Strocel.com | Memories

Little Boxes, Full of Me

Amber on May 17, 2013 1 Comment

I keep my life in little boxes inside my head. This box contains my multiplication tables, which I learned in elementary school, standing beside my desk and clapping out a rhythm. Five times six is thirty. Five times seven is thirty-five. Five times eight is forty. Five times nine is forty-five. That box contains advertising jingles. Another box contains old locker combinations and computer passwords. It’s a little dusty, and sometimes hard to find. A small opalescent box contains barely conceived fragments of dreams, which I’m not quite ready to give voice to.

Sometimes, a trigger I wasn’t expecting causes me to trip over a box, and long-forgotten feelings and memories come spilling out. Like yesterday, when I heard Garth Brooks singing The Dance.

In 2001 my only cousin died. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that he was murdered. He had just turned 21, and his life had taken several wrong turns, until he found himself in a place he couldn’t get out of. He was shot, and after spending a few days in the ICU he passed away.

At his funeral my uncle stood and shared some memories of his only child’s early years. Lying on the grass, looking at clouds, asking questions. Playing together. Full of life and full of promise. And then my uncle played The Dance, which is of course the perfect choice in so many ways.

I’m glad I didn’t know
The way it all would end
The way it all would go
Our lives
Are better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
But I’d have had to miss the dance

When the song came on, I was standing in my kitchen washing dishes. As the box that contained all my memories of that June day 12 years ago opened up, I started to cry. I thought about my cousin, four years younger than me, and what he’d been like as a child. I recalled sleepovers at my grandmother’s house when we were kids, and I pulled him and my sister along in a wagon. I thought of how happy he was then. And then I thought about my own children. Can I save them from the same fate? Can I keep my own happy little boy from taking too many wrong turns?

Life is funny, though, and people are resilient. I’m resilient, too. I know how to bend and not break. So I shed my tears, and remembered the people who I loved and who aren’t here anymore. The people who helped me become who I am. The people who got lost, and the people who just couldn’t bend anymore. The people who lived good, full lives, and then moved on. And then I wiped my eyes on the sleeve of my hoodie, and rinsed the pot I was scrubbing, while the memories disappeared back inside their box, and the box receded back into its place in a small corner of my mind.

So many boxes, so many pieces of me. Big pieces and small pieces. Happy pieces and sad pieces. Old pieces and new pieces. All of them just waiting for a cue to open, and remind me of what this particular piece means to me. How it contributes to making me the person I am, full of life and full of memories.

Filed Under: Random Awesomeness Tagged With: Memories, Navel Gazing

Thinking About Roots

Amber on February 26, 2013 20 Comments

I’ve been thinking about roots, lately. Not literal roots, anchoring and nourishing plants, but metaphorical roots. The kind of roots that anchor and nourish people, connecting them to where they live, to the soil they walk on every day (even if it is buried beneath the concrete). I’ve been considering the way that the sights, sound, tastes – the whole feel of a place – can get under your skin and change the way you look at life.

I’ve been thinking about roots for two reasons. The first is that many of my friends are moving away. Some are moving five or six hours down the road, some across oceans, but all of them far enough of that I won’t see them anymore. Oh, maybe there will be a trip or two, and we have the wonders of technology to connect us. But they are leaving this place, and I am staying, and it won’t be the same. They are uprooting themselves, in a way that I never have.

Plants on Salt Spring, putting down roots

Sometimes I imagine my friends clipping the ties that are keeping them here with a pair of scissors, and floating up, up, up like balloons. They are free, not weighed down by the petty cares and concerns that fill life on earth. Pulling up roots has also removed the obligations that come along with those roots – obligations like remembering to take out the garbage once a week and trying to get along with that cranky neighbour. I imagine myself joining them, floating away, surveying a vivid green landscape below me, looking for a promising spot to land.

The real truth is that I don’t want to fly away from here. This is my home. And that brings me to the second thing that has me thinking about roots – my trip last weekend to Salt Spring Island, a smallish island that’s home to about 10,000 people not too far from me. In recent decades Salt Spring has become something of a hippie mecca. It’s home to artists and artisans, small-scale farmers and people going back to the land. You won’t find a McDonald’s or a Starbucks or an Old Navy there. Many of the houses are nestled amid tall trees, with big wood piles in a shed out front. There are lots of signs advertising pottery and art studios, and many farm stands selling fresh eggs and other farm goods at the side of the road.

Goats enjoying the island vibe

Being on Salt Spring reminded me of my own roots. I was raised by hippies in a semi-rural setting. Cows grazed in fields across the street from my house, and many of my fondest childhood memories involve playing in a little creek beneath the tall trees of the forest. My father was a self-taught goldsmith, an artisan in every sense of the word, and a sign on our front lawn advertised that you could find his jewellery store in the front room of our house. That house was heated with wood, and I remember my parents out chopping up kindling in all weather. Inside our house, the only doors separated the studio and showroom from the rest of the house. Our bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen – none of these had doors.

Being on Salt Spring was like taking a tour of of my life some 30 years ago. Many of these folks are creative people, moving away from the city, looking for a quieter lifestyle. The graffiti scribbled on the wall at the provincial park spoke of overthrowing our colonial-capitalist system. The children wore hand knits and big gum boots. While this was the first time I set foot on Salt Spring, the homes and the people looked familiar. My roots might not have been in that place, exactly, but they were in a place very much like it. I grew up steeped in the same sort of ethos that I felt as I ate local, free-range, organic eggs served to me by a young woman with henna on her arms and a laid-back sort of approach to waiting tables on Sunday morning.

Enjoying our kid-free weekend

I spent my childhood among people who made similar choices to the people on Salt Spring. The hard-scrabble-ness that comes with those choices is only really visible to me now, as an adult myself. Living in a semi-rural setting presents challenges. Making a living from your art presents challenges. Being a ferry ride away from a bigger community presents challenges. You embrace those challenges, because for you, the upsides outweigh the downsides. With my adult eyes, I saw both the challenges and the innovative solutions. The sacrifices and the gains. I found myself asking the inevitable question: would I choose it, too?

As my husband and I sat in our car for a rain-soaked ferry ride from Salt Spring to Victoria on our trip home, I realized that I have already chosen where to plant myself, right here in suburban Vancouver. I don’t want to leave this place to return to my counter-culture childhood. I don’t want to leave it in search of greener pastures, either. I found clarity as I sat in the passenger seat of my husband’s car, listening to the soft tap-tap-tap of the raindrops, gazing out through blurry, rain-streaked windows. I choose to plant my roots in this wild and rain-soaked country, where fir and cedar trees grow tall and straight, and the ocean is never too far away. I love that, in spite of the wilderness that’s always nearby, I’m 10 minutes from IKEA and within easy walking distance of four Starbucks locations.

Luckily the trip to Salt Spring was nicer than the trip home

My roots are deep in the place I call home, and I’m choosing to stay right here. While my friends fly away, I send good wishes with them, hoping they find the perfect spot to plant themselves. I send good wishes to the potters and painters and artisanal cheese-makers on Salt Spring, too. While I feel a warm sort of familiarity with them, I happily drive away after buying some organic camembert. I’m pushing my roots even further into my thick, damp, suburban soil. I’m feasting on the nourishment that I soak up through them. It’s the best thing ever, this soul food that lets me know that I am just where I should be.

Where do you choose to put down your roots?

Filed Under: Random Awesomeness Tagged With: Beautiful BC, Memories, Navel Gazing, Travel

Hannah + Eight

Amber on February 19, 2013 9 Comments

They always tell you that your first child is a science experiment. To some extent, they’re right. You’re trying things out, gathering the evidence, and deciding what works (or, all too often, what doesn’t). However, I feel that the analogy is imperfect. Scientists are supposed to be dispassionate, devoid of bias and not invested in any particular outcome. And let me tell you, as a parent, I am very much the opposite of dispassionate. I would say that parenting a first child is more like learning to cook by creating a meal for an elaborate dinner party – you feel very much out of your depth, but you want it to be good, so you’re giving it your all and just hoping it works itself out.

On the cold, clear February morning eight years ago when I woke up to find that my water had broken six weeks early, I had no idea what I was in for. I didn’t yet understand the combination of fierce mother-love, loss of independence, self-deprivation, utter confusion and divine transcendence that comes with being a parent. Like most first-time expectant parents, I was focused primarily on labour and delivery. In fairness, birth is sort of a big deal. But in retrospect, it was so very short and self-contained. When I think about my parenting journey, it’s everything that came after Hannah shot out of me at full speed, skidding across the delivery table, that really matters. It’s eight years’ worth of moments, big and small, that I’ve spent with my daughter that define our relationship today.

If I draw on my dinner party analogy, eight years in I’m still in the thick of cooking. I can see that some of the dishes have worked out well, while others were maybe a mistake. I don’t yet know how it will turn out in the end. But even so, it’s apparent to me that on the whole, it’s pretty freaking amazing. And, what’s more, with each day that passes I have a more competent and able assistant. She is defining what we’re doing, and what the end result will be. She is blowing me away with her creativity, her compassion, and her sense of humour. As we cook together, she changes me, and makes me better.

Each of the little moments of parenting are complete in and of themselves. They’re like little vignettes or short stories, each distinct from the other. And so, when I think back on the past eight years, I have a hard time teasing out the narrative. I struggle to connect the newborn baby who spent her first days in the NICU with the chubby-legged toddler who insisted on making her own fashion choices very early on. The baby I carried inside me seems like a totally different being from the four-year-old who passionately embraced drawing, and they both seem very different from the seven-year-old who patiently read her little brother his favourite stories.

And yet, sometimes, I see the reflections of those other moments in the person my daughter is today. When she sleeps, her face looks so much younger, and I can see her baby-self. When she curls up in my lap, if I ignore the gangly arms and legs of childhood, I can feel the same feeling I used to feel when she was so much younger and she came to me in search of solace. There are reminders of how she came to be the child she is today, but they are dim, and they are fleeting. This is why parents complain that time passes too quickly – because we can never fully re-capture those moments after they have passed.

Today I will bake and ice a birthday cake. I will give gifts and sing “Happy Birthday” to my daughter. I will take Hannah to school and swimming lessons, but I won’t insist that she practice her spelling because it is her birthday, after all. I will try to remember what the journey has been like, and how she was on her other birthdays. But mostly, I will celebrate the person my daughter is today, on her eighth birthday. Because I don’t want to miss out on this moment, in my vain attempt to re-capture the past.

Filed Under: Kids and Parenting Tagged With: Birthdays, Kids, Memories, Navel Gazing, Parenting

Blogging: A Love Story

Amber on February 14, 2013 18 Comments

I never meant to be a blogger. I kind of fell into it, accidentally.

It all started in 2003. At the time, Geocities was all the rage, and many people were creating their own webpages. When I discovered that I had access to a free webpage through my internet service provider, I decided to get on board. Unbelievably, that web page still exists. (If you choose to click that link, please do keep in mind that I created it 10 years ago.)

At the time, I didn’t know the word blog. I was relatively newly-married, and working full-time as an engineer. I hadn’t written anything in ages. And yet, I fell into updating the minutia of my life in my life in the news section fairly quickly. When we decided to buy a house, I suddenly had more to talk about, and more to share with my friends and family. My husband Jon suggested that we could graduate from the free site to our own webpage, and I was on board. It would be like Geocities, only better.

When Jon set up a blog, I was irritated. As I said, I didn’t know what a blog was. I didn’t feel that anyone else did, either. I made him put up a splash page, which linked to separate “weblogs” for each of us, as well as our photo album, videos and so on. And yet, in spite of myself, I fell into updating my blog regularly. I wasn’t good at it, and you probably had to know me personally in order to understand what I was talking about, but I did it. I blogged, once a week or so, sometimes more and sometimes less.

Things really changed for me as a blogger when my son was born. I decided that blogging would be my maternity leave project, and I got more serious about it. If you look through my archives, you can see the shift that occurred in late 2008. At the same time I joined Facebook, and later Twitter, which also shifted my perspective when it came to connecting with people online. I began to understand the power of the internet. I also began to understand what my inner writer knew all along – I have to write. Even if it’s badly-laid-out, three-sentence missives on an ancient webpage, once you give me the space I will fill it.

And now, today is Valentine’s Day, 10 years after I started that terrible free webpage. In retrospect, I can see how that haphazard decision shaped my life, and set me on a course I couldn’t have anticipated. Through blogging, reading and connecting online I have once again reclaimed my identity as a writer. I have become a dreamer, and taken real steps towards creating a more meaningful and intentional life. I have met amazing people, been entrusted with inspiring stories, and danced my heart out. It isn’t extremely rewarding from a monetary standpoint, but I love it more than I can say.

I’m not a big fan of the romantic obligations that come with Valentine’s Day. However, I do see value in setting aside a day to let the people in our lives know how much we appreciate them. And so, today, I’m thanking you. If you’re reading this, then you’re making yourself a part of my community. That means so much to me. After all, I know I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. If I’m yours, in some small way, that’s the most rewarding part of blogging I know. It’s so much more powerful than I could have anticipated, when I tapped out my first entries 10 years ago. Sometimes, life has a way of making the unexpected adventure the best one of all.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Filed Under: Blogging and Social Media Tagged With: Bloggy McBloggerson, Memories, Navel Gazing, Valentine's Day

A Photography Story

Amber on February 11, 2013 10 Comments

I got my first camera as a present for my ninth or tenth birthday (I don’t remember which, exactly). It was a Kodak Instamatic, and it was as basic as could be. It didn’t have a flash, or any functions at all. It produced square photos, and it was mostly only good outdoors under optimal lighting conditions. Like all film cameras, you never quite knew what the photo would look like. Would it be in focus? Would it be dark? Did you accidentally cover half the shot with your thumb? Only after you had paid to have your photos developed would you find out.

Still, for all its shortcomings, I loved that camera. I thought I was so funny, sneaking up on people and yelling, “Surprise!” before catching their reactions. I was documenting my life, in the way an nine-year-old would. My other photos featured family pets, my toys, and family members. I can’t imagine wasting eight precious film shots on Cabbage Patch Kids now, but at the time I felt a heady sense of power. I was the photographer. I was, quite literally, calling the shots, and I was recording the world as I saw it.

I got another camera as a gift when I was a teenager. I don’t remember the make or model. It was a standard sort of point-and-shoot for the time, with an automatic flash and a few basic controls. I took that camera on trips to Mexico and the Caribbean and Disney World and New Brunswick. For the four months that I lived in Ottawa one winter, that camera recorded trips to museums, came skating with me on the Rideau Canal, and tromped out to a sugar bush. I was still using it when I got engaged, and I remember using it to snap photos of floral arrangements and dress fittings, taking the photos to be developed before faithfully putting the best ones in my wedding preparation album.

I can’t remember exactly when I made the switch to digital. I know that Jon had a digital camera fairly early on, and he laughed at my reliance on film for several years. But was it before or after we got married that I made the switch myself? Did the photos of my honeymoon come from a flash card or film? I honestly can’t remember. I suspect that it was film, because of the sleeve of duplicates I had printed up at London Drugs, but I can’t be sure. At the time I still relied on prints, and it’s possible they could have come from a digital camera.

I do know that by the time we moved into this house, 10 years ago now, I had fully transitioned to digital photography. We bought a little black Canon point and shoot in the US around that time, which we kept for years and ran into the ground. That camera captured my pregnancies, and my children’s infancies. It documented milestones like starting solid foods and taking first steps. Eventually it gave up the ghost, sometime around 2010. We bought another Canon point-and-shoot, which I promptly managed to drop into a tide pool on the beach in Parksville, a favourite local vacation spot for my family. We made the drive into the nearby ‘big town’ of Nanaimo, and bought another one as a replacement.

I made a mistake with that camera. I allowed my children to use it. They were, unsurprisingly, not as careful or gentle as one would hope. Yet I continued to allow it, because letting them to take pictures somehow seemed harmless, as compared to letting them play video games on my phone or sitting them in front of a screen. It was not shocking when it was damaged just two short years after buying it. While muttering under my breath about children’s destructive tendencies, I gave up on having a camera and relied on my phone for taking photos.

They say that the best camera is the one you actually have with you. In that respect, an iPhone makes a fabulous camera. Throw in apps like Instagram, and you can not only take photos, but share them easily across all your social networks. Still, a phone has its limitations. I wasn’t always satisfied with the quality, or with the shots I was able to get. I missed my little point-and-shoot, which, while basic, captured the light so beautifully. Its images did justice to my memory of events. I wanted that again.

After shopping and researching and reading, my husband and I decided that we were ready for a grown-up camera. This is how, in the first weekend of February, we found ourselves shelling out for a new Canon Rebel T4i, two lenses, filters, a flash card and a brand new camera bag to keep it all safe. We have firmly declared that children may not touch it. I am careful to always wear the shoulder strap when I use it, lest it, too, fall into a tide pool. While I eat breakfast I read through the little manual that came with it obsessively, learning how it works. I’m signing up for a photography class.

My first photo with my new camera

I have no desire to be a professional photographer, to take the sorts of photos that belong in magazines. I just want to shoot the world as I see it, for myself. And so once again, I am calling the shots. I feel the familiar exhilaration I felt when I received that little Kodak Instamatic. The world is mine to capture, one image at a time.

Do you remember your first camera? And what sort of camera do you have now? I’d love to hear your photography stories.

Filed Under: Random Awesomeness Tagged With: Memories, Navel Gazing, Photography

Remembering my First (Fur) Baby

Amber on January 28, 2013 8 Comments

My first baby was a guinea pig named Tilly. I had other pets before her – in fact, I had many of them. A faithful German Shepherd cross named Kali was my childhood companion. A fierce cat named Fluffy came to live with us when I was six years old, and survived to see her 20th birthday. There was a budgie named Benjie, and a hamster named Patches. And so many goldfish, whose names I no longer recall. But none of these pets were truly mine, in the same way. They were family pets, and ultimately the responsibility for them rested with the fully-fledged adults, not with me.

Tilly was different. I adopted her in the early days of 2000, after moving into my own apartment. The apartment allowed pets, but only if they lived in cages. Dogs and cats were out of the question, but after doing some research a guinea pig seemed like a genuine possibility. They were awake during the day, and large enough not to sneak into a crack and get lost. They couldn’t jump like rabbits, and they couldn’t climb, which meant that you had no fear they would somehow end up peeing on your bed. It seemed the perfect answer to my desire for a little companionship.

My trip to pick up Tilly was delayed by several days, because Jon had the nerve to propose to me on New Year’s Eve. It was Y2K, and we were all going to die when the computers stopped working and the planes fell out of the sky. The man I had been dating for over eight years at that point was planning to seize the day and pop the question, but I didn’t know it. Not for sure, anyway. When I suggested he could take me to pick up my new guinea pig on December 30 (having no car of my own at the time), he balked. Couldn’t it wait a few days? Just a few? He wanted us to stay in Abbotsford, where our parents lived, on New Year’s Eve. Then he wanted to spend New Year’s Day with our families. It was important, although he wouldn’t explain why.

I suspected that something might be afoot, but there had been several moments over the previous year and a half when I had thought to myself, This is it, he’s going to ask, and then he didn’t. There had been a Valentine’s Day when I asked what he wanted and he told me he knew just what to get me, he’d been planning it for ages. His plan wasn’t a diamond, as I hoped, but a Home Depot gift certificate. And then there was a weekend getaway when he left me at the table in the fancy restaurant to get something he’d forgotten back in our room. I thought maybe this was a set-up, and he’d return with a ring. Instead, he came back with his camera, and snapped a photo of me looking aggrieved.

As we approached the New Year’s Eve when the world didn’t fall apart in spite of our Y2K fears, I didn’t want to get my hopes up. So instead of speculating about why Jon was insisting on spending time with our families, I pouted about the delay in my guinea pig plans. All was forgiven when he got down on one knee in the same park where he’d first asked me out. However, I didn’t allow my mind to wander too far. This is how, a few days later, I stood in the PetSmart sporting my new engagement ring and surveying the guinea pigs.

I was smitten with Tilly right off the bat. She was so cute, and her squeaks of delight when she heard me opening a treat bag slayed me every time. My family liked her, too, and looked forward to having the chance to take care of her when I was out of town. When we moved to this house, and adopted our cat Dorothy, Tilly even got a room of her own where she could run around without fear of being attacked. She was thoroughly spoiled in her way.

guinea pig house guest

When Tilly was four and a half years old, Jon and I went on a trip to Atlantic Canada. Tilly went to stay with my mom and her husband. When I got back, I could see that she wasn’t well. Her health had probably been declining slowly for a while, but the extended absence made the situation obvious. I took her to a small animal vet, who confirmed that she was deydrated, and diagnosed her with a kidney blockage. She could operate, but it would be expensive, and the odds that Tilly would come through it well were low. I cried a lot, but ultimately made the decision that it was time to let her go. That prolonging her life through procedures that would terrify her wouldn’t be a kindness.

This week, however, I have again welcomed a guinea pig into my home. My good friend and her family are off on a trip, and her guinea pig is visiting. My children, who were both born after Tilly died, are enchanted and enthralled. My cat, trained from a young age to give guinea pigs a wide berth, is keeping her distance. Once again the rustle of a plastic bag is greeted with high-pitched squeaks, from a small animal hoping for a treat. And I am remembering my first baby, the first creature that was truly mine and mine alone. Sometimes I still miss her a whole lot.

Did you have a first pet that truly captured your heart? I’d love to hear about it!

Filed Under: Random Awesomeness Tagged With: Memories, Pets

Things I Want my Children to Know

Amber on January 21, 2013 10 Comments

I was raised by hippies. This meant that while many of my friends in the Bible Belt town I was raised in spent Sundays in church, my family spent it either at the flea market, or out in nature. It was something I didn’t enjoy, actually. I wanted to be the same. To not be the only little girl at the Wendy’s at noon on Sunday who was wearing jogging pants instead of a fancy dress. To not spend the day trapped in a car, listening to the music of my father’s youth, while we drove out to some remote location for a hike.

Now I have children of my own, though, and being a parent myself changes things. I want my kids to get outside. I want them to spend time running and playing, instead of sitting and watching. However, most of our outside time is logged on the playground, or in our own backyard. This is something that I am okay with, generally speaking. It’s easier, because while they play I can sit, or chat with a friend – or if they’re in our yard, I can make dinner or work. After my own tenuous relationship with hiking as a child, I haven’t made much of an effort to actually get out into the forest with my kids.

Yesterday, though, was a rare sunny day in January, and getting outdoors seemed like a good idea. I thought we’d visit a regional park with some easy walking trails, just to switch things up. It was the perfect day for it, and the mist creeping out across the lake lent the whole scene a magical, idyllic sort of an air. There was a thin layer of ice on the water, and my children were having fun tossing gravel on it, watching the pebbles bounce along the surface. As they did, I heard the strangest sound. It wasn’t just the sound of the rocks on top of the ice – you could hear the reverberation through the ice and the murky water below. As I listened, I paused to take in the scene around me. The way the light shone. The smells in the air.

Standing on that gravel trail, it hit me like a ton of bricks. There are things I want my children to know, that maybe I even need them to know. Things like the way that rotting logs smell on the forest floor – sweet and earthy, with a hint of something fungal. The tang of the huckleberries that grow in the forest shade in the height of summer. How to navigate the roots and the rocks. The casual, friendly etiquette that hikers share, as they pass on the trail. The way that it’s always darker in the forest, under the canopy of tall trees, silently keeping their watch. The thrill of achievement as you take in the view from the top of a mountain, a real mountain, that you climbed yourself.

For me, the forest here isn’t only the scene of the forced marches of my childhood. It’s also a constant feature of the area, a distinctive landscape of this place I call home. Of course, there are forests everywhere, but the truth is each forest is different. If you drive two hours east of here, the forest changes. The trees are shorter, the spaces between them bigger. This Pacific Northwest rainforest is one of the things I think of when I think of home. I want my children to feel at home in it, too. To know its tastes, smells, sounds and textures.

As I get older, I find myself returning to what I know more and more. Those experiences that shaped me and made me who I am. The touchstones of my past, for good or ill. Those lessons I learned while wading in cold streams, climbing trees or picking blackberries. I want to share them all with my children. Maybe not in the same way, and maybe not to the same soundtrack in the car. They are all part of who I am, part of their inheritance, picked up as I spent those Sundays in the place that was my parents’ truest spiritual home. Because while I do take my kids to church, I know that some lessons require a different sort of cathedral, roofed by branches and surrounded by all of creation.

Amen.

Filed Under: Kids and Parenting Tagged With: Memories, Navel Gazing, Parenting