The grocery store in the town near where we live has been boarded up since before Christmas. There are a couple of other places that offer a limited selection of groceries but for anything out of the ordinary, people have to drive at least 30 minutes in any direction. For folks who do not drive this is a terribly inconvenient situation. The store is on strike with no hope in the near future of resolving discussions. There is talk that it will be a year before we see a new grocery store opening in town.
There is no question that having a fully stocked (well, mostly stocked) grocery store is something we all pretty much take for granted. Even I, who meddles with making ketchup, have stumbled more than once recently on the fact that I just can’t get what I need when I need it. What I imagined to be some degree of self-sufficiency has become even more obviously not the case.
I am very curious to see how others are coping. When it was starting to look like convenience foods buy us time, it now takes half a day just to drive to get these handy items.
I’m not advocating that you buy yourself a cow and some hens to avoid all future dependence on your neighbourhood grocery store. That’ll chew up more time and money than it’s worth if your reason is to gain access to the food alone.
But I am suddenly even more aware of how important the habit of foraging for food is in our day. Those who depended on that store are all learning new habits out of necessity. It is a grumpy process. It involves a lot of unwanted change in schedules, patterns and willingness to go without, find alternatives or stock up.
At the end of the day this foodie is thrilled to note, however, that it is possible to change our food buying habits. Recognizing that it may take an external driver to make it so, I still realize that even the most embedded of habits can change.
Backing up and reiterating what I seem to be striving for with food production on our farm is that I simply want real food back. That is all I want. I want it available and accessible and affordable to all. I want it to be our habit to seek it out. If we could learn to value where our food comes from, perhaps we could board up the processed food section by our own volition. We could take the power back into our own hands.
A dear young boy from the city visited us the other day and heard a rooster crow from the barn. His immediate reaction was to cover his ears and suggest that we duct tape the roosters mouth. I wasn’t offended. I found it curious. I felt compassionate in that moment. Not only have we (city folks) been separated from the sources of our food but we’ve actually come to feel disdain for the animals that feed us.
We may be boarding up our grocery stores due to union disputes but please tell me that we won’t be boarding up our barns anytime soon as well. At least I would prefer to let that rooster tell his side of the story a little while yet.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
A Magical, Snowy Day
Rain fell hard outside our window stealing away our December snow just after Christmas had closed its chapter for this year. The New Year was approaching fast as was our annual pond hockey game with family and friends. We always tried to pull this off when the weather cooperated or I wasn’t carrying one of my two new year babies.
The past week I had sledded my two dear children down to the pond a few hundred metres from our house with shovels, skates and the necessary change of clothes and skating apparatus. Back against our deciduous and rocky hillside, nestled beyond the sumac groves, we have a small, spring-fed irrigation pond that houses the largest leeches I have ever seen in my life in summer yet turns into our recreational bliss-land in winter with the right conditions.
Around 3pm, the sun hits this pond like a spotlight in a movie. The golden light is like a whisper in your ear telling you that the New Year has come and the magic has arrived. Whenever I see this sun setting, my heart fills so large I can hardly breathe.
The kids each have shovels and fortunately they are obsessive like me. They continue to help me clear the 6 inches of snow off the ice for 3 days in a row. One day we are by ourselves, the next day we have help from a single mother friend who is visiting with her four young children, the next day we have help from Rob. All the while the forecast looms two warm days of continuous above zero temperatures and rain which will surely bring the partial thaw of our ponds.
There are two ponds. We have banked on this one this year for skating because the other froze after a beaver had dammed and flooded it. The beaver then let us remove his dam, the pond drained and a lovely, thick pancake of ice floated high above the water making it impossible to trust the hollowness beneath.
Meanwhile I am reading my usual ‘how does this world work’ fodder which happens to be focusing on the great need to relinquish control to a God in our lives. As a Christian, this includes letting Jesus work in us.
I stumble so greatly on this one thing. The need to surrender, the nature of this kind of worship, it is the exact opposite of everything I’ve ever known. You have to realize this kid has been making her own way since she insisted on tying her own shoe laces at age 2 (and wore shoes on the wrong feet with dangling laces for many months after that).
There is no question that I’ve learned that I try too hard. I push circles into square holes. I often would do better to bang my head against a wall than attempt the energy and time-wasters that I take on. The thing is I am always rewarded for my efforts. What I know for sure is this reward may have come with or without my help.
The day after the rain, the temperature dropped and we had a small window of sort of cold weather where the pond could freeze again before our party. On our way home from church, I toddled down in my Sunday best right away to check the ice. Open holes so large you could swim in them made my heart sink on first glance. The snow banks that we had made had insulated the edges so greatly that they had proceeded to thaw the ice underneath in the warmer temperatures. All of our work had basically fashioned us a lovely freezing cold swimming hole.
I lay awake the night before our skating party imagining the ways in which I could regain control of that pond. It was to be my husband’s birthday. Small children would be coming, some that could skate and some that could not, mine included. People that I was really excited to see and that were really excited to skate on a winter’s day on the farm would be there. I cared that it would all turn out.
How long would it take to freeze again enough to make it safe for skating? What temperature would be needed to make it refreeze in the 24-hour period we had before the gang was to show up? How would I keep the people safe? How would they get to the pond, what would they eat, where would they go to the bathroom? How would they stay warm and get to and from the pond? What would we do if we couldn’t skate without any snow anywhere? I jokingly suggested we get out our volleyball net.
During this insomnia, I read a little more about the need to allow God to take care of our plans. There was much to say about how the agenda of the individual could be in fact damaging to not only the individual but also to the world at large. I fell back asleep in a stupor of worry and shame. Worry about the danger that could ensue if I did not take a frozen pond seriously. I had in fact lost a friend on a frozen lake on New Years eve many years ago – this was not something I took lightly. The shame I felt was about how I had spent my whole life imagining that I was the only captain of my ship.
I do not look for a higher power to take control of my life so that I no longer need to take responsibility for my actions. I still feel very much in charge of the consequences of my actions. Jesus may take the wheel but my hands are gonna hold on to it too and I’m surely gonna keep my eyes on the road while I’m at it. But there are two piles. One includes the things I can control. The other contains the things I can’t. This pond was so far out of my reach it must have the Gods laughing their heads off.
The morning of the party arrived and I headed immediately down to find out the verdict. Would we or would we not be skating on this final day of the holiday period before our lives swept us away again in a blur of routine and to-do lists?
My pond was still a swimming pool. It had mostly frozen but the number of areas with paper thin ice nowhere near safe enough for skaters.
As a consolation, I headed through the forest to the other pond, the one the beaver had taken control of. In years past, this one had worked out marvelously for us if we put a lot of work into keeping it cleared. This year I had not even laid eyes on it.
Well, you guessed how this ends.
The day ended with large white snowflakes descending gracefully onto the fleece jackets of a rinkful of hockey players of all sizes. My son wore skates for the first time and took it upon himself to push his little metal bar right through the middle of the hockey game for a number of hours without break. I trailored a birthday cake down to my husband where we would all stop for a break and sing while he blew out candles as the snow fell lightly all around. The faces were all smiling. We all shared the same secret about how to make the best of our cold Canadian winters .
The ice was like glass. I could not have groomed it so well if I had tried. With the warm weather, the large pancake of floating ice thawed and dropped down to the water level forming a solid 6 inches consistently over the pond water. No cracks, no moans, no danger zones, the pond was literally made by God.
At the end of the day as my red-faced friends left our house with their contented children, their tummies full and their hearts even more full we all had the same thing to say.
That was just magic.
The past week I had sledded my two dear children down to the pond a few hundred metres from our house with shovels, skates and the necessary change of clothes and skating apparatus. Back against our deciduous and rocky hillside, nestled beyond the sumac groves, we have a small, spring-fed irrigation pond that houses the largest leeches I have ever seen in my life in summer yet turns into our recreational bliss-land in winter with the right conditions.
Around 3pm, the sun hits this pond like a spotlight in a movie. The golden light is like a whisper in your ear telling you that the New Year has come and the magic has arrived. Whenever I see this sun setting, my heart fills so large I can hardly breathe.
The kids each have shovels and fortunately they are obsessive like me. They continue to help me clear the 6 inches of snow off the ice for 3 days in a row. One day we are by ourselves, the next day we have help from a single mother friend who is visiting with her four young children, the next day we have help from Rob. All the while the forecast looms two warm days of continuous above zero temperatures and rain which will surely bring the partial thaw of our ponds.
There are two ponds. We have banked on this one this year for skating because the other froze after a beaver had dammed and flooded it. The beaver then let us remove his dam, the pond drained and a lovely, thick pancake of ice floated high above the water making it impossible to trust the hollowness beneath.
Meanwhile I am reading my usual ‘how does this world work’ fodder which happens to be focusing on the great need to relinquish control to a God in our lives. As a Christian, this includes letting Jesus work in us.
I stumble so greatly on this one thing. The need to surrender, the nature of this kind of worship, it is the exact opposite of everything I’ve ever known. You have to realize this kid has been making her own way since she insisted on tying her own shoe laces at age 2 (and wore shoes on the wrong feet with dangling laces for many months after that).
There is no question that I’ve learned that I try too hard. I push circles into square holes. I often would do better to bang my head against a wall than attempt the energy and time-wasters that I take on. The thing is I am always rewarded for my efforts. What I know for sure is this reward may have come with or without my help.
The day after the rain, the temperature dropped and we had a small window of sort of cold weather where the pond could freeze again before our party. On our way home from church, I toddled down in my Sunday best right away to check the ice. Open holes so large you could swim in them made my heart sink on first glance. The snow banks that we had made had insulated the edges so greatly that they had proceeded to thaw the ice underneath in the warmer temperatures. All of our work had basically fashioned us a lovely freezing cold swimming hole.
I lay awake the night before our skating party imagining the ways in which I could regain control of that pond. It was to be my husband’s birthday. Small children would be coming, some that could skate and some that could not, mine included. People that I was really excited to see and that were really excited to skate on a winter’s day on the farm would be there. I cared that it would all turn out.
How long would it take to freeze again enough to make it safe for skating? What temperature would be needed to make it refreeze in the 24-hour period we had before the gang was to show up? How would I keep the people safe? How would they get to the pond, what would they eat, where would they go to the bathroom? How would they stay warm and get to and from the pond? What would we do if we couldn’t skate without any snow anywhere? I jokingly suggested we get out our volleyball net.
During this insomnia, I read a little more about the need to allow God to take care of our plans. There was much to say about how the agenda of the individual could be in fact damaging to not only the individual but also to the world at large. I fell back asleep in a stupor of worry and shame. Worry about the danger that could ensue if I did not take a frozen pond seriously. I had in fact lost a friend on a frozen lake on New Years eve many years ago – this was not something I took lightly. The shame I felt was about how I had spent my whole life imagining that I was the only captain of my ship.
I do not look for a higher power to take control of my life so that I no longer need to take responsibility for my actions. I still feel very much in charge of the consequences of my actions. Jesus may take the wheel but my hands are gonna hold on to it too and I’m surely gonna keep my eyes on the road while I’m at it. But there are two piles. One includes the things I can control. The other contains the things I can’t. This pond was so far out of my reach it must have the Gods laughing their heads off.
The morning of the party arrived and I headed immediately down to find out the verdict. Would we or would we not be skating on this final day of the holiday period before our lives swept us away again in a blur of routine and to-do lists?
My pond was still a swimming pool. It had mostly frozen but the number of areas with paper thin ice nowhere near safe enough for skaters.
As a consolation, I headed through the forest to the other pond, the one the beaver had taken control of. In years past, this one had worked out marvelously for us if we put a lot of work into keeping it cleared. This year I had not even laid eyes on it.
Well, you guessed how this ends.
The day ended with large white snowflakes descending gracefully onto the fleece jackets of a rinkful of hockey players of all sizes. My son wore skates for the first time and took it upon himself to push his little metal bar right through the middle of the hockey game for a number of hours without break. I trailored a birthday cake down to my husband where we would all stop for a break and sing while he blew out candles as the snow fell lightly all around. The faces were all smiling. We all shared the same secret about how to make the best of our cold Canadian winters .
The ice was like glass. I could not have groomed it so well if I had tried. With the warm weather, the large pancake of floating ice thawed and dropped down to the water level forming a solid 6 inches consistently over the pond water. No cracks, no moans, no danger zones, the pond was literally made by God.
At the end of the day as my red-faced friends left our house with their contented children, their tummies full and their hearts even more full we all had the same thing to say.
That was just magic.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Chapter One: Searching for the Boy - March, 2003
You know that feeling of looking for something and not knowing where to find it?
I have a bachelor apartment in downtown Ottawa, a government job, 3 cats, some lovely friends and a family who likes me most of the time. The desire to have a life partner, kids, an established creative outlet, a fulfilling job that I feel I am good at is surging through me like my blood - but I’ve yet to find a way to go about finding it.
I decide to write a book. The fact that I’m terrible with grammar, can never remember when to double the consonants before adding ‘ing’, switch verb tenses just for fun and my English teachers always thought English my second language (although it is my first) does not scare me. I am confident that I have a unique voice. I have studied Carrie Bradshaw (newspaper columnist), Bridget Jones (Diary Enthusiast), and read every issue of Oprah Magazine religiously from cover to cover. I feel a full and integral part of my generation and its culture. I once believed myself to be a true Madonna clone. I have never missed an episode of American idol, and fancy myself to be a silent judge for the show.
I know I am and always will be a writer. Someone who feels compelled to write things down for any purpose, not necessarily making a living this way. My mother once found a piece of toilet paper in my shoe with a poem called 'Love' written on it. I was in grade 3 at the time and had sneaked out with the bathroom pass and a pen to sit in the stall writing on the neat little folded pieces of paper that came out of the metal box.
I’ve written and recorded some songs but I’m not a musician or a performer. I am a song-maker. A songwriter who hears songs in her head and tries to make them whole by playing them out on an instrument with some lyrics attached. I must admit though, sometimes they make up me. Sometimes they come to me while I am driving in my car or wake me up in the middle of the night. They are bossy, these songs. But they don't afford me a vast enough area to write the script that streams constantly through my head.
So a book it will be. What will this book be about, I wonder? Boys. Let’s make it about boys. So I'll have to go off now and find me a boy to write about, won't I? If nothing else, I can prove that I have indeed searched far and wide but not found a fellow well suited to me. That would be a good story to write.
There was that first Bachelorette reality show that showed Trista and Ryan Sutter’s whirlwind romance. Perhaps I could create my own mini-drama. Though I may not be a skinny, blond cheerleader, I have some things to offer. Besides, the whole thing would be much easier for me as I won't have production crews following me around and I won't have to do interviews with People magazine. I could be in control of the whole thing.
I am 32 and accept that I may be single for a very long time yet and may never have biological babies as a result. I am fine with this outcome, in some ways excited about it. But I need my 60 year old self to be able to look back and know that my 32 year old self did everything in her power to accept love and a partner into her life.
If I was going to be autonomous, it would not be from fear or unwillingness to expand in whatever way was necessary to let another human into my biosphere.
Having had a long string of completely failed relationships, some short and some long, some important and some frivolous, many hopeful and many hopeless, I have learned a few things. I have come to see some pretty obvious patterns in the way that I approach relationships with men. During a strong, independent stage of my life (a superior version of myself), I attract a fantastic man, Velcro myself to him like a needy cling-on, become desperate and dependent, and lose the very thing that attracted the man to me in the first place.
The other version was with men who actually wanted a powerless woman beside them and there I would stand as the sinking and suffocation ran its course. Then it would be I who disappeared into the night, unable to breathe under the constraints of being with this person. In either of these scenarios, I was unable to hold on to the core of me in my relationships. This will have to change or I will accept a life as a single and fabulous person.
I want someone who can inspire a better version of myself. I want someone who sees the good and the bad of me and accepts the whole picture without judgment. I want someone who can give me room to grow and not be threatened. I want to do all of this for the person I am with.
But does such a relationship exist?
I have a bachelor apartment in downtown Ottawa, a government job, 3 cats, some lovely friends and a family who likes me most of the time. The desire to have a life partner, kids, an established creative outlet, a fulfilling job that I feel I am good at is surging through me like my blood - but I’ve yet to find a way to go about finding it.
I decide to write a book. The fact that I’m terrible with grammar, can never remember when to double the consonants before adding ‘ing’, switch verb tenses just for fun and my English teachers always thought English my second language (although it is my first) does not scare me. I am confident that I have a unique voice. I have studied Carrie Bradshaw (newspaper columnist), Bridget Jones (Diary Enthusiast), and read every issue of Oprah Magazine religiously from cover to cover. I feel a full and integral part of my generation and its culture. I once believed myself to be a true Madonna clone. I have never missed an episode of American idol, and fancy myself to be a silent judge for the show.
I know I am and always will be a writer. Someone who feels compelled to write things down for any purpose, not necessarily making a living this way. My mother once found a piece of toilet paper in my shoe with a poem called 'Love' written on it. I was in grade 3 at the time and had sneaked out with the bathroom pass and a pen to sit in the stall writing on the neat little folded pieces of paper that came out of the metal box.
I’ve written and recorded some songs but I’m not a musician or a performer. I am a song-maker. A songwriter who hears songs in her head and tries to make them whole by playing them out on an instrument with some lyrics attached. I must admit though, sometimes they make up me. Sometimes they come to me while I am driving in my car or wake me up in the middle of the night. They are bossy, these songs. But they don't afford me a vast enough area to write the script that streams constantly through my head.
So a book it will be. What will this book be about, I wonder? Boys. Let’s make it about boys. So I'll have to go off now and find me a boy to write about, won't I? If nothing else, I can prove that I have indeed searched far and wide but not found a fellow well suited to me. That would be a good story to write.
There was that first Bachelorette reality show that showed Trista and Ryan Sutter’s whirlwind romance. Perhaps I could create my own mini-drama. Though I may not be a skinny, blond cheerleader, I have some things to offer. Besides, the whole thing would be much easier for me as I won't have production crews following me around and I won't have to do interviews with People magazine. I could be in control of the whole thing.
I am 32 and accept that I may be single for a very long time yet and may never have biological babies as a result. I am fine with this outcome, in some ways excited about it. But I need my 60 year old self to be able to look back and know that my 32 year old self did everything in her power to accept love and a partner into her life.
If I was going to be autonomous, it would not be from fear or unwillingness to expand in whatever way was necessary to let another human into my biosphere.
Having had a long string of completely failed relationships, some short and some long, some important and some frivolous, many hopeful and many hopeless, I have learned a few things. I have come to see some pretty obvious patterns in the way that I approach relationships with men. During a strong, independent stage of my life (a superior version of myself), I attract a fantastic man, Velcro myself to him like a needy cling-on, become desperate and dependent, and lose the very thing that attracted the man to me in the first place.
The other version was with men who actually wanted a powerless woman beside them and there I would stand as the sinking and suffocation ran its course. Then it would be I who disappeared into the night, unable to breathe under the constraints of being with this person. In either of these scenarios, I was unable to hold on to the core of me in my relationships. This will have to change or I will accept a life as a single and fabulous person.
I want someone who can inspire a better version of myself. I want someone who sees the good and the bad of me and accepts the whole picture without judgment. I want someone who can give me room to grow and not be threatened. I want to do all of this for the person I am with.
But does such a relationship exist?
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