Seasonal concerns

The good: There is nothing like getting one’s first valentine from one’s son. Yesterday we brought it home from school, a heart in construction paper, covered in those little tufts of tissue paper where you wrap it around the pencil and dip the bottom in glue to stick it on standing up… you know the kind. I oohed and aahed but Noah was too busy landing at home to really notice. But this morning he picked it up off the table and came over and said “I made this valatine for you my mummy.” Be still my heart.

The dance between son and mother is quite something even at this age, I have to say.

We had heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast and if work goes all right I will pick something nice up. Otherwise it is “take out and make out” around here (I love working around the corner from the young fashion mag team).

The amusing: Can anyone explain to me why a) I cannot read a calendar and b) Noah’s school had its party on Wednesday? Because either understanding would have prevented the mad panic yesterday morning when I realized I had to deliver 6 non-homemade goodies for the toddler goody bag (the school does not encourage individual valentines). I thought I had another day to shop for them in the convenience store in the lobby of my building!

A quick search of the house came up with nothing. We’d managed to take at least one sticker off every sticker sheet that looked remotely like valentines; the pencils we have are Hallowe’en-themed; we’d opened all the mini-playdough jars; our markers are used; we clearly do not eat enough things like granola bars, individually wrapped goldfish crackers, or anything like that. Finally I discovered a box of hot chocolate mix in individual packets (score! they were even red!) and since Noah had made valentines galore (see stickers, above) on the weekend, when I thought we would be doing those, I wrote “you warm my heart” on each of them and stuck them onto the packets. Ha! Thinking outside the box! (Okay, ok, but I tried.)

I guess I had better hit some stores and develop a basket of “generic crap for moments like these.” Because otherwise I would have to be, like, organized. It’s funny how when I was teaching I must have said or thought at least, oh, daily, that parents that could not remember a simple thing like bringing 6 plastic containers to school (with lids) on Monday should be ashamed of themselves, and now I have trouble with even the major holidays on the school-party calendar. I’m glad I’m on the learning curve before Noah is really old enough to notice.

Organizational suggestions are welcome, with the caveat that I really DON’T know what the issue is. Tuesday night I actually PLANNED to get the party favours (I was being facetious about the convenience store; there is a drugstore across the street! :)) and STILL missed that it was the NEXT day.

The hard: We have a lot of snow right now in the city, great mounds of it plowed up at the side of the road, half-melted, frozen, and covered again. It’s been a while since I had to scramble over a snowbank; while I was working from home and on mat leave I could pick and choose my errands and destinations. Now that I’m working full time there are places I must be, meetings where I can’t cheerily call up and say Noah refuses to put his shoes on, ha ha. And snowbanks in front of intersections I must cross.

Maybe it’s that rhythm, the 8-4, Monday to Friday rhythm, that is making this year so hard. I have phantom kicks in my belly. I am suddenly undone by the scent of the same soap that fate has decreed is used both at the Sick Kids NICU and in the washrooms of my new office building (or close enough). I freak out when Noah comes to ask me where did Emily go? (It turns out he means the Thomas the Tank Engine character, on You Tube.)

Maybe it’s that Noah seems stronger, more articulate. It’s not that I don’t know on a zillion, primal, levels that he is still a baby and still in need of my protection. But he’s not an infant. His legs are long and strong; his torso is lengthening out; his head is not quite so large in comparison. The child is replacing the babe. And I suppose that leaves the space for my ever-after newborn.

Whatever it is the currents of trauma which have moved calmly like a creek, then faster, are swirling now back around that experience and I feel them more and more, my moods quicker to sink.

Carl’s seeing it and feeling it too and in a sudden reversal of our usual roles, he sent me a text message on Monday: i think we should book the briars. So, we did. We’re now officially the people who put their child in daycare and work two jobs and take a luxury vacation and remain a little bit in debt, at least for a while. But I’m kind of glad to know where this rush will end: where we’ve washed up before, on the shores of a quiet, family-friendly inn, where meals are served in the dining room at set times, or delivered to one’s room for a small extra fee, there’s a pool to swim in, grounds to walk over, a lake in view, and a fire lit in the fireplace.