“One of the many things I dislike about being a grown-up is the compulsion to have a purpose in life.  People are forever asking you why you are doing whatever you happen to be doing and before long you succumb to the need to supply an answer.”

- Michael Lewis (Home Game)

Last week’s ‘word for thought Wednesday’ was delayed by the arrival of our newest bundle, a son!

Thomas Patrick Hart arrived in a hurry Wednesday afternoon after a previous day of slow contractions (Madeleine and I even went for a swim in our neighbour’s pool on Tuesday but it didn’t help speed things up.)

Thomas was born during Madeleine’s nap, one hour after our midwives arrived, in our brightly lit living room.

My mom spent last week with us — cooking, cleaning, hanging art, planting flowers, generally being an angel — so she and Madeleine were able to come downstairs and meet Thomas minutes after he was born. After taking a bath at noon on Wednesday (a good check to see if it speeds things up or down) my contractions sped from 10 minutes apart to 2 in the span of 30 minutes. Fast labours are a mixed gift: afterwards I had a major case of whiplash. But we are back on our feet, with endless help from my amazing mom, and we are a happy, happy, happy clan.

Here is a link to a video of Madeleine and Thomas.

(Oh, and the book pitches were mailed in advance of baby’s arrival. Thanks for the encouragement, everyone!)

“I hate it when people say: ‘I’m spiritual but not religious. That’s like saying, ‘I’m emotional but not a psycho.’ It turns religion into a dirty word. Religion simply means re-ligion: to reattach to the God you feel separated from.”

- Susan E. Isaacs, author and comedian

This arrived at our door on Friday. Thank you, dear Avital and Corwyn, for the drawings. Mail wins.

there is a thing that i need to do. a stack of things, really. a stack of pretty 100-page books i had printed and bound from a ramshackle pile of pages i carefully packed around all over vancouver that comprise my book.

the book about the life and mess and thrill and heartbreak of faith, and the wild and courageous and deeply-flawed and beautiful women i know who live it every day. and i need to send these books to publishers. and to agents. and everything in my pregnant, over-heated body tells me to take a nap. but i really need a kick in the pants.

aggressive/encouraging commenting welcome below.

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 thought I’d start a neat little weekly feature called Word for thought Wednesday.

What do you think? Worth a weekly gander?

Last year I pitched a story to UPPERCASE magazine — a profile of my creative hero, artist/author Sabrina Ward Harrison. It was a thinly veiled attempt to meet Sabrina, whose work I have followed for close to ten years. As luck/fate (read: GOD) would have it, the pitch turned itself into much more than a phone interview.

I was sent to Prince Edward Island for a three-day sojourn with six other women to create alongside Sabrina at an old waterside hotel called the Highlands. (You may remember I faced a little trepidation as prepared for this trip.) The historic home and adjacent town dance hall, where we did our making, has housed royalty and the likes of Reverend Billy Graham. Each room was brimming with island minutiae and stacks of old LIFE magazines — a writer’s dream. Angela Ritchie, founder of the Whistler-based ACE Camps, and a creative mastermind in her own right, was the organizer of the retreat. I had the good fortune of interviewing her when I was back in Vancouver last week.

The fruit of the trip — Watchful Reverence, in UPPERCASE issue 10 — arrived at stockists and doorsteps days ago.

An excerpt:

“It’s the steady calm of the island air whistling through the birch trees. It’s the burst of plover, finches, and jays that begin their daylight calling at 4:30am, beckoning us to do the milking… I am sitting on the front stairs of the Highlands main house. Here four crooked trees congregate like an outer hearth. The twisting white-worn branches are the sort you’d find in the Haunted Wood of Anne of Green Gables’ imagination. The beaked chirps, caws and whistles blend into a symphony of spring. Behind me seven girls chatter on around the breakfast table: preserves, balkan yogurt, fresh-baked muffins, boiled eggs, brimming between. In the old adjacent dance hall Sabrina, dressed in a vintage polkadot dress, is readying for the day’s making.”

It was an absolute gift to meet Sabrina and a joy to work with Janine Vangool, tireless publisher/editor/designer of the magazine (not to mention mother to an on-the-run toddler.)

______________________________

If you are interested in reading the complete article you can order single copies or subscriptions to this beautiful publication at: http://shop.uppercasegallery.ca/collections/uppercase-magazine-1\. It is available in print only.

You, God, are my truest self.

The place I can sit unhurried.

You are the vast earth, ocean, star, hill invading my skin like night wind.

You are the birth place, the open passage, announcing life.

You are the hope dismissing my ‘whys’ and calling my eyes to the two darkened sky birds circling grey sun.

You are the voice saying: “rest, find rest, sweet spirit. Believe with the fierceness at first. Draw ear to my belly, my black mouth, and look.”

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.