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.