Slaying the Dragon (Part I)

I recently wrote one of my writer friends that I felt my blog had become this withering, old grandmother of mine in some distant, remote long-term care facility I rarely visited anymore. Of course, both sets of grandparents are long gone for me. But I've been really missing blogging and feeling guilt over its constant neglected state. Life has felt more harried and health issues have been munching up the last few months, dining on each spare moment I might have had without even a belch.

Starting in January, we were allowed occasional visits to my son's new, upcoming daycare as long as I remained with him. I would take him and stand apart to observe how he played and explored his new environment. With each visit he seemed to grow more comfortable with the place and the number of other little people, the concepts of sharing, waiting a turn. Our initial visits were brief: perhaps an hour, no more than two, each time. I could sense that, though he was fine to go off and play without the interaction he was used to from me at home, there was a subtle "checking in" every so often. He would get lost in play but a glance would be thrown my way to ensure I was near and accessible.

Driven crazy by daycare

I thought he was adjusting admirably. My mistake was the February visits became much more frequent such that he became used to my presence there with him. There I was, patting myself on the back like a fool counting her eggs, believing the transition to fulltime was flowing as smoothly as possible. By the first day I returned to work fulltime (March 1), he was in shock that I would not be spending the 8 hours with him.

I began to measure his growing acceptance of this fact by where/when he'd begin to cry during the dropoff stage. At the beginning, he'd wail when I put him in the car on our driveway in the mornings. Slowly, I could get him in the seat tearless, but when we parked outside the daycare, he'd burst. Eventually I could park and he'd wait until he was inside the actual doors. Then a few mornings, we made it as far as down the hallway before the act of removing his coat in front of his cubby brought on Niagara Falls. On other rare occasions, I could get him all the way into the actual room before the waterworks.

What put my heart through the ringer most mornings was the fact that, in the face of his howling sobs and upstretched arms and the cries of "Maaammmmmmmmaaaaaaa", I had read in the literature that you, as the parent, are encouraged to keep a 'happy countenance' as you drop your child off so that she/he doesn't sense any worry on YOUR part about leaving her/him there for the day.

Now, I am a trained actor. In addition to four years of university training and various subsequent workshops and seminars, I've had a good amount of theatre and film experience. I further auditioned for the Royal National Theatre's Summer Programme in London, England, a programme which auditions in five cities in the States and two cities in Canada for a mere 30 spots each summer, and I got in and garnered some incredible training in that programme.

But I can say without hesitation that doing a tapdance with a big smile on my face while choking back my own tears and burying the deeply ingrained desire to grab hold of my reaching Sonshine and run out of that daycare with him every morning in some mad embrace, wild and happy once again, to the freedom and luxury of time we've had for close to two years was the most demanding acting job I've ever had.

My friend, Karl, tried to console me with "in a few weeks, you'll show up and he'll be totally indifferent to your presence and not want to leave what he's doing there and that will hurt even more." Damn you, Karl, for being spot on.

But just as I began to feel all sorry for myself that he was maybe no longer missing me or yearning for me the way every cell in my body was for him while I sat back at my desk, the onslought of germ warfare began. Perhaps this was Mother Nature's cruel joke, "You want more time together again? Okay, bring on The Sick!"

(Continued in Part II...)

The Tiger and the Snow

About a month ago, near the end of December, I rented a wonderful film called "La Tigre e La Neve" (The Tiger and the Snow). I'd never heard of it, but it's directed by that amazing Italian wizard, Roberto Benigni. I love this guy. He is SO full of life and so passionate about everything he does, as is his wife, Nicoletta Braschi, who has the face of an angel and usually plays his love interest in his films. They are such a dynamic duo! I remember beaming, giggling and even standing up in my living room applauding with excitement the year he won Best Actor at the Academy Awards and nearly stepped on Steven Spielberg's head in his exuberance to accept the highly deserved prize. Such an inspiration! Every pore of his being is drenched in the oxygen of living life to its fullest.

One of the best scenes (or, rather, several of them) in the film is a recurring dream the main character, Attilio (played by Benigni), keeps having in which he is about to marry Vittoria (played by, of course, Braschi), literally the woman of his dreams, in his underwear. He keeps arriving late, in boxers, and enters this beautiful courtyard setting where his wedding is taking place. The music starts, he stumbles forward, half naked, and every seated guest turns to follow him up the aisle towards his bride-to-be.

Benigni adds such a magical touch to all his films, a Chaplin-esque quality, even when they deal with such serious content as the holocaust in his masterpiece, La vita è bella (Life is Beautiful), or the Iraq war, as this film does. This actor/director never fails to surprise and engage his audience. Even amidst his comic genius, he doesn't pull punches about the sorrows in Life. But he does like to emphasize its JOY. He is a true poet of life, in my opinion. The Tiger and the Snow unveils what lengths a person will go to for someone he loves. No obstacle, no distance, no boundaries, no war is too great to overcome in the name of love. This film makes your heart sing. It did so for mine, anyhow.

Two of my all-time favourite performers are in this film: Jean Reno plays a beautifully understated cameo role as Attilio's long-time friend in the film; and the best part of the recurring dream sequences is listening to the most exquisite song for the wedding march up the aisle each time the dream occurs. The wedding band is led by Tom Waits and his song gives me shivers every time I hear it.

So tonight, because it's Groundhog Day (which was also a wonderful film about living through a recurring day, over and over until it's lived right) and because the end of Winter is nearing, I want to dedicate the song Tom wrote and recorded for this enchanting film to shadows. To Déjà vu. To signs. Like snow. And tigers. To believing.
Music: You Can Never Hold Back Spring, Tom Waits

Little Green

I know I've been complaining about the lack of snow, but I've simultaneously been enjoying my plants while stuck at home the past two weeks. They are a nice reminder of life growing despite all the decay of Earth lying beneath the snow. I'm amazed at myself that they thrive at all. I used to let plants die all the time in my 20s and even into my 30s. I was horrible at maintaining the little attention they required to keep going like, well, watering. Watering was a challenge sometimes. More in the remembering, less in the doing. I think I let probably 4 goldfish die when I was a little girl before my parents accepted I was maybe a little unreliable. I never did it on purpose. Just, I think, I'd get a little distracted, staring at and talking to trees and weird stuff like that. (I'm sure at this point, you're wondering if I should have had a child on my own. But believe me, he gets all the attention he needs and then some!)

This jade plant (above, to the right) I'm quite proud of: when I first brought it home, it was the size of the tiny cactus plant shown in the same photo. I have had it going strong for over 10 years now. The tiny cactus was given me recently when my twin sister visited. I have a larger version of the same plant spiraling out of its pot in my kitchen sink window which I've grown the last four years or so. Another cactus-type plant hangs above the sink.

 

In the bathroom there is a plant I adore. I have no idea what it's called (maybe someone out there can help me with that), but it's blue and red-hued leaves are gorgeous and it blooms tiny, pink flowers that are very delicate and sweet.

The plant I think I love the most is one I've had to cut down to the root base for the second year in a row. And it's just begun to sprout again a small, green shoot. This plant is a vine of some sort and has the most stunning purple blossoms when it's in flower. Again, no idea of the name of it, but I love it.

My orchid, I hope, is resurrecting itself slowly again. We'll see what happens there. I've had it for a couple of years now.

Despite all the green growing under my nose in the house and even though I shouldn't have likely made the extra expense, budget-wise, I actually bought myself flowers this week: oriental lilies. Not that my ex used to buy me flowers a lot (usually once a year on my birthday), but sometimes it's just nice to treat yourself, especially when no one else is around to buy 'em for you (and besides, it was my birthday recently so I can sort of justify this 'gift to self').The scent of the lilies in my dining room where I feed Sonshine his meals is intoxicating. Spring begins less than two months away and the fragrance of these lilies makes it feel just around the corner. (Not necessarily something I relish since, in my own opinion, we've hardly had a true winter yet.)

The end of this winter will be a bit melancholy for me, my last in this farmhouse. Spring will bring such change and I know right now it will all be a blur once it's over. But I look forward to celebrating my baby's first birthday in May and the idea that that is around the corner, too, is unfathomable! No idea if the party will be here at the farmhouse or in our new home together.

What I do know is that my son is one of the many signs of new life in the house while the earth sleeps and her flora and fauna hibernate. In his jolly jumper, he is all the Spring I need for right now!

Music: Little Green, Joni Mitchell

Nesting

She came back to her nest today. Her mate was with her. (I envied her that.) I was heading out the side door on my way to prenatal class and they both flew over my head to the maple tree until I was gone. My due date is exactly one month away. Tears fill my eyes to see her finally. Last spring, she had five little robins. They all lived. I’d climbed a ladder to take a peek and my shadow made their little heads pop up and their beaks open, expecting food.

It was July when she returned to nest a second time. She hasn’t done that every year, but last year she did. She laid only two eggs then. One I’d found by the beginning of August on the stones, broken into bits in front of the door. The other remained in the nest, blue and perfect, though clearly not alive since she’d abandoned the nest altogether. I took the remaining egg indoors. This was around the time I began injecting my belly with infertility drugs. That robin egg became my little talisman. It sits on an antique hutch in another abandoned nest I’d found on the driveway. Neither of her two eggs survived, but when I look back now, what happened proved so ominous. In Celtic mythology, birds act as messengers. One egg had broken and the other had remained whole. This happened the month before I conceived twins through IVF. By the 12th week ultrasound, I would lose one baby. One baby would remain intact. So I have a thing about this robin. I feel a strange bond with her. It’s so good to see her back nesting again while I prepare my own. We are in synch.

I love that her nest sits on the beam outside the room that you and I will share; the room where I intend to birth you. When she’s nested the last four years in this same spot above my side door, she flies over my head each morning I leave my old farmhouse. She’s been kind enough never to shit on my head while doing this. It’s a brief flit to the maple tree and then back to the nest once I’m in my car. Eventually, by the end of each spring, she gets used to me and flies a shorter distance to the post sometimes, secure in the knowledge that I will leave her and her eggs alone. I gain her trust gradually.

The Weepies sing as I write this. I am thinking about the peak night of the Perseids last August. All those falling stars as I sent prayers up to the heavens for you. My body is wide to hold all the promise of blue-velvet dark and stars. You are that promise. In a month, perhaps less, but no more than 6 weeks from now, I will finally be holding you in my arms. My soul will weep and sing at the sight of you being pulled from between my legs. My heart will burst like fireworks all over the bloodied sheets beside this window below her nest. You will take your first breath and take away mine. The pulse of the cord will slow as your heart beats on its own and mine skips. I will be gazing into your eyes in disbelief, awe, gratitude, Unconditional Love, as you suck at my own red breast. I swear I’ll try to prevent tears falling from my dark lashes upon your sweet little face, your own dark locks, but I can’t make any promises, kay?

Here’s one promise I will keep: when those little robins break open from their greenish-blue eggs, I will swaddle you and climb two steps on my ladder when you are a month or so old and I’ll hold you up so our shadows will prompt their tiny, feathery heads to pop up and they will each open their mouths to sing you a proper welcome, my baby, to the planet.

For now, Mama Robin and I prepare our nests. We clean the dirt out. We put fresh straw and twigs in. We sing. We begin to hunker down. We watch the sky for falling stars. We count the days. And we await patiently the Joy that flies toward us…

Maternity Photography: Mattitude Photography

Music: Stars, The Weepies

Snowflake

The sky was so grey this morning. Then came the first, real downpour this spring; sounded like an army of watery soldiers marching across my tin roof. I paused, transfixed amidst the disarray of the studio space under renovation, imagining the crib against the wall, listening. The deluge made me want to strip my clothes off, layer by layer, and go stand in it so my skin could recall the last time it was touched.

Just now the sun came out and it was the first time baby moved inside me all day. I was watering my plants as the last of the snow melts outside my side door. The windows needed this cleansing. I moved closer to the pane, wondering when the robin will return to where she’s nested above my side door these last four years.

Looking through the glass sparked a flashback to that second night I stayed with you last December. Remember the size of the snowflakes? Like golfballs drifting down. I’d had a bath in the early evening and was lying with my feet up on your sofa, my iPod echoing in the semi-darkness, when you returned to the apartment. The first thing you did was cross the room to open the blinds. You called me over to the window then and we stood looking up to the sky and onto the street, following their descent amidst the traffic. Your hands were deep in your pockets and my heart was high in my throat. They were so goddamn breathtaking and, recalling another wintry night far in the past, I fought a sudden rise of tears, my eyelashes blinking them back.

The snowflakes looked solid, they were that big. Their size made them appear heavy, less fragile somehow yet impossibly floating with their weight, so quietly and softly. It was like we were standing in this gigantic snowglobe: a souvenir from Vancouver. And that’s just how my heart felt. As though it had been inverted (like a silver claddagh), turned upside down and shaken into a million ice crystals dancing all around us. For sure it was falling as gently, silently, steadily as those flakes; the tiny hairs on my neck rising, anticipatory, timorously reaching out to the close proximity of your t-shirt, the skin of your arms, as I stood nervous and speechless, my mouth a little dry.

Did you know that snowflakes aren’t even white? They’re clear. Just the light, the way it hits ‘em, gets diffused by the hollows within the crystal. People talk about how perfect a snowflake is but actually its flaws cause the light to shine white and sparkle like a diamond. Its incalculable, tiny, crystalline imperfections enhance its beauty. The things I imagine doing with you, to you, are as innumerable and varied.

And it's this reverie that causes my fingers to ache with the memory of the silken smoothness of your back as they slide down the cold glass of my door, still a touch of this past winter clinging there. Hiccups begin in my pelvis. It's not a euphemism. But it feels like a little heartbeat down there, reverberating with the rhythm of your own fingers' caresses. I look at my hands. How many weeks before they draw this little one to my breast now, the pulse of the umbilical cord slowing before it's cut: less than I can count on these fingers against the pane, guaranteed. Seven weeks? Five? Eight, maybe? I remember how baby kicked when you warmed my feet with yours under the sheets that night. You don’t have to talk to me about water and longing. ‘Cause lately I feel like crystallized H₂O, like one of those snowflakes we witnessed the second-last day of December: floating around in space, not knowing exactly where I’ll land with the delicacy of all my womb carries, the frailty of my heart. I feel a little afraid of the heat of your breath fogging the window, emanating from your skin as I drift down through the sky. The stars, where I began this journey, seem so far away up above...

I wish to gather the courage to say just how I feel:
‘Cause I really don’t want to disappear. I don’t want to melt away.
Unless it’s on your bottom lip. Your tongue.
What I want is for you to come outside onto the street and open your mouth along with your heart. Open wide, ‘kay? And catch me.

Catch the one-of-a-kind, hexagonal symmetry of this love and swallow its perfection, its imperfections whole, so its light can diffuse, dispel the dark places and shine again from within…

Music: Chasing Cars, Snow Patrol;
I Remember (December), Lisa Hannigan and Damien Rice