Life These Days: A New Landscape

Above: a rare photograph capturing a difficult-to-visit and never-cleaned locale: the lair of an artistic genius and/or a feral creature hiding from his mother. Are the out-of-tune scales a reflection of some other material on the music stand? I risked my life trekking into this cavern, and have no plans to return.

I was sitting in my car the other day, where I like to spend all my free time (or any time at all, really), and my windows were open, parked next to another parent in her car with her windows open. We were enjoying a little casual chit chat and the fresh air and the breeze, and this glorious breeze was sending little bits and bobs of the earth, buds and leaves from the trees, into our cars. I could see her whisking this debris out of her very neat and tidy car, while into mine, it was merely a few drops in the ocean of detritus, hardly noticeable. If anything, it just adds to the flavour of the soup.

Such is spring, this excellent and tremendous season after a dreary and endless and grim winter. I’ve had my first Tim Hortons’ frozen lemonade of the year, so spring has truly arrived for me. The windows are open, allowing through the sound of blaring sirens and streetcars clanging, the cats are sunning themselves two aggressive feet apart from each other, the kids are biking in the laneways. Who needs to do math homework, when the sun is calling? (Caleb, that’s who.)

As for me, I’m staring up into the open blue sky, wondering what’s up there, before the earth calls my attention back. Emails, appointments, phone calls, another season of clothing to weed through and organize, dental work certainly made no less pleasant by the bracing freeze of lemonade. All if it is where the good stuff is, and yet I dream and wonder about our next adventure, and the thrill of packing our bags to look for something new, to see what’s out there, to find out if I’m hungering for the right things. Perhaps I’m reading too many books. Perhaps not enough?

There is a lot of stuff going on in the shop these days. There are still several bookshelves left to assemble and organize. Bigger and smaller projects are in various stages of development and burner rotation, and some of them are very exciting. All of them exciting in their own way. Each of these projects is a new challenge, which is both fun and also debilitating for the indecisive. A labour of love and contemplation, to make the right choices in this time, for this time, for the future. A joy to be on this journey, the privilege of the view from this seat.

The kids’ car podcast theme song is stuck eternally in my head, I’m sopping up the puddles of bathwater outside the tub with the clothes that are left on the floor, underwear dangling off one inside out pant leg, Junia’s opinions are multiplying exponentially by the day. The best is yet to come, even as the best is here right in this very moment. I will take it all.

Below: a very helpful slide of the lyrics to Baby Shark that I witnessed while bringing the kids to a Family Time at one of our excellent Toronto public libraries. I love it! A very accurate number of doos. Over the years (over a decade!) of Family Times as various libraries, and each one has its own flavour and carpet etiquette and librarian personalities.