There was a question mark on my carpet

…and I asked a jumping spider to act in a short film

It’s only been 12 days since I last wrote. But I can feel the weight of not sorting my day weighing on me. The stories welling up with no place to go.

I’ve written letters to friends, sent voice texts, and assembled care packages.

I’ve worked at my magical jobs, and I’ve had a birthday. A soft Wednesday birthday at the bookstore where if someone asked me how my day was I said “it’s my birthday. I’m 45 now.” Testing out this new age on my tongue and finding it sour only because I have a strange aversion to multiples of five. The aging part, I love that part.

Every year I travel around the sun and I wonder how many more times I’ll get to do that. I called my father on my birthday, so that I can hear him tell my birth story. It is my favourite part of the day. The fact that 45 years later he is still excited that I’m his kid.

This year he forgot why we were talking. He meandered through his day as he always does telling me what happened, and then he said “I think that’s it since we last talked.”

And I nearly didn’t remind him.

But that wouldn’t have been fair to either of our hearts.

So I said “you haven’t told me my birth story.” And I tried not to cry.

He laughed and said “OF COURSE! and if I ever forget the story itself then you’ll know I need to go into a home.”

And he told the story. Of my mother not feeling well. Of me being in danger inside her body. Of us being flown to Winnipeg so that she could be cared for and I could come early if I needed to. And in the Health Sciences Centre Women’s Pavilion my father was the first person to hold me, because my mother had an episiotomy and needed to be sewed back up. It is this moment that I credit for our strong connection. I often say that my Dad was my mom. I found out later why he was the one in my memories making sure I was comforted and calmed. My mother gave me that. When she was overwhelmed with caring for me due to a multitude of factors she would call him home. Once, after I was an adult but before I had children she said that she once called him and said “please come home and take this baby before I throw them against a wall”.

She gave me my Dad, and let him be the warmth that she couldn’t always give me. And that is why I love my mom. Because she knew I needed someone to love me deeply, and she knew my Dad was up to the task. She trusted him. In an era where women were often forced to do the bulk of the caring, and where men were not, or could not be trusted to care for their children…she had found my father, and he was not only up for the task, he wanted it.

My mother would later tell me that being a parent in those early years was not what she really wanted to do, and I could feel that, my whole childhood. But I knew she loved me, because she let my Dad love me. She wasn’t jealous, or controlling of the way he raised me. And they loved each other, they still do, 51 years later.

I have so many feelings and stories that shape who I am. One’s that I’m afraid to write because writing them feels like cementing them.

When I ran storytelling shows I would sometimes get asked for advice. I do not like giving advice. But some people want it.

So I would tell them. Let your stories breathe, let them change as you change, as you grow up your perspective shifts and you can see through different lenses.

When I was younger I couldn’t always see my mother the way I can see her now. I have so much space and understanding and the ability to see why she was the way she was when I was a child. I have had the courage to ask her the big questions knowing that I wouldn’t always like the answers. I listened. Trying not to impose myself into her story.

I can feel the weight of this past week lifting. That writing out the things I’ve been letting create a storm within me…it helps.

I’ve be a party to some brilliant happenings in the past 12 days. I’ve reread my novel and I love it so much, and am thus afraid to put it into the world where people might hate it. And maybe it is just for me. Maybe I don’t need to give all of myself over to the world to be judged and discarded.

I’m not sure what this newsletter will become.

I’m thinking that I may write here daily. But that I might not send out emails. Maybe that seems counterintuitive.

But I’m not here to grow a readership. I’m happy with the people who found their way here early, and stayed. I’m happy for the people who find themselves here accidentally but it’s where they are meant to be. I’m here to read as much as I am to write.

That feels good. So on Wednesdays I’ll make up strange whimsical prompts. I’ll write on them if I feel like it, but I’ll put my small stories here. And my big stories. And the stories that don’t fit anywhere else.

And I’ll sort my life so that it doesn’t get stuck inside telling me my voice doesn’t matter. It matters to me. And these days, that’s enough.

TWO FUN MOMENTS:

Yesterday I saw Inside Out 2. It wrecked me. My teenagers did not want to see it. Maybe because it’s too real for them. But Inside Out, the first one, was the very first movie I took them to at the theatre, when we had just moved to Bellevue, Washington, and I was atrociously lonely. I wept over their heads, and my children fell in love with the dark of the cinema.

I texted my best friend to wish me good luck. I was mostly there for the air conditioning because eastern Canada was in the middle of a heat dome event.

My best friend was also in a theatre parking lot. In a different province. She chose not to go in.

So last night, I made a small movie just for her. The leading actor was a small jumping spider on my car.

I asked it ever so gently to be a part of the movie.

It agreed. And for 8 seconds we worked together to bright a smile to my best friend’s face.

Our wrap party was brief but meaningful. And our film reached the intended audience to rave reviews.

I’m lucky to have a best friend who loves the silly weird whimsical human I can be. I’m lucky to have a best friend who herself is whimsical strange and full of potential adventure. I think we have known each other 18 years now. And I’m grateful for each moment we share the earth, even when we aren’t in the same vicinity.

MOMENT TWO:

There was a question mark on my carpet.

And that made me want to write.

This week I’m grateful for all the people in my life, near and far, who are out there being themselves, through thick and thin. Through whimsy, boredom and grief. I’m grateful you exist.

Heart,

Wake