This Land

This house, I know is ours. We’ve paid for every piece that’s gone into it. We’ve built so much of it ourselves. But this land we set our house on, i have a complicated relationship to our land. How can we own this —This expanse of prairie. This strip of clear air with a window to the stars. This wedge of moonlight. This meadow of snow drifts. This stand of trees, and that one. This wood pecker destroying this old wooden hydro pole. How can a human own nature ? Isn’t that God’s thing ?

The incongruity of my name on the title of land taken away from other people doesn’t escape me. There’s a real irony about me as a Mennonite woman owning this land in this country. This land has been fought over at great cost to the original inhabitants. My people had their lifestyle upended and were chased out of  Europe right around the time the First Nations people were having similar but more horrific experiences in Canada. Did my ancestors understand that their displacement displaced others ? Did they realize the irony in them being chased from their homes in Europe straight into the homes others had been recently chased from in Canada ? I do know that their stance against war, fighting and government involvement will have kept them from being an active part in chasing the First Nations people from their lands. I do not know how much they knew of what was going on in Canada before they arrived. This was several generations ago; there’s no one left to ask.  I only see from the benefit of over hundred years of hindsight and Canada’s true history finally coming to light that my ancestors inadvertently benefited from others’ misfortunes. Generational Guilt.

Land ownership, especially in this country is full of ambiguity. Until we owned land ourselves I didn’t think much about this. Now I can’t unthink it. I often wonder about the people who lived here a couple hundred years ago. Did they have a fire ring near the place where mine is today ? Did they hunt deer, moose grazing in same meadow they graze in today ? Did their babies grow up under this same patch of stars ? What did their life look like before roads and cars and ugly Europeans? Did they feel as secure and happy as I do ? What things did the women of that day worry about? Did a tiny human learning to stagger from one parent to another bring them the same delight it brings me ? How did it get to be me raising my child on this peaceful beautiful bit of land ?

Mary and Me

Fully a month after Christmas and here’s me still thinking about Mary, a major character in the Christmas story. I think it’s because we had one final Christmas gathering last weekend and my dad read the Christmas story. The phrase about Mary pondering all the things really caught my attention. I thought I had a momentous year with the birth of my baby boy and so many other more minor but still major events and happenings. Compared to the year Mary had when her first child was born, however, my life seems very manageable.

Mary’s life, the year Jesus was born:

 -an engagement (to Joseph of course. They’d been friends for years; but still the proposal had been a surprise.) 
-then something stranger: an angel visitor with an unbelievable message that took her days, months, a lifetime to process. 
-ostracized by all the people who didn’t believe her unbelievable story about where her baby was coming from (those weeks when Joseph was considering breaking off their engagement were especially torturous.)  
-then one day the first strange and miraculous movement of a super human baby insider her and everything started to feel more real and doable
-a long trip with her fiancé and his family to their home village (so many distant family members she had to meet when all she wanted to do was sleep. In a real bed. Not. A. Pile. Of. Hay.) 
-the trauma of giving birth in a barn 
-then finally meeting the newborn that immediately changed the whole world, not just her world. (She had to share her baby with everyone from the very beginning. How hard must that have been for her protective first time mom heart?!)

Mary kept these things and pondered them in her heart. Everyone else was talking about them: the neighbours were gossiping about her and Joseph, the shepherds were telling everyone they met about this Baby, the Saviour, and the angels and their amazing song. The wisemen asked so many people where to find this Little King that they accidentally alerted a jealous murderer to the birth of this baby King. Old people were waiting in the temple to meet the Baby.

 It must have felt to Mary like everyone was talking about her and her baby, and no one understood what she was going through. She had no choice but to quietly process everything internally, to ponder these things in her heart on top of second guessing how to mother a Holy Child, how to share Him with everyone in the world, how to cherish every single smile, giggle, silly game before He grows up……………………

Disclaimers. I took a lot of poetic license with the Christmas story and humanized it to the point where it is relatable for me.  No irreverence is intended. 

 

Janvier Hurts

Janvier hurts. While I spend the whole day giggling with my 8 month old or if we’re not giggling he’s being clever or cuddly, January hurts. 

For little things: it’s post holidays, post all the parties, what do we cook now that we don’t cook Christmas food. It’s the air stings my face when I go outside and the snowy fields don’t hold the magic of angels singing I could easily imagine 2 weeks ago. It’s day 5 of fog, and, yes, the heavy layer of frost on everything is beautiful, but give me clear skies already. It’s unexciting planning meetings for all the winter responsibilities we could do without -crafts with the kids and Bible study for the whole congregation.

It’s bigger things. It’s Sissy going back to BC when we all are so used to her being here. She says families are meant to spread out, but we kind of disagree. It’s all the brothers drama all the time that we want to avoid, but also spectate on because it keeps life interesting.

There’s scary things. The man on drugs who really could’ve frozen in his vehicle just down the road from our house but amazingly didn’t. It’s Gun shots fired in the night near where we were winching a car out of the ditch at Keeseekoose, the popo coming to find out if we’d seen the “guy with the gun, wearing a plaid jacket.”  Although he must’ve been nearby, we didn’t see him. 24 hours later we’re still saying dramatically to each other “what if.” And then 48 hours later I finally think to think, “what hurt made this human want to hurt other humans to this extent?”

There’s so many hard things happening around us, more than to us right at this minute. There’s hurting people, hurting children. There’s so much hurt this Janvier, every Janvier, every month, every day, every year. 

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.