summer fun!

like a hot house tomato

That's what life feels like these days. It's deep summer. The garden is busting out: fruits ripening, leaves multiplying, new sprouts seemingly exploding from the ground hours after the little seeds were tucked in there. I just might, maybe, be getting a bit of lettuce fatigue.

But our life in general feels like how the garden looks right now. The projects got bigger fast upon returning to Madison. Good things have been happening professionally. The kiddo, my favourite sprout, has been exploding with vocabulary and movement . He is like grass growing so fast you can literally see it getting longer before your eyes.

I am a little distracted with the unruly pile of things I need and want to do in a day, anything from grant writing to repairing the broken vent/faucet/toilet/hose/shower rod to making freezer jam because it's strawberry season. We have a non-functional shower but have managed to build a gonzo sandbox in the backyard out of a derelict raised bed. Do I continue to unpack the office or go for a run or make dinner?

Yes, you can say that the tendrils of our life have run a little amuck lately. And yet, somehow it works for us right now. There's a joy to the summer chaos that can only be appreciated after a long, isolating, sickly indoor winter. I kind of like feeling sand underfoot in the living room and sticky ice cream fingers wrapping themselves around my neck. And I think I'll finish writing that grant tonight. I'll make the jam tomorrow. And the office can wait a little longer.

Circling back

We circle back upon ourselves. An ever-widening spiral. Nine months ago, I hadn't let myself think about how much I missed my hometown and family. I couldn't go there because our return was fleeting, just months. I didn't want to have my heart broken at leaving again. Nine months later I learned something else. I really missed the place that had become home to me now: Madison, Wisconsin.
I hadn't understood that love of place is not a mutually exclusive phenomenon. You don't give your heart to one place at the exclusion of any other. It can be strange to feel simultaneous loss and gain. I knew it would be hard to leave Montreal again. But I hadn't expected to feel so much joy and anticipation at our return to this little midwestern town.
The little winged samara feels it too. He walked the perimeter of his new home for the first few days and then seemingly realized this is now his place. At the end of a long day he will walk in the door and audibly sigh. Sometimes lie down on the floor with relief at being back in "his" space.
I wonder if he too will one day come to feel like his heart lies in many different places. And if so, I hope it makes him feel as rich as I do.

The next best thing to being here

Since you're away for your birthday, we thought we'd bring the birthday hootenany to you instead. Happy birthday, Jake!





Love Helen and Milo

P.S. We ate a birthday banana in your honour. Figured the cake can wait for your return.

taking a moment to look around

The sun came out today and I just took a break from work, taxes, miserable illness, cumulative shitty bed achiness and general surliness to glance out the window.

We are thisclose to seeing green leaves outside again!

I feel better already.

Open Arms Midwifery!

Something lovely to write about! I have a wonderful friend Debbie who was doula to us during the birth of Milo. This week, she formally launched her new website and business, Open Arms Midwifery, as a homebirth midwife (who kicks some serious birthing ass, but in a nice way of course). It gives me no end of pleasure to shout out the news to anyone who will listen because she was such a linchpin to J. and I having a great birthing experience. It's almost enough to make me want to go for kid #2, just because I look forward to such funny, wise and competent care again.
Congratulations Debbie!

Ode to the First Day of Spring

We all travel the milky way together, trees and men ... trees are travellers, in the ordinary sense. They make journeys, not very extensive ones, it is true: but our own little comes and goes are only little more than tree-wavings - many of them not so much. - John Muir

flowering magnolia at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum,
Spring 2007

Yay, books!

A little package I've been waiting for arrived in the mail today: two beautiful childrens' books I recently splurged on. Although published, or photographed over 30 years ago, they've got this fresh, vibrant and almost timeless feel to them. Bruno Munari's One Potato Two Potato Three Potato Four is especially exciting because there seems to be a dearth of baby books with photos instead of drawings. And these are lush, beautifully composed black and white photographs to lose yourself in for hours. Alas, both are actual fiber pages and not gnaw-able boardbooks so I'll be spending some together time with Milo when we read these.

behaving like you're on sabbatical...

means that instead of just sitting at your desk and starting your workday, you drop the kiddo off at daycare and go skiing for a couple of hours. Just the two of you. Blowing off some steam. Putting all that snow to good use. Pretending you do this all the time.

The trails were all ours this morning. A lightly falling snow tickled our eyelashes as we alternately slipped and crashed through the snow, putting our backcountry skis to work. At the top of the mountain we stopped to admire the cityscape spread out below us. The skyline has slowly morphed over the decade since we last lived in this city. Subtle changes. The city's silhouette has grown thicker. As ours has, too, I guess. One of those fleeting flashes of how time is slipping by, then I shake it loose, like the dusting of snow on my hat, and crash on back down the trail, excited to be skiing again.

the little winged samara

Yep, the littlest samara is working on his wings.