Images of Home: My Aunt's House {Souvenir Street}

Memories and perceptions in one's youth are so formative and enduring. The cherry cake the neighbours served at a party, which later made me quite ill, has nurtured in me a dislike of the little red fruit to this day. The rock music my parents played around the house in my earliest years still hits my ear with fond familiarity, despite having long developed my own musical tastes. And the places I visited throughout my childhood are now blanketed in an impression, formed from fragmented memories, images, smells and sounds. My aunt's house, a place visited in sporatic, whirlwind stays, was blanketed in . . . magic.

To my little girl eyes, it was a house surrounded by both wonder and mystery. An old gray stone victorian in Montreal's downtown made it exciting regardless of it's inside. Yet it was the inside, with it's trove of treasures that made me so eager to be a part of mom's journeys there. I anticipated visits with both excitement, and anxiety. Excitement because my aunt's was a study in clustered collections and colourful curiosities. Nothing was off limits. We were permitted to explore, and touch. Shelves lined with little bobbles. Petrushka dolls waiting to be opened. An old gumball machine, that, though brimming with coloured balls when we were kids, became mysteriously empty once we hit teenagehood. Large hanging plants, top lit by beautiful skilights. Skittery cats, creeping out from under beds and behind desk chairs. Mexican morraca's and tambourines. A basketball net by the entry. High, molded ceilings which made me feel so small. Walls covered in precious scraps; old pictures, cherished notes and cards, news articles. And books. Soooooo many books. And not just boring old books with no pictures, but coffee table books made to catch the eye with deliciously vivid photography. This is a place where there is room for everything, and all things are given room.

Any anxiety I felt over impending visits came from an awareness that her's was an adult house. One were little people rarely trespassed, thus making it feel a little alien to me and my siblings. It held things which, though benign to adults with their muted imaginations, became horrifying after a bit of childish meditation under the cover of darkness. I remember a poster of a cherub who's notched arrow was pointed out at the room. When our beds were made up on the floor that night, I didn't want to take my eyes off that arrow lest it be loosed on us. A wrought iron mask that had been implanted in a wicker vase full of pennies was removed after I had nightmares over it, and refused to even pass it by. An adult would see it for what it was; molded metal, but to a child it was a demon, waiting to pounce on penny-thieves. And let me impress upon you the necessity of retrieving said pennies, as they were much needed in the gumball machine upstairs.

Now, as an adult in an adult house everything has become familiar, rather than enticingly exoctic. I realize now that much of what I see in my aunt's home has been collected in love over many years. I once took it all for granted, but I know now that it was gathered bit by precious bit. Nothing truly valuable in and of itself, but each item holding a memory, and a story. And it is this that has affected me. I have come to see that houses with character are the ones I enter and never want to leave because it feels like they have introduced themselves to me and want me to stay. Houses filled with expensive items, isolated and untouchable leave no impression at all. Or if they do, it is this: come in if you must, but don't touch, and don't stay long. If we have to live in houses on this earth, shouldn't they be welcoming? Welcome . . .

What little people leave behind

As I tucked myself into bed last night something caught my attention. A tiny motorcycle sihouetted against the night sky. An unlikely place for a motorcycle, and yet . . . the right place for a motorcycle because it was placed there by a little boy who has a passion for precariously positioning his treasured possessions.

I turned to Aidan with a lump in my throat. "Look. They leave their mark on this place, don't they?"

Children imprint themselves upon your life. Some of their imprints are loud and obvious. But some are merely tiny, residual traces of themselves they leave behind to be happened upon. In my case, these discoveries often make me want to cry. Sometimes, when you are with a person, the preciousness of their presence is lost on you because you are in the moment with them, seeing and touching in living colour. But when they are not with you, and only their half-empty mug of tea and rumpled pillow are left behind, your heart aches for them.

Here are some of the ways my children have marked our home, leaving behind echoes of their daily activities. Marks which, when discovered in the quiet hours, stir up my heart, if only because when when my little ones are tucked quietly in bed, these small evidences are all that remain of them until they awaken again:


This lamp never manages to look dignified. The shade is always unhooked. It has begun to look more familiar that way.


There is a Psalm that says; "The high standing forest of trees He strips bare..." That is the effect my kids have had on my houseplants. I recently found the livingroom floor littered with leaves. The plant, from which they had been plucked, looked so pathetic, it's naked stems poking out from it as though it were having a very bad hair day. Though healing, it remains scarred.


I only discovered this little gem a few months ago. When I did, I was so delighted by the unexpectedness of it. Caelah must have snuck one of her window markers into the car sometime after her last birthday and sketched out a tiny little stick-man up in the top corner of the car window. I love that it has been there for so long, smiling out at the world as we drive by.


Caelah also left her mark on the car in a more indelible way. I remember her asking me how to spell "car" one day as we drove to the library. What I didn't know was that she was practicing her writing skills in ink on the car upholstery.


And of course, some are temporary marks, left by necessity: piles of coats for every kind of weather, and elastics criss-crossing every drawer that may contain tiny bits for eager hands to snatch and scatter.


My house has been marked by my kids, but so have I. And though plants heal, and chalk washes away, my very being will always be imprinted by these days of impromptu creativity and wide-eyed discovery.

Little sister . . .

. . . is engaged!

Ceiling Fan Blues

I just heard the most devastating news: We need a ceiling fan. No one warned me. No one even hinted at the possibility. But it seems that it had been a foregone conclusion form the beginning, with only me obliviously unawares of the impending blemish on the house. A two-story livingroom, it seems, needs a fan to distribute air into the upper parts of the house. Oh, how badly I took this news...

For years, I have seen designers on those home reno shows shudder at the ceiling fans they find in people's homes. The first thing they all do is tear them from the wall. They do it with such glee that I am left to assume they stomp and spit on it off camera. In any case, such displays have given me the strong message that ceiling fans cannot be redeemed and that their tackiness outweighs their functionality by a long shot.

I took to the internet with a mission. Find a nice ceiling fan. Find nice ceiling fan. Find a nice ceiling fan. But I made the mistake of typing in, "Trendy Ceiling Fans"--and was assaulted by the most bizaar and unattractive lighting fixtures I have ever seen:

OR

I finally just looked at the Home Depot site, and scrolled through the endless fans they had on display. And I began to have some hope. Ceiling fan engineers (?) have been doing their homework. Maybe they got tired of seeing their hard work mocked and trampled on reno shows. Now, most ceiling fans are more lighting with less fan.
I do hope that I can find one that suits me.

FIXTURE FOLLOW-UP:
We just might be buying those taps from the last post. It turns out that Aidan's brother can get us a HUGE discount. And I am more desirous of them than ever now that a lighting sale at Canadian Tire yielded these for our bathroom:

Matching! Matching! Matching!

They get you every time: Lessons from tub shopping

The inside scoop on plumbing fixtures salesmen: They show you a tub that you fall in love with, for a price that fits well. But then they show you the faucet set that would compliment the tub. And you fall in love with it too. In fact, you fall even more deeply in love with the faucets because they are pretty and shiny, and come in sets that match your tub to your sink to your shower, and your feminine heart flutters at the concept of a "matching" bathroom, so you begin hatching mental plans to match the master bathroom to the main bathroom to the powder room to the kitchen . . .

Once they are certain your heart is invested-- they do this by watching the wife's facial expressions closely-- they chalk up the price list, and hand it across the desk. This is what you see:
Roman tub-----$600
Tub faucets-----$700

WHAT?!!!!!!!!!!!!

Aidan had his poker face on so as to disguise his astonishment, and I, mercifully, didn't look at the list until we left the store. In this way we avoided an embarrassingly conspicuous reaction. But wow! What they really do in the business is sell you a tub to accessorize your faucets. And the frustrating thing is they did get to me. I love the faucets. I want the faucets. I feel I need the faucets. But it is clear that I can not have the faucets. Hear my heart break.

Just a few days ago my brother-in-law asked me my opinion on faucets, and I laughed; "I'm not going to get emotional about sink fixtures. Just give me a $20 collection to look at and I will pick the nicest one." Here I am, three days later, in mourning over the Town Square Collection.
I am nearly a marketer's dream. They snare me emotionally, but sadly for them, I haven't the funds to act on it.

Mud!

A spring day, if ever I saw one. The sky was a crisp blue, and the smell of melt was in the air. (I have recently been finding myself obsessively checking my kids' diapers, only to realize that the offending odour is coming from a winter's worth of burried dog doo-doo lying freshly exposed on the street.) Chalking up the smell as an intrinsic part of the wonder of spring, we decided that a BBQ was in good order.

We carefully packed the car FULL of equipment and food and headed off to the country. Having made a mental note of what a lot full of loose soil and melting snow would look like, I had been proactive in my pursuit of minimal mud mess. Caelah would be wearing brand new wet pants pulled snuggly over her rain boots. And Elijah would be wearing his full snowsuit, despite the mild weather. I figured that if they were covered from head to toe in fabric of some sort, they would remain clean, despite the inevitable superficial damage. Did my plan succeed, you ask? Oh, dear me no. A tale in pictures:Within one minute of pulling up to the house, Caelah, Connor and Elijah had found the mud pit behind the house and gotten to work. They were in up to their knees in seconds. And my darling girl had managed to smear a wad of mud all up one side of her face.Frozen, after an hour of mudplay, the kiddos stripped off their socks, which had managed to be caked in mud despite having been tucked inside rain boots, which had, in turn, been tucked under rain pants, and they toasted their toes by the stove.However, despite the all of the precautions taken to keep out the mud, one thing was left unaccounted for--little accidents. Chilled and excited, Caelah didn't quite make it to the "bathroom" in time. And since no extra clothing had been brought, she was given Uncle Connors pyjama bottoms, Grandpa's work socks, and Grammie's sneakers to wear. She wore them proudly.And just because this is one of the cutest things I have seen in a long while, please have a side view of the motley outfit. Happy, mucky mud days.

Walls

The walls are going up. As this process is taking place, I have suffering through deja-vu. The uncomfortable sense that things look way to small has been revisting me when I walk around the second floor. I know better by now. I have learned to patiently wait for the walls to be up completely before making a final judgment. I think, however, that it will take some beds set up in each room this time for me to be fully comfortable with the space.

For my vertigo-prone friends, you see that plank that stretches across the gap at the top of the stairs? That is the boys' attempt at a "safety rail." Unfortunately, they had little 2-foot tall people in mind when they built it.

A sermon. An analogy. And a victory.

A sermon . . .
For the past few weeks my pastor has been trying to do justice to the subject of conquering sin. Big job. His heart's desire is for his flock to understand that sin can be conquered. But that it not a mystical experience. It is, rather, a daily fight. He first read from Hebrews 12, forcefully hammering home that sin MUST be conquered. That there is no excuse for complacency. His sermon was met with some discomfort. Some members of the congregation felt like they had been slapped. But me, and my purge-happy tendencies, loved the verbal kick-in-the-pants.
This past week my pastor tried again. "I didn't want you all to come away without hope." And so he reread the passage, and proceeded to reinforce a growing conviction in my heart: To conqueur sin is to be determined to break free. It is a conscious decision, that must be followed up with actions. Easier said than done . . .

An analogy . . .
"Throw off everything that hinders..."(Hebrews 12:1) While he spoke I felt like I was cliff jumping. Can you all picture yourself at the top of a 60-foot cliff? The analogy was readily available to me, since I have had extensive experience with 60-foot cliffs. (For the less adventurous, try picturing 20 feet. Still high enough for you to get the picture.) What you feel at the very top of a lakeside cliff is a great tension between the desire to jump-- to fully submit to the pull of the water below, feeling the powerful rush of air as you fall-- and the desire to keep rock solidly beneath your feet. You can stand there for five, ten, fifteen minutes trying to will yourself to JUST JUMP.
And then you do jump. It is a moment where you bust through your wall of fear and act completely irrationally. And you fall, fall, fall---Wham! You break the surface of the water, and despite any pain that may follow from the impact, your veins are pumping with the thrill of victory and accomplishment.

So, yeah, that's how I feel about my battle with sin. Leaving the cliff is doing something about my sin. But that something takes monumental effort. That is the nature of beginnings. Just initiating some movement is incredibly hard. But once you do, the blessings become apparent, and they help sustain and encourage the forward movement. (Or downward movement, as my analogy better illustrates.)

Can you feel the tension? Does this resonate with you? When you have been strolling along comfortably in your life, and you are suddenly made aware of some sin. It tends to become more and more and more apparent. Every sermon convicts you. Every comment seems to strike you. And every glance seems accusitory. Your conscience becomes smitten more and more sharply. But as uncomfortable as all of this is, you are aware that making a change is going to be equally as uncomfortable. To do nothing, however, is to never find peace. You will always long to be nearer to God.

A victory . . .
We must jump. And the jump comes with deep deep rewards. I want to share a personal jump that has resulted in much joy. This is what my cliff ledge was composed of: lots of good books from the library, all of which I was eager to read, and all of which would have transported me to a fictionary world, serving as an escape from reality. There were episodes of the Gilmore Girls to watch, or some other television show, empty of meaningful content, but requiring passive attention. And lots of materials to help me indulge in creativity. This, to me, was a most appealing environment, filled with things I love to do. However, most notably absent, are my children and my duties to them.
This is what the jump looked like, when it came: All the books were returned to the library. The Gilmore Girls episodes have remained untouched. And the craft supplies have been religated to naptime.
The rewards have looked and sounded like this: Pillow fights, airplane rides, wrestling, giggles and glee, lots of 'I love you mommy's', a deeper friendship between my two eldest, progress in potty training, deeper God talks with my little people, and a more intimate awareness of who each of my children are. I am falling inlove with them. These rewards will surely sustain me.

And yet I know that it isn't so simple. I will have to wake every morning with fresh resolve and a determination to set aside my natural inclinations, in order that a might choose those things which are more excellent. The fact that I have revisited these ideas over and over again with you through this blog indicates my ongoing struggle. But also attests to God's unfailing attentiveness to us. He is steadfast at His potter's wheel, molding us into better likenesses of his son. The cliff will always try to root me into immobility, like a giant magnet, but because I have the power of the Spirit at my disposal, I will keep making that jump over and over again. Ever higher. Ever more rewarding.

Quick house update

There has been little to no movement on the house all winter.

A) Weather. It's TOO cold to work. The upstairs windows have been delivered, but the boys haven't been able to install them, lest they freeze themselves stiff, or lose some fingers to frostbite. And the frustrating thing is that the house will not keep the cold out until the windows are in. So the only workable space is in the basement. And working on the basemnet doesn't bring the move in date any closer.
B) Other priorities. We haven't been able to get anyone out to help. I think I was a bit naive. I assumed we would have lots of help. I figured it would be easy to get a work crew together-- a real testosterone-fest. But no. It doesn't help that Aidan has a hard time asking for help either.
C) Sickness. It's just that time of year. So even the few people that we do have available to us have been in and out of the flu or colds.

So, we aren't getting anywhere fast. And I am getting antsy. Hopefully, come spring, that will change.

A few good pictures

How low can he go?Hallelujah snowman?

Sunlit baby:

It's a girl thing:I can't get enough of flower shots. Yeah, yeah, their easy. So what?!

Cane Toads

I've been on a documentary kick. It's one of the only ways, I could think of, from which to glean tidbits of semi-useful knowledge in a short period of time. I've been learning of the one-child policy in China, the Indian Bhopal incident, a short history of the Maya, (shudder). And then came the Cane Toads . . .

The back of the box reads as follows:

A magically sustained work that is, at once, a tribute to toad resiliency and a cry to wipe the ugly little beggars off the face of the Earth. -Dallas Times Herald

I also read somewhere that if Monty Python were ever to produce a documentary, it would look a lot like this. How could I resist? I so wasn't disappointed.

Perhaps it was the fact that it was filmed in the 80's. Or perhaps it had everything to do with being an Australian-produced gem, but the entire thing had an air of the caricaturesque, (my word). At most, two minutes of serious commentary would be maintained, only to disintegrate into absurd interviews with the most zany people imaginable. For example, the film was composed of two factions: toad lovers and toad haters. The toad hating camp yielded a gentleman who proceeded to go tearing through the countryside at night spearing toads after his exotic pet cat was poisoned to death by one. Another described, in great detail, and with a severe stutter, the damage he could inflict with his piece of metal pipe. Another still, actually admitted to habitually veering back and forth across highways in order to squash as many of the toads as he could under the wheels of his VW camper. (This last was accompanied by incriminating footage.)

The pro-toad camp was composed of individuals no less amusing, if perhaps, a bit more disturbing. An elderly couple waxed and waned about the joys of sitting out in the backyard with their toads, feeding them cat food and having them hop all over their toes. While another woman recounted how her two daughter once adopted a pair of toads as pets, and would dress them in dolls clothes and throw them tea parties. "The most contented little dollies, they were-- but just SO ugly." Have I mentioned yet that these Cane Toads are roughly the size of a cat?

And I would be remiss in omitting to share the lyrics of one of the background tracks. This particular one was crooned in much the same style as a Sinatra ballad;

"If anyone could ever love a Cane Toad
It would have to be another Came Toad.
'Cause if anyone could ever love a Cane Toad
They'd have to love him warts and all."

This is a plug. If you need a laugh, or a distraction, or have nothing else to do with three-quarters of an hour, have a look: Cane Toads: An Unnatural History."

Talk to yourself. Don't allow your self to talk to you.

We all carry our sins like a burden on our backs. Depending on the season of life, different sins make themselves more evident in our hearts. Weighing us down. Demanding to be dealt with. In this season of my life, this sin is burning my heart: Self-indulgence. It's a nasty one. One that weedles it's way into every decision and interaction. One that paves the way for me to spend my day reading a good book, doing something artistic or preparing elaborate meals, rather than reading to my children, doing devotions or praying.

Can you see how slippery this particular sin can be? The world shouts out; Do what pleases you! You owe it to yourself! This seems to be directed, most often, at mom's. Society sees mothers as weary, downtrodden creatures, who are desperate to be freed from the mundane. The perfect captive audience . . . Hence, elaborate efforts to advertise spas and beauty treatments; health and fitness programs, and getaways packages. A sense of entitlement has been nurtured, so that mother's truly believe these diversions are owed to them for all of their labours.

This aside, when it comes down to it, it just feels great to indulge in what provides the most direct pleasure. I love being lost in a book. And I love concocting and savouring good food. I do not find direct gratification in building castles, or slopping paint all over a soggy piece of art paper. And so I prioritize my favourite activities, squeezing in the latter ones, as though they were on a checklist of onerous activities I must dutifully perform.

In my efforts to chip away at this iceburg of a sin, here is a nugget of wisdom I unearthed:

"I say that we must talk ourselves out of allowing "ourselves" to talk to us! Do you realize what that means? I suggest that the main trouble in this whole matter of spiritual depression, in a sense, is this, that we allow our self to talk to us instead of talking to ourself. Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday. Somebody is talking you. Your self is talking to you- Martin Lloyd-Jones

My self tells me quite frequently that I am entitled to my daily pleasures. But when my mind touches down on the duties of a mother--the challenging job of playing on their level, and nurturing them-- my self also tells me: "La, la, la, la-- I don't want to think about these things right now." So, what would happen if I began to interject. If I began to cut off those thoughts with these: "I am a mother. That is an honour bestowed upon me. By who? By my God. What can I do to give him the glory in it?"

Jones points to the psalmist who wrote: "Why art thou downcast, Oh my soul? Why so disturbed within me?" (Psalm 42) The psalmist is questioning himself. If we would only evaluate our every thought, reign them in, and then slap them into shape, how would our priorities shift? The apostle Paul says it's all possible. I have no choice but to believe him. I know we are no longer slaves to sin. We CAN talk ourselves out of sin and indulgence, and onto a right path by speaking God into our hearts. Jones finishes his thoughts:

Defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say as this man; "I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance."

This is the psalmist's endnote; "I will yet praise Him, my Saviour and my God." My heart is challenged to begin smacking my thoughts into the right gear, particularily the ones that great me when I wake up. Rather than lying in bed, indulging in the formulation of a list of all the pleasures the day holds for me, I will seek to put forth my God, and all things not-me first. In the healthiest sense do I say, it is time to start "talking to myself."

Country rink photo shoot

Oooooh! Aaaaaaaah! Snow removal. . .

Captivated.
It only took one enormous orange snow tractor, trailed by 9 multi-coloured dump trucks to do it. Even I was hooked.

Wood Stove

We have a wood stove! No upstairs windows-- but we have a wood stove! More than any other development thus far, this one has made me feel most at home in this place. I feel it is a bit premature for me to wax and wane about something with which I have little experience. But I will gladly let someone else do it:

The wood stove offers much more than warmth. It creates an atmosphere that high-tech gas logs with a press-of-the-button remote control can’t come close to achieving. The welcome smell of wood smoke (sometimes a whole roomful on damp evenings before the chimney starts drawing properly), the snap and pop from dry kindling or a misplaced cedar log, the radiating heat and even the ashes have their place in the whole ambiance of heating with wood.

Boy Scouts and old salts love wood stoves almost as much as whittling on sticks with their pocket knives. Cutting firewood in the forest, sawing logs, splitting, hauling and stacking cut wood, even hauling it from the wood pile or garage to the wood box bring a measure of pleasure.

Tinkering with the damper on the stovepipe and setting the draft control to get a long, hot, efficient burn all add up to a rewarding experience, a real throwback to bygone days of pioneers who kept the fires burning to ward off winter’s chill.

As I turn off the room light and settle back in my easy chair, I quickly get lost in the hypnotic dance of the flames flickering through the isinglass. Thoughts of inflated fuel prices and brutal windchills drift away leaving only the cozy smell of woodsmoke lingering in the air. The stove’s radiant glow warms my feet, my face and the whole room offering comforting reassurance that all is good with the world.

-Tim Sweet- WNR Magazine-

Heart Day

"What's Valentine's Day?" Caelah asked me, sometime late January.
"It's just another excuse for a party," I replied.

And it is. We don't love one another a little more on Valentine's Day. We just allow our love to be manifested in shades of red and pink for one day, and sweeten the deal with lots of chocolate. I used to love writing up Valentine's for my classmates, thoughtfully assigning each card to the most appropriate person. I can't give Patrick the one that says; I love you Valentine, because then he'll think I do love him. And I do, of course. He just can't know that.

Caelah and I worked as a team on her Valentine's this year. She helped me glue important bits where they belonged, and painstakingly signed her name 25 times. (Good thing she only has six letters to pen---I had 8!) We popped them each into an envolope with a chocolate heart, making sure that her teacher and bus driver each got one too. It was fun. But it was even more fun to look over her own stash when she got home. They were beautiful! I was thrilled to see how many were handmade.

That evening, true to my word, we had a party. Some friends and their three little munchkins arrived from across town, despite the snow blizzard and traffic, bearing beautiful tulips and chocolate cake. We all piled around our tiny kitchen table in our tiny kitchen, improvising where we had to, (we had more bums than seats, thus, temporarily employed an old wooden chest). We munched on fajitas. Chatted over the noise. And then . . . we went skating. "We are hardy folk," is the way Melissa put it. Or crazy. That's up for debate.

Four adults; two teeter-tottery girls on teeny tiny skates; two little boys, non-skaters, and disgruntled about it; and two tired toddlers were to be bundled and strapped into three different strollers. At the last minute Aidan and I decided to take remove Gabriel from the equation, after having begged a favour of my sister, who promised to keep an ear out for him while he slept. One down, 9 to go.

The skate was surprisingly smooth and comfortable heading South. The girls skittered along, Janika more gracefully than Caelah, and the stroller-bound bambinos didn't rebel. But then we turned around. The snow came at us horizontally. Right into our eyes. The children began to lose some of their cooperative spirit, and the going was slow. But we made it. And were rewarded.

Back home, there was hot cider on the stove, and chocolate cake on the table. The noise level was markedly lower upon returning, now that the kiddoes bellies were full, and their energy dampened. It was so nice to end the day warm, well fed, and in good company. A good good day. Good for the belly. Good for the heart.

Look like a full table? Now add three more adults and one more baby.

My Valentine's gift from Aidan: A hardcover book full of our wedding photos!