Fingers & Toes Crossed

I, M, & L

My three grandkids were together recently. I is almost 11 months, M is 3 1/2, and L is almost 18 months. 

Like my grandson in this pic, I grew up with cousins, two girls close to my age, one older and one younger. 

Gen X kids, we mostly raised ourselves. It wasn't easy. We knew how to fend for ourselves and how to disappear, but we filled our hiding places with music and candy and pretend and stories but mostly laughter, that sort of laughter that makes breathing sporadic. (You'd understand what was so funny if you watched us perform The Most Beautiful Girl in the World in a freezing cold unfinished basement for an audience of one bored and one bewildered cat.) 

With much to learn and no one safe to ask, we figured life out together, without judgment or shame—so relieving for a group of offbeat oddballs. Uncertain about ourselves, but relying on each other, our promises were kept: we crossed our hearts and hoped to die. We forgave each other's mistakes, all of them, I hope? Throughout childhood, there were few people I trusted more than those two. 

Inevitably, life led us in different directions. I miss them. I'm grateful for the cushion we constructed between ourselves and the world, and so of course I will foster this bond in I, in M, in L. And perhaps someday, fingers and toes crossed, my cousins and I will spend an entire sunrise to sunset with each other again. And since we no longer have to sneak whiskey shots, perhaps karaoke? 〵(⌒˽⌒)〴

Dear friends, did you grow up with cousins? 

Take Hold

I's hands

Ten-month old toddler hands rarely cease. 

Curious, her hands examine all things in her path from the stuffed bunny's button tail to the start "button" on the dump truck. Chewing a toy then dropping it and crawling to the next, climbing up the coffee table and inching her hands to one coaster, then the next, and the next. 

She absorbs this life hands first, then into her mouth, her eyes darting from one pursuit to the next, her ears perked by toys that beep or spin, then kitchen noises, then my voices. I wonder, what does she smell? Perhaps smell develops slowly, thankfully unadvanced until post-diaper life? 

I use ASL to encourage her with my own hands: yes and yes and yes. 

Oh to be a new human again, and take hold of the world. 

Coining it?

Perplexed, I discovered these coins in our kitchen sink. Literally, money down the drain?

My wife was away, so I texted her this pic. Later, she explained, "while cleaning our vehicle, I found the coins in the console, dusty, so I tossed them in the sink and ran water over them."

My (Dad) brain: 

1. Ah, so dirty money? 
2. Like nickel and grime?
3. Perhaps we should have laundered this money?
4. A penny for your "pots" (and pans)?
5. If only we had more than two nickels to scrub together....

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Don't forget.

October 2024, Northern Canada

 Decades ago when we bought our home, I noticed something that made me love it even more: walking up the staircase, we have a window from the main floor to the ceiling. It's like having a skylight visible from the lower floor. As I walk up the stairs, there's a fairly clear view of the sky and occasionally, the northern lights are framed there above me like garments of light. 

As a northern Canadian, I can't imagine a sky without them. Years ago, while traveling in Scotland, locals told us how they longed to visit Canada someday to see the Rocky Mountains and the northern lights. The Scots helped me understand that we Canadians—even though we've literally grown up with them—must avoid taking the northern lights for granted. 

As a young boy (when seatbelts barely existed), I recall lying across the backseat of the family car staring up through the rear window at the northern lights, my Mom driving us home from somewhere. I recall telling her that I thought the northern lights "might be the bottoms of God's curtains?" 

Even as a preoccupied teenager, I remember driving on backroads with my friends, pulling over, all us jumping around like Walt Whitman, "yawping" into the night sky as it shimmied like a woman dancing, her colourful dress twirling in slow-motion. 

And as a parent, I never missed an opportunity to point them out to my children, to teach them to wonder, to awe.  

Our modern world boils over with distractions and strife (there's a sort-of numbing creeping into life), but the northern lights remind us we are alive and more in sync than we realize. Mary Oliver said it better: the northern lights remind us to pay attention, be astonished, and tell others. 

Dear friends, notice, celebrate, share. Don't forget. There's a comraderie in any sky: whether it's a lingering sunset, a shooting star, or a sheer-costumed sky, these experiences mean more collectively. The northern lights are unifying, and today, for me, there's a longing in them too, a longing for those no longer here to share the sky—those good friends who forgot or those whose pain was too overwhelming to remember how we celebrated being alive, together, astonished, our feet on the ground, looking up, clapping, whooping, laughing, loving this one short, extraordinary life. 

Things one should never outgrow:

"Music can change the
world because music can
change people." Bono

making music, even if the best you can do is the washboard-tie aka musical instruments made for people like me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Do you play a musical instrument, or perhaps some sad substitute, albeit with absolute glee? 

(Whatever your response, I hope there's an abundance of music enriching your life.)

Sheesh or Yeesh?

I noticed that my blog tag widget displays both "sheesh" & "yeesh." I did not realize I was using them interchangeably, so I researched these interjections and discovered they are indeed related. 

Several sites declare they are both used to express "annoyance, disapproval, dismay, surprise, impatience or distress." The urban dictionary explained that yeesh is "yikes" and sheesh combined and etymologically they are variants of the exasperated expressions, geez/jeez (and their profane origin)...or, at least that's the hypothesheesh. ;)

Either way, I love them. 

I checked my tag stats and discovered I use "sheesh" far more often, and this made me wonder if this interjection is regional. Do you use sheesh or yeesh or both, or something a little more spicy to express your irritation? 

September

September is such a slow burn in Western Canada. Until it isn't. 

Among the greens, hints here and there of new colours, mostly yellow, and then all at once everything's yellow and those leaves flutter away like ash.  

Even though they are still fruiting, our strawberries are ignited too, showing off with so much (fleeting) beauty. 

Let's be honest:

Spotted in this restaurant (5 stars)

 

Things one should never outgrow:

gallivanting. 

The Spot

Niagara Falls, Ontario Canada
aka the Horseshoe Falls

This is the spot. 

My wife and I attended a wedding north of Toronto recently, so we used the opportunity to visit Niagara Falls. Since she had never been to the Falls, we did everything we could in an afternoon: rode the funicular down the escarpment to the river, took the boat tour (so much fun!), braved the thongs of tourists tasting maple syrup, bought the requisite t-shirts, and paid $15 for a small bag of chocolate almonds at a store I'm sure was named The Tourist Trap. It was a lovely day. But I was waiting to get to "the spot."

With my parents and older brothers, I visited Niagara Falls decades ago when I was 11(?) and snapped a photo in this spot. Although I don't recall much from that first visit, I do remember it was early on January 1, and thus a thoroughly different tourist experience. Essentially we were the only people there that morning. 

I remember how it felt, for me: powerful, beautiful, alive. Yet my Dad looked over the edge and said in his characteristically deep and slow voice, "it's just a bunch of dirty water falling off a cliff." My Dad was often reductive, but I suspect his particular disdain that morning was due to the fact that he had just spent a week with his older sister, a person I observed during that visit (from afar) with equal fascination and fear. She was scary. 

So what was so special about revisiting this spot? Reflecting on it now, I have no idea. Before we arrived, I guess I was hoping to feel something...special? There's an alchemy that sometimes occurs when revisiting childhood places, reinhabiting sentimental spaces, a kind of emotional time travel experience that can be especially meaningful and deepen those experiences. Right?  

Nope. Not this time. My tone may seem negative, but that's not my intention: just being honest.

I wanted this spot to say something, mean something, signify something (explain something). Despite my magical thinking, there were no voices from the past or explanations about long-ago hoped-for happiness, nor new connections or understandings. There were better feelings though: gratitude for this experience with my wife, gratitude for the time and resources to travel, gratitude for my life now. Being able to unapologetically marvel at life!

The Falls have changed and so have I. Erosion is inevitable and the Falls have been reshaping themselves for thousands of years. All progress is typically upstream. 

I think longing for "the spot" was about discovering something that never was. It's one of my romantic default bad habits: revisiting the past hoping to write a better narrative. Although I often continue searching there, happiness is not in the past; it's right now. Shakespeare may have said "what's past is prologue," but a happy epilogue makes for a great story too.