parched from a long day of walking through the woods, using my newly learned wilderness navigation skills to locate my missing Duran Duran cassette.  The tea was cool by the time I had a chance to taste it, and it was delicious.  So I had a big glass of it.  Then another.  Then I filled my canteen with it, drank all of that and filled it again.  This veritable orgy of cool rose hip tea drinking happened while the instructor was rattling off the benefits of some of the things we had been eating and drinking that day.  Grasshoppers are an excellent source of protein.  Ants and grubs (ants crunchy, grubs disgustingly chewy) even more so.  The lavender tea (which I had tasted and decided I didn’t enjoy at all) was a mild sedative and could help you fall asleep in your lean-to (we learned how to make these as well).  And finally, as I drained the last drops from my second canteen, rose hip tea was an excellent, and mild on the stomach, laxative, and had she mentioned not to drink too much of it?

My friends chuckled quietly for a moment, then a few broke into that laugh that can only be described as a guffaw.  I tried to laugh along, but I was far too worried to do so… remember, 15 years old.  Did I mention it was a co-ed camp?  Yeah, this was not my most shining moment.

For years afterward, some of my classmates would casually remark about campers leaving their soiled underpants in the trees (hey, the out-house was just too far to make it), and I never did get to go on the fishing trip (I was pretty much confined to tent for two days) or the deer watching excursion.  To this day I have no idea how that didn’t follow me through the rest of my scholastic experience – that’s the sort of thing you shouldn’t ever be able to live down.  Somehow, and I have no idea how, I did, and it was forgotten.

But when I spotted my wife’s cat looking at my jeans on the floor last night, I reminded her that the only one who gets to shit in my pants is me.  And I have the taste for rose hip tea to prove it.  And that, is another story.

How Things Change

When G woke me up at 5:30 this morning (it was my turn to get up, so naturally he chose to wake up two hours before his usual time) the sky was overcast and the fog so thick you couldn’t see the houses across the street and I just knew the day was going to go badly. But then G snuggled in, and we watched some Diego. There is nothing, nothing in the entire world, as satisfying as your child snuggling up with you on the couch, especially when he still smells fresh from his bath last night (just a hint of watermelon bubble bath remaining) and he puts his little arms around your arm to make sure you hold him just right.

G and I followed that with a breakfast of home made bread (OK, OK, it was made by the new bread maker, but I still poured in the ingredients damnit) toasted with jam, while Bug (who had sleepily stumbled out an hour later and immediately came and gave me a hug, telling me that he loved me) had his usual “square cheese and a wiener please dad”... yeah, he’s kinda that odd. Then off to work.

The ride to work this morning was breathtaking. The fog had burned off (or so I thought... cue the foreshadowing) and the wind was light. The speedometer on my bike (yes, I am a geek) hit a new high speed going down the big hill - 56.1 kms/hour! Passing cars on that stretch is always awesome. But then, as I rounded a corner, the most amazing thing greeted me. Someone, presumably someone with magical powers beyond my own “Very Minor Superpowers” had put up a perfectly vertical and, to my naked eyes, perfectly straight wall of fog across the road. The fog was so thick that the cars moving into it were completely veiled within inches of entering it. I hit the brakes hard and thought about walking the bike down this part - its sketchy even at full visibility. But something in me rebelled at this choice, something didn’t want to play it safe. This tiny little voice said “Fuck it! Let’s roll!”

Now usually the voices in my head give me much saner and far more sensible advice than this. Usually they are sober and pretty reliable. Yeah, they repeatedly tell me things about myself that I don’t want to hear, and they almost always make me worry about things that I don’t want to worry about. I make a habit of listening to them - even if I don’t always follow through. While what they were saying was crazy, for some reason it resonated with me. And so, the brakes were released, the pedals were pressed, and I hit the fog at a solid fourty clicks an hour.

It was almost physical, the cold and damp slapped me in the face like a thrown blanket. Visibility was restricted to about a meter, and even the sound of the cars inching along beside me, and the steps of the very surprised pedestrian (sorry about that if you chance to read this!) were muted.

The sheer exhilaration of flying down the hill, with no way of seeing what was ahead, relying on my memory and the feel of the road, was incredible. Stupid? You bet. But it reminded me that sometimes, you just have to say the hell with it, and let go. Let go of inhibitions, let go of fears and insecurities. Let go of the things that tell you “You Can’t!” and let go of yourself. Sure, sometimes you crash and burn. But every once in a while, you fly.

In Nomine Patris

Last week, I did something that I have been thinking about for about 10 years now. I wrote a letter. Actually, that's not accurate, I wrote the letter about a year ago, and its been sitting on my hard drive since then. Last week I mailed a letter.

Now I mail about 5 letters a day. Most go priority post, and most are to parties to a file I am working on. Thankfully, the government pays the Canada Post bill. :) This letter was different. This letter was to my biological father.

I've never met the man. He and my mother separated when I was about a year old. He's never had any contact with me, never made any effort to see me, call me or get in touch. But, having been on the flip side of that particular equation, I know just how difficult it can be, and how much pain it can cause to dig up old wounds, to talk about long buried or repressed feelings. How hard it can be to love someone without ever knowing that person.

I am not sure what I was expecting. I think I sort of assumed that my letter, which was a fairly impersonal one, asking only if he was interested in corresponding, would be received with a bit of surprise, followed up with a short letter saying either yes or no. I think I was maybe setting myself up to hear the no part... its my particular jaded worldview coming to the fore, as well as a history of bad relations with the majority of my family.

Last night, I got an email. I get lots of them. But this one was from him. In it he told me that he'd been hoping for years that I would contact him. Hoping that those wounds might one day be given a chance to heal. He told me that he'd been crying and shaking since he got my letter, and that the only reason he'd emailed me rather than calling me was because he didn't think he'd be understandable through all the tears. He wrote that there had always been a hole in his life...

Not what I was expecting.

I am so taken aback that I actually have no idea how to respond. I don't know what to think, let alone what to say or do. Here's a man, my biological father, who wants to be in my life in some way. I invited him. And now I don't know if I want to open that door or not. Of course, its too late now... the door is open. But I don't know what happens next. I don't know how to feel about this.

Part of me is excited. Since my family and I rarely talk (I haven't spoken to either brother in years, and my mom and I talk maybe once a year, though not at all in the last 12 months) I don't have much of a model for family communications. My wife's model really doesn't work with me at all... her family is so involved in each other's lives, so close, so open with each other, that its kinda like watching an alien species at times. I really have no framework to understand how they click. They are great people, and her mom and dad are two of the best people I know, but they just confuse the shit out of me at times.

I know how to deal with my family. Its easy. You just pretend they don't exist.

But now this man exists. He is interested in getting to know me. He's family in a way that I am having trouble grasping - he's part of me in a way that I can't recognize.

There really ought to be instruction manuals for human relations.