Christmas Leftovers

Ah... a little somethin' for the folks far away...

Tis the Season...to think too far into the future

I haven't been a fan of Christmas, I admit. It started years ago, longer ago than I can even put my finger on, but I know that it was borne of a mixture of exasperation with the pressures, financial and otherwise, of the stress of trying to get everything done, of trying to please too many people, of the consumerism and the waste and the voracity of our appetite for things in this part of the world. I would buy a few token gifts here and there, and all we would do to celebrate for many years was make a very good special meal on Christmas day, but otherwise, it was pretty much a day like any other.

Then, there came Nahanni.

Suddenly I had one foot back on the Christmas train from which I had leapt so many years ago. I was up at Parkgate and bought a little tree which I dragged home through the forest, trying earnestly not to poke Nahanni's eye out from her perch in the sling. I dug through the wreckage of the urban storage locker and pulled out a dusty box which contained one set of red chili lights, one box of bulbs, the 2 ornaments my mom had sent and a Christmas gift I had bought a friend who has been AWOL so much of the past five odd years that I can't remember what year I bought it in. There I was, doing Christmas.

I wasn't even sure how I felt about it - I continue to be unsure how I feel about it. I can admit that I enjoyed it more than any other in recent memory and I have a whole new understanding and appreciation for the Christmases my mother knocked herself out to give us as children. I sheepishly admit that I couldn't wait for Nahanni to rip open the paper on the few little gifts I bought her. I was resisting the urge to load the tree with presents in an effort to provide her with the one that would light up her eyes. I was resistant to the fact that every toy nowadays seems to be some weak little hunk of plastic made in China, sprayed with god knows what toxic brew of chemicals {the one toy I did buy her is already broken...). I went simple...but I was still excited. I resisted too the urge to dress her in little reindeer outfits, girly Christmas frocks - I found myself in the aisle one day a while back holding a set of antlers and a little Santa outfit and I felt like I'd been mentally kidnapped -"You don't even like Christmas!', I admonished myself. Instead I plucked a leftover Halloween costume (a holiday I do love) off the rack, a red Little Devil costume and decided that was more fitting for our holiday.

I will admit, I loved watching her open her little gifts, her clumsy fascination with the bow and paper (I know, I usually wrap in newspaper but I also discovered a long forgotten roll of wrapping paper in the back of the closet). It was a happy day - and yet there was a sense [as there so often is with me] of melancholy that accompanied it. Ez had the idea that we should begin our own holiday tradition which will evolve over time to include meals and traditions from around the world, community service etc., but he thought the first thing we should do was make stockings to use every Christmas. He has a long cherished memory of his old stocking, a giant sasquatch-like foot with big toes in which one year, when putting his stocking up he pulled out a dinky car that he'd missed the year before and has never stopped thinking of the absolute glee with which he discovered it. He went out and chose fabric for each of us, Nahanni's being a soft and fuzzy leopard print with pink flowers and stars. I sewed it up after breakfast and glued onto the cuff her little rock from the Nahanni River that Royce and Trish sent - a wonderful symbol of her first Christmas, of our first Christmas as a family. And that was when it really hit me. This stocking that I hold in my hand, it is the one that will see her through all the Christmases of her life, of our life with her. And suddenly I was trying to understand what that kind of span of time really is - it was shocking and depressing and exhilarating and daunting all at one, a flurry of flavours of emotion. Sometimes it can be hard to understand that Nahanni won't always be this little baby, that she will grow and become a little girl and then a teenager and then a woman - and yet always, I will remember the weight of her in my arms, her little hands thumping the hollow of my neck as she waits impatiently for the milk to let down, of her pirhana smile, little shards of teeth peeking out, reminding me that she is growing every day. She is at the point now where she doesn't seem to want to be rocked asleep at night anymore, something which gave her dad great joy. Now she likes to have her milk and then she pops her thumb into her mouth and wriggles to be put down to sleep on her own. You wait and wait for them to gain independence and then when they do you mourn the loss. Someday I will take out a battered box of Christmas whatnot and from it I will pull this crazy stocking and hand it to my grown daughter to take with her to her own home and I will wonder where all the time went from here to there. It makes me immeasurably sad to think of it, and yet also, I am filled with pride and hope at the thought of what an amazing tale that stocking will tell of all the years from now till then. Some will be bountiful, many will be lean, and there is no telling what form our family will take. Watching marriages fall around us like cards in the wind we cannot help but feel some of that breeze upon us. We watch as friends and relatives stumble their way through arrangements, custody, who spends Christmas Eve where and we think how lucky we are that for today, at least, we have had a wonderful holiday, we have started traditions of our own. We are building our family, one day at a time and this day marked it memorably.

I have a little leather-bound photo book which has lain empty for years but I have kept for some reason or other. Today I will slip a picture of her golden bowed head into the slot on the cover, slide a few little memories of this season into the vellum slots and I will tuck it away into that stocking. Every year I will add to it so that someday she can look back and, I hope, remember Christmas as a time when we celebrated how much we loved her, how much fun we had, the adventures we led. I hope she will have little pictures in her mind of these times, and remember them fondly so that no matter what form Christmas, with all its garish possibilities might take in the future, she will think fondly of its smells, its warmth and its wonder.

Will she always be this obedient?

SO, ask and ye shall receive...sort of. Nahanni kept up her part of this bargain - I asked for her to sleep and I'm telling you, she did the very next night and has since, sleeping right to 6 am - which is a vast and wondrous improvement. The only problem was that I continued to be up in the night for hours - it was maddening. But, finally, through the fog, I woke up yesterday and realized I'd slept til 5:48, and I can tell you, it was the first time I have ever been elated to be awake at 5:48. It was like being a new person (but for being sick on top of insomniac) and I realized how long it has been since I slept 8 hours at a stretch. Too long, my friends, far too long. Thank god I have such an amazing kid -- just ask her for something and she seems quite able to give it.
That's it for now, nothing scintillating, I admit, just a little update. More after x-mas, which has managed to grab hold of me despite all my ranting about consumerism and my decade long resistance to it on principal. I guess it's true, things do change when you have kids...

To sleep, perchance to dream...

That's all I ask, eight sweet and solid hours straight. To not be roused from my dreams in the midst of any great adventures (the latest of which, I kid you not, involved my old boyfriend {I use the term loosely and with much internal sarcasm} from Paris and a robotic President Ahmadinejad). I don't think it is too great a request. I am really, really tired. And in truth, it isn't really that Nahanni is being unreasonable. She is holding fast to her last middle of the night feeding, although to her credit she nurses and then goes back to sleep, so I think she is genuinely hungry. The problem is actually this pervasive insomnia that is plaguing me. She is in and out in ten or twelve minutes but by then I'm awake and thinking and working on my taxes and writing a letter/script/short story/novel in my head...either that or worrying, depending on the night. It's getting increasingly hard to focus and I find I say the word 'retarded' a great deal in reference to myself. I remain hopeful every night that it will be the one. I ask each of you to keep me in your nighttime thoughts...
Otherwise, Nahanni is on the move. She first began to crawl about 10 days ago and it did not take her long to figure out. It is adorable the way she drags one leg along the floor, almost in pigeon pose and then raises herself up on the other leg in a sort of half down-dog; it's a bit like watching Quasimodo lurch around your living room. She slaps her little dimpled hands on the floor like a staccato calling card so you always know she's coming. Half the time what really gets my attention is when I don't hear her...that's always when I discover her gnawing away on power cords or with her hand inches from the cat food. On the 13th she pulled herself up to standing and we are not surprised, what with her always having had super-strength and all (did I also mention that she is super-smart and super-beautiful?). Her little left incisor is mostly in now and it's so bizarrely cute, this little fang of hers - I make her laugh just to see it. I'll almost be sorry when her other three top teeth finally come in, we'll miss our little snaggletooth girl. She is eating bravely and quite voraciously, with a wonderful palate for an 8-month old baby. She want crazy over garlic-heavy filipino chicken, has been seen gnawing on raw scallions, devoured spicy steak and eats salmon like it is candy, popping into her mouth with a proclaimed 'emmm!' and clapping her hands - another favourite new pasttime. It takes me 45 minutes to feed her as she plucks up individual peas one by one and looks to me to say 'good job!' so that she can proudly clap her little hands. It is particularly amusing to watch her eat avocado, buttery jade squares that I cut up and place ceremoniously before her. She measures them carefully with her two litte pincers, chases the little shards as they escape her before squeezing them into her balled fist where she pops it just enough for it to rise to the little cleft there so she can carefully crane it towards (although not always into) her mouth. Then we start the clapping game and onwards, slowly onwards we go. I know someday I will watch her sullen face at the table, slumped against the affrontery of something we've forced upon her and I will think fondly of these times.
We recently received a wonderful gift from Trish and Royce, who live now in the Yukon and who have both guided trips on some of the amazing rivers up north, including the Nahanni. They sent Nahanni some special rocks from her namesake river, one even made into a necklace which I placed around her neck, explaining that this had come from her river - I felt like an elder placing her amulet about her neck. I took her picture and when I tried to take it off of her she cried. I cannot wait till the day we stand on the banks of that river with her, when we take her into the places we love best and she can see us as we truly are, as we were long before her and who I hope to always be.

The Devil Wears Yoga Pants

Alone at last, alone at last, oh my god, alone at last.

It's quiet. The lights are off, the room is silent but for the clacking of these keys, the baby sleeps, Ez went to bed hours ago, sick -- and I find myself alone, savouring the silence like chocolate on the tongue. Or like red wine, the likes of which I have happily been sipping for the last hour. I have now several declarations. First of all, I want to be gorgeous like Meryl Streep (oh Kate, please, when you see her, tell her she has changed for me how I feel about ageing. Actually, so have you for that matter, but she really did it).

I have of late been lamenting many things -- the passage of time, the shift in my career path, the disjointed nature of my life as a mother...the complete destruction of my home as I once knew it. It has been a confusing and perilous time for me lately, for I know that this is one of those periods in life when one can easily fall into the depths of something dark without realizing it, without ever feeling the feather's breath of it on one's cheek. Simple darkness, mind you, but a dusk nonetheless.

In many respects I am now understanding what I have heard tell about what happens to you once you become a mother; the setting aside of self in response to the devotion you feel for your child. I am so completely ensconced in my life as Nahanni's mother that sometimes I don't even have the opportunity to look up and see where I have knocked off bits of myself. I really see this time as a difficult sort of cleaving away - trying to carve just enough of myself off from her, from my mommy-ness to still feel like I am the same person. I have spent the better part of the last year and a half melding myself to her, embracing her from the inside out, and now it is my new and somewhat arduous task to try to unwind all the tangle of nerves and synapses that bind us so tightly together -- and yet not take it too far. I think I struggle every day with the balance of what is enough for her and for me and frankly, I have no real idea if it's working. She seems happy enough, but at the same time, she has become incredibly demanding of my attentions, like a new boyfriend who cannot comprehend that you had a life before him (at least, I have heard of these types, I never actually had one...but that's another blog altogether). I am finding it tiring and trying even as I love that she needs me so thoroughly. I am struggling though, to maintain a sense of identity, particularly when I haven't been working, when I have no idea what the future holds for me in my career.

It's somewhat funny that for my 'me time' (finally!) tonight I should fall into watching 'The Devil Wears Prada', which I loved despite a complete resistance to it when it came out just by dint of the mention of Prada. I have long had a bitter and suspicious dislike of rich trappings (certainly rooted in my humble beginnings, but also for what the vanity of it represents in such a struggling world) and it was something to see with that kind of mindset. Of course, it recalled for me how much I love pretty things; adore them really, while at the same time flicking the on-switch of all my rational thoughts on the nature of what is important and what is not. How do you know, really? Since I became a mom (okay, maybe even somewhat before) I have definitely noticed that things are not the same for me in the pretty department. I just haven't got the time to devote to drying and primping and making-up and accessorizing (at my own peril with little Miss Grabby Hands)...my house is a wreck, I've done yoga once in a blue moon and I have scarcely written at all. I feel sometimes like I've lost touch completely with everything about myself. What do I want to be? How do I want to live? What the hell do I do now that I am where I am? I really, truly do not know how to know -- I am so bogged down in the now that I can't even process a cogent game plan -- and that scares me. I have seen how fast time has begun to pass (her 8 month birthday today...and another of mine fast approaching) and it frightens me to think that I might look up and have completely lost track of my whole path, my whole plan, my dreams, my focus. I am scared that I will get so wrapped up in being Momma that I will forget how to be everything that I am, that I was, that I was meant to be. Certainly I am better because of Nahanni, but I am also in someways..less...is that fair to say? Less in that I have given up pieces of me for her...perhaps like inches you didn't need anyway. I don't know, I'm not sure yet. I imagine that as she carves herself away from me (which I also lament in its own way) I will begin again to discover who I am, to grab hold of the beltloops of that lovely 1940's hooded black coated girl who traipsed the streets of Paris and really, honestly believed in every impossible dream she had. I also know that when she turns her face to me it will not glow with youth, but with experience, that her face, once porcelain smooth with belie the lines borne of a million smiles,, the best of which have been instigated by my daughter. And, like looking at Meryl in all her silver gorgeousness, I will understand her to be even more beautiful now.