It is my first day of summer holidays – and by that I mean I sent one last work email this morning and then proceeded to shut my blackberry down till September 1st! It was an empowering move of technological resistance. Or something.
So now, on my other phone 🤦🏼♀️ I’m attempting to write a work-free blog entry…while my mom-job remains in full swing (with a sleeping toddler who is sharing my personal space in a big way)…and I’m all too aware – in this perfectly uncomfortable position – that “relaxing” is not something I come by naturally. For me relaxing takes work, practice even. I know many others who are like me. I am not alone. And practice makes perfect, so the cliche goes?
I have done quite a bit of thinking in the past hour. A bit of scrolling and picture-liking, if I’m being honest, but lots of thinking!
Thus, from my couch to yours I wish upon you a sturdy three-in-a-week-year-old who might fall into a deep sleep laid out on your lower torso. That sleep will obligate a posture of stillness you did not know you had. I admit that my own hope is for this stillness to manifest itself in some much needed career-based “aha!” moment of forward movement…but on my first day of my summer holi[daze] I shall strive to be content – and present – in this moment.
I’m staring at the NYC subway map, deflated. It’s been a long morning. The older man with the bike says, “Get comfortable – you’re gonna be here a while! 143 is the stop to watch for…that is unless it goes local!”
“What’s local?” I say.
“Longer” he says and goes back to his crossword puzzle.
Ok Natalie – reframe. At least there’s airconditioning! So I decide to do what he has suggested and just settle in. I’m not going to check email. I’m not going to text. Still wearing his pjs from our early morning flight, Frankie is passed out on Clifford’s chest – so I have few moments of travel time to let my mind roam.
On the plane I was reading a paper written by a brilliant friend. He was my phd supervisor who reads the work of other brilliant people and passes names – and papers – my way. This one is his own, a 16 page consideration of the soul at work. I’m only 4 pages in and I’ve already scratched notes to pass on to my sister, my parents, my friend: what does it mean for the soul to always be at work? For creativity to be forever attached to economy? How does one allow for spontaneous artistic happenings if everything follows a business plan?
Now, as we whiz through 42nd Street station, I wonder: How do I just sit on the A train and think when the value I am accustomed to placing on those thoughts is attached to an end product? Because there’s always an end product…right?
How long has it been since my creative soul has had a long weekend??
A-train analysis.
Source: Flat earthed
I’ve been doing too much reading of Twitter headlines and not enough reading of full blown literary text of late – and I can feel it in my body. It’s making me irritable. It feels akin to a line I remember pulled from one of my favourite films – No Country for Old Men – where Tommy Lee Jones’ character says to his naive deputee, “Age flattens a man.” I may not be “old” at 38 (isn’t 40 the new 30?) but this line resonated with me today to the point where I HAD to walk away from my office and escape to the Humber College Arboretum…or die a pancake death at my desk. It was that imminent.
I walked with John Berger’s Ways of Seeing tucked under my arm and hoped to find a bench upon which to sit and read for a half an hour – but I was derailed in my aim by an impossibly fluffy baby gosling. Berger writes, “The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.” The gosling and my two year-old are so new to the ways of seeing in and of the world…and I’m starting to think that my landscape (flattened with so much #Trump #Manchester #FreeBresha sadness) won’t become more textured with words alone…I need to see anew again.
I have learned, as I have been watching my husband garden, that soil needs to be turned many times over for something to grow; a tangible metaphor that I will return to in my ongoing efforts to fight the flattening effects of gravity.
I borrowed Sarah Manguso’s term “ongoingness” and used it throughout my doctoral dissertation – what was a work that focused on a philosophical questioning of education for youth in detention. Now 38, I used the term to talk about a temporal reality that has marked the years since I was a 22 year-old teacher at York Detention Centre in Toronto. The “ongoingness” of a story – lived then…and still now…is not easily summed up for readerly analysis. Five chapters, a dissertation defense, & four peer reviewed articles later, I find there is still so much to say and question about the educational happenings in such a space.
And for those of you who read my original blog entries, the “ongoingness” of my health issues – now handily contained in one region of my body – is another story that won’t go away. My right foot and I battle it out everyday.
So where will my attention be focused: the outside/inside world of education or my swollen ankle? I started this blog as a form of brain-based exercise when my body stopped me from working as a teacher. Then, when we thought I was cured, I put the blog on hold (sullied it with a few academic-y posts I have now deleted to save us all the trouble) and I didn’t just go back to teaching – we added a baby into the mix!
So here I am. A microcosmic example of ongoing teaching and learning exercises lived out in my body and mind…both in some form of (dis)repair.
Hummingbirdunpaused – next step: change the blog title!
“The summer of the wedding” came to an end with this picture – Clifford’s first time at the Ex! Armed with a bag of those bad for you, sugar covered mini donuts, we entered the farm building and my sister snapped this shot – “for your blog” she said! So here it is…
I am excited (as my smile suggests) about this new year, and looking at my new day to day I recognize that my time on pause has come to an end. As I speed up here I anticipate that I will write less and read more (my monday night course’s reading list is immense!) – and I’m not reading alone!
Fall is my new favourite season…
The adage “A picture is worth a thousand words” is captured here for me – as all of us school based individuals prepare to go back, let us make space to read for pleasure! Elsie set up shop here in the used bookstore at the top of our street. She informed me that it is different than a library – a wise distinction! We stayed close to an hour, her on that little stool and me standing, books in hand.
I think heaven might look a little like a used bookstore…I hope so anyways.
This sparkly goodness was a birthday gift for my friend’s little girl – though I think I took more pleasure finding them then she did having to put them on! The shoes were a bit big and the wings just a touch small – but sparkle is sparkle and I love pink! Sometimes the gift is more about the giver…Thank you Olivia for wearing what I FEEL today!
Clifford, Elsie and I had a big day this week – we baked! I love to cook and blend (a la vitamix!) but I am not a baker. I never have been – I am not big on measuring. I like being able to throw things in to a pan or a pot based on what I have in the fridge and in mind…and most of the time it turns out! Baking, though, is more of a science than the messy art that is my kitchen creating and such boundaries make me feel constrained!
Clifford likes science – he and my scientist brother-in-law get along well. He has an appreciation for process that is not my immediate inclination – proof rests under the paintings I have hung where you will see three nail holes, whereas under those he has worked on you will see a careful pencil measurement…I say we are a good balance!
So when Clifford suggested that he and Els make cookies I looked at it as a personal growth exercise and attempted to respect process: I googled a recipe for quinoa chocolate chip cookies, printed it, laid out all things baking and, calling them to the kitchen, pulled out the final ingredient – only to find it wasn’t quinoa flour we had in the freezer. Screw process!! Spelt flour in hand, I started “reading” (making up!) the (now useless!) baking directions in front of me and somehow — with a whole lot of tasting (thus the cookie’s name!) we ended up with an Elsie-approved dessert!
My specialist says that my on-going treatment has become “more of an art than a science” and such is the way with medicine. Science and art combined – in our kitchen and my body…perhaps the success of our cookies is a good omen 🙂
I love this picture! I love how randomly Elsie’s dress links mine with Bec’s. I love how our phones are distracting us and yet we sit together, waiting. Specifically waiting for my hair to magically transform from bone straight strands to picture-ready waves…for only then could the big event take place!!
A month and a half later, Clifford and I had coffee with a friend who commiserated with us over shared family pain spanning what has been a hard year. Though not a monarchist, Clifford leaned in and said, “The queen once called it her ‘Annus horribilis!'” Wise woman.
As pretty as they were, curls mean not a whit in the bigger picture. The ‘annus mirabilis’ that is strangely antithetical to what has been very real pain includes the now-born niece Els is hiding in this photo. The marriage that happens but two hours post this shot. The special time my mom is spending with all of her siblings right now as they surround their father’s bed, preparing to say goodbye. The fact that I have not had to take pain killers for two whole days…and counting.
A toast to the queen(‘s speech writer) and my hair dresser! Thanks to a husband who paid attention during Latin class!
Continued prayers to a God who loves and brings the mirabilis into every year.
hummingbirdonpause 