Undisturbed

It is Saturday morning, and I am sitting at my laptop with my whipped-cream-topped coffee, when I see this Facebook status:

"I would like to kidnap somebody and take them to a nature place close to my house. Who is free to be whisked away?"

My house is a mess.  I mean, really.  A mess. There is a pile of laundry at the bottom of the stairs that seems to be only growing.  Every kitchen surface has dishes and crumbs.  You would be hard pressed to find a piece of empty floor to lay down on.  No one is dressed.  No one has eaten anything with any nutritional value.  Sh*t is generally not together.

I am torn, once again, between responsibility and the spirit of carpe diem.  I find my fingers typing:

"Oh, boy. Me and my kids?"

Carpe Diem wins.

The next hour is marked by dressing, gathering, packing, and buckling little bodies into car seats.  Relying on my memory for a few directions given over the phone, I pull out of the driveway very close to on time.  Traffic, construction...  I arrive at the park just before 11.  Thing 1 out of the car, Thing 2 strapped to my back, and into the woods with my friend we go.

All week my nerves have been rattled.  So many feelings of swirling upheaval, and no time or space in my own mind to settle.  But here, now, surrounded by trees and mud, away from the noise and movement of the city, away from the computer and the phone, I feel my jitters start to fall away.  I hear birds.  I feel the wind on my face, and see the gently movement of the leaves.

We are not the only ones in the park this morning.  Here are a couple boys jumping bikes.  There is a fisherman on the banks of the river.  A group of 3 runners hurry past.  We are not exactly in solitude, and the morning is not marked by perfect peacefulness, either. 

Nik on a swing we found, strung simply from a tree with rope.

Nik runs ahead, gets called back, needs one thousand reminders to stay close, to not approach the water, to hold my hand or climb safely on the logs.  Alexa is mostly happy, along for the ride, but even she has her squirmy fussy moments.

But somehow, the conditions don't have to reach perfect serenity to allow me to reap the benefit of being here, in creation in the spring.  The birds still sing.  The sunlight still filters through the canopy.  The river still rushes.  These things are undisturbed by the chaotic movements of a 4 year old boy.  Undisturbed.  Still growing.  Still peaceful.  And they lead by example.

Conservatory calm

I wrestle my 3 year old into his clothes and then into his car seat. I snap the baby seat in place, and drive. Wait for a train for 10 minutes. Fight my way through traffic on the 3 lanes of Portage Ave. Loop around the underpass, up Tuxedo, right onto Corydon... Pull onto Conservatory drive. Find a parking space, unbuckle 3 year old, put baby in carrier. Chase three year old with umbrella through rain.

Through one set of doors. Catch 3 year old, and through another set of doors. Up a path, past a crowd of school kids. Around a corner. Breathe.


All around me, at my feet and above my head, are the lush, thick leaves of tropical plants. Soft light filters through the greenery onto the path before me. The air is heavy with humidity, and from somewhere I hear water quietly falling. I can smell black earth, and dusty paving stones, and warm, wet, growing things.

It is well with my soul.

I duck under the canopy of a low growing tree, and follow my quick-footed son. He has spotted a bench to climb onto, and off of again. He runs by the pond, pausing for just a second to watch a koi fish circle in the water. We round the corner and see a trickle of a waterfall, landing in a small pool where five turtles are unhurriedly passing the time. A friend I meet up with asks me, "Do you come here very often?" Sigh... Not as often as I'd like.

We've come to another set of glass doors. Opening them, I recognize the sweet fragrance of hydrangeas. There are so many here, nestled together with tulips, snapdragons, lilies, and many more flowers I cannot name. As the light rain drizzles down the greenhouse roof, I watch as Nik runs to and fro along the paths, up the steps and around the gardens. I find a bench to sit down, and nurse my baby.

Fish and turtles pass slowly through still pools. Trees tower overhead. Ivy creeps near our feet. A group of school children pass through on their way to transplant some seedlings. Seniors take photographs. A young man with autism taps a garden tie rhythmically as he watches a gardener misting plants. The room is alive, but not frenetic. Everyone seems at peace in the midst of these beautiful, growing things.

Time passes and tummies rumble. The time comes for us to leave again, sooner than I would like. Back out through the doors, into the drizzle, babe in arms, and 3 year old in tow. Back into the car seats, down the drive, into the traffic... Back to life. Back to that list of laundry to do, diapers to change, kids to feed, groceries to buy.

But I carry a little peace with me. A lighter breath. An acknowledgement, a gratitude for my moment of conservatory calm. Namaste.

Art journalling

Since my son was born nearly 18 months ago, I am afraid that my long time papercrafting passion has gone by the wayside due to lack of time and opportunity to indulge. Oh, I still get my Scrapbook etc. subscription in the mail, and I am keeping all my supplies and continuing to take photos, but I have pretty much stopped shopping, and haven't completed a single layout for months. I kept telling myself the opportunity would arise again, and maybe it still will, but in the meantime my soul was withering away from creativity dehydration.

Enter art journalling.

For Christmas, many members of my family write wish lists, and post them on my brother's web site, to make shopping easier on us all. I didn't have many things on my list this year, which resulted in getting not one, but two, copies of Kelly Rae Roberts "Taking flight", one of the books on my list. A fabulous, inspiring, tall-drink-of-water book, but I still didn't need two. So off to Chapters I went to exchange the second copy for another book of the same type. I looked through all the scrapping and cardmaking books and magazines, feeling sort of ho-hum about them, and then a new type of book caught my eye: Sharon Soneff's "Art Journals & Creative Healing". I knew Sharon Soneff's name from the scrapping world, best for her Sonnet's line of scrap supplies, and so I flipped through the book, deciding almost immediately that it was the book I had been looking for.

Being the research-oriented kook I am, I had to read multiple more books, magazines, and online articles/blogs on art journaling and altered books before I was ready to put pen to paper in my own version, but during a recent holiday I took the plunge, picking up a spiral bound sketch journal, and a giant jar of gesso at Hobby Lobby. My work is simple so far, consisting of drawing and/or painting with a wide variety of mediums (watercolour, pen, coloured pencil, crayon, oil pastel) and handwritten thoughts. I hope to get into more collage techniques in time, and also complete an altered book honouring my love of children's literature, in a old copy of A. A. Milne's "Winnie the Pooh".

In the meanwhile, I am staining my bedsheets with art supplies, working in my journal before bed a few nights a week. It has proved a wonderful tool for combatting overthinking and negative self talk, and I hope create a record of personal growth (a la Sabrina Ward Harrison). The spin off benefit of beginning this new hobby is that, in addition to meeting my needs of getting messy and making things, I feel more in touch with my inner artist than I ever have, and I am having the strangest cravings to read poetry, or spend a day at the art gallery. If only I could afford real art lessons...

Now is the time for Copperfield

Lately, I have been reading David Copperfield as part of my nighttime routine. My paperback copy of Dickens' illustrious work was found collecting dust one summer in a second-hand book shop at Winnipeg Beach. I was inspired to my $2.00 purchase by some vague feeling that it was virtuous to read the classics (or, at least, have them on your bookshelf). So, after 6 months or so of allowing the book to collect dust in my possession, I picked it up and actually started to read.

Though I've read Dickens before, it has always been of the shorter Christmas-themed type, so Copperfield's complexity came as a bit of a shock. With a dictionary within reach, I struggled to make sense of the unfamiliar language, reading chapter after chapter, until one day, after finishing the chapter XII, I came to a realization. David was off to seek his aunt, whom he had never met, out of desperate times that were a result of many hardships in his young life, and I didn't care. Not at all! He could get there, or not, and it would make no difference to me. This orphaned and abused boy had just been robbed, and was off on a long journey on foot, and I didn't have any interest in reading the next chapter. So I didn't.

Fast forward a year or so. Nik is born, and I am reading every baby care book and website I can find. His sleep problems begin, and that triggers another reading binge, starting with sleep solution books, and branching off into basic parenting philosophies. I am starting to make myself crazy with all this research. Then my sister lends me a book by Billie Letts, out of the blue, Where the Heart Is. It is a breeze to read, and I am done it within the week. Now, I have the fiction bug. I pick up A Wizard of Earthsea, one of Andrew's books on the shelf downstairs. More difficult, but thin, and it only takes me a few weeks to get through. Upon completing both books, I feel a sense of loss. I have really begun to look forward to my before-bed chapter, in the quiet of the evening, tucked into bed. The books just aren't lasting long enough.

And then I remember Copperfield. I remember how I felt it would never end, and how a month of reading it barely made a dent in the book. I realize that if I am looking for a book that will last, I need to look no further. So, I pull it off of the shelf, and pick up where I left off, at Chapter XIII. Soon I meet Betsey Trotwood and Mr. Dick, and watch Janet chasing the donkeys off of the lawn, and David is put to bed under Mr. Dick's sound advice, and I am hooked.

Now is the time in my life to read David Copperfield. Now is the time in my life where reading a chapter of such a long and formally-written book is a respite and not a chore. My intellect is challenged, and my need for quiet and still and uninterruption is met. Surprisingly, the book that I gave up on over a year ago is my sanctuary today. A good lesson to extrapolate, I think.