Double rainbow

Three years ago today, I was in the tub, soaking in complete denial of what the day had in store.

The week before, E had been battling her third round of croup. It being the middle of summer, there were few places to find a cold breath of air during her coughing fits. The ER doctor suggested we put her head in the freezer. I’m still not sure she was joking.

She only wanted me, on the couch, in the rocking chair, but mostly snuggled up with her in bed. So there I was, her massive, whale of a mama, for whom sleep was a distant memory, perched precariously on the side of a tiny twin bed with a child the temperature of a pizza oven. I was willing the contractions to stop.

“Listen kid,” I said, “I know I’ve been telling you in not so nice tones to get the hell out of me for the past three weeks, but I implore you now to stay where you are. I promise I will give you chocolate before you’re two.”

Wonderfully, baby listened.

The following Monday, when I was a week overdue, E went back to the day home. I joked that she might have a sibling by the end of the day. I closed the door to go home. Click. Contraction. Ha ha. Very funny. 

I got back home. Closed the door. Click. Contraction. What a joker. 

I went about my usual morning, tidying up from breakfast, likely folding one of the seven hundreds onesies people had given us, all the while feeling these twinges grow stronger and more consistent. At an ultrasound appointment later that morning, Luke asked if I was in labor.

“Nooo, no, no. Just a cramp.” He humoured me by feigning belief. 

He goes back to work. I go home. I had an appointment with my OB at 2. "I can make it until 2. This isn’t that bad." I got in the tub, also known as the midwive's epidural. I was still just calling it a bath. A really long bath from which I never wanted to emerge. 

The drive to the doctor's was interesting. It’s amazing how much power your mind can have when you need it to. Only have contractions at red lights, I told my uterus. It obeyed, but there were four red lights and it made me pay for each one.

Once there, I mentioned casually that I might be in labor. She attached me to some machine behind a curtain from which I would occasionally reach out for Luke’s hand.

“Your contractions are three minutes apart,” she said.

“Do we have time for me to go home and change.” Luke asked.

“Mmm… Maybe,” she said.

As much as it would have been an exciting end to this story, we did not end up having a baby in the SUV. In fact, our little man took another seven hours to make his grand entrance, or exit. Both, I guess!

Today, three years later, I stood in the kitchen preparing cupcakes for the first birthday party this poor second child has ever had. Mixing the icing, all I could think about was that peaceful soak in the tub when the two of us had our last conversation as one, when this glorious being knocked on the door and told me he was ready to take in the world. 

Real life, no filter

For the longest time, Luke and I believed we were the only people in the world, or at least our circle of friends, who had Tazmanian devils for children. No matter how hard we tried, ad nauseum, incessantly, with Sisyphean effort, our house perpetually resisted order with the vehemence of a three-year-old resisting transition. It still does, as does the now five-year-old, still, with respect to transitions.

Every time we’d go to a friend’s house for brunch (parents of small children don't do dinner parties), their houses would be perfectly tidy as if they were preparing to list it for sale the next day. Countertops devoid of crumbs, the sink an empty chasm waiting patiently for a dirty dish, toys hidden away in quaint cubbies that would make Real Simple proud. And you could walk on the floors without playing the what-did-I-just-step-in game.

There is only one moment when our entire house looks pristine: the moment I close the door behind the wonderful woman who cleans our house every few weeks. The latch clicks, I turn around, and take a mental picture of the beauty that lay beneath the mayhem. Usually by the time I blink, there’s a bowl of yoghurt embracing gravity or an art project underway involving scissors and many tiny pieces of paper.

The disorder has sparked many an argument. I don’t like chaos. Luke doesn’t like chaos. But there are only so many hours in a day and sometimes breakfast dishes just don’t fit into them. There’s been resentment and assumptions, swearing and tears. All because our house is, for the most part, unkempt.

But you see, we’ve all been fooled. Worst of all, we do it to each other. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve warned an imminently arriving friend of the disastrous state of my house, only to perform an emergency high-speed restoration of order in the rooms said friend is mostly likely to use. I answer the door praying I haven’t missed anything, like a certain someone’s remarkable inability to remember toilet flushing (not Luke).

“Your house doesn’t look like a disaster,” friend will say as I wipe the sweat from my brow.

“It was five minutes ago,” I say jauntily as the kids race past to unleash a new form of destruction.

There was one time I let my guard down. It was a ridiculously cold, rainy morning in August. A bunch of us had our kids in swim classes at the outdoor community pool a couple of blocks from our house. All available overhangs were occupied by shivering parents and siblings waiting for the swimmers to emerge from the steaming water.

A relatively new friend of mine was there with his two boys whose swim classes were something like two hours apart. Normally, they’d spend that time at the adjacent playground. That day, their prospects were diminished to hanging out in the change room or sitting in the car, playing tic tac toe on the fogged windows.

“You should come hang out at our place in-between lessons,” I suggested as I was leaving, my child’s lips starting to turn blue. “But I’m warning you, our house is a disaster.”

This time, there was nothing I could do about it. There were toys all over the place, clothing on the banister, dishes piled on either side of the sink. There was even a kitchen cupboard open for some inexplicable reason and not one I could easily blame on the baby.

I remember his face when I opened the door.

“Wow,” he said. “You weren’t kidding.”

He stood there looking stunned for what seemed like an unusually long time, almost hesitant to sit down for fear the movement of the stool might cause a domino like cascade of tupperware from across the room. I swallowed my pride and offered to make coffee.

Later, perhaps after he’d sat down, he told me he was honoured I felt comfortable enough to invite him over when my house was in such a comical state. It killed me to have someone see the house like that. It was as if I’d opened the door in my underwear. But seriously, who’s going to choose ego over letting a friend and his kids freeze their asses off in the rain?

I guess the lesson there—other than to close the kitchen cupboards before I leave the house—is that people appreciate authenticity. Real life doesn't come open house ready. Real life involves smoothie on the ceiling and hand prints on the fridge. At least, it does in our house. How about yours? 

Game face

Last summer, when I was in the midst of feeling like shit, this poor girl went around telling everyone we were having a festival in our backyard. She was desperate to be surrounded by anyone with life left in them, since her mother clearly had none.

She picked a date. She made invitations. She invited about 30 people. I entertained the notion for a few random moments — I desperately wanted to let her see it through — but eventually had to break the news that it just wasn't going to happen. Not only did I then feel like shit, I also felt like an asshole.

This year, I'm functioning on a scale much closer to, well, functional. So I decided to take the advice of a friend who is wiser than her years should allow. It was originally given before Christmas, when I was loathe to supply my children with another mound of presents in the absence of what really mattered: cousins, chaos, and memories.

“Write your own story.”

I’m sure those words have come to me in many forms from many people on many different occasions. But here's a funny thing about advice: it's only good when you're ready to take it. After all, taking good advice usually means doing a lot of hard work — either by yourself or, perhaps worse, through asking people for help. Horrors!

This particular chapter of the story involved organizing a block party to celebrate Neighbour Day, and also to make up for crushing my child's dreams. It sent me knocking on every door — even the scary ones — to get signatures for our permit application, chasing a neighbour down the street in my pyjamas, driving to the strange traffic sign graveyard to pick up road blocks from a short, round, grey-bearded dude named Walter or Wiley, and perhaps most challenging for me, purchasing hot dogs. Yes, I have an issue with nitrates. All I can say is, I’m working on it.

I had absolutely no clue how to put on a block party but, miraculously, it all came together. There was food, a ridiculously small bouncy castle (rented under the guise of it being “Large”), music, street hockey and, of course, a water fight. Children played past their bedtimes. Adults drank until past theirs.

The best part didn't happen until the next day. The doorbell rang. It rang again. I opened the door to see a five-year-old boy standing there, the grandson of the woman I chased in my pjs. 

"Is she here," he asked, poking his head in the door. "Can she come out to play?" Clearly, he had forgotten her name. Or maybe he never even knew it. Kids don't seem to waste time with those kinds of formalities. I remember picking up E from bike camp and having her point out her new BFF, then drawing a blank when I asked for said BFF's name. Kids just want to play, and here was this new child asking mine to come out to do just that.

With that, the Neighbour Day chapter was officially written. Next on the list: summer adventures. Dear God, let it not be a cliff hanger.

Current life cycle

 

Wake me up when September ends

Kindergarten is the modern world’s dunk tank into cold, hard reality. One day, you’re sleeping til you’re done, eating a lazy breakfast, and getting dressed when the mood strikes. The next day you’re ripping yourself out of bed, being blinded by the rise of curtains and shovelling down food in an attempt to provide sustenance before the bell rings.

I’m sure it’s been tough for E, too.

After three hard weeks I’ve come to a startling conclusion: September kind of sucks. I had notions of sliding into a gloriously well-oiled routine after a summer of lackadaisical free-for-alls. Clothes would be chosen the night before. Bedtime would be easier (since she’d be tired from all that learnin’). Then we’d have a happy skip to school before she faced another exciting day of mind expansion.

That fantasy played out for the first few days. Then sometime in the middle of week two, E woke up and asked me how much longer she’d have to go to school. At first I thought the truth would be a hard blow but then I remembered she has no concept of time. I also realized that no matter what I said, it wouldn’t be the answer she wanted, which was likely something along the lines of, “just a few more days, babe.”

In the last few weeks she’s gone from excited to tired to annoyed. Now we’re at just plain pissy. And I’m here thinking, good gravy this is going to be a long thirteen years. Luckily, I know people who’ve been around the schoolyard a few times. I’m told everyone’s shit hits the fan near the end of September. The kids have caught on that this school business is an actual thing and it isn’t going away. Apparently, they lose their will to fight after Thanksgiving (the Canadian one).

(I’m sure there are exceptions. We all know those people whose social media feeds have us believing they’ve found the key to the perfect family life. No one yells, their kids do the dishes and everyone plays Jenga together on Friday nights.)

It also doesn’t help that E is convinced I’m the one who made school start at eight in the morning. What kind of crazy fool does she take me for? In a fit of irrationality, I tried to introduce reason to our conversation.

“How could I possibly be responsible for forcing hundreds of kids to be at school that early? More importantly, why would I ever do that??” I suppose I should be flattered by the reach she assumes of my power, although also concerned that she thinks I’m capable of such lunacy.

When her anger first started to rise, I wondered whether something bothersome was going on at school. Unfortunately getting pertinent information out of a five-year-old is like trying to get shoes on a two-year-old. Both are incredible frustrating activities that usually result in footwear being thrown across the room.

Then I found this list of great questions. I tried ones like, “did anyone do anything nice for you” and “who made you smile” but another thing about five-year-olds is that they have no concept of gratitude. I was asking these idyllic questions of the same child who, a week prior, cried over the future absence of ice cream while she was still eating the ice cream.

Last night, I took a different approach:

Who did you sit beside? Noah. If someone in your class could be the teacher, who would you want it to be? Me! What’s the hardest rule to follow? NO TALKING!!

Little by little, I’m shedding light on the mysteries that unfold behind those closed doors. In this respect, I’m happy Alberta has bucked the trend of subsidized daycare and kept kindergarten at a half-day. It gives us a bit more time to prepare for that day when they go off on their own, forget that we exist, and only call when they need money or advice about how to do laundry.

Day One

In the days leading up to this moment, all I could think about was how the hell I would ever get the Queen of Stall Tactics to school on time. I've been ruminating on that point since about May, back when we learned school would start at the ungodly hour of eight o'clock in the morning. I imagine it was my brain's way of creating a diversion from the actual task at hand: letting go.

Friends had told me how they melted into puddles of tears the first day their little one marched off to school. I couldn't imagine why. It's not like we're shipping them off to boarding school. It's kindergarten. It's less than three hours long. You can't even do Costco in that time.

Then it was my turn. Luke stayed home late that morning to help get everyone out the door on time. As I mentioned, I was worried I would be dragging a half-dressed, underfed fit of defiance to the school yard to greet the new teacher. On this day, she was standing by the side of the bed, fully dressed and raring to go before I had both eyes open. Excitement, fear, nerves, whatever we were working with, it certainly made my life easier.

It all seemed rather idyllic. We walked hand in hand in hand, the three of us, towards the schoolyard we know so well. She has spent many an afternoon exploring its playground or running through the field. It's where she learned to ride a bike and where she flew a kite for the first time. Despite my agonizing over school options, I think we always knew she'd some day join them on the inside.

The teachers stood outside in front of the swarm of nerves. Parents and children alike staring silently as they waited for a name to be called. Some ran to stand in line without looking back. Some ran the other way. All of them with their massive, snack-filled backpacks smacking the backs of their knees.

E had a few last minute tears, then walked up the steps and disappeared. All of a sudden, it was just the parents, standing there watching the doors close behind kids that two minutes ago were taking their first steps, saying their first words or eating a grape for the first time without it needing to be cut into a million pieces.

How the hell did that happen so fast? Why the hell did I want it to? Now it's all coming crashing down around me, all this time that I can't get back, and I finally empathize with the ugly cry set. We're not sad that they're growing up (we all talk about how wonderful it will be when they can get their own lunch or walk to a friend's house without a secret service detail), we're sad that they're doing it at the speed of light.

We're sad that with each new milestone, the previous ones seem to fade in our memories. We long for the feeling of their baby soft skin sleeping against our chest, for the fuzz of their hair tickling our nose, for the squeak of their voice as they learn how it works. We long for them to be small and vulnerable and close just a little while longer. Then they let go of our hand and walk away.

Summer à la mode

Summer is for throwing bedtime routines out the window

Summer

Everything

There is something intoxicating about photographs of Luke cuddling our babies. I could look at them for hours. Perhaps it's that I know how comforting and empowering his embrace can be, housing strength, love and protection all in the space between his arms and their tiny little bodies.

Wisely, these children yearn to be close to him, sometimes descending to such unloving acts as pushing and shoving in order to get the best seat. When he is away, or even if he has a few late nights at work, they start to wilt like cut flowers in need of fresh water. As far as children goes, this can mean becoming either incredibly sensitive or downright cranky. The only antidote is a swift reunion.

Sometimes I wish I could clone myself (I imagine every parent does, but in this instance I mean for reasons other than having someone else make dinner and change diapers) in order to capture similar moments shared with me. I'll be sitting on the bed braiding hair or holding a tiny hand as the blender makes its unsettling racket and I will take a snap shot in my mind. Like many photographer parents, I not only want my children to have beautiful memories of their youth, but to have evidence that I was part of it.

I have experimented with taking my own photograph, but often it feels weird. The idea behind candid or documentary photography, or whatever catch phrase is used for capturing real life, is that it isn't contrived. In theory, we shouldn't move water bottles out of the way to get a clean shot or ask someone to repeat their actions under better light. I'm struggling to decide how balancing a camera on a stack of cookbooks in order to capture a manufactured moment fits into all of that. It's not like this scene hadn't played itself out a thousand times over. It's just that this time, I made sure the camera was there.

I guess we can leave it at this: if you happen to see a photograph with me in the scene, it's likely a set up (this was an exception). Same goes for anything involving clean children sitting nicely and looking like angels. Everything else is as real as it gets.

Listen

Thinking

Almost

Sometimes I get to thinking it would serve me well to have more direction in life. Much of my existence follows the take-it-as-it-comes philosophy. It keeps me on my toes but lacks any real push towards meaningful accomplishment. Yes, I did cleaned the kitchen for the gazillionth time but does that really count as having *done* anything? It isn't something I'm eager to include in the post mortem of my day, though (somedays) if I didn't, it would seem I did nothing but romance the pooch.

Maybe that's why so many mothers start their own websites, whether they be about food, photography, writing or, well, whatever else people muse about. We are the elastic bands in our families. Whenever something out of the ordinary happens, we stretch to accommodate the extra need. It's wonderful to know there is always someone available to fight the fires without disturbing the other person's professional pursuits, but it also means you always have to be ready to drop everything at a moment's notice. After a while, you start to think things like "big projects" are a pointless endeavour because you will inevitably be interrupted and called upon to manage two weeks worth of illness. Having a website ensures you at least have your own little corner of the Internet that isn't going to get angry if you miss a deadline.

This is all sounding very depressing. I'm just in a reflective mood. I was thinking back to a photography course I took last fall through ClickinMoms. The course, taught by the eternally giving and insightful Meredith Askey Novario, aimed to teach us how to tell a story in just one frame. At the end of four weeks of intense introspection and experimentation, we were asked to come up with a project that we could see ourselves carrying forward through our photographic journey. I was stumped. I decided to go with something totally easy: the overhead view.

I'm being sarcastic here. Shooting from above requires one to be tall enough to get above your subject and be far enough above them that your lens will focus. It's great if you want to photograph ants, for example. People? Not so much. My classmates and I were joking that I would need to start including a stepladder in my kit bag. I was going to title the project, "Mom, what are you doing up there?"

(I will admit that sometimes I cheat by holding the camera up in the air and praying for good fortune. It always reminds me of a scene from Austin Powers when I do that. Sometimes it works. Most of the time it doesn't.)

I haven't been doing a very good job of keeping up on this overhead project, partially because of the challenges the technique presents to someone who's only 5'6" (on a good day). But as I was scanning my mind for an appropriate caption to the photograph at the top of this post, it suddenly dawned on me: I might have more success if I embrace an abstract notion rather than a predetermined vantage point. And so I came up with Almost.

So much of life with kids is about watching them try and try and try while fighting the urge to jump in and do it for them (though sometimes this is necessary if one is to arrive anywhere even remotely on time). It is the living version of the Butterfly's Struggle.  It's about shoes on the wrong feet, shirts on backwards, standing on tippy toes, mispronouncing spaghetti, the backwards E on their cards. We want them to succeed but at the same time we don't, since that would mean they've grown once again.

There will always be almosts. Maybe this will be the true way to reflect back on their lives, one struggle at a time, one accomplishment almost realized.

The Cult of Personality

Someone once suggested that I’d know I was truly grown up when I became the same person around my parents as I am around my friends. I’m not sure why this was deemed to be a barometer of maturity. Frankly, I'm not sure any of us want to go through life being the same person at every turn.

I had an interesting revelation along these lines in the not so distant past. I noticed that my voice tends to jump an octave in certain situations, like when I’m ordering in a restaurant or calling an appliance repair shop. I fully understand why—all the women in my immediate family do the same thing—but the fact that I do drives me bananas. It’s as though I’m saying my regular voice, which is a bit smarmy, isn’t feminine enough for mass consumption. I go overkill on the pleasantness, leaving the other person thinking they're talking to a delusional housewife who’s been a bit too liberal with the quaaludes (or whatever be the modern equivalent).

I remember reading an article once about how babies enjoy our playing the part of babbling idiots. It was something about the higher pitch resonating a vibe of happiness in their new little brains. By the same token, they also enjoy the deeper tones Dad provides, likely because that voice sounds a bit more relaxed than Mom’s overly enthusiastic attempts to get a smile. In my own experience, I notice a happier, sing-songy voice when trying to sway my toddler’s opinion, a somewhat less annoying tone when speaking to my four-year-old, and an arguably tired and grumpy voice when speaking to my poor husband. Sorry Luke.

It reminds me of another article a based on a book co-authored by Elizabeth Dunn. The book is actually about how to spend money more happily (apparently this is challenging), but in it she suggests we should all try to treat our partners a bit more like strangers. Think about it. If you are in a similar situation to me, your significant other comes home around the time your children are turning into gremlins because you either haven’t yet presented them with dinner or you had the gaul to give them something other than hot dogs and cheese pizza. You’re not at your best. You’re not feeling the love. So they walk in the door and you’re thinking, “For the love of god, make the screaming stop!” as a dinner roll goes flying across the room and they're thinking, “Uh… hi?”

But let’s say they brought someone you’d never met home for dinner. Social etiquette makes it challenging to embrace anger when there’s a new person around. It feels as natural as wearing your underwear on the outside of your pants. So you’d probably laugh off the insanity, greet your guest and put on your best show. Eventually, you'd likely forget that you're supposed to be angry and end up having a good time. 

It would be interesting to know at what age we start to experiment with these different masks and whether it’s even a conscious undertaking. Most of us don’t have a personality switch we actively flip depending on who walks through the door, it just seems to happen like a pavlovian response. If it is even possible to reach that plateau of full growth (god, I hope not), perhaps it's not through being the same person with our parents as we are with our friends or with our spouse as are with our children, but through recognizing the difference and understanding the manifestations. 

Out from the shadows

The Witches

Free to be

There’s been a lot of talk in recent days about showing girls the value of personal authenticity—that the best version of themselves is the one they are to themselves, likely when they think no one else is watching, and that being a little rough around the edges is better than feeling like you have to pretend you aren’t. At least, that’s the message I’m taking from the viral sensation that is Kate T. Parker’s photographic series, “Strong is the new pretty.”

From what I’ve read, part of the reason behind Parker’s project was a desire to show her girls they don’t have to be the picture of magazine perfection to be valued. Parents might also heed that advice, since they are the ones entering kids in cover photo contests or having people vote for their baby to be deemed the cutest in order to win a year’s supply of god-knows-what.

It’s a wonderful message for us all to hear, but part of me also thought, “how sad are we that the concept of encouraging our girls to be true to themselves is so novel, it garners the attention of the Today Show and CNN?” Then I remember how far society is from understanding things like equality, respect, and individuality. Group think is safe. Different is scary.

It reminds me a little bit of Tracey Spicer’s TEDx talk. I encourage you to watch this brilliantly engaging woman break down the cumbersome daily ritual that takes her from a frizzy-haired, fair blond with a less-than-perfeclty flat stomach (i.e., one that has housed babies), to a culturally acceptable, coifed, tucked and tanned TV host. At one point, she talks about the trouble she has explaining the point of this song and dance to her young daughter. What does it say to our kids when they see us painting our nails, straightening our hair or putting on various forms of face goop? We say, “Be yourself! You’re perfect!” Then we show them how we feel the exact opposite about ourselves.

So perhaps, by the same vein, photography is best platform to expose people to a different form of “perfect little girl.” After all, we see before we hear. This I learned during my brief stray from radio into the world of television news. You can have an amazing story, but if you don’t have pictures, you ain’t got shit. If Parker’s story is that her kids are amazingly real and unique characters worthy of celebration, there is no better way to prove it than to for her to show not tell.

As someone newly-smitten with the art of photography, I took something else away from all this. It’s a similar message, but one directed at me, not my kids. It’s that, as a photographer, it’s okay to do your own thing. I’m not sure what I’ve been aiming for recently, but I’m often crippled by the idea that actual photographers will look at my work and think, “I hope she doesn’t think she knows what she’s doing because x, y, and z are all wrong.” I struggle with the notion that there is a right and wrong and that there are little details I can’t see that give my ignorance away.

Then I see a series like this and I am struck by the variety, the freedom and the pushing of envelopes. The images are divine. They inspire me to experiment with scene, perspective and composition but also with the aftermath. Some of her photographs look like screenshots from a Wes Anderson movie, speaking to me from a land caught between truth and fantastical. Seeing something like this, I realize a good photograph isn’t just what I see through the lens, it’s also what I see through my imagination. If I play around with it, maybe people will catch a glimpse into that crazy world inside my head.

I’m not saying I don’t have more to learn (if we compare my photographic journey to climbing Everest, I haven't even bought my ticket to Nepal). I’m just saying it’s okay to play around and be flawed in the process. I’m pretty sure that’s the message Parker is trying to convey to her kids. She just probably didn’t realize it was a lesson the rest of us could take to heart.

Boot camp for a lazy muse

I have realized something over the last few days: writing is g.d. hard when your inspiration is out of town. Seriously. I figured if I finally gave myself an outlet, the words would flow. The ideas certainly do. But I don’t want to post crap. No one has time to read crap. Most people don’t even have time to read stuff that isn’t crap.

My need to write is a physiological thing that happens at unpredictable and often inconvenient times. It’s like a fart. If you’re at home alone, you can let it out freely without having to worry about others being around to experience what’s going on. It might stink, but time will fix it and no one will be the wiser. If you’re in public, well… then it’s all about repression of instincts.

I think this is why I’ve become so interested in photography. You don’t need three hours to take a decent photograph, especially if you consider yourself a documentary or “real-life” snapper. Let life happen and hopefully you’ll have your camera ready when something interesting presents itself. Then you can edit when the kids go to sleep or when they’re trying to pull your pants down or, even better, when your husband takes them to the pool — both of them, together, without another adult (my hero).

In my experience, which is very little, you can still dabble with presets when you’re sleep deprived. In fact, I find it relaxing to fiddle around with a photo in post processing. Does it look better in black and white or colour? What if I boost the contrast? Does that look too fake? Is fake okay?

Writing, on the other hand, requires me to have some semblance of mental function. I should mention here that I am in no way saying real photographers can work in their sleep. It’s much more of a honed craft for them. They know what works and what doesn’t and how to manipulate a photo (either before or after they take it) to look just right.

I’m sure if I sent some of my shots off to for some CC, as they call it, my photographer friends would come back with a plethora of suggestions for how to improve the exposure triangle, the lighting, the saturation, the composition or all of the above. They would suggest changes I couldn’t have seen because they never would have occurred to me. It’s similar to when people send me their writing. I suggest changes they couldn’t see because they aren’t used to the puzzle known as structural flow.

I think that’s my favourite part about editing. Often when people send me a piece, it isn’t the writing that needs help, it’s the structure. Move that sentence here, flip that paragraph around and, often, find the lede somewhere in the middle. You’re still getting from point A to point B, but without as many obstacles or switchbacks. There are times, though, when I get carried away and commit the asshole crime of editing for style. I pay penance for that because I know how much it sucks to have someone hijack your mojo.

I suppose that could also happen with photos. The eye is so personal, as we all learned from the black and blue dress. You know, the one that *isn’t* white and gold? I keep asking photographer friends for editing advice, but I’m not respecting the difficulty they must face in separating personal style from direction.

I need a moment here as I feel the enormity of creative possibilities that exist in the world. Can you imagine if we all liked the same music or read the same genre of book or ate the same food? Life would be boring as shit. The interesting thing is that we sometimes fail to see the value in those differences. We look at ourselves and subconsciously ask whether our clothes or cars or even parenting philosophies jive with the concept we want to present to the world. We see outliers and either envy their ability to stray from the norm or flee from the discomfort of something that’s too different.

I met a lady the other night — normal person/mom/wife like me — and she had the most amazingly rad hair. I thought, good god this woman is fantastic! I immediately started imagining myself with this kick-ass hairdo. Then I quickly came back to my own reality. I loved it on her, and it may very well look great on me, but it’s not who I am. I am subtle. I wear run of the mill clothes. I don’t dye my hair, I don’t do my nails and I only wear jewelry when I feel the need to look grown-up.

I am just me. And today I wrote about writing farts and rad hair.

Teller of truth

The problem I seem to have with starting a blog, or anything really, is that I want it to be perfectly formed before it ever sees the light of day. I think I get this from my father, although I’m sure I’ve read some parenting thing somewhere that says we discount the concept of individuality by suggesting we inherit traits from our parents or that we pass them onto our children. It implies we are all merely the same person living over and over again just with less ozone and more technology.

I'd argue we're more likely to see the challenging parts of our personality (or label them as such) play themselves out in our little reincarnations than we are to see the good we pass on. The more modest among us are, anyway. In light of that, I will also suggest I get my ability to write from Dad and that I inherited my mother’s desire to help others along with her propensity to worry. A bit from Column A, a bit from Column B.

But here’s what I’m realizing. This little seed that I’m planting here can’t possibly grow into its own thing unless I put it out into the sun and add a little water every now and then. It’s like having children: we fool ourselves into believing we have some semblance of control when really it is they who call the shots, before they even divide into two cells.

I want to control what this may or may not become, which means it isn’t becoming anything. It is a dog on a leash in front of the most amazing off-leash park. There are so many piles of shit to roll in! Why won’t she just let me go!

This is probably where fear in the creative process comes into play. If I never actually launch this site, it can’t possibly fail. If no one knows it exists, no one can’t read it. I can go on living with this lovely notion of having this beautiful thing like so many others I see without actually having to do anything. It’s easier to live with the dream of success than the reality of failure but I’m creatively lonely and tired of having nothing to call my own.

I realize it’s possible to just write for myself, but (shock of the century), I have an ego. I enjoy writing for other people. I enjoy sparking conversation or helping people feel they aren’t alone by expressing what many of us are too socially respectable to say. My truth is real and the filter is thin.

(As for my photography, I really don’t know what I’m doing but I’m enjoying the challenge. Constructive feedback from those who do know what they’re doing is always welcome.)

So here we are on the eve of my not-40-yet birthday and I am finally (mentally) ready to push this thing out of the plane. It’s certainly not perfect. It definitely requires work. But at least it will now have purpose.

Nanoo Nanoo, and all that jazz.

What she said

Heaven forbid someone birth a child and live to have intelligent thought.