It really is white in heaven...

She is in bliss.

I have set before her a steaming mug. Its contents are simple - milk, cream, cocoa, vanilla - but really, the most important thing it contains is memory. This is a mug of childhood, of the time before things have too many calories, are too verboten. In this moment in time, this fervor of Christmas, all bets are off and she is allowed to eat the unthinkable. She has had hot chocolate before, but never like this. I take my time, whipping this tender brew into life. I steam the milk gently, whisking frothy air into it, coaxing it with vanilla and my secret weapon: a few drops of maple syrup. I plop three fat, impossibly white marshmallows into the mug and spoon over the steaming cocoa to start them melting. The piece de resistance is a sweet white chocolate peppermint kiss, shaved over this glossy, sticky piece of childhood heaven.

I set it before her. She eyes it warily, sizing it up. Her lashes dance up and down as she follows the steam. She peeks over the mug's rim where the melty white pillows are lazing in their nice, warm baths. She pokes one little baby with her spoon and it spins lazily on some unseen axis, like a chicken on a spit. It looks gloriously, sublimely sweet. She plunges her spoon into this riot of frothiness and scoops a dripping spoonful of it to her yawning pink mouth. She closes her little lips over the spoon and for a moment she pauses, speechless. Her eyes flutter up to mine and we have a perfect moment of understanding: this is the best thing ever. She bobs a little dance of glee and spends the next 8 minutes poking and prodding the slowly diminishing balls of gooey goodness until there are only threads remaining, gossamer webs on the side of the mug. She licks her lips, places her little arms akimbo and declares in her most eery imitation of me:

Well, that was just too good!

Yes it is, even if you're just watching.

Nahannina Ballerina

There is a thing that sometimes happens to me now that I am a parent, this wave of prescience, of emotion, of timelessness. These moments are ethereal, they move across me like the wafts of heat that waffle in the air of a hot day, obscuring that which we see behind them.

Yesterday I took Nahanni to see the broadcast of The Royal Opera's 'Nutcracker' at the movie theatre. She had seen a preview and asked me repeatedly so I bought tickets and took her, not really knowing if she would even last five minutes. She insisted that I bring her ballet slippers and she was adamant that she should wear her white princess dress, a big puffy meringue that when worn by a mop-haired 2-year-old is cute enough to melt even the hardest of hearts. She sat quietly awed in my arms during the first half, asking dozens of questions, interspersed regularly with 'When is the ballerina going to dance again?'. Then, as though a gust of fairy dust had wafted through to her, she slid from my lap and (after donning her ballet slippers, of course) stepped out into the aisle.

And she began to dance.

Here she dances, this lovely child, against a backdrop of fantasy, arms whirling, prancing, tip-toeing, leaping, twirling - her face a monument to the innocence and joy of one untouched by life. She swept up and down the aisle, awash in the joy of moving along to this beautiful music, inspired by every step she watched on screen. People began to poke each other and they leaned out of their seats to watch her and for 10 or 15 minutes there was only this darling little puff of a girl dancing in the aisle.

It was the most beautiful dance I've ever seen and it was hard for me not to cry as I watched her. There came upon this crowd, and most especially upon me, a wondrous joy that made the whole experience of this sumptuous ballet even more beautiful. I could see it in others' faces, and surely they could see it in mine.

A long, slow shattering of things.

That's what being a parent is.

I will watch my daughter dance this dance for the rest of my life.

But I must report...

On a happier note, I must report that Nahanni just read her first words. She got a set of letter stamps from Playdoh at a birthday party today and I began to put together little words I've been showing her in books. There is a line in 'Red Fish Blue Fish' (Dr. Seuss) "little words like IF and IT" that she has lately been reciting so I put together I and T and without hesitation she sounded them out and read them - IF, IT, FIT, AT and CAT.

I'm damned impressed and she was very excited and did a little victory dance. It was a wonderful thing to see this beautiful moment in my daughter's life when she really grasped the concept of reading. Oh, the world that awaits her in books!

PS. I'll be okay.

Trials of Bad Wife/Mother/Actress

Oh, here it comes - the middle-of-the-night blog, the bellyaching I'm bad at everything blog (granted, it is almost 5:00 am and I've been up for hours). It's all the stuff I'm feeling but not supposed to say blog.

It's not been a time of shining moments for me. Part of the never-ending pendulum swing of life, this is definitely a down cycle. I can't remember a time when I have felt so stuck, so miserably failed, so out-of-touch with my own self and my former goals and dreams and desires. I feel utterly tossed away, I feel as though I am accomplishing nothing and am grasping at the threads of my own identity.

I find myself gazing wistfully at women with small babies in carriers, in buggies, in arms. I look at them and remember that at the most fulfilling and wonderful time - when I didn't care about anything else but being a mother. It was a simpler time, so much simpler that my voracious quest to conquer a world which I am no longer sure I even want to be a part of. I spend my days now spinning my wheels, feeling unsuccessful in every realm of my life, not knowing what to try to get out of it. I do keep trying, but it still feels like I can hear those wheels a-spinnin', feel the grit of the gravel as it spits up from the spinning tires that don't seem to be driving me anywhere lately.

I'm feeling like a bad mother.

It was easy to be a wonderful mother of a baby, new and pink and vanilla-scented. But now I have this little person who wants my attention most of the day, who demands and deserves hours of my time - and I feel like I don't know how to give it to her. Where before my days centred around her and her amusement, her edification, now I often feel myself wandering away from things with her, intent on finishing cleaning the kitchen, trying to get to yoga or to do some writing or bills, or cooking or cleaning or dragging myself back from the precipice of my own slide into...what? I don't even know what I'm sliding towards.

I watch how Ez plays with her and I am amazed by it. He thinks of the most creative little games to play with her, they play dress-up and house and hockey and games full of imagination...and patience. I hear them roaring with laughter and often, when I go upstairs and try to join them Nahanni is the quick to shout at me to get out and I feel a wave of inadequacy pour over me. I never make her laugh like that...Why don't I think of those games?..Why doesn't she want me here?

I struggle nowadays to find ways to entertain her, especially since I am simaultaneously trying to figure out my own return to life, my own return to myself. And I am really struggling with my own identity - just who the hell am I anymore? I feel like I used to have very specific identifiers for myself and my life - I am a successful actress, I am a doting mother, I am a fiery, roaring fabulous woman...

Well, was.

Now I really feel...doused. Yes, I am still an actress, but not what I was. I am still a doting mother, but not...what I was. I am still a fabulous, fiery woman -- somewhere. But those identifier cards don't seem to be there like they were. Now I'm 'just another woman with a kid' as one friend aptly put it. I no longer have a newborn at which to coo, I'm not pregnant or nursing, I'm not working on camera, I'm not even really writing lately. I had a flurry of motivated activity that has all fallen to the side and I feel stuck right back in the hinterland of non-me that I was in a while back. Granted, I had that brief respite when I booked onto that show (that show which will never be mentioned and I hope goes down in a burning wreckage of bad reviews and low viewership - yes, it's spite, but still, I'm bitter). I'm not going to try and sugarcoat it - this period has been really, really hard.

I adore my little daughter and I am proud of her beyond measure. Of course, I see where all the work I put in is visible in her incredible language skills (Mommy, look! I'm being ambidextrous!) and her excellent manners and her sweet, gentle disposition. I try to take her out and do fun things with her still, but I just...feel at a loss in general. I wonder what kind of example I am right now, what she feels from me in this gritty time in which I am trying to reclaim my lost self. Does she wonder where her real mom went?

I sure do.

It's some fun and games

These days fall upon my skin like a rash, slightly nagging, but not altogether unmanageable. I think fear of the impending unknown weighs most heavily, although it is not as though we haven't faced that before. Uncertainty comes with the territory we have chosen.

As usual, motherhood is the constant(k) that stays with me and keeps me grounded. This child, still so wondrous with her lashes and curls and gravely voice. She teaches me something everyday and I feel genuinely sorry for people who are to busy to notice all that there is to learn from these marvelous little people. She picks up things, words, expressions like a magnet picks up metal filings. Little scraps here and there, spouted back at me for approval. Her latest thing is declaring herself to be 'ambidextrous' - something I explained to her a week or so ago and which she pulled out of her hat the other day as we were painting our holiday wrapping paper. Plonking away with her paints, she said 'Mommy, look - today I'm using me right hand. That means I'm ambidextrous' - and again, I am amazed. Not quite as funny as 'Look! These are my boobies, they're from China!' (don't know where she got that one). The other night, apropos of nothing she suddenly looked at me very seriously and exclaimed 'Boobs!', which naturally cracked me up and caused her to repeat it for about 20 minutes. Funnier still is that it took that long for it to actually stop being hilarious.

I'm in the throes of the whole Christmas thing - which is quite funny when you consider that I have been a hater for many years. Suddenly I am combing stores and doing research and have finished all my shopping - and it's only mid-November. All my fears and cries of consumerism seem to have been set aside and I am looking forward to Christmas is a way I haven't since I was 10 years old. I cannot wait to look at that child's face when she comes downstairs and sees the bounty before her. Who knows how the future will provide for us? But for this year, there will be more than enough for her and I know it will be wonderful.

The thumbsucking is improving, although I may be giving her a complex (why not, I have many to spare!). I heard her telling her monkey the other day that his teeth were crooked and I cringed. I have changed tacks and am working with the 'nasty germs' angle instead, in an effort to spare her worrying about orthodontics at such a young age. And I am trying to make peace with my imperfect teeth and not make that my first official crappy thing I pass onto my emotionally absorbent daughter. Whatever works.
Besides, natural teeth are beautiful too, right? (Please say yes, my complex is not fixed yet...)

All in all, even as we are in the midst of the next big who-knows-what, we feel pretty good. Some days I wonder where all my drive and ambition and relentless forward pace has gone, and some days, I just don't care. Some days I don't do any particular homework and I don't try to claw my way up to anywhere and I just live in the now.

It's not too bad.

The Long Slow Leaping of Things

This is the slowest leap off ever.

There are so many questions and very few answers. This is a difficult time for us - we are breaking new ground. Trying valiantly to figure out which way to turn next, where to look for our joy. Now it may seem obvious where joy lies, but I don't think it really is. Or you might see it, but the path is thorny and often perilous, mentally and physically. And there's all that damned real life to worry about.

I hear my friend, my old, often disappeared friend sermonizing that real life things mean very little next to joy, and while I agree, there are still realities to contend with. And questions. Yes, I know there is always more - but when?

I am struggling - though not unhappily - with what's next. Baby? No baby? Travel? Move? Leave the business? What then? What's next? How and how and how?

I have let far too many no's block me in my path, and while I certainly have no intention of letting that continue, I still feel as though I am fumbling around in the dark. The road less traveled comes with no convenient map (or GPS) and I wander around trying not to get lost. Not that being lost doesn't have its own aura of adventure, but after a while in the woods, you just want to find the inn and have a shower, you know?

I have been handling the latest round of cruel fate with more aplomb than even I knew I could muster. Some of it is simply the maturity that comes with age and motherhood, some of it is simply acquiescence. Somedays I just get tired of fighting the unfightable and I just surrender to where it is now.

Currently now is stuck at home, since Ez's truck has taken this unbelievably inopportune time to die. With no car and lamentable public transit (the other day it took me over an hour to go to family place - a 7-minute drive) Nahanni and I are plodding through tasks at home, tearing apart closets, wintering the garden. Today we raked sodden leaves and pulled the dahlia bulbs in fat wads from the dirt. When it finally got too cold we came in and I made hot chocolate with marshmallows which she got in her halloween bag. We sat at the table and I watched her pluck each tiny blob of marshmallow from its frothy chocolate bed and slurp spoon after spoon of the milky brew with a look of utter contentedness on her face. We chatted, we ate pizza left over from last night (not part of my new 'what-would-Dierdre-do' eating plan) and we laughed and had a lovely time which would we would not have otherwise had were we not stranded at home.

You could have worse days.

Like a Baby...

Today, as every day, we read books. Hundreds of words tumbling past her, everyday. She catches a lot.

She's lying in her bed, her pale skin warmed by the light of the yellow curtains, sunflowered by its rays. Her ponytails are high up, askew, tiny pea-shoot tendrils of her wispy little girl hair writhe in every direction. She is gorgeous.

She still sucks her thumb, no matter how much I inveigle her to stop. It makes little squishing noises and is like a little song she sings while she sleeps. I watch her for some time, her eyes quiver in dream. I kiss the finger that remains pressed to my lip where it last fell in her dreamy descent and I try to slip out. She awakens, her eyes flutter open, her lashes two swift butterflies. "Stay here" she says.

And I do.

Thanksgiving 2009

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Have many thoughts...too tired for now... ;)

If only bubble gum did this for us all...

There was good news, but it didn't even last long enough for me to manage to talk about it. The only good news is that there isn't anything lethal around....gotta thank what stars you can.

I need some grown up bubble gum.

At least I looked smashing for the red carpet parties and had a ball at Brightlights' party at Cin Cin.

a little slide show

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Insomnia Sucks

I think insomnia is half the reason why I haven't shown up here much. I think it has been over six months since I have slept through the night and I am feeling worn thin like an old blanket. It is as though my body has decided that this is normal, that I should awaken every morning around 3 and read for several hours. It is getting desperate indeed and I am feeling stupid and slow witted today especially. After a week in Desolation Sound, still not sleeping, I am desperate for it. I awoke yesterday at 4 am and couldn't retrieve a lick of sleep and so went to bed last night at 8 pm, only to awaken at 1 and am still going...

I finished my book, reviewed by one as 'unrelentingly tragic' and I literally bawled on the couch in the half light of the lamp. My mom, newly enamoured of texting, sent me a message at the inauspicious time of 4:26am and since I was up, I chatted with her instead of writing some sad, woeful entry influenced entirely by my reading and my week on the edge of civilization, where we thought every day about leaping off.

Here we still are, our house seemed...somehow less upon our return from that beautiful, quiet place. For me, the fear of the unknown is ... well, I don't even know. By turns it is exciting to think of leaving it all, of spurning the business which has so often spurned me. But then I get fearful of leaving it all, for it is what I know. But I am tired of the 'rat-race', of the rejection and uncertainty. I'm most tired of my husband's misery and its effect on his health and the health of our family. Most of all, I miss and crave adventure as we have always known it, and I am pretty sure that this is not it. We dream of boats, of water around us as far as we can see. We dream of life less ordinary, of a child who grows up knowing more than tv and texting and this modern life so shaped by superficial things. Not to say that escaping somewhere simpler would erase those effects on her, but surely that they would be mitigated by her exposure to nature, to travel and adventure and the road less traveled.

I am tired. Very, very tired. Too tired currently, for my years. I need sleep like I need air and I need it soon so that I can recover myself for the next big leap.

Nahanni's in the kitchen with Dinah.

Today I stopped into a little local grocery on Main Street to grab a quick loaf of bread. They had these little carts and I pulled one out for Nahanni and she just ran with it. She went right over and started loading up her little cart with great gusto, and was pretty specific in her choices. I'm glad I managed to catch some of it. Ahh, the innocence of youth.

For dinner tonight I cooked each of the things she picked - scrambled eggs softly with butter and a bit of cream, green pepper, tomatoes from our garden, cilantro, sharp and green on the tongue. Spicy Mexican salsa and the chips she jammed in at the end, broccoli and corn on the cob that she shucked herself. Blueberries she picked out at the Farmer's market the other day. She was so proud of herself, she kept exclaiming 'I picked out all of this food we are eating!' and her smile just lit up her face. It was worth the $36 in groceries that I didn't necessarily need. Worth more. Teaching a kid about the love of food, about the process of growing it, choosing it, cooking it with pleasure and eating it without reservations is a priceless gift.

Ah, these are the doll days of summer.

Words and Letters and Temper Tantrums

All of which are mine.

Unlike Nahanni's tantrums, which are visible, visceral, designed to grab attention, mine are mostly silent now, although as always, directed inwards at myself. Mostly it is a running monologue of 'I didn't finish, this needs, what happened, why is...' with various misdeeds tossed in like nuts in a salad. Some days I get tired of the notion that nothing gets done. This weekend I finally realized that because of this running monologue I never seem to relax. As in, it would never occur to me to simply sit in the sunshine in my hard-won backyard and just enjoy. Somehow the idea of doing nothing for me is tantamount to personal treason. But the reno on the den (I use both terms loosely) needs to be done, the query letters for three books remain unwritten, there's my demo reel and my new website and the blog and the photo albums and the .... well, you get the picture.

So this weekend I tried a little experiment [Ez would like it noted that it was at his behest and not me being zen]. On Saturday I sat in a chair in the sun and did nothing. Gasp! What horror! A lazy day? How dare you be unproductive, how dare you leave emails unresponded, chores undone! For shame you lazy mongrel, you! But I did it and it felt pretty good. I lazed in the hot sun in my workout clothes (workout not included) until it occurred to me that I could wear a bikini in my own backyard. I dug it up and put it on and felt the breeze on my skin and the sun prickling the tops of my thighs which cannot remember when they last saw the sun. I spent the day fending off the amorous advances of my long-suffering husband (not bad for 14 years) and Nahanni's random hosings. I drank ice cold pop that I stole from the big BBQ stash for next weekend's party. I listened to the ice crackle in the big red cups and I tasted the sugar and tried not to feel bad about drinking pop. I smelled the essence of tomato on my hands from when I straightened the behemoth that is overtaking the small patch in the garden. I plucked mint from the little groves where it has thrived, strangling out even the irrepressible morning glory. I pressed my hand into the lingering pain at my hip from last weekend's kayaking adventure - my first since I was 9 weeks pregnant and ran a stretch of the Thompson with my gladdened heart in my throat, afraid any twist of my abdomen might steal that burgeoning life from me.

I guess I relaxed.

It felt good.

And still, the house managed to come together over the course of the weekend, and is almost in shape enough to throw open the doors to the friends we've invited this weekend, for the company that's coming for the rest of the summer. We are proud of our home, of its unique and eclectic nature. We are proud of our amazing little daughter, quietly singing in pidgin Portuguese to herself as she rolls and slices playdoh, rolls and slices, her naked bum dotted with bug bites and little, sweet bruises. I've cut her curly bangs to frame her lovely little face and sometimes I look at her and feel like I have always known her at the same time as I look around my house that I am working so hard on and know that someday it will not even remember our presence here.

It's that at the heart of it. The transience of it all. I think that is both what gets me going and what brings me back. There will always be cooking and cleaning and fixing and problems. There is no real plateau - although 'they' are ardently selling us all on the notion that there is. Life is life - you can try and paddle upstream in it, and sometimes we must to reach that eddy, to avoid that rock. But mostly, life is best lived going with its flow, paddling hard in the white stuff and knowing when it's the right time to pop your legs out under your skirt, ask for the tinny your partner has in his pfd and just float a little in the cool water.

Finding Time is my New Impossibility

Yikes. There is nary a spare minute these days with an active two-year old, a house, a garden and a career. I don't know how I do it. Somedays I don't manage to do much. I try to concentrate with all my might on the present (oh, Eckhart you!) and to ask myself constantly 'If this were your last day...'. When I feel impatient or stretched, especially with Nahanni, I ask myself if I will regret the way I have reacted. It is a study in being present in the now.

I find very little time to write, which is frustrating on many levels, but I am trying to find room. It is a busy schedule at best. But our garden grows and reminds me that to everything there is a season. When she wakes in the middle of the night and I am groggy and tired, I try to think of all the people who later say 'I wish I would have just lain with her' and I do. I apologize when I am short and love her to the ends of the earth.

Except when she's whining.

But I guess that's the twos.

I'm Baa-ack. Sorta.

Mostly I feel somehow guilty for not managing to do this sooner. I know it keeps you folks back east in the loop. So here's a few cute ones.

k

Nahanni pix



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