I don’t mean to be a Debbie Downer, but is all change good?

I am weary of computer technology. Yes, I own a Mac. Yes, I blog. Yes, I Facebook. I spend time on these things in fits and starts, as I feel led, working hard to not be led by compulsion.

I see the world around me running full-tilt into the arms of a technological lover and I’m having trouble understanding why.

Screens aren’t faces. Scanners aren’t hands.

Maybe it’s because I’ve become a parent and I am hyper-aware of the misuse and missed opportunities surrounding technology.

For example: Our local library has a self-checkout system. I go there once a week with Madeleine and Thomas for story time. By the time 11:30 AM rolls around, we are tired, hungry and I am one mama juggling a writhing two-year-old and an infant strapped to my sweaty, over-dressed body.

We approach the counter helter-skelter. I want to make eye contact. I want my child to pass our carefully chosen pile of books to a librarian. I want HELP. So, I smile and ask the woman behind the counter if she can help us check out our books. I hope she’ll smile at Madeleine. Hope she’ll strike up a conversation about the books she’s picked. Hope she’ll encourage a love of reading. Hope Madeleine will have her own memories of the librarians at her childhood library, like I do. Instead of helping the woman asks me if I need a tutorial on the checkout machine. No, I think, I’m not an idiot. No, your machine is not fool-proof. It usually takes me three tries to get all of our items successfully on the screen and, oh, I’d like my daughter to meet you and, oh, CAN’T YOU SEE I NEED A HAND?

The Toronto Library is seeing major cutbacks and the Literati (led by none other than Margaret Atwood via Twitter) are fighting back. But the truth is, our library staff are working themselves out of a job.

Is this change good? I can’t see how. When lines are long and people are in a hurry, perhaps self-checkouts at the library expedite the process. But when there is no line and there are young eyes seeking connection, looking for help, the technology is not the greater of the two.

The computer is not, never will be, better than you.

I love clothes. My mom instilled this affection early in my youth, with her personal sense of style and what some would call flamboyant taste. Capes and red-rimmed glasses. Aboriginal prints and snake-skin shoes.

Building a wardrobe takes time and a keen eye. Over the years friends have asked me to take them shopping, help them take the guess work out of what can be an altogether tedious task. And it is. I hate shopping out of necessity. I rarely do intentionally, instead I explore favourite haunts from time and time, collecting pieces as they find me. This way I can purchase items I love rather than the best I could find in the moment. And you can too!

On a recent trip to Anthropologie, a delightful (and unexpected) anniversary gift from my husband, I carried a pile of twenty items into the change room.

Shopping Tip #1. Grab everything you like.

That way you don’t have to run out of the dressing room half-naked combing the store for that pair of grey corduroys you were iffy on.

On this particular trip, I started with the tops. I am a stay-at-home-mom/sometime writer at present, so tops and cardigans paired with a favorite pair of jeans are my go-to outfit.

Tip #2. Wear jeans, flats, a good bra (for the ladies) and a favourite plain cardigan.

This will allow you to see each item exactly how you’d wear it day-to-day. If you are an uber-planner, toss a pair of heels in your handbag too.

I create three piles of clothes — no’s, yeses, and maybes. In the end it was down to four daily pieces (all from the Anthropologie sale section) or one incredible (full price) dress.

Tip #3. Buy to wear.

If you can’t see an immediate need for a piece of clothing, don’t buy it. I have done this and regretted it time and time again. Save the money, and the closet space, for later.

In this case, I opted for the four simpler items. While I loved the dress, I had no immediate event on the books and, in case something crops up, I have a handful of lovely frocks waiting for me at home.

Final tip of the day…

Tip #4. Buy to last.

Building a wardrobe is about buying quality and developing a personal style. That way clothes can be worn year after year, no matter the style forecast. Purchasing quality clothing does not have to break the bank. I rarely (if ever) buy full price items at stores like Anthrolpologie. Check out sale sections of local designer boutiques (try Dream in Vancouver and Poa Studio in Toronto,) end-of-season sample sales and, my favourite: vintage and consignment shops. I found an incredible little-black-dress for $10 at a vintage shop on Commercial Drive last summer. I promise, it’s possible.

A final note: I am a firm believer in wearing what you want. If you are a man and you want to wear Tretorn gumboots in Gastown, then you damn well should. That goes for white after labour day, too.

Happy shopping!

The days with a new son are blurring into one.

First, his birth: marvel, a rush, completely bowled me over. His face, an orbit, encircling us with new love. Then, his sister’s midnight scare. Stopped breath. Gasping: “Mommy, help. Mommy, help me.” Me a mess of tears, fears. Nursing to health a child drenched in sweat, her airway betraying her, mere days after her brother’s birth. Me, sitting on the couch nursing newborn as my husband braves the ambulance ride with our first baby. Sobbing for what might have happened had I not heard her: had the air conditioners been on, the doors closed, muffling her cries from bedroom next door. I’d woken to nurse babe and heard the stirrings I’d otherwise miss. This is our miracle.

Now, two children roaming these wooden floors, healthy. And me, sent to rest week after week. The bleeding keeps coming. Cabbing to emergency, waiting in rooms with a woman swallowing needles, man cursing at children. Full moon, they said. Husband at home laying toddler to bed, feeding infant by bottle. Slowly now, it is subsiding, but my world circles round a room, a house, a three block radius. I can’t walk further for the pain of it. And I am tears and laughter and more tears as I struggle to find moments with my sweet girl, my devoted man. And I hold a babe in arm all the day.

And today we had a party in our front yard to celebrate two years of life, of memory, of firsts — steps in the Bowen House, ice cream cone with Grandma, words, airplane rides — and over plates of cupcakes and gummy bears spilling on grass, the pain of it all slips away.

____________________

Joining with Emily, at imperfect prose, today.

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I feel I should explain exactly what happened. Madeleine caught croup and a spiked fever in the middle of the night had her gasping for air. That was the cause of the 9-1-1 call and our midnight scare. I had complications with bleeding after Thomas’ birth and had to be on bed rest for a couple of weeks. In the end everything checked out and I didn’t need any surgery, thank God.

photo by Grace Groot. Madeleine and I (9 months pregnant).

Balance has always been a word that made my skin crawl. A kind of hokey, mumbo-jumbo approach to life lacking any root or grounding. When I would find myself drowning in a sea of school/work/relationships/sports, my mom would tell me I lacked balance. And it made me want to sock her in the nose. (I really do love her heaps and heaps.)

I know she meant well. She still does. But balance just isn’t my word. I’ve always loved to throw myself into things full tilt. Rowing. Boyfriends. Jesus. Faith. And it has often served me well.

Often. Not always.

And now I am a mother. And I have hit thirty. And I am coming around to this seven-letter-word. B-A-L-A-N-C-E.

For everything there is a season (Ecclesiastes.) And, like my dad said last week, “we need a balance of work, family and service (to the Church.)”

My awesome friend Meg tipped me off to a series on Balancing Work, Life and Motherhood. Though some of these women employ full-time nannies, many of them are quite normal — all pursuing creative work with children in tow.

I have been on the wet coast for five days now and the unexpectedly cool weather has been doing my eight-month-pregnant body good. I expect when I return to Toronto’s July humidity I will balloon something fierce. In the meantime I am enjoying much quality time with family and friends, lots of time at various petting zoos, and altogether too many americanos and plates of dessert. What a good holiday should be.

This is my first visit home since our move to Toronto and it is different than I would have expected. Instead of packing in trips to my favourite Vancouver enclaves I am wanting for quality time with people wherever I can get it. DQ in suburbia. Visits to my grandma in the hospital. Teeter-tottering in Queen’s Park.

I am fitting in some final article writing, interviews and key meetings before I return home and baby number two arrives. I have this (well founded) feeling like my life is going to (temporarily) end when baby boy shows up a month from now. It is amazing the productivity that comes with that kind of a deadline. In the past month and a half I have checked off some major writing to-dos, like stacks of poetry submissions, article pitches, contest/mentorship apps, and some other quieter projects. I promise to post a bunch of recent articles soon.

Vancouver (/Bowen Island,) I love you — ALL OF YOU, MY BEST FRIENDS, MY FAMILY – more than ever.

when

you

love

somebody

THIS MUCH

words

don’t

do you

justice

______________

I am cherishing these last days as just the two of us, being mindful of how our world will change when another little one makes his way into our world. There are new days ahead.

[poetry / freewrite]

I am here today to give myself

permission
to take all of the twine
the knots
the dirt-sand-rock-thorn lines
and bless them
smile with my mouth
my eyes

what I mean by that is

I want to live open
extend my arms
out
give way to the new things
lift eyes to grey skies
lover’s hand
and grasp with the strength of a giant

last wednesday

I sat with my one-year-old
reading the ugly duckling
the ripped pages
painting a pretty picture on the floor

and we danced
cheek-to-cheek
on whatever was playing on the radio
her warmth to my warmth

I am craving

more of this
the untethered moments
the knowing
that this is life at best
life at present
life given
life to be grabbed
life not foresaken

and I want the beautiful

when I was little I wore

dresses that matched my sister
and it made me proud
I wanted to look the same
next to her olive skin

the colours were

pink, white
sweatshirts with happy and sad faces
dresses in fuschia and aquamarine
there were yellows — warm

I remember how

we’d go to the playhouse
dad built in the backyard
the one with the real house windows
that opened and closed
we’d sit on the black spackled roof
and laugh at our brothers
dressed like batman and robin
jumping from roof to lawn
and be secretly jealous of their bravery

I wore my hair

long then
but I’d liked it short
the time I cut it in my friend’s bathroom
with paper scissors when no one was looking
and wore it the same way to my dad’s wedding –
a perfect tomboy in a pale blue dress

Tomorrow I leave for a charming, Atlantic coastal house on the shores of Prince Edward Island to work on my life’s dreams. It’’s an Angela Ritchie ACE (arts, culture and education) camp being hosted by a longtime creative hero of mine, Sabrina Ward Harrison (whose work I was first introduced to by my dear friend Avital.) I’’ve been reading Anne of Green Gables in preparation, and between that and reopening Sabrina’’s book Spilling Open, I am being confronted with an abandoned way of living — Anne’’s insatiable desire for all things romantic and Sabrina’’s altogether raw confession.

Yesterday I was talking with my friend Sara and trying to explain how I felt about this trip. With my tongue uncharacteristically tied in knots, I finally spilled the truth that I was feeling NERVOUS.

I am nervous to go to camp.

Like the nervousness I felt before going to a Calvinettes camp-out when I was eight. Except today it’’s an adult nervous. Like I’’m fooling myself into believing that I can see all of the potential potholes ahead.

I’’m not nervous the girls are going to tease me or the boys won’’t think I’’m pretty. I’’m not worried I’’ll forget to bring my bathing suit or that it will rain all week and we won’’t be able to sing or roast marshmallows around the campfire. I’’m worried that this trip, this camp, this first four-day sojourn without my one-year-old, this meeting of a creative hero, this writing assignment, won’’t be all I desperately hope it will be.

Something deep, DEEP, in me wants to fling myself into this week with the unhindered expectation of a five-year-old. I want to believe with my twenty-year-old-heart (the better, freer, lighter heart) that this will be IT. The marker. The moment. The chapter changer. A time so affecting that I’ll hold it up as my Everest climb. A culmination of so so so much. And something (SOMEONE) tells me it is. And I want to believe it.

Oh god, do I want to believe it.

But my adult self tells me to be careful. To not care too much. To not get too excited. To set my expectations just a little bit lower.

And my five-year-old/twenty-year-old self is telling my thirty-one-year-old head/heart to fuck-off. To ““do what you did at first”” (Revelation 2:5). To BELIEVE.

That my God (the God I am so unsure of, the God who ever clings to me, the God of my youth, the God of the universe) is love. And that he WANTS me to believe this with every single inch of my being. And to not hold back.

And somewhere behind my ribcage, behind my separating bones, screams YES.

The yes of my two-year-old, five-year-old, twenty-year-old, pre-period, pre-heart-smash, pre-confusing-years, pre-church-mess-ups, pre-career-detours, pre-falling-out, pre-self.

Yes.

Yes. It will be.

Yes. I believe it.

Yes. There is love ahead.

Yes. There is more.

Yes. The daring will be worthwhile.

yes. yes. yes.

good. good. good.

love. love. love.

amen. amen. amen.

echoes my thirty-one-year-old heart.

And tomorrow I leave on a jet plane. And all shall be well. And all shall be well. And all manner of things will be well.

Yes. Amen. Let it be.

Madeleine at the Humber River Park, Easter Sunday

Here are a few pictures of our house in progress.

We wake up, have breakfast, unpack, play, eat lunch, unpack, look for stuff on Craigslist/IKEA.com/CrateandBarrel/wherever.com, buy groceries, fire off some emails, eat dinner, do a pile of dishes, baby bubble bath, tuck munchkin into bed, tidy, read, bed. Repeat. It’s coming together. We pick up our teak bed set tonight!

See the full set of pictures here.