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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

The Contents of my Purse

Amber on May 14, 2013 Leave a Comment

They say that you can learn a lot about a person from the contents of their purse. Actually, they say you can learn a lot about a woman from the contents of her purse, and to be fair, few men carry purses. Of course, male clothing almost always has pockets for holding things like wallets and keys, while dresses and skirts rarely do.

In fact, back when I was an engineer I went rogue with my ID badge. When I originally got my ID badge from my employer, it came with a company-issued lanyard. And then, one day, we got a message saying that we shouldn’t wear the lanyard anymore for safety reasons. The lanyard could get caught in something and choke us. Instead, we should use the belt clip that we were also issued. For my predominantly male co-workers, this wasn’t an issue. They clipped the thing onto their jeans and went on about their days.

For me, however, it was a different story, especially because I was pregnant at the time. I still wore jeans a few days a week, but they were maternity jeans, with massive tummy panels and fake pockets. I kept using the lanyard. Luckily, my co-workers had the good sense not to call me on it or report me to the health and safety committee. They may have been a little bit scared of me. Given my rampant mood swings, I wouldn’t have blamed them.

This is not actually my purse – mine is WAY BIGGER

Back to the point of this post. Supposedly the contents of your purse provide some massive insight into who you are, gender issues notwithstanding. So I thought it would be fun to share the contents of my purse with you. Here’s what you can find in mine right now:

Band-Aid blister cushions.
My daughter Hannah’s wallet, which she asked me to carry for her the last time we went shopping.
Coupons from Great Clips.
My own wallet.
Four old receipts, for pizza, a local cafe, gardening supplies and Mother’s Day gifts.
Four reusable nylon bags.
Two pens.
A small red plastic recorder that doesn’t really work.
Business cards – mine and others.
A packet of crackers, which has been completely crushed to the point that the crackers are more powder than cracker.
Random assorted garbage – an old lollipop stick, a crumpled napkin, an empty cellophane packet, a sticker that’s lost its sticky.

That’s it for now – normally, I’m carrying a lot more. I’m not sure what that says about me, either way. But if you want to prognosticate on my personality, I’ve given you all the tools you need.

What would I find in your purse, diaper bag or coat pockets?

Filed Under: Random Awesomeness Tagged With: Navel Gazing

Finding Abundance on Mother’s Day

Amber on May 13, 2013 4 Comments

I’ve had a mixed relationship with Mother’s Day since I became a mother myself. While there are lots of things about this particular Hallmark holiday that are lovely, there’s also a whole lot that’s not. Mother’s Day can easily devolve into an occasion that’s all about guilt and unrealistic expectations and overly-flowery poems that don’t actually reflect what it means to be a mother at all. However, yesterday may have been my best Mother’s Day to date, and I have former British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell to thank for it.

The way provincial elections used to work here in British Columbia – and the way federal elections still work in Canada – is that they’re called when Parliament dissolves. This can happen either at the pleasure of the Prime Minister (or Premier), or when Parliament fails. While there’s a maximum term for a Parliament to remain sitting, there isn’t a minimum. What this means is that Prime Ministers who’ve had the ability to do so have tended to schedule elections for times when their parties are enjoying a surge of popularity. If it’s been three years and three months since the last election, but things are looking good, they’ll dissolve Parliament and begin a five-week sprint to an election. While there would be a whole lot of speculation about when the next election would happen, you’d never really know until it was called.

(If I’m getting any of this wrong, I trust my more-informed Canadian readers to correct me. However, I believe I’ve captured the essence of how federal elections work in Canada.)

Things changed here in British Columbia in 2001, when former Premier Gordon Campbell instituted fixed election dates. Since that year, provincial elections have happened every four years, on the second Tuesday in May. If you’re doing your math, you know that this means the election is happening here tomorrow. What this also means is that my husband, who works in TV news, has been spending the past week or so working long hours, building graphics packages and rehearsing and whatever else goes into preparing for an election broadcast. Because of this, I knew that Mother’s Day this year would be a bit of a dud.

Paper Mother’s Day flowers

The surprising thing, however, is that yesterday may have been my best Mother’s Day so far. Given my husband’s work commitments at the moment, we had absolutely no plans whatsoever. The kids woke up, and I set them up in front of PBS Kids so that I could get an extra hour of sleep. Once I was up, I fed everyone the last of our cereal, which will all too soon be a thing of the past as I seek to cut down on our sugar consumption. The kids gave me their handmade gifts from school, and the card they bought with their father. My husband gave me chocolates and a card. We headed to the first farmers’ market of the season. When we got home we ate leftovers for lunch and the kids and I cleaned and vacuumed, while Jon went to work.

I had absolutely no expectations of the day, and in the end it was lovely. In reflecting on it, I realized that I usually get caught up in what isn’t going well on Mother’s Day. I get annoyed because I have to get up with the kids since my husband isn’t a morning person. I get caught up in the guilt trip of worrying that I’m not doing enough for all the other mothers in my life (my own, my husband’s, our grandmothers, and so on). I feel sorry for myself because all of my Facebook friends seem to have been on the receiving end of breakfast in bed and gorgeous floral arrangements and spa treatments, while I’m refereeing fights and cleaning up spills.

By having no expectations, I was able to focus on the good parts of my day. The sweetness of my four-year-old’s pride at having glued sparkly decorations to a cardboard picture frame. The way my daughter came stayed up late on Saturday night to make me two extra gifts. The gorgeous local greens that I bought at the market and ate for lunch alongside leftover pizza. The fact that my kids helped me to clean, and afterward I just felt better.

Perhaps the secret to happiness – not just on Mother’s Day, but every day – is to spend less time focusing on what we don’t have and more time focusing on what we do. At the risk of going all Pollyanna on you, life’s abundance is all around us, if we only look for it. Yesterday, I found mine, in two little people who mean the world to me, sticky hands and all.

Happy belated Mother’s Day to you!

Filed Under: Random Awesomeness Tagged With: Mother's Day, Navel Gazing

So. Many. Band-Aids.

Amber on May 8, 2013 5 Comments

When you have little kids you use a lot of band-aids. There’s just something about these sticky bits of plastic and gauze that children find enchanting. When my daughter Hannah was two or three, the offer of a band-aid could stop her tears as if by magic. It didn’t matter if she really needed one, or if the wound was mostly emotional. Slapping a band-aid on to whatever spot she decided was hurting soothed it.

My son Jacob loves band-aids. He’ll keep them on forever-and-a-day, until the skin underneath is pale and pruney with the sweat that’s being held in. Once a band-aid gets really dirty and grubby Jon and I will try to urge him to take it off, but he always declines. Once he even came to me, tattling. “Daddy wants to take off my band-aid,” he said, “but it’s precious to me.”

Sometimes we run into a band-aid catch-22. This happens when my son requests a band-aid in a place that’s covered by fine little hairs, like his neck. If we decline the band-aid, he is inconsolable, and sometimes even applies one himself. If we allow the band-aid, then when it has to come off he is inconsolable, as the little hairs all get pulled out by their roots. It doesn’t matter if we rip it all off in one go, or remove it as slowly as possible. Either way, there are tears. And then, once the band-aid is off, he asks for another because he was hurt by removing the first one. Then we enter a never-ending cycle of neck band-aids, until we hide the box from him.

My daughter Hannah has mostly outgrown her fixation with band-aids. These days, she tends to only opt for them if she’s genuinely hurt, and possibly bleeding. Even then, she has a tendency to remove them herself after only a day (or even less), so that she can see how her wound is healing. All of this stands in stark contrast to my first experience with Hannah and band-aids, which provided one of my earliest parenting lessons.

When Hannah was released from the NICU at six days old, she had a band-aid on her heel. It was a remnant of the heel-pricks she was receiving at the hospital to check her bilirubin levels. As I took off her little sleeper to change her diaper, it caught my eye. My first impulse was to just leave it until it fell off or she picked it off. Very shortly, however, I realized that neither of those things would happen. Hannah was still five weeks shy of her due date. She wasn’t about to pick off a band-aid, especially one that was hidden inside a sleeper most of the time. She also wasn’t walking or doing much of everything, so the likelihood that her band-aid would fall off by itself anytime soon was small.

For some reason, looking at that tiny band-aid on my daughter’s heel was a revelation to me. It drove home to me how completely and utterly dependent my baby was on me, for every little thing. She couldn’t apply or remove band-aids, or move around of her own accord, or do pretty much anything. It was all up to me. And so, I picked off that band-aid, and then held my crying baby, apologizing to her and shedding my own tears at the enormity of the responsibility that I had assumed.

Children love band-aids. And, in many ways, their childhood can be measured in all those band-aids they wear. Each and every cut and scrape, real and imagined, wears a band-aid like a badge of honour. It’s one more time that my child has fallen and gotten back up. One more wound kissed and dressed. One more example of how my children depend on me, even still. And so, I buy the biggest box I can, and remember all the band-aids that have come before, even as I dread hearing the piercing cry that tells me yet another one is needed. The cry that is up to me to soothe, because that’s what I signed up for, whether I knew it or not.

PS – I realize that band-aid is a brand name. But, since I’ve never said ‘adhesive bandage’ in my life, I’m going right ahead and using it. I am not being sponsored by Johnson & Johnson or anything like that.

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

What I Will do This Year

Amber on May 6, 2013 12 Comments

I celebrated my 37^th birthday yesterday. I have to say – birthdays are getting less fun with each passing year. It’s not just that I’m getting older. Rather, some part of me can’t help but feel as if I should have a greater sense of direction, more wisdom, more to show. These days, my birthday triggers an existential crisis, leaving me to ask what am I doing with my life?

To help myself overcome this intense birthday navel-gazing, I like to set some personal intentions. It’s a way to give myself that direction I’m craving. It’s also a way to honour the fact that I have a whole new year stretched out before me, and I can use it however I see fit. Instead of lamenting what I haven’t done in my 37 years on earth so far, I’m going to think about what I want to do.

For the past two years, I’ve made birthday resolutions. I’ve had about a 50/50 success rate. I think that’s to be expected, especially given that things change over the course of a year. Still, even at a 50/50 success rate, I’m bringing a whole lot of things into my life that I didn’t have the year before. In any case, the list is more about aspirations or ideas, than writing a to-do list I must complete. It’s about setting a tone, if you will. So without further ado, here’s my list for this year.

What I Will do at 37

Renovate my house, so that it better suits my needs.
Buy a bicycle.
Sing.
Go on a women’s art retreat.
Write.
Do yoga.
Spend more time with my hands in the dirt.
Eat less sugar.
Read more books.
Teach my daughter Hannah to use the sewing machine.
Send my son Jacob to kindergarten.
Learn how to make fabulous iced tea.
Play fewer video games.
Give my kids their own household chores.
Allow myself to just experience what it’s like to have both of my children in school all day, before making a bunch of plans to fill up the time.
Go on at least one fun family outing a month.
Try kayaking.
Not beat myself up if I don’t do everything on this list.

What do you want to do with your next year on earth? I love it if you’d play along in honour of my birthday!

Filed Under: Crafting my Life Tagged With: Birthdays, Crafting my Life, Navel Gazing

What I Learned in April 2013

Amber on May 1, 2013 8 Comments

Monthly reviews are one of my favourite traditions. Here’s how it works – every month I come up with some things I learned, and not always the easy way. Then, I ask you all to join in with some recent revelations of your own. And we all learn and grow and what-not. Or at least share a laugh at our own expense, because some of these lessons are both hard-fought and funny. Sound good?

So, without further ado, here is what I learned in April – or some of it, anyway.

What I Learned This Month

1. I learned that while you never forget how to ride a bike – hence the expression just like riding a bike – that doesn’t meant that getting back on that bike after 20 years will be easy. I had the muscle pain to attest to it.

2. Following my second gum graft, I found solace in Pride and Prejudice on DVD, re-affirming my belief that a good costume drama can help with almost anything. Especially if said costume drama features a young Mr. Colin Firth.

3. I had my first fancy salon haircut in years, and I re-discovered just how lovely it is to be pampered like that.

4. I lived with a pirate for the second half of the month, when my son Jacob decided that he would spend a few weeks wearing a pirate costume.

5. I put an offer on a house (which wasn’t accepted), and arranged for some quotes on home renovations. In the process, I re-discovered the stress of real estate, whether buying or owning.

6. I’ve listened to the score of Seussical the Musical on repeat for the past few weeks, as my daughter Hannah practices for the school play.

7. I was delighted by my sister-in-law’s dessert sushi.

8. I mowed the lawn for the first time this year, and re-discovered just how much I love the smell of fresh-cut grass.

9. I learned that while being on live TV can be stressful, having a pro do your makeup is really kind of awesome.

10. I celebrated many birthdays – my mother’s, my mother-in-law’s, and my niece’s. And I confirmed once again that few things are quite as good as birthday cake.

I’ve shared what I learned – what did you learn in April? Leave a comment and tell me! Or, if you’d like to play along by writing a review post of your own, link to it in the comments. And please feel free to grab the button from the top of this post.

Filed Under: Monthly Reviews Tagged With: Monthly Review, Navel Gazing

That Moment

Amber on April 30, 2013 4 Comments

When things go sideways, I have a moment. It happens in the split-second when the dawning realization that something bad has happened crosses my consciousness. It’s the instant I hear the plate break, see the earring go down the drain, or catch sight of my kid taking a Sharpie to the wall out of the corner of my eye. In that moment, I almost believe that if I concentrate hard enough, I can back things up to just half a second before, when everything was still good.

Of course, we can’t change the past. Everyone knows that. Or, at least, everyone knows that except the version of me that inhabits that moment. That person really believes that maybe, with enough mental energy, I can back things up just the tiniest bit.

That moment where I’m trying to back things up and change reality actually provides a fair bit of insight into my personality. I’m a person who spends a lot of time dwelling in the past. I think about what happened, how it happened, why it happened, what I said, what I did, and what I could have done differently. I re-play conversations, try to recall details that will provide me with clues about what other people were thinking, and lament the things that didn’t go the way I wanted them to go. Even my subconscious dwells in the past. My father died more than 20 years ago, for instance, but he appears in my dreams more often than my children.

I’m fairly optimistic when it comes to the future. I tend to believe that things will all work themselves out, and that at some point my problems will diminish and my life will be more serene. I’m not afraid of what lies ahead. What lies in the past, however, scares the pants off of me. And so, the not-so-rational part of my brain experiences that moment, when I try to change something that cannot be changed.

No matter how hard I concentrate, the plate will stay broken, the earring will make its merry way to the sewage treatment plant, and the wall will bear the Sharpie marks. I can close my eyes and focus all I want. The past simply cannot be changed.

I’ve been thinking about my penchant for living in the past rather a lot lately, for a few reasons. The one conclusion I’ve reached is that it isn’t serving me well. As long as I’m living in that moment when I’m trying to change something that cannot be changed, I can’t actually deal with the present and do what needs to be done to move forward. I need to move beyond all the things I said or did in the past, and forgive the version of myself who was doing her best at the time if she made any mistakes.

At the beginning of the year I chose Presence as my word for 2013. By definition, that means living in the present. To do that, I need to let go of the past. I need to stop living in that moment where I’m trying to change things, and offer myself compassion instead. Compassion because sometimes things go sideways, and that sucks. Compassion because I rarely have all the information when I’m acting, and therefore I’m going to make mistakes. And compassion because we all deserve it.

Here’s to letting go of those things that we can’t change, and living in the moment when things are actually not so bad after all.

Filed Under: Crafting my Life Tagged With: Crafting my Life, Navel Gazing