Blessings

First we scoured Kijiji. 200$ seemed like a lot back then. She was worth every penny. 

She was the darling of the family as a baby. We didn’t have any other babies then. I was the only girl at home. I spent time chilling with her, reading and cuddling while the others were in school. 

We debated her name. We found the perfect name, a nod to our recent past, a way of keeping Africa alive in Canada. Blessings. 

She grew into an obnoxious tween, a little awkward, very bouncy. 

All the people (not actually all.)  made fun of her name. They thought her wrinkles were ugly. They were annoyed because she was so loving.

She grew up, into the gentlest of dogs. She was intuitively precious with all our babies. We never sawed a bared tooth or heard an impatient growl no matter which baby girl pulled to standing on her fur. 

Not everyone saw her as gentle. Her deep voice and large size intimidated all the delivery drivers and caused even the bravest Jehovah’s  Witness to abandon their witness with a string of expletives. 

She was always there, undemanding, patient, a friend, a companion, an unbiased listening ear, a furry shoulder to cry on. Always there. 

At an old age she was forced to adopt a rambunctious child. The playful child kept her young just a little longer, but she was always the boss. The child is lovely, but she can never be a replacement for Blessings.

She got old and crippled. She continued to be there, Even in pain, for the little boy who names his stuffies after her and the sensitive little girl who benefited from the passive therapy only a animal can give. She was still always there  whenever I came home to visit , staggering as fast as she could to meet me. She kissed my baby the last time we were there and he wiggled with delight. I guess I kind of knew it might be the last time we’d see her. 

“Do dogs go to heaven?” the little one asked. She said it for all of us. Most of us have never had to say goodbye to a pet this loved. 

We’ll miss you, Blessings.

Community of Criminals, Little B’s Pacifier, More About the Dog and How to Follow This Blog

Community of Criminals 

There was a song I used to listen to, when I was a kid dragging Main in Steinbach. Back in the days when 1D was a thing. If you know you know. (Sorry, gen z; I’m sure it was before your days.) It referred to the bad things happening in people’s lives not changing them. “Even when the night changes, it will never change me and you.” * In a chaotic world, I found that thought comforting. Almost 10 years later I know that, in a way, it’s patently untrue. 

 The change that happens in a night does change us. 

The story of teenager recently kidnapped and then miraculously rescued right on our doorstep (within our community) changes us. It makes us question things we hold to be true. It makes us mistrust our neighbours’ motives and lifestyles. It creates a new band of fear in our newly parented hearts. 

At the same time, many things remain. We are strong, we communicate, we get annoyed, we don’t get enough sleep. The line of flame glazing the field behind our field doesn’t waver. In the northwest a haze of orange glows thoughtfully, reassuringly around 3 sides of a stand of trees. 

Moving on (forever changed), we have a few boring life stories.

Little B’s Pacifier

He refused it for the first few weeks of his life, but sometime between month 3 and month 4 he decided he liked it. Why we kept offering it, I still don’t know. A First time parent obsession..  I’m pretty sure this decision constituted two parenting mistakes in one go -first the soother addiction that we will some day have to break and second the fact that we pay ten whole dollars for each of these pieces of rubber. very aesthetic pieces of rubber. But still.

Moving on. We only have one of these soothers  for the first few months but it start making odd squeaking noises when Little B sucks particularly hard.  20$ Later we have new ones. Then the old one disappears. It’s fine. I was only keeping it as an emergency backup. A couple weeks, 2 trips and 2000 km later we lose another one on a Sunday evening. It’s not in the car seat. It’s not in the car. It’s not on the driveway at our friends place.  Little B is grouchy as we try to have coffee with our friends. I didn’t think he was  uemotionally attached to his pacifier, but I was wrong.  I know it’s gone for good because it’s nowhere. Somewhere in there I pray because I do that a lot when I lose things and I lose a lot of things. (The things that keep us close to Jesus.) Still the paci doesn’t appear. I reluctantly pull out the last new soother that I had hoarded for a proverbial rainy day. It’s the rainy day. In fear of losing our last pacifier I buy some cheap ones as a stopgap hoping Little B might be okay without lux. He’s not.  I resign myself to seeing if I can get soothers on an Amazon subscription.** a few days later I’m cleaning up outside. I find the original soother, the one destined for the garbage / saving an emergency before it disappeared, taken, I now realize, by Rebel the thief of a dog. It has teeth marks; it’s destined for the garbage now. The next day Big B walks across the yard very near where I was yesterday. He comes inside chuckling and holding out his hand. The missing pacifier -the one lost Sunday night enroute to a friend’s place- is found! Rebel the thief of a dog found it on the ground near the vehicle before we got home and looked for it there. This one she was gentle with -it’s intact and like new; there’s nothing on it a good sanitizing won’t take care of. We love our little thief of a dog and she loves anything she thinks she’s not supposed to have. 

Prayer answered. But Only after I’d 1. Given up 2. Been dramatic about it 3. Told my sister not to hook her baby on a $10 pacifier. 

Small things magnify in my life these days. 

More about the dog. 

She’s been accepting but wary of Little B from the beginning. As he’s grown more interesting, noisy, and movey, she’s grown to like him and learned how to be gentle with him. She’s his guardian and he adores her. His whole face lights up every time he sees Rebel. He  screeches with delight and wiggles all over. She sits down beside him and lets Little B pull on her fur. When she’s had enough she moves just out of his reach; he doesn’t mind and  continues joyous screech-growling at her. She’s an excellent babysitter -more of a distraction, because I don’t lave them alone together. I trust my dog near my child, but she is still a dog. I can’t read her mind or have an English language conversations with her (although I do try) so I play it safe.

And One Last Thing

Finally Blogger followed through with its threat to delete  all my followers. It also allowed me to add a follow button back to my page. If anyone is desperate to read my monologues or needs something to gossip about, you can follow me again.

*Night Changes by One Direction 

**just kidding. That actually never crossed my mind until this minute. It adds to the drama tho.  

Goodnight Moon

There’s a goodnight moon tonight, not the genial full moon but the moon with the cow jumping over it.  Except. There’s  no cow jumping over this moon.  The goodnight moon swings above the moody horizon.Things always happen when the moon is a cowering sliver buffeted by clouds. I should know to beware on these nights.

They start out peaceful. Very peaceful. Sleepy. Goodnight light and the red balloon. Goodnight little house. Goodnight nobody. Goodnight everybody.

Then comes the phone call. In Malawi I knew those night phone calls usually meant someone had died or was dying. Since I’ve been married middle of the night phone calls aren’t usually bad; 97% of the time it’s someone who’s hit the ditch and needs a winch or the RCMP waiting beside the road with an intoxicated driver’s SUV. But on these nights, the moody ones with a goodnight moon, the phone calls do carry sinister messages.  There’s a delirious dehydrated child who needs to go  to the hospital . A diabetic 20 who may be in serious medical distress or maybe just drunk.  A fire. A nephew who needs a place to sleep while his parents drive through a blizzard to find an ER. A missing mother. A violent teen. And tonight, the quavering call for help comes from a little one huddling at the sidelines of a domestic violence battle miles away, out of my (/our) reach. 

There’s no cow jumping over the moon for this baby girl. No quiet old lady whispering, “hush.” The old lady (sorry, Mom) would do anything to be whispering, “hush” to her right now. She’ll whisper her “hushes” extra lovingly next time she gets a chance, trying to delete the horror with a few nights of security and safety, green rooms and red balloons sock monkeys. 

The crisis is deescalated and the emotional scars on baby girl are deep and irreversible. They reflect onto my mother and me; they haunt the night , casting a sinister shadow on things normally safe and beautiful . Helplessly I hold my own baby tightly, waiting for the next horror that surely will occur. I try to convince myself it’s safe to relax;  I try to slow my racing pulse .  A sleepy baby smile and the goodnight stars whispering promises from their Creator calm me back to sleep while my heart breaks on repeat. And as always I pray for Jesus to stand by all the hurting children, everywhere, healing the wounds I can’t fix. 

Someone Else’s Baby

If you were someone else’s baby I’d say you needed a bath right now. 

You smell like the milk that dribbled from your mouth when you were half asleep this morning and still lingers in your onesie. You smell like baby barf that I couldn’t sleep quite wash from the fold of your little neck. You smell like autumn wind and maybe a little of dog. 

A ring of dirt sits under your chins, your hair is a little stiff where the dog licked it. There’s a tiny piece of green cattail laced into your red brown hair from me pulling you onto my lap to cuddle as I wove a basket. You have dirt between your tiny toes  because  your dad dipped them into a mound of cool sand . 

If you were someone else’s baby I’d be judging your mom right now  

But you’re my baby. 

Baths mean bedtime to you. So, although bath time, together with outside time and dad coming home from work time, is your favourite time of day, we’ll wait until bedtime when the chances of you getting dirty again are minimal to get you really clean. Right now I’ll squish you 10 more times before I get around to buckling you into your stroller. Then we’ll head back outside to get more wind blown and more dog kisses and a little layer of dust and sunshine on our skin. Because you’re not someone else’s baby.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

The Cranes came to say goodbye to me today, just before they left on their extended winter vacation. They say they won’t even be back for Christmas. To be honest, I thought they’d already gone. They’ve been pretty quiet the last few weeks, a change after their ubiquitous 5pm dramas all spring and summer. Their farewell was poignant and noisy. They landed in my bald browning meadow for a few minutes, updating me on their flight information and taunting Rebel the Dog. For a moment the dread of another long snowy winter swept through my veins and I wished I could join them on their graceful journey south. To fly off to a place with no winter only to return to this beautiful place when the sun is once again warm and the prairies and forests verdant, would the best of all the worlds. Then, with a majestic slapping of massive storm cloud blue wings and another round of raspy goodbyes, they were off. They flew a final circle above the yard and I with Little B and Rebel watched them disappear. 

I’m going to miss this weird couple. They’ve been here for everything this summer. Days before Little B was born they cackled from the air when Rebel tried to chase them and then settled back into the swamp to watch my heavy waiting body trudge down the road. They communicated to me through the quiet days of new motherhood. They must’ve been having their own babies right about then. They knew what it was like. They’re a dramatic pair. Life must have been a little stressful for them for a while because for weeks they had noisy arguments I could almost set my clock by. They went on daily flights across my yard from one slough to another. They were predictable when many things in my life weren’t. 

It seems a little early for even the cowardliest of birds to be leaving, so perhaps they are making some stops (to see relatives? to tour the marshes on the other side of the quarter?) along the way and forgot to inform me. Nevertheless, this feels like the beginning of the end. Summer is ebbing. The fields are browning. The weeds in my garden of weeds are dying. The sun is still warm on my face, but the evenings and nights have the whisper of winter in their breezes. @RobertFrost said it best. Nothing gold can stay.

 *poetic license was taken in the narration of this tale 

The Almond Milk Woman and Mother Intuition

I wasn’t prepared for the sheer amount of  people who want to talk to me about my baby when I’m in public with him. 90% of them are women around my mother or mother-in-law’s age who tell me that their children aren’t planning to have children or that they only have one grandchild and that grandchild lives two thousand kilometres away. All of them tell me how adorable and precious he is.  I already know this, of course, but I love hearing it just the same. There’s also a few men who like to talk to bébé. They say gruff things like “high buddy” or “this year’s model, eh.”  Big B finds these conversations amusing. He loves the “aww he’s with daddy” or “he looks just like you” comments he gets when he carries bébé  around.

Most of these people and conversations are forgettable and
similar, but a few stick in my brain. The Almond Milk Woman is one of them 

You are a good mother, she told me she when we met in the organic aisle in Superstore only a few weeks after Little B was born. We were standing in front of the coolers that held milk alternatives. More specifically we were both reaching for the almond milk. Her words tried to make my hormonal sleepy new mom brain tearful a little, but luckily i realized that Superstore wasn’t the place for that. You are a good mother even when you make mistakes or think you aren’t. Always trust your *mother intuition. You know what is best for your child. And then before she left she said, I usually make my own almond milk, but today I was lazy. Now I know it was because I was meant to speak to you. 

No one else has been quite this dramatic or full of advice. None of the others have told me they were meant to speak to [me.] My little judgey heart says that if I hadn’t been wearing my newborn in a linen sling and standing in front of the almond milk display in the natural foods aisle  Almond Milk Woman wouldn’t have deemed my level of crunchiness high enough for her to speak to. Nevertheless, I was happy that she did. And,  Almond Milk Lady, if you ever happen to read this, please know that, even though I don’t make my own almond milk like you think I should, my sourdough starter was rising on my counter at home as I spoke to you in Superstore and I have since started a kombucha journey. 

About mother intuition / parent intuition -I would love to know other parents’ thoughts on this topic. Is it legit ? Not a real thing ? One Mother I trust and love told me something similar not in this exact terminology but still about trusting my mother intuition, since I became a mother. My sissy passed on  something she’d read on this topic: a mother’s intuition is right 80% of the time. For intuition being just a feeling, 80 is a high percentage of correctness. Are you a believer in mother / parent / caregiver intuition? Do you have experiences where your intuition has been right? -or wrong ? 

VBS

 

Vacation Bible School

We’re now on the VBS committee. An ambitious gym building project at the school complicates tradition / habit so we had to host VBS at church this year. The guys hauled in swing sets and play houses and soccer nets to entertain the children at recess. We brainstormed to create 3 large classes out of one big open space and banished one group to the too-small nursery. Everything was labour intensive but it also worked better than expected. Still, we spent a lot of time at church organizing, facilitating, cleaning, and just being there to do whatever needed to be done and help out with any kid drama such as gravel scrapes and forgotten lunches .

Here’s how it went:

One class had an usually large amount of kids so I got to spend some time with them several days. It made me feel like a school teacher again.                                    Frisbees on the roof every day. Children on the roof, too suddenly. 

The back row of boys cutting up, singing crazy, their favourite song the duck song. Bébé B is enthralled. They like him too. 

No throwing rocks near the church windows. no throwing rocks full stop.

Say kind things. The group of preteen boys I worked with a couple days seems to have forgotten what those are. The girls conversely are full of over the top compliments they don’t actually mean.       

Beading. Macrame. Hot gluing.                       

Painting. Signs at the road, verses, something pretty for the walls.      

Flower arranging. Foraging. Everything looks like autumn. 
Crafting with the big boys. There’s so many 11 and 12 year olds this year. Their crafting skills are above par. Otherwise they act 5 but with 15 vocabularies. Little B watches in awe. As do I. 
Food. Juice boxes. Chatting with the snack ladies every day. Someone always asking to hold bébé, giving me a couple minutes to be more efficient. 

Killing time but always busy. 

Picking up “my” girl (Lexus) every day. She is such a joyful sweet child. 

So many tables and chairs and glue sticks and pencil crayons and a hundred or more pairs of scissors. 

Muffins from Paula, buns from  Val, supper from Paula and her girls, kombucha scoby from Heidy, a housewarming snake plant for my entrance from Paula. Cucumbers and another housewarming gift from Heidy . Kittens from Tiffany.  Generosity abounds. 

Pizza party to celebrate the last day. Pop pizza Caesar salad ice-cream. Food of champions. The children are all joyful and foodfull and some are a little sad that it’s all over. 

The program is great. The silent skit of the first and second graders. The only half wild Only a Boy Named David and If You’re Happy and You Know It. The hauntingly harmonized God Makes a Lot From a Little. BTT gets to do the thanking and do the closing praying. 

The after party is long and exhausting because we are in charge of making sure everyone gets fed and then we  have to stay until the end to clean up. 

Then we go home and rehabilitate our new kittens and my sister and her husband come and we go to the lake and drink ice coffee and cook over the fire and talk a lot about Airbnb and babies and sleep. 

 

Another Summer of Bittersweet, But Different

It’s been five years since the original summer of bittersweet. I am not the person I was that summer; loss, marriage, time and now motherhood have changed me. 

The bitterness that started one late spring afternoon in 2017 as I sat in the ditch of a lonely Saskatchewan highway haunted me for long. It still can when I give it power. It’s especially real at this time of year, the time when everything went down. 

The summer of 2022 has its own sets of bitterness and goodness, possibly bringing the bittersweet into higher relief  than recent  years. I’ve relived the intensity of emotions that crammed into the weeks before and after our wedding. There was so much tragedy happening to people I knew that summer, not only to me, but, at the time, my pain was I all I saw.

This summer there was the bitter again.  The days of shuttling my infant through hospital hallways, both of us dreading the next medical procedure or bad news from a doctor. That’s the bitter. The long lonely hospital nights. I despaired of ever finding the sweet again. Those days passed and are mostly just something I complain about now. I’m not good at handling the bitter parts of life. It’s easy to be happy, to smile, to praise when the bitter is over and I’m sitting on the rocks at the lake cuddling my contended 3 month old and dangling my feet in the icy waves. But on the hard days when Bébé was being poked by careless nurses, when a doctor wasn’t  careful with my newborn, when i face any hard thing I dissolved into an angry mess. In hard times my entitledness fully lives these song lyrics: “I was sure by now, God, You would have reached down And wiped our tears away Stepped in and saved the day. But once again I say, A-men, and it's still raining” * When things get better and they inevitably and unexpectedly (not the way I imagine) do, I wonder why I can’t live the rest of the song: “And though my heart is torn, I will praise You in this storm.”* 

Now there is the sweet. When I’m rocking my precious child in the cool breeze wafting in on the sunset and drinking Agua Fresca or iced coffee with my husband, that’s the sweet. I want to freeze this moment and replay it infinitely on repeat. This is your cue to gag, my unsappy people. There’s so much more good. A sunset walk with my puppy and my child, days at the lake with BTTs family, fresh garden produce, sunshine, having coffee with the neighbors. Many days have felt too good to be true. 

*Praise You in This Storm by Casting Crowns

Almost Chimichurri

 Almost Chimichurri  

a sauce, a marinade, a sandwich spread

Ingredients:

 •Handful of fresh herbs

       Parsley

       Basil

       Oregano

       Dill

       Chives 

•A few over ripe cherry tomatoes. 

•small spoonful minced garlic 

•salt and pepper

•olive oil 

•thawed chicken breasts or thighs 

directions / comments 

•Using a sharp knife or herb chopper mince herbs into small pieces. Incorporate garlic. Crush the tomatoes into the herbs with a sharp knife. Sprinkle with salt -use enough to bring out the herb flavour. This should look something like:

•Rub the mixture onto chicken. Drizzle with olive oil. This should look something like: 

•Grill slowly over medium heat until internal temperature reaches 165•F. We’ve been using baking stones on our grill and love that they keep meat from drying out during the grilling process. Unfortunately I forgot to take the following photo should’ve been the chicken once it was cooked. 

•Once the chicken is cooked remove it from the grill and let it rest for a couple minutes before serving. 

•Eat the chicken. If you have some of the herb mixture leftover use it as a dipping sauce for the chicken or you can just use bbq sauce or your favourite dipping sauce . Recently I like to top everything with sautéed onions, sweet peppers and jalapeños and that is how we’ve eaten this chicken as well. 

•For a full meal Serve with a carrot / sweet potato / Irish potato bake (airfrying is a faster crispier option) and a quick Caesar salad (our boring favourite salad). These have  been  my go to easy sides recently. Garlic bread can be added as well. 

•The following day we make leftover chicken into a sandwich for a quick packed or home lunch: sour dough bread, garden lettuce, tomatoes and onion, New Bothwell cheese. Try using the sauce for a bright pop of flavour. 

the Good Things

The Good Things 

I feel like I’ve been living a nightmare since last week Wednesday. Find the good things, BTT says. Of course, he is one of them. Here are more of the good things. 

The prayers a lot of people are praying. I know people are, they’ve told me that. And these prayers are being answered. Also. @grandmamavis is such a prayer warrior. 

All the new things Bébé B is learning even in a hospital room tethered to an IV machine. 

The all’s right with the world feeling when BTT and Bébé B and I all fall asleep under the same roof. 

Hope that treatment plans will be worked out and we’ll be home soon. This hope has been very tenuous at times; tonight it’s stronger. 

The many people I’ve met these last nightmarish 1.5 weeks. Sometimes i see them for only minutes. Sometimes we don’t exchange any pleasantries. I am not a people person so being forced to come into contact with so many strangers is overwhelming. Still, I like the times when  I find out how many grandchildren someone has or the names of someone’s kids or why someone regrets choosing the job they did or why someone loves their job or about someone’s wife’s pregnancy complications or where someone grew up or who knows someone who shares my baby’s name. I like finding relatable things about the strangers. 

The woman smoking under the No Smoking sign outside the hospital door who made my day with her uplifting comment, “you look snazzy in green.”

Our local hospital supports and advocates cosleeping even though the big city one doesn’t as we found out abruptly and sleepily at 2am. 

The sacrifices people have made so our child could receive the care he needs. Specifically

1 . The man who “has a thousand children” (his coworker’s words) who stayed at work late to care for Bébé B. He probably skipped having supper with his wife and all his kids to help us, BTT pointed out. Really it was his SO and 1000 children who made most of the sacrifice.  

2 . That unnamed child somewhere in Regina General who is still waiting because bébé B received the IV line meant for him. Our child was somehow prioritized over someone else’s child and we are so grateful. My heart is also hurting for the child and the child’s parents who are still waiting. 

This child who makes us so joyful in hard times. His epic whole-face smiles and his sparkly blue blue eyes. His cuddly chubby body cuddled against my shoulder. His conversations. (is he always going to be this talkative?)  The fact that two months in we still argue sometimes about who gets to hold him.

One Year Later 

I’m posting this on Canada Day, remembering my July 1st post from last year.  It’s been another Canada Day filled with heart ache and mixed emotions across my country. Canada, or rather Canadians, have had a rough couple years. We’re struggling to reconcile our differing opinions on how our country should function through the pandemic and into the future. We’re struggling to respectfully acknowledge and mourn a terrible past, the horrific things our country as we know it today was built upon and move forward. The words of our national anthem ring truer than ever tonight, God, keep our land. God, keep our people. 

A Revelation

A Revelation

The Sermonette I wrote to myself tonight.

“casting all your care upon him; 
for he careth for you.” 1Peter‬ ‭5:7‬

No one (but me) ever talks about their least favourite verse in the Bible. Because so many others love this verse I’ve only thought of it as a cliche and never as words that could be meaningful to me.  I’ve never stopped to think about the meaning of it. Possibly the main reason I’ve avoided thinking about casting my care on anyone else but myself is that I love to carry my cares around alone feeling all proud of my broad shoulders.

Week 8.

It’s hard to write about now. 

Everything is visceral and intense. 

The emotions, bigger and better and more complicated than I imagined. 

The actions. Hours and hours of breast feeding. The many is-he-still-breathing checks I perform in my newmom paranoia. 

The state of being. No being alone. ever. Semi exhausted but also motivated and euphoric when it comes to the small human. 

The secrecy. Eavesdropping on BébéB having deep conversations with his daddy. Keeping the secrets he shares with me during his 4am diaper changes. 

The feelings. So much delight in BébéB’s smiles and coos. So much excitement and pride in when he learns new things. So much love when I look into his blue blue eyes and see them crinkle in a smile. 

The ways my self and my life have metamorphosed in the last two months: not at all but also completely. 

The Village

It takes a village to raise a child, the old proverb goes. Our baby isn’t even here yet, but already they have their proverbial village. 

“ I think the Ukrainians are more excited about our baby than [the Mennonites.]“ my husband has said to me more than once. He should know. His friends and customers, many of them grandparents by now, have faithfully asked about his pregnant wife and unborn baby in the last few months and love to share their own experiences with being parents.  Lately some of them have been messaging and calling ostensibly for legitimate reasons, but mostly to ask, “You daddy yet?” 

The people who own and run local establishments and know us by sight or possibly reputation, are full of questions about due dates and health and are effusive in their well wishes. Random strangers in stores and restaurants hug me and congratulate me. Most of them don’t do the hugging part. One adorable old woman in Superstore told me, “you are carrying a precious baby boy.” We’re impatient to find out if she’s right or wrong about that. 

The ladiesatchurch are very good at asking, “how many more weeks?” and “are you all ready?” Some of them have bits of advice for me. Buy gripe water before baby is born. Make sure you have enough blankets; it’s summer and they’ll get dirty quickly if you spend time outside. You need a thermometer for those middle of the night tiny baby fevers that can cause so much worry ! they say. 

There are different women from the community who call me regularly to see if I’m okay and ask how big my bump is. “You will be a good mom,” they tell me. One raised 8 children and the other has been a mom to many more than that. They have the mothering wisdom of years and their concern for me comforts and encourages me. 

All of these people are beyond our immediate circle of family and friends. In this group we have mothers (and fathers) who give us things for Hermit (including advice) and tell us things we need to know and share stories about when we were born. We have excited siblings including the little boy who is actually a teenagers and often asks, “is Hermit here yet?” and the sisters who listen to me talk about being pregnant like it’s the only possible conversation topic and the brothers who give my husband joking advice about being a dad. We have friends from nearby and far away who put on the most delicious baby shower and/or give us lovely gifts and/or share things they’ve learned about having a baby and being new parents in the 2020s. 

You are part of our village, cliche as this sounds. I am awed and blessed by the sheer amount of people who care about us and our child. Many women do not have supports of any kind around them through pregnancy, birth and parenting, but I am surrounded by love and support. I realize how blessed I am. 

La Vie

The dog sleeps soundly on the floor beside me.

The husband rushes off to help someone, and then someone else, and then someone else.

The bébé and I have conversations about when he’s going to come meet us. He says 4 more weeks if we’re lucky; I try to persuade him that anytime now is good.

The snow silently melts a little more, while The mud becomes muddier

The boy calls once, twice, sometimes 3 times to say hello, to vent, to beg to come over, to talk to the dog.

The sky lights up with auroras, and, tho I see it for a minute and marvel and make my husband come admire, mostly I just asleep under the spell of their majesty.

The husky and I see animal tracks wherever we walk. The fields are full of them, the hedgerows even more. One set of tracks could really only be from a bear (I know, Because of Google.) I now believe the brothers in law who say they’ve seen bears nearby.

The dirt in my green house shoots joyful tiny seedlings up toward the light. 

The tow trucks run a little less often than they used to, but still very often. People still hit bison, jump snow banks and roll vehicles. Someone’s neighbor children lock the keys in their vehicle and run away yelling “April Fools.” Someone’s car dies necessitating an evening haul to Yorkton. Someone gets fed up with their family using their broken down vehicle as a garbage receptacle necessary another evening haul to Yorkton. 

The weekend approaches, is here. Sour dough buns rise on the counter. Saturday dawns quiet (no work calls yet !) I think about working on whittling down my todo list. My husband actually does work on his. La vie continues. 

Who Lives Here ?

Who Lives Here: a few of the towns / areas I’ve been so far this year identified by descriptions of the people who live in them. 

Who lives here ? The people who like perfect streets and tidy ugly appartement complexes. The ones who thrive with a little bit of everything handy in an orderly fashion. Traditionalists who are learning to push boundaries, who believe that anything can be accomplished if you work hard enough. The ones who like a nice paved parking lot to set their eclectic second hand stores on, especially if it’s near a Tim Hortons. The ones who use their land to their advantage, to build bigger things with more  cement, to buy and sell on a whim, to make themselves better people. 

Who lives here ? The ones who want adventure, and novelty and beauty. They’re the ones who seek prestige and then self medicate with cocktails of mind altering drugs when they don’t find it. The ones who live their lives among a grandeur that sparks leaps of imagination. The ones who are willing to contend with weird weather patterns to live in the country of their dreams. The ones who identify with the land surrounding them, who delight in being swallowed by its hugeness and are slaves to its drama. 

And how about here -who lives here ? The hard working ones, who aren’t afraid of dust and dirt and long long days. The ones who crave aloneness and space. The ones who appreciate a ubiquitous form of beauty broken by the most spectacular skies. The peoples who would die of hunger without their daily dose of small town gossip. The only ones who are strong enough to deal with the wiles of the most drastic weather patterns -hails, droughts, winds, blizzards and, in between these all, one or two scorching weeks of summer. The people who identify with the land they live on, who live from it and grow from it and are at its fickle mercy.