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.
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