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

Dream a Little Dream

Today I am finished my 7th month of pregnancy. Yesterday I stepped inside a baby store for the first time this entire pregnancy. Not just any old store that happens to sell stuff for babies along with everything else it carries, but an actual store with the sole focus of selling all things baby-related. Over the years, I can count on two fingers the number of times I have done this. In general, I have avoided these places. It was just too damn difficult to walk around in them and think that perhaps I’d never be buying anything for a child of my own.

Maybe it was the two days of sunshine in a row after such a long, cold winter but yesterday marked the day where I felt I could start to accept that my dream is finally coming true. I looked at cribs. I looked at bassinettes. I looked at strollers and baby monitors. I looked at change tables and I even touched them. I opened drawers. Imagined my child lying in the crib. Pictured the delight of lifting my baby from out of it. My own baby, at last!

Over the years, I have knit gifts for baby showers I have had to attend. I do believe homemade gifts to be the nicest. But the selfish excuse attached to this is the fact that I was loathe to enter these baby-focused stores for the regular type of gifts people purchase. The one or two attempts I made to do so had me leave the lineup, put the items back and get the hell out – it was just too much of a challenge to my courage to watch pregnant women walk around with their spouses, so excited about choosing crib bedding, to have to listen to the chatter waiting to cash out, each of them asking the others when they were due, was it their first child? To have to bite my lip listening to those women who would actually complain about all they’ve had to endure or how bored they are with the pregnancy and wishing it were over by now. During the span of six years between my two miscarriages, there were 16 babies born to either my immediate family members or close friends that lived within a half hour of me. Some on their second or third children by the time I was finally pregnant for the second time only to lose that baby at 8 weeks. Attending the showers was my singular act of sacrifice because of the love I felt towards these sisters and girlfriends themselves, but I resolved not to enter these stores again to save my life. I simply could not bring myself to do it.

Yet here I am, finally. I actually purchased some burping cloths. I bought little words made of twigs to hang in my baby’s room. The words speak as much to me as I hope they will to my child. Dream. Laugh. And Shh (for over the crib). I am allowing myself to believe, to accept this is finally happening. To ME. It has felt such a long journey and I realize I have been holding my breath, not really permitting myself to believe it is coming true even after I’d reached my second trimester for the first time.

My mum has kept asking me when I’m going to start knitting for my own baby. All those little baby clothes I’ve knit over the years for gifts for other people’s Bundles of Joy. I know I’m surprised, too, that I have not begun this for myself and my own child. So I go up to the closet where I've stored tiny balls of yarn for the baby blanket I’d planned six years ago now. I bought them when I purchased other yarn for the same blanket I knit for my twin sister’s second son. I knit his first and planned to knit mine after. I was still pregnant the December he was born, but lost my baby in the weeks that followed his birth so I hid the small bag of yarn and the pattern away. Everything baby-related was tucked safely away from sight in storage.

And now I am 9 weeks away from my due date. I finally dig out the bags and boxes of these items I've kept hidden for years: the baby photograph frame my mother bought me almost 11 years ago when I was first pregnant, but which I’d packed away after I miscarried at 12 weeks. The little rust-coloured knit booties I purchased secretly in the Dingle Peninsula when my ex and I traveled to Ireland in the September of 1999, almost a decade ago, for the dream of a baby again someday. The little suede moccasin-type boots I bought in the village where I live maybe 8 years ago because they were so adorable and I still hoped that I would one day have a child of my own who would don them. The little knit hat I bought at the Danforth Music Hall the night I went to see Sam Beam (Iron and Wine) in October of 2007. His sister, Sarah, had knit it and there were a basket of her items at the front where you could purchase the vinyl albums and CDs. As I unpack each item, I feel finally that I am freeing a hidden burden of sorrows in my closet. In each their tiny way, these items represent the dreaming I have held for years of a child of my own.

They speak to me from my past and I can finally concede that my dreaming wasn’t actually in vain; that all the years I thought I had given up Hope (especially once I miscarried my second pregnancy), I actually hadn’t. A small ember of Hope kept burning somewhere deep inside me that refused to extinguish. It fanned itself into a flame again and I remember the specific moment this happened. I was sitting in a small room in the fertility clinic in Hamilton in June of 2008. The clinic at which I’d been a patient for almost five years, years with my ex-husband and then, on my own. The moment that ember burst into flame was when my doctor advised me not to go through with the In Vitro Fertilization surgery I was planning. He relayed to me that he felt it would be a waste of money as my chances seemed very remote. I replied that I had to do it anyway – for my own self, for my soul, my spirit, even if it was only for some kind of closure. His words could have stamped out that ember once and for all, but they had the opposite effect. By refusing to listen to his advice, I had opened the wrought iron woodstove door on my heart and blew that tiny ember into the flame that has been burning since last August when I initiated this entire journey on my own. Be careful how close you come near me now. That fragile flame of last June has blazed into a virtual bonfire over the last 7 months beneath my right breast, my belly has become its own oven baking this bun, the warmth of which consumes my entire being.

I am two months, perhaps less than that, away from holding my baby in my arms at last. I am 42 years old. I am single. I am going to finally realize my dream of being a mum.

I am over the moon.

I admit now nothing is impossible. Dreams can come true. What seems unimaginable CAN manifest. These thoughts are a little dangerous to me these days because the flames begin to lick at other areas of my life. But I remain afraid to push my luck, really. I am feeling pretty damn blessed right now that at least this one dream of a child is coming true and I feel too afraid to dare to hope that other dreams harbored in my heart might also be fanned into flame. So I am closing the wrought iron door. I’m stepping back. I don’t want to look a gifthorse in the mouth. This is enough of a blessing for me right now. I’m afraid to get burned if I make an attempt for even more Happiness than is now growing in my belly… don’t want to jinx myself.

I will just focus on this new little love of mine coming to my arms and not be greedy for other dreams to also come true. This is a big one and, when I look at other people’s lives, at so many other women I know who’ve dreamed of it themselves but have been denied, I feel more than lucky and that Life has been more than good to me.

I know when I look into his or her eyes, the Joy I will finally know will ease my heart where any other dreaming is concerned…God, I hope so. I cannot ask for more than this blessing right now in my Life…this is a helluva massive dream to manifest already.

My baby, I cannot wait to meet you. To embrace you.

I will hold you so tight and snug to me, all the more closely that it might help me let go of other dreams held within my heart. Someone once wrote me a special note about the struggle of letting go, of the kind of cry that is loneliness mixed with feelings of wanting to be alone. When you are born, I hope and pray your little eyes, your hands, your tiny feet, your giant heart will help pull me through this struggle of letting go and just be thankful for the Joy I am already blessed to feel.

Until then, kneeling amongst these little boots and balls of yarn, books and bonnets, in the sunlight of what promises to be a week long warm spell to properly welcome the Vernal Equinox on March 20 next Friday, the official beginning of Spring, I whisper a little tune that, ironically (or maybe not so ironically) was recorded by The Mamas and the Papas, as I journey through this final stage of becoming a mama myself. A song of night breezes and sunbeams and leaving worries behind…a song of stars shining brightly above. In a sad way, it’s a song of farewell, but in a happier way, it’s more than just that: it’s a song of Love. I sing it to you, my baby, as a kind of first lullaby. I sing it to my heart. I sing it as an ode to soft skin, to wolf eyes, to the aurora borealis and to the magic of cold, starry, wintry nights. To the leaping of years and of hearts. To the courage of risk leaps represent. To love that holds the depth of mermaid-ridden oceans and the majesty, power and strength of horses.

Tears of sorrow, of longing mix with those of joy, slide over my freckles as to My Soul, I sing it…

Stars shining bright above you
night breezes seem to whisper
I love you
Birds singin' in the sycamore tree
Dream a little dream of me.

Say "nighty night" and kiss me
just hold me tight and tell me
you'll miss me.
While I'm alone and blue as can be
Dream a little dream of me.

Stars fading
but I linger on dear
still craving your kiss
I'm longing to linger til dawn dear
Just saying this:

Sweet dreams til sun beams find you
sweet dreams that leave your worries behind you.
But in your dreams
whatever they be,
dream a little dream of me

Maternity Photography: Mattitude Photography
Music: Dream a Little Dream of Me, Ukelele Cover of The Mamas & the Papas

Things that Go Bump in the Night...

The morning of Thursday, December 18, I think I feel you for the first time. I am sat on my toilet looking out at the snow and the trees. My midwife told me it might feel like gas, but I sense the little bubble that has burst in the lower part of my belly is not indigestion. It feels different somehow. I sit in wonder, waiting for more reassurance. Instead, I must shower and get ready for work.

It is called the quickening. I wonder why? I feel as though I've been waiting all my life to experience this amazing sensation! Sheila Kitzinger writes in Rediscovering Birth, that, "'Quick' is old English for 'alive'" and that, "in all cultures, quickening is recognised as an important transition in the process of becoming a mother."

Saturday morning. December 20. Tomorrow is Yule or Winter Solstice and tonight I am hosting a Solstice Soiree at my home. I have an insurmountable list of things to accomplish, but I lie in bed because the bubble I felt on Thursday begins to burst more than once. This time, I am sure it is you. My heart swells and my eyes fill. I am dialing my sister's number to tell her. Everything I do that day in preparation for the celebration of the Solstice is coloured by the fact that you have finally made your very real presence known to me. The grocery aisle is as exciting as a rollercoaster ride. I lower the window on the way to the Blackberry Bog so the wintry air can bloom roses on my cheeks. I touch the Scotch pine to thank it for being my yule tree before the man who sells it to me starts to chop it down. The strong scent of its needles inside my car fills my nostrils and I breathe deeply, my soul singing in elation of this day. Talk about a tiny light beginning to grow the longest night of the year!

Two weeks have passed since first contact and now daily, I feel your little bumps and grinds inside my womb. You are growing bigger with each day. When I lie down at night, you become most active. You push and press and kick and tumble. Each time you say hello in this way, my spirit soars.

I feel as though my very heart has fallen into my belly and is floating around inside there, banging against my womb walls to redefine Joy for me. You are my heart bursting and bubbling and blooming inside this tummy. I cannot wait to hold you, to kiss you, to press you to my breast, to smell your hair, to whisper to you, to touch you and to love you unconditionally forever.

In five months, I will look into your eyes. I will nuzzle your tiny neck and kiss your delicate fingers, your button nose. For now, your kicks keep my heart skipping a beat. Goddamn, I love you, my little star. You are all I am living and breathing for. You are whom I've been waiting for all my life. It won't be long now. At 22 weeks, I am more than halfway there. This has been one long journey and you feel closer than ever with each kick. I don't need to sleep to feel I am dreaming, that this long dream I've dreamt is finally coming true, finally manifesting. What a happy new year 2009 is for me!

The happiest I've yet known...but then again, wait until next year ;) HA!

Maternity Photography: Mattitude Photography

Music: In the Still of the Night, Cole Porter

Margaret Dumont and the Magic Handkerchief

So it's been snowing on and off the last few weeks and today I was sitting in the little cafe at the back of the General Store staring out the window at The World's Smallest Art Gallery. Basically it's someone's beatup, old station wagon and every month in the summertime there is a different art installation in the car. You can get in and sit behind the wheel and read about the artist and what the installation means or ponder what you think it might mean. You can wander around the car and you can peek through the windows. Sometimes the installation extends to the outside of the car. It's a pretty cool idea started by some artistic folk who refer to themselves as The Village Idiots. I love that that's their moniker. It makes me feel like I actually belong here. It makes me feel not so weird at times. Or at least that my weirdness is no weirder than that which could perhaps be exhibited by any other person wandering around my village.

Today is the 10th anniversary of the due date of my first pregnancy. Weird to think I could have had a 10-year old running around by now if I hadn't miscarried. I try to picture him/her. I love and mourn the idea simultaneously, but I know this year, for the first time in a decade, this anniversary doesn't feel so sorrow-filled. I am finally carrying a baby again this anniversary and I am almost at 17 weeks. In a week or two or three, I will feel the "quickening". My midwife says I might think it's gas. My mum says it'll feel like a bird. Lesley, one of my best girlfriends ever, says, "it's like a butterfly's wings floating across your tummy". In four or five weeks, I will be SURE it's a kick happening and it won't remain as subtle. I cannot wait for this kind of daily reassurance. I know I will breathe a little easier and feel like this is actually happening to me and that's it's for real this time.

I was pondering all this in the cafe as the snow was falling and when I glanced outside, sipping my chai latte, I wished I'd brought my camera 'cause I suddenly wanted to take a photo of this statue which stands almost right beside The World's Smallest Art Gallery. The statue is commonly referred to as "the Tall Guy" around town. The name of the sculpture is actually It's a Question of Who's in Charge. See, the Tall Guy is slightly bent over as though he has a calcium deficiency and he points down and he's pretty tall so if you were to stand below him, right below that pointing finger, you'd feel for sure like he was the one in charge. No question. The thing is, I've passed this sculpture a gazillion times already. But the reason I wanted to take a picture of it today was 'cause there was a pile of snow piled on his back and neck as he was stooping over to point downwards. And it made me want to get a broom and sweep off that mound of snow that was burdening him. I imagined, as I sat there sipping, the act of brushing the broom across his shoulders and that somehow this small gesture would allow him to un-hunch his shoulders, stretch and stand up straight. Yeah. I'm about to turn 42 in a month or so and I still have these weird, little fantasies/visions/thoughts. Somedays I feel like such a freak, but it makes me laugh too hard to honestly ever worry about it.

I was such a bizarre kid. I was an oddball. Mainly due to an unorthodox sense of humour even from a very young age. The kind of humour not everyone "gets" and sometimes the kind of humour that isn't even funny and is just plain weird, but is, let me tell you, pretty goddamn hilarious to me. It's not malicious or cruel or anything, or even sarcastic-trying-to-be-witty. It's just 'weird'. I'm the looney lass who laughs out loud at a part of the movie that no one else finds funny. Yeah, THAT girl. The kind that drives people who paid good money for popcorn and soda crazy.

My mum is my best straight man. My twin sister always tries to not react, but can't help eventually losing it and giggling at me. My mum, though: she is the Margaret Dumont to my Groucho Marx. I can say (have said) the craziest shit right to her face and she's all, "that's nice, dear." And it's not that she hasn't heard me, you understand — just that her replies to my increasing wackiness over the years are simply her way of being hilarious back. She secretly loves being my straight man, all stoic when the crazy one-liners let fly from my lips. It's why we get along so damn well. Right now I'm reading A Complicated Kindness and man, do Nomi and Trudie ever remind me of me and my mum. Of course, Tash reminds me of me, too. So does Ray, really. But Nomi most of all. Trudie is how I like to imagine myself as a mum to the possible Nomi I may be currently carrying in my womb. I hope to fuck I'm not carrying The Mouth. Boy would that be ironic. A kid whose mum was so wacko, the only way to be rebel was to become some ultra-conservative religious zealot. I best watch myself and tone it down for the first while to ward such a frightening possibility off. I am loving this book, though. It wasn't until I got to page 103 that I realized Nomi had already been compared to Holden Caulfield on the inside of the front cover by the New Brunswick Reader instead of just inside my wiggy head. I giggled and whispered, "no shit" to myself. I was in the bathtub, the place where I always inevitably start talking to myself aloud. I love how my voice echoes over the water.

Anyhow, I started thinking about my baby sitting in the cafe. Is it wrong to hope your kid turns out to be a geeky nerd? To relish the idea? It's not that I'll be hugely disappointed if she or he is "normal" (by whatever societal stereotypical standards continue or are in place by then) or even "popular" or what have you. Just I've always had a soft spot for the goofy types. They remind me so much of myself when I was that age. They remind me so much of myself right NOW at 41. I am drawn to corny jokes, bad puns, braces, thick glasses. I never had braces or thick glasses, but I sincerely didn't need them to be as nerdy as I recall being (and, let's be frank, continue to be).

A few years back, when I actually watched television, there was this commercial I loved. My ex and I used to mute all the ads like they were a plague to be perpetually shunned. But I'd always unmute this particular one. It was actually a commercial against advertising that targeted kids and it featured all these kids being true to themselves: being what they wanted to be, doing what they wanted to do without worrying about peer pressure and stuff. One kid boards a bus with his tuba. Another kid tapdances up a storm. But there was this one boy who gets shown a number of times. He is an aspiring magician. In one scene he saws his little sister in half and near the end of this commercial, he pushes his thick glasses further up his nose before pulling out this magic handkerchief and giving it an honest-to-god flourish. I would wait with baited breath for this, my favourite moment, and release an audible sigh, beaming the happiest of smiles. My ex knew that I absolutely ADORED this kid for no good reason he could understand and he'd always tease me by calling this kid "dork" or "loser" or something every time the commercial came on. I knew he was just trying to make me laugh or react, but I also know he could never understand why my heart was always fit-to-burst whenever I saw that kid wave that hanky around. This little magician was definitely the type of kid that would have been pounced upon on his walk home; the kind who'd have his lunch money stolen from him. Maybe that's why he wanted to perform magic so bad: to make any potential (or very real) bullies disappear. Or maybe just make himself invisible...

The thing is, I kinda went out of my way to befriend every kid in school whether their parents had a pool or just a clothesline and dogshit in their backyard. I didn't exactly have the apparent talent or capacity for differentiation. Yes, I recognized there were cliques, but I didn't ascribe to any of them. It was like Groucho Marx refusing to belong to any club who would have him as a member; only kinda more like the opposite. I decided to convince myself I belonged to every group in some tiny way. I think this was one of the major inspirations for me to develop my predilection for acting and its chameleon-like nature. I don't mean being fairweather or fake. I just mean, I could blend easily with kids of all shapes, sizes and situations and always felt comfortable alongside any defined "clique" or non-clique. The kids who were "dorky" liked me, but they still couldn't understand why exactly I would befriend the guy who bullied them. For instance, there was one guy in grade 8 when I was in grade 7. We were in a split grade together and nobody talked to him and it was widely known that he had been caught carrying a knife to school and shit. Everyone was scared of him and when we'd have group activities, people didn't want him in their group. I remember one day we were all tie-dying tshirts as a school project in the courtyard and we had different buckets of various coloured dyes and were wrapping about a million rubber bands around random spots on the white tshirts we'd brought to school and stirring them in these pots and I remember him being off to the side, alone, trying to act too cool for words and there was something about that kid. I used to always go up to him and say, "hey" and he always looked shocked that I wasn't terrified to speak to him, like he wanted to come across all tough and shit. But then he'd just say, "hey" back and we'd talk about regular stuff. One thing I couldn't stand when I was growing up was watching someone be alienated or left out.

I think the best thing was that I kinda knew how dorky I was, but here was the clincher: I still didn't care and to this day it still doesn't bother me. I think it's one of the best feelings in the world. And I hope if my kid is dorky, or even if she or he is "cool" (however society will define that by the time he or she hits gradeschool), that she or he will be smarter than to be wooed into some exclusionary kind of clique or try to fit in and become like some unoriginal sheep in a massive flock. I pray all my children will be always true to the individuals they are. I dream of them protecting everyone around them from alienation, humiliation and loneliness, whether bullies or bullied. I dream they will be protected in turn.

And I hope when they turn 42, they can still get melancholy picturing leaves falling in the Autumn as though they're tears the trees are crying or that they will sing Happy Birthday out loud in some over-the-top way to their coworkers or that they will wear curlers in their hair at the Tim Horton's drive-thru on the way to work in the morning to give the ladies behind the counter a laugh. Well, maybe only if they're female. Okay, male, female, whatever. Really what I mean is that I hope they never lose their imagination, their fascination with the world around them, their celebration of individuality or their capacity not to let the opinions of others wear them down, inhibit or intimidate them from being true to themselves to the best of their abilities. And to always have the ability to laugh at themselves, without the inclination to laugh at the expense of others.

I hope they never lose touch with the innocence of being a child.

Hear that, baby? You can be wacko just like you're mummy if you want to be, flourishing your hanky all around the town, or you can take after your Wee Irish Nana and become my Margaret Dumont, rolling your exquisite eyes at my kooky behaviour with a cardboard expression. Either way, you'll always be the apple of my eye.

Music: You're Innocent When You Dream, Tom Waits

The Senator of Illinois

I lived in Illinois from 1980-1983. Entering grade 8 when my family first moved down, we lived in a town called Naperville, about half an hour train ride from the Loop in Chicago. My twin sister and I spent our first two years at highschool in the neighbouring town of Lisle. The highschool was Catholic and private. One of the friends I met in the first term that autumn of 1981was a guy named Joe. As an African-American, he was one of the few visible minorities who attended the highschool. After Christmas, I didn't see him anywhere and I asked Cristina, my best friend at the time, where Joe was, had she seen him? She told me he'd quit and left. I couldn't for the life of me understand why. Cristina is Filipino herself and she explained, "the racist comments - he couldn't take it anymore." I remember feeling stunned. In my naivete and at my young age, I always pictured the Southern states as being the areas with that kind of problem.

I am thinking about Joe tonight. I am wondering what he's thinking, what he's feeling tonight. I just drove home from watching an amazing piece of history unfold.

Senator Barack Obama of the State of Illinois has just been elected the 44th President of the United States of America. He is the first African-American president to ever be elected.

I first saw him maybe 3 years ago on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. He was hilarious, witty and spoke so astutely of the Iraq war. The show was promoting his book, Dreams From My Father. I bought the book shortly thereafter and loved it. Obama's writing was so frank and clear, honest, open and heartfelt. Ever since, I've tracked with growing interest the fact that he was touted to be the next possible president.

I feel elated tonight. The last two elections in 2000 and 2004 were literally stolen right from under Gore and Kerry's noses and proof has shown since, quite illegally so.

Witnessing tonight's democratic victory was, simply put, incredible and awe-inspiring. I am thrilled to be carrying a baby who will enter the world where such a man as Senator Obama will be the new Leader of the Free World, the man heading up our world's biggest Superpower.

My twin sister was with me today at my initial midwife appointment where I was able to hear for the very first time my baby's heartbeat. It was so good and strong inside my womb, a nice high count of 170 bpm.

Tonight, watching the election to the South unfold, she told me she was carrying her first child when 9/11 happened. She said how terrified she felt, for herself, her child, her family, her country, for the entire world. She thought it was World War III starting. Of course, we live in the hemisphere where bombs don't hit the ground every day and innocent people do not become collateral damage on a daily basis. Still, I can't imagine the fear she went through and what kind of world she thought her first baby would encounter.

So I feel blessed to have witnessed this awesome event in my lifetime and at this stage of my life. I crawl into bed tonight and touch my belly and feel so much Hope for the planet, for my own country, for our neighbours to the South, for the baby in my womb.

I am so thankful, Barack Obama, that you had the audacity of hope to make your own dream and the dream of your country and its people manifest. You are part of a global dream for many people and the myriad of countries around the world who celebrate with you and your family tonight and applaud your victory. You have given me and my growing baby hope that change in the world can happen, the kinds of change that are needed and a vision and promise of a better world with it.

Can we change the world for the better?
Yes we can! We just did. And we will...

Music: Strange Fruit, Billie Holiday

Hallowe'en Tail...

Hallowe'en was pretty scary for me this year. It started off with a phonecall at 5:30 in the morning from my ex. I bolt upright knowing that a phone ringing this early can only mean one thing: bad news. And it's pretty fucking bad. My dog had a stroke on Thursday night. My ex describes, when he can find his voice, how she'd fallen over, what sounds like some kind of epileptic seizure, her eyes twitching all over, her arms flailing. The way she'd tried to flip herself over to her "good" side. By the time he phones me, he's already admitted her to the Guelph OVC hospital and has no idea if she will be alive or dead the next time we see her.

I am clutching my belly the whole phonecall without being conscious of the act. He says he is sure it was a stroke. He doesn't feel confident she'll survive it. She'd been fine when he'd left for work that morning: standing, wagging her tail, with her eyebrows raised in hope, her dark eyes willing him to stay at home the way she always does. When he got home, she was lying behind the door. He took her outside for a pee and she fell over and started spasming. He managed somehow to get help from this myriad of wondrous people who surround him and actually give a flying fuck about their neighbours. Talk about All Souls. When we ended, he moved to this amazing, artistic community where people come up to you to chat when you're walking your adorable German Shepherd-Husky. Where they throw you a spontaneous welcome party 'cause you've just moved into their village. Where they come visit your dog all day in streams 'cause they've heard she's not good and you're the ex and they talk to you like they've known you for 20 years already. They're in shorts and tshirts in November. They're fey and dressed as Bo Peep for a belated costume party. They're intriguing and refined matriarchs who've raised four boys single-handedly. My eyes shift between my dog at my feet and the new friends she's made since my ex and I split.

The evening before, we find out what's wrong: it's called Vestibular Disease. They don't really know what causes it. Could be a fall. Some hidden tumour in the brain. An ear infection gone cryptic. It starts off like a seizure and suddenly your dog looks drunk. The vet describes it as "she doesn't know what's up from down right now, she's lost her sense of balance".

That morning it's still dark out, not six o'clock yet, as I stare at the wig on my table, the one I'd planned to wear to work for a laugh. My fingers work anxiously over the curled coils of the telephone cord like they're prayer beads. In my mind, I am hearing him tell me the details, but I'm going through the day as it may unfold. Will I get to look in her eyes again? Will she recognize me/us, wag her tail? Will she be gone by the time I get to touch her fur again? Or will she be in irreversible pain and we have to (pause. take a breath here.) put her down? Will he want to cremate her or bury her?

He and I have never had that talk. When she turned 10, it was like we made a concerted effort not to bring up the nearness, the possibility that one day she'll be gone from us. We manage to share her and since we parted, we walk around wondering, will I be there with her? Will she be with him or me when she goes? How will either of us cope without her? It's too painful to swallow the knot building in my throat as I hang up the phone. She will be...would be 11 years old this Winter Solstice. She was 11 weeks old when we got her. We've raised her, loved her, and been loved by her since she was handed to us in March of 1998. Just a puppy. A rescue. Born 500 miles North of Thunder Bay. She had paws the size of Manhattan to grow into. Her nose, a cute, little, stubby thing protruding between deep, dark auburn eyes, hadn't filled out yet. The softest silver tips on her ears. Her mum had been shot and dumped at the dumpster. She'd been abandoned there with the body. She'd had a really rough start and now she was ours. She'd never known what it was to wear a collar or leash. She was as wild as can be. She resembled a little wolf. A timid, sweet, petrified, wild, tiny thing. That's how Unconditional Love looks sometimes. Our hearts completely melted.

After a night of zero sleep, I drive down to the vet hospital. All I intend is to bring a blanket so she has something to lie on 'cause we've been asked not to come see her at all on Friday, that it might stress her out to visit her and then have to leave her in that place. They were talking about monitoring her until Monday. I cry on the drive down thinking maybe I still won't get to see her, picturing the last time I saw her a week ago. I'd been looking at photos and videos of her in the night, praying to the stars fading in the morning dawn. Suddenly I am standing in the reception area clutching this blanket like she is already wrapped in it and the doctor is telling me she's an exemplary patient. She's made a wonderful recovery. She's eaten, she's peed, she's pooped (with the help of 3 vet students). She is on anti-nausea pills for now to help her with balance and she can be released that morning back into our arms. I am led into a room where I lay down the blanket in a square and kneel down. And here comes the manifestation of the prayer I make on all fours, prancing in the room, a little wobby, her eyes smiling, her tongue panting and lolling, wet sloppy kisses all over my face. And there's that perfect fuzzy Husky TAIL, lashing around like it's Babe Ruth's bat ready to hit a homer. Out of the park. Goodbye Mr. Spalding. I LOVE that fucking tail! She almost falls on me in her excitement and I start weeping in mine. Her head is slightly tilted. She is twitching, but it's an old twitch she's had since the broken collarbone in her first year of life when she ran into a concrete bench at the tennis court in Riverdale park near Broadview and Danforth. We can take her home this morning. She will always have a head a tad askew. She will be a little off-kilter (join the club, is what escapes my lips as a slight murmur). She will be clumsy (the apple doesn't fall far from the tree). But she will survive (in all these ways, there's no denying she is her mommy's puppy, the resemblance, uncanny.)

My dog is alive today. Her tail thumps a little rhythmically at my foot as I sit and knit and read between her and a warm fire for 10 straight hours at my ex's apartment while he's away working a long day. Waves of visitors arrive with stories and smiles to make sure she's recovering. Her head is tilted as she looks up at me each time she wakes. She leans against my leg a little as I walk her outside to pee. That morning, the vet tells us she'll always have a bit of a quizzical expression and I have to crack a smile. That doc just doesn't know it's something she's always had since she was that lost, little bundle placed into our lucky, loving arms.

I am writing this thinkin' bout the first baby I lost a decade ago, how relieved I was then to have an adorable, little puppy who needed a mommy. 'Cause I needed to mother and it ended up being this crazy, furry, little girl. It is balmy and sunny today, this first day of November, but I have a fire going anyhow. I'm relishing the way my dog's ribs move up and down as she sleeps and I breathe deeply along with their rhythm. My wooden needles click and clack and I pause. My hand moves slowly in a circle over my burgeoning belly. I am now at 12 weeks, beginning week 13, the final week of my first trimester. A new milestone. My Lil Sweet Potato I got cookin in this here oven is developed now and can, apparently, suck her (his?) thumb. A phrase pops into my head: I Yam what I Yam. HA. Then the song. Maybe it's his (her?) way of reasurring me...

I'm strong to the 'finich'
cuz I eats me spinach.
I'm Popeye the Sailor Man.

Take after your mum and her good, ol' dog, kay? Stay strong to the finich. Pinky promise me.

The dark of All Souls Night has passed. It is the Celtic New Year. A Sunny Samhain. And my dog is ALIVE!


Music: (S)He's a Good Dog, Fred Eaglesmith